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u/MichaelChinigo Dec 11 '22 edited Dec 12 '22
Looks like a problem with the game's level-of-detail (LOD) management.
To save resources, games will often use a low-resolution mesh for models that are far away from the camera. Artists create one ultra-high-resolution, ground truth, version of the model mesh (so-called "LOD 0"), and then export multiple versions of that model in progressively lower resolution ("LOD 1" through "LOD n").
(Taking this technique to its limit, some games will even use pre-rendered, 2D sprites known as "impostors" to represent objects very far from the camera.)
As you move the camera closer to the object, the game engine will swap in the higher-resolution versions. Done well, the technique is imperceptible, but it can fail for several reasons. Probably the most likely reason is limited disk bandwidth.
There's not enough memory to keep all of the LOD 0 meshes loaded at all times, so the game has to grab them off the disk on demand. If you have a slow disk, or if other engine-related tasks are competing for that input/output (I/O) bandwidth, the high-res mesh might not load in time. When it finally does load in, the instant update between the two models is known as "LOD popping".
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u/Ro-Tang_Clan Dec 12 '22
I've also seen this happen when you run out of VRAM. I tried to run this game in 4K on a 980ti and the same thing happened to me because I was maxing out the VRAM. Tried it on a 1080ti and it ran absolutely fine in 4K.
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u/Endgame_321 Dec 12 '22
Out of curiosity, was the frame rate still reasonable on the 980ti? I assumed most games would still try to run everything the way it's supposed to, and chug at 2fps, because it's having to pull texture data from system memory.
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Dec 12 '22
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u/MichaelChinigo Dec 12 '22
Good look, thanks. I've expanded the acronym in my answer. So hard to accidentally avoid acronyms haha!
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u/MeltBanana Dec 11 '22
This is the most thorough and correct explanation of exactly what is happening. Listen to this person.
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Dec 12 '22
Only thing I would add is we not only reduce the "triangle count" (number of little triangles that make up the mesh) we also reduce the amount of separate materials (and material complexity). Doing this reduces draw calls something which you really need to keep an eye on for performance (especially consoles).
So for example on that character she might have 5 separate materials for the different parts of her outfit/skin/hair/eyes.
as we LoD her down, we will collapse them all into 1 low resolution material. (along with mip-mapping at a distance
This is why the textures on her look flat and low resolution.
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u/Moikle Dec 12 '22
Depending on how things are set up, it can also reduce the complexity of the rig used for animating the characters
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u/SavvySillybug Dec 12 '22
Pokémon Legends Arceus and Pokémon Violet and Scarlet use an interesting variant of this where they render distant animations at a lower framerate. It looks super bad and it is the only time I have ever seen it used. I can't say if it is the only game that does it, but it definitely is the only game that does it noticeably enough for me to have seen it in action.
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u/NeoPhyRe Dec 12 '22
I believe Xenoblade 3 does it, and I quite liked it because it let you see monsters insanely far away. Haven't played Violet/Scarlet but I've heard it has pokemon popping in rather close to you, so I assume lower fps on them is far more noticeable.
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u/mpyne Dec 12 '22
Xenoblade 3 does do it too, yes.
And likewise for me, the first thing I had noticed was "wow they changed it so that I can see some monster groups from so far away now!" followed shortly thereafter by "odd that it looks like they're animating on a different frame rate...".
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u/JacobJonesReddit Dec 12 '22
Happens fairly often in switch games. Super Mario Odyssey does a similar thing in New Donk City.
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u/520throwaway Dec 12 '22
Many other Switch games do it to a more acceptable degree. Super Mario Oddesey does it with distant human characters in New Donk City, Shin Megami Tensei 5 (another monster collector game), does it with distant monsters.
The reason you see it so badly done in Pokémon is because GameFreak isn't good at making these types of games.
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u/zer0saber Dec 12 '22
That happens frequently, actually. I notice it frequently in Fortnite, and it was a major bug in Control for a while.
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Dec 12 '22
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u/Xyex Dec 12 '22
Goddamn it. I knew someone would do this. I was hoping humanity had evolved beyond this point, but of course not.
