Optimizing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered
November 2024
Bringing a classic back to life
Identifying Performance Issues - Game Thread
Studio performance engagements are some of the exciting parts of my role on the XBOX Games Technology Group. My part for this project is to act as someone who identifies performance issues with the project and suggest solutions. We looked for memory optimizations, general game thread performance, and solutions to hitches through PIX captures and memory insight captures.
While the engine uses Unreal Engine 5 for presentation the world streaming tech and gameplay remains simulated with Creation Engine. To help alleviate pressure on the game thread I found harrada plants were skeletal meshes, so I suggested the use of World Position Offset instead to shift the workload to the GPU.
Identifying Performance Issues - GPU & Memory
XBOX Series S is known to be a memory bottleneck for projects and this one is no exception. We shared our memory budget internally with the project and suggested the use of virtual textures instead of traditional textures.
For the GPU, we suggested running Lumen reflections async to free up the graphics pipeline. We also suggested the addition of cull distance volumes to all the levels so smaller objects relative to the player can be culled sooner.
There were many other findings from other technical artists and engineers. However, as we were brought in as advisors we ultimately do not know the actual actions taken with our provided findings. That said, it was still an amazing time learning how other studios make the vastly different games they do.