This update looks into another performance improvement idea for low end hardware as well as improving the visual quality of some meshes, including notably distance island wall meshes.

Wall LODs improvements

The lower LOD (level of detail) levels of walls, noticably when used on other islands in the distance had three areas I felt could be improved. First, the blocky-low-poly appearance is not nice to look at. Second, I felt even with this amount of poly the poly could still come down. And finally, the shadows / ambient occlusion didnt react well to low poly mesh causing weird artifacts on occasion when the sun hits at a low angle. So, to approach solving all three I began experimenting with baking the high poly mesh onto essentially jig-saw shaped layered planes. The idea is that when far enough from the camera the walls can transition to a mix of height and normal detail on 2D surfaces and blend it convincingly together so not only do you not notice it, but it looks way better than the low poly 3D. Specifically look at the second row of images and notice how the lighting artifact is no longer present. There will be performance improvements for very low-end devices when playing with other islands enabled specifically. This is achieved through the triangle count reduction between the two techniques of wall LODs. Playing on individual levels such as in practice mode will make little difference however because of the distances involved before you'd see these far LODs. When testing on a Ryzen 3200G APU (with no dedicated GPU) at medium settings 90fps was mostly achieved with smaller levels exceeding a hundred fps. A few levels still dropped to mid 70s, and they may need specific tweaks over time. Having a buffer from 60fps is especially helpful when playing with lots of players, including split-screen so the performance does hold up. For comparison testing on a 3060TI typically gives 200-300 fps, sometimes more and there isn't really any particular performance issues to speak of when it comes to reasonably recent dedicated GPUs that I'm aware of.

Wall shadow casting improvements

Another quality change with this update is slightly better shadow detail relating to walls as a result of the better LOD models used. Essentially the LOD models get used for shadow casting simply because the poly involved would make shadows pretty costly, so improvements here does result in slightly better casting, especially for smaller details. A couple other elements such as pipes have improved shading as well. Due to the randomness of levels and lighting it was very hard to get two exact images, but other than the pipes the most noticable improvement will be the gaps between stones give small shadow detail when at certain angles to the sun where previously they'd come off more flatter in shadow appearence. Other meshes and overall scene brightness will be down to just the random dynamic lighting, which could include something like varying cloud shadows etc.

Various bug fixes

I've also gone through every level quite extensively as a result of the changes made to lower wall LOD levels so I've fixed a bunch of minor visual issues. If you are aware of any issues I haven't fixed then please let me know so I can quickly hotfix them. You can find full patch notes below. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/Golfing_In_Aether/

Patch Notes

Environment

• Added improvements to wall shadow casting.
• Fixed various minor wall gaps across several levels.
• Fixed a shading issue relating to the cup LOD.
• Added a couple of new wall meshes to better help joining in places.
• Fixed a tiny pipe alignment issue to a pipe in Tee Time.
• Added improved LOD models for fences.
• Added new LOD models for walls.
• Added new LODs for level LODs.
• Added improved shading for pipes.
• Fixed an issue with the snow on downhill from here.
• Added improved LOD models for rocks at low foliage quality settings.
• Added improved models for ground petals at low foliage quality settings.

Interface

• Fixed a behaviour issue with navigation in the choose players menu when pressing 'back' and rejecting the prompt.

Discord Server

Be sure to check out the official discord server with channels for Golfing In Aether and my other various projects.