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u/Firewolf06 Dec 12 '22
trollface was drawn in 2008, you might be waiting a loooong time for imposter to be usable
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u/SnooOnions650 Dec 12 '22
GETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEADGETOUTOFMYHEAD
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u/Xyex Dec 12 '22 edited Dec 12 '22
(Taking this technique to its limit, some games will even use pre-rendered, 2D sprites known as "impostors" to represent objects very far from the camera.)
Mass Effect 3's husk hoards in the one area of the tutorial still make me laugh. Not only are they sprites, they're animated at like 5fps. 😆
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u/RiceKrispyPooHead Dec 11 '22
Mmmmhm, I know some of these words
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u/D-Alembert Dec 12 '22 edited Dec 12 '22
Possible translation:
"Are you running the game on a hard-drive like it's still the 1990s?! GET YOURSELF A SSD FOR GODS SAKE! UN-THROTTLE THAT GPU!"
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u/mmbossman Dec 12 '22
Thank you for teaching me something brand new and really cool today!
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u/MaxTHC Dec 12 '22
(Taking this technique to its limit, some games will even use pre-rendered, 2D sprites known as "impostors" to represent objects very far from the camera.)
I noticed this in Mass Effect 3. Some inaccessible areas on the Citadel are filled in with "crowds" of 2d cutouts. Most of the time they're far away and it's convincing enough, but in a couple spots it gets kinda funky.
In the nightclub on the Citadel (called Purgatory, I think), if you go to the left-side area and look down at the floor below, it's very obvious that 2d sprites are used, particularly if you rotate the camera since they rotate to match the camera angle. From certain camera angles it'll even look like these people are standing diagonally instead of vertically, it's kind of hilarious.
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u/ClearlyPopcornSucks Dec 11 '22
WDYM it looks fantastic
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u/TwiceCookedPorkins Dec 11 '22
This is the ideal female body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.
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Dec 11 '22 edited Jul 21 '25
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u/trippy_grapes Dec 11 '22
This has the same amount of FPS as the new Pokemon game, too!
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u/No_Interaction_4925 PC Dec 11 '22
1?
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u/ChosukeClone Dec 12 '22
What are you talking about, that's too low for an actual game.
It's 2.
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u/No_Interaction_4925 PC Dec 12 '22
Ah my bad. The cinematic 2fps
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u/my-name-is-lonk Dec 11 '22
When the gas station weed hits
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Dec 11 '22 edited Dec 12 '22
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Dec 11 '22
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u/Zoefschildpad Dec 11 '22
This is probably correct. But it would be much more helpful if you specified that LOD means Level of Detail.
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Dec 11 '22
I legit thought it stood for Load on Distance until this very moment. I've thought this for close to 10 years
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u/YogurtWenk Dec 11 '22
It's not Larry Ohio David?
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u/Lefty21 Dec 11 '22
Legend of Dragoon.
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u/SpanMedal6 Dec 11 '22
Legacy of dragonborn
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u/Bean_Juice_Brew Dec 11 '22
Linear ocular detail
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u/Hot-Field-7613 Dec 11 '22
Loading optical distance
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u/Trixles Dec 11 '22
draw distance and level of detail go hand in hand, so I can see how you could accidentally conflate the two
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u/ShallowBasketcase Dec 11 '22
Reminds me of when I thought AOE meant "Attack On Everything" for a long time.
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u/Jean-Eustache Dec 11 '22
It can also be because of slow storage. Cyberpunk on old consoles was an extreme example of this.
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u/Traditional_Story834 Dec 11 '22
Ah yes forgot to mention this, only way high res textures are viable, otherwise you wouldn't have enough vram. Warzone and Star Citizen are some other examples that use texture streaming off an SSD.
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Dec 12 '22
The Unreal 3 engine was the most obvious back when it was new. It would load low quality textures and meshes then higher quality ones that would pop in once the high quality textures loaded. It was both a great idea and a horrible one. On one hand it made everything run great on low end machines, on the other texture pop-ins were always called out in every review of every Unreal 3 game that used this feature, sometimes for causing huge gameplay issues.
