Func_AreaPortal Optimization question

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Oct 6, 2008
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Hi,

This is a bit of a weird one - but again, I only get the weird stuff happening :p

From my understanding, if I'm in Room B and the door to Room A is sealed with an areaportal then I shouldn't be able to see anything in Room A unless I'm looking straight at it. Note: looking at it in mat_wireframe 3 areaporatl is open.

The issue is I'm standiing in a room but I can see stuff (mostly models 98%) on the far side of the map even though the room is sealed. If I approach the areaportal then the displacements etc on the other side of it (in room A not the far side of the map) start to be renedered too.

Any ideas why this would occur? Perhaps it's just a question of opening / closing the ap's as the cart passes over the nodes on the pathtrack < don't know if that would help.

edit add on - does every stage of the map literally have to connect to each other?
 
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Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
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2,579
Hang on. Are you seeing this stuff through the door or behind the walls around the door? Because areaportals are only suppoed to block the latter, no matter how many other walls are between the objects and the doorway.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Check your visleafs don't see around the door, usually this happens over walls/structures because vvis doesn't like to cut visleafs vertically. My experience is that areaportals block models based on their bounding box, this can be a nuisance when dealing with large models rotated that might be over a thousand units out of view, but are rendered because the engine works out that you can see the bounding box.

The other consideration is that vvis just didn't work properly and none of your optimisation is working as a result, like if you had compiled with fast mode.

If you try to shortcut optimisation it often negates all the efforts you have taken up to that point because it requires you be thorough.
 
Oct 6, 2008
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I think it's through the walls (currently at work) and couldn't check it last night (was in school)

Aren't walls / portals supposed to block vis so that the items aren't renndered saving resources? That was my understanding of it - save resources untill they're need to raise your FPS output.

I'll post s couple ot pics tonight.

Thanks Grazr - your post came in as I was typing - I was running fast vis - I'll try a full compile as well to see if it's still happening :)
 
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Oct 6, 2008
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Thanks Grazr

It was the fast Viz causing the issue - I did a complete compile ant the problem went way.