Yes, there is a REAL limit on placeables... it is why the total placeable count in an individual area, AND in the total module has to be kept as low as possible.Zwerkules wrote:There is a maximum distance a placeable can be away from the PC for it still to be rendered.
If your fog distance is very high you will see placeables in the distance disappear abruptly because
they are too far away and aren't rendered any more. I get the feeling that distance is somehow
even shorter for doors. I can only move a few tiles away from doors before they become transparent
and soon they disappear altogether.
You can even notice that the placeables aren't rendered throughout an area at all times if you use
the DLA willows or birches. Once you walk near enough and they get rendered there is considerable
lag. If I use more than one of those on the same tile the game slows down to a crawl.
The way the NWN rendering engine works, an area is 'loaded' when you first enter it, EXCLUDING all placeables... IE, the tileset is loaded first, then rendered down to just the tiles actually used and this is controlled by the fog distance... placeables are then re-added AFTER the area is loaded, and what is viewable is re-rendered every step you take... placeables are required to be re-rendered each and every step you take... each and every step... this greatly increases lag. Now add in creatures, NPCs etc, and you get even more lag.
That is why sooo many of the Bioware tilesets, especially interiors, already had 'placeables' baked in... IE,. bookshelves, tables, etc. that are static... They only get painted, and re-calculated ONCE when you first enter the area... where if they were actual placeables, they would have to be re-rendered, every step you took...
I don't know exactly what the placeable rendering distance is, but it is NOT controlled by fog, IE, placeables will render, THEN the fog distance is calculated and overlaid on top of what is 'visible'...
It is annoying... but, it gives the builder a greater ability to change the default terrains to make their mod specific to their own vision.
Increasing your max cache ram for nwn, which has an actual limit of 64 meg of cache, regardless of how much memory your computer has, helps, but it still is not enough to overcome the actual engine limits... NWN was created in win98 days... 64 meg max ram available etc... NWN has been updated a bit, thus the ability to force more ram into the cache, but it's max is now 64meg... regardless of what you attempt to set it to. So, on my current system, with 4 Gig, running XP, I can only use 3.5 gig as the other .5 is grabbed by vid card, soooo, even with 3.5 gig, the max cache that NWN will accept is 64... setting that number higher has no effect.
Multi-core CPU's don't really help at all with this, as the engine itself only uses ONE core regardless. I have a dual-core, but can only run NWN on one... So, the latest and greatest quad cores are sitting idle more than 75% of the time, regardless of what you would like to happen. The engine just doesn't understand nor is it written in such a way to actually utilize multi-core cpus. You can force the engine to work, or run, on a multi-core, but you have to do it by telling the engine to use only one core.
Anyway, these things are not going to change now, not unless Bioware releases the game engine to the community, which has a fat chance of ever happening.