Research: custom culling

[ElmarJ]

Currently, all GameObjects (such as buildings, bridges and canal islands) within the camera frustrum (even those very far away) are rendered every frame. Only a small fraction of these GameObjects is visible from any specific position.

The built in occlusion culling system is not feasible as none of these objects are static (because of time traveling) and may not be effective due to the extra CPU-overload.

A custom solution might work. I'm thinking about the following approach:

• A separate thread runs (about) every second going over a (cached?) list of all GameObjects. Objects are disabled whenever:
  • Not present in currently selected year (TimeMachine)
  • Not currently visible, and at least 100 meters away

This would significantly reduce the number of rendered objects. I should research how much this would impact performance / frame rate. Some buildings might appear with a slight delay, but that is not a big problem.

Note: after this run, shadows should also be recalculated.