User playing at 4k - conversation on recomended settings.

[Bikerdude]

@XolvixFollowing on from the conversation in the share your status thread... 

Its recommended to fun most missions with LOD set to normal, and afaik most are built with said setting on normal. IN my current WIP for example, I have deliberately set two LOD levels normal and better. Normal for regular players and better higher end players 

Regarding the issue with the Training mission, which light/s were you observing with an issue..? as I was the last person to work on that.

[Xolvix]

OK so this is what I found. Run the Training Mission (nothing special, just what's bundled with TDM 2.14). Open the door to the "Jumping & Climbing" section and go outside, through the hole in the wall. Staring at that wooden structure in the middle I had a bit of an FPS drop, so I used it to test various settings. This is where I discovered the LOD quirk. Hopefully this is fully reproducible for anyone to check.

Object Details (LOD) set to High:

Object Details (LOD) set to Normal:

See how in normal the background areas have darkened. In particular some of the cast shadows don't seem quite defined or are even lost, even though I didn't touch any direct shadowing options. I have the max FPS set to 144. Note the major drop when set to High (which I'm fine with if it retains the intended visuals).

Edited May 7 by Xolvix

[datiswous]

I think you can set shadows via LOD.

[chakkman]

2 hours ago, Bikerdude said:

Its recommended to fun most missions with LOD set to normal, and afaik most are built with said setting on normal. IN my current WIP for example, I have deliberately set two LOD levels normal and better. Normal for regular players and better higher end players 

What happens if someone has set a higher LOD, but the map author has NOT set several LOD levels? Default to normal LOD level?

And why does the thing @Xolvix posted happen? Bug?

That's particularly bad as that mission is supposed to be used for setting gamma and brightness...

Edited May 7 by chakkman

[Xolvix]

I feel a bit out of the loop. Isn't LOD (especially on a setting that's specifically about object detail) just a determination of how close you need to be before the game swaps a low-poly model for a high-poly one? Why do map designers need to consider LOD, isn't that just an feature handled by the engine? Or this this more about tailoring for performance?

[Bikerdude]

3 hours ago, Xolvix said:

Object Details (LOD) set to High:
Object Details (LOD) set to Normal:

That will be the moonlight assigned to LOD better, because 99% players play with the default LOD normal. But that's some FPS drop your seeing on a beefy card like the 4070, but that might be down to the fact your playing at 4k with no upscaling...

So going back to my previous comment "Its recommended to fun most missions with LOD set to normal,"

Edited May 7 by Bikerdude

[Bikerdude]

1 hour ago, chakkman said:

That's particularly bad as that mission is supposed to be used for setting gamma and brightness...

Nope, all settings are for the LOD normal setting, eg where most players play.  The extra detail that was added to the map was only added to the LOD better setting.

Edited May 7 by Bikerdude

[Xolvix]

OK, so you're basically saying that with higher LOD values you actually include non-object specific details like that lighting you see. Hopefully you can understand my confusion, I don't expect the lighting to change on an Object Details (LOD) setting. Maybe that setting needs a name change so it doesn't sound like it's just about the poly count on distant objects.

Edited May 7 by Xolvix

[Bikerdude]

53 minutes ago, Xolvix said:

• OK, so you're basically saying that with higher LOD values you actually include non-object specific details like that lighting you see.
• Hopefully you can understand my confusion, I don't expect the lighting to change on an Object Details (LOD) setting. Maybe that setting needs a name change so it doesn't sound like it's just about the poly count on distant objects.

• Correct.
• Yep, but most players don't change the default LOD out of the box setting.

[chakkman]

The LOD setting shouldn't brighten up things so much. Object detail is object detail, not lighting.

Edited May 7 by chakkman

[Bikerdude]

Well I have asked some of the team if they want me to revert it. 

[stgatilov]

A small comment from me.

I used to run missions with "Very High" LOD setting, because architecture modules LOD switches in New Job look awful to me. I have not seen much FPS difference depending on LOD settings anyway, but maybe it exists on a few specific maps.

Now that I have added "Full" LOD, I'll just run it 
Unless lower LOD is needed for testing.

[datiswous]

On 5/7/2026 at 3:36 PM, Bikerdude said:

Yep, but most players don't change the default LOD out of the box setting.

I don't think you (can) know this..

It doesn't make any sense to me. I would assume most players have a pc that can run games on higher settings. It seems stupid to play the game on low end settings if your pc can handle it quite easilly.

[Xolvix]

OK, after further investigation I think my GPU either has a problem with it, I've got a dodgy setting in my TDM config, or the engine just scales poorly when it has to render at 4k. Which isn't that surprising, it's quadruple pixels compared to 1080p after all. But I've seen commercial games using say the Unreal 3 engine rock solid at 4K without any need to tweak too much if at all. Admittedly it's unfair to compare a AAA game to a community effort so it's worth keeping perspective.

I loaded an older FM (Penny Dreadful 3) and found that in certain areas I was getting less than 50 FPS in certain interior rooms when my render scale was still at 1.0. LOD had no effect here because I don't think newer effects were implemented at higher LODs in this mission, or at least in the areas I were testing. Shadow quality definitely has an impact (I use Maps). But it's hard to tell if I'm GPU bound or CPU bound at this point. The Doom 3 per-pixel lighting might be killing it or it's something else. In any case if the GPU is being dodgy I might be in a position to get something newer, but I wasn't expected to do so for The Dark Mod of all things! Oh well.

[chakkman]

On 5/10/2026 at 7:58 PM, datiswous said:

I don't think you (can) know this..

It doesn't make any sense to me. I would assume most players have a pc that can run games on higher settings. It seems stupid to play the game on low end settings if your pc can handle it quite easilly.

Yeah, I think those who have a moderately powerful PC (even mid range from 5 years ago will do) will change most settings to high/highest, including LOD.

Edited May 13 by chakkman