precomputed light volume memory

[bazmod]

Hi,
I have a question about the precomputed light volume memory stat that is displayed when running my level...

When I bring up the stats ('stat memory' on the console), it tells me that my precomputed light volume memory is 4gigs (133%). Everything else is really low and my fps is solid 60.

So my question is, is this normal (ok)? Is it just a bug, and what exactly does it mean?

Many thanks

[Tom Shannon]

Have you set up your lightmass importance volume correctly? I have some pretty big levels and don't even get CLOSE to that. You may have also changed a setting somewhere related to the spacing of the light samples. O_o 4gigs!

[bazmod]

thanks for the answer.

lightmass is turned off, although I do have a small light importance volume in there.

The map only takes about 30 seconds to compile (the map is huge though).

When it says 4gigs, what exactly is this? 4gig of RAM, HD space, GPU memory? If i go to task manager the game is only using about 300meg of RAM...?

Is it just a buggy readout?

Cheers

[Wyldhunt]

Precomputed lighting would imply lightmaps. I'm guessing that it's HDD space. Lightmaps can get really big if you have a lot of meshes or use high detail lightmaps.

[bazmod]

hmm, well i do have some enormous static meshes in the level (enourmous in terms of scaling rather than poly counts) and these have hi-res normal maps on them.

To be honest I think i'll just ignore the readout for now, as it isn't affecting the fps

[Wyldhunt]

You may want to test and make sure that they aren't causing any issues when they're all not occluded.
If there is anywhere in your level where you can see all, or most, of the large meshes (Even if it's just a tiny part of the huge mesh), go there and make sure that as many as possible are in your camera's field of view and some part is visible on the screen. Then check your RAM and FPS.
Since mesh get occluded when they're not visible, you may have certain parts of your map that have lower FPS than others. If you have huge meshes that reference huge lightmaps, you may see a decent drop if the engine has to show many of them at the same time without occluding them.