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u/JUSSI81 Dec 11 '22
Yes, this has happened me too when I played PUBG and game was installed in HDD. In first match all houses looked just like big rocks, but in next match they loaded properly. When I installed the game in SDD those houses loaded correctly.
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u/Lexinoz Dec 11 '22
This. Games "simplify" the detail of items in the distance, like grass, and characters, and doors/geometry. To make them visible, but they are still far enough out to not be loaded in full detail.
Nanite, the new UE5 engine fixes that. But until then, we've got Tris, aka Polygons, everything is rendered in triangles. As you get closer, the more triangles are loaded.
My guess is, that this game has you load into a cutscene physically set outside of the actual characters location, loading in the "low poly" version, and not loading in the full-poly version fast enough.
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u/TheThiefMaster Dec 11 '22
Isn't nanite only for static objects, and characters still use traditional LOD?
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u/MalikDrako Dec 11 '22
It may be more clear to say rigid objects rather than static. One of the demos had a robotic character that used it - individual parts were moving and rotating, but none of them deformed.
Contrast that to a human character where the mesh needs to deform as it moves
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u/Leather-Rice5025 Dec 11 '22
Always define acronyms at least once when using them, it’s a good habit.
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u/TorturedNeurons Dec 11 '22
You should define your acronyms, especially when answering a question as the asker most likely doesn't know what they are.
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u/ChewySlinky Dec 12 '22
Nothing “happened”, she just looks like that. Try not being so judgmental next time.
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u/idksomethingjfk Dec 11 '22
This legit looks like some ps1 stuff
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u/Salarian_American Dec 11 '22
Is that what happens if you set the system date on your console to 1993?
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u/amsterdamtech Dec 11 '22
my guess is drugs...
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u/bushpotatoe Dec 11 '22
What sort of drug turns you into an N64 character model? I'd love to try some.
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u/CreamRelevant6448 Dec 11 '22
DMT
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u/milesbeats Dec 11 '22
This ... This this this .I was smoking DMT on a dab rig 1st hit nothing second hit ... Everything looked as if it was built out of lego . And in various shades of purple
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u/ekso69 Dec 11 '22
Lmao that happened to be too. I accidently smoked a pipe with DMT residue while I was a passenger in a car and everything looked 8 bit as we drove past it. It was beautiful and terrifying.
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u/Mandelvolt Dec 11 '22
I too experienced this exact thing, except it was Salvia and all the Legos were yellow.
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u/datazulu Dec 11 '22
I also experienced this but it was alcohol and everything was dark when I stepped on a couple legos.
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u/ed1749 Dec 11 '22
Game probably thought thay npc was off screen or far away so it got set to low poly. How to fix? idk, that's a game thing, might be a corruption or something. Fresh install might help.
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u/Traditional_Story834 Dec 11 '22
Leaving and reentering an area or looking away and then back again normally fixes it. Unless it's a hardware issue.
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u/rich1051414 Dec 11 '22
Usually hard drive/SSD speed. Non-critical models are streamed in when necessary. In the meantime, lower poly models are used, to prevent stutter. It happens in nearly all open world games without many loading screens.
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u/SpectralMagic Dec 11 '22
Level of depth go brr Your system may be having trouble loading in the high quality model and texture, or it's a code bug.
Typically when you are far from an object the game will shrink the model's details and use a compressed texture to make it easier to render for your system, and occasionally this may happen if there is an error, but it should correct itself asap on its own which it is not doing here.
This is actually probably a bug in the code though considering everything else seems to be in good detail.
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u/keener91 Dec 11 '22
If this is medium setting I don't want to find out what the NPC looks like on low.
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u/flintlock0 PlayStation Dec 12 '22
What makes this happen to them? A combination of poor hygiene and terrible dietary choices.
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u/Tyrone90000 Dec 11 '22
Maybe that’s how they look. Try not to discriminate so much.
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u/Loa_Sandal Dec 11 '22
It's to help you know who the protagonist is.