UE5.3 Preview - New Landscape Features

[@michaelasquith4433]

I'd just like to add... THANK YOU SO MUCH for all these videos you are making. You are at the bleeding edge of landscape and terrain workflow in Unreal Engine. If some of the folks at Epic were 1/10th as thorough and professional as you the engine would be in a much better place. I hope I speak for (most of) your viewers when I say that we greatly appreciate your efforts.

[@demenzunmedia]

Thank you!

[@zarackbustelo3352]

Could not agree more.

[@JDAeroVR]

Yep I tried importing 32K.... made it past the import mesh part... however never finished the landscape shaders portion. No crash but never finished.

[@demenzunmedia]

I tried importing larger than 16k on my workstation system, as single heightmaps and tiled, and I still get the same crash with a GetMax2DTexture error, so the importer is still limited to a maximum texture size of 16k. For me it runs to past where you get the low-res proxy mesh and then the new Creating Regions dialogs, and then it errors right after that. My workstation is an Intel Xeon W7-2495X 24C 48T, ASUS Pro W790 ACE, 512GB DDR5-4800 ECC RDIMM, ASUS ROG STRIX RTX-3090 24GB. The Roadmap stated that they were going to add "successive batch importing" whatever that means, it's nonsensical, so I tried tiling and subsequent imports and looked for new buttons and everything else that I could think of and everything resulted in two Landscape actors that were not merged.

[@michaelasquith4433]

Typical Epic never finishing anything properly. Like most promised features it's half-baked. Let's hope it'll be there by final 5.3 release. This is super disappointing.

[@demenzunmedia]

I tried everything I could think of to get larger Landscapes, including importing larger sizes, using tiles, doing subsequent imports, and everything else. I looked for new buttons and features, and the only thing new that I could find is the Regions and their viewport cubes, along with a Region Size Property on the Landscape importer. The Roadmap stated that they were going to add "successive batch importing" whatever that means, it's nonsensical, so I tried tiling and subsequent imports and looked for new buttons and everything else that I could think of and everything resulted in two Landscape actors that were not merged. I don't know if there will be a 5.3 Preview 2, maybe that will have something. Unless Epic has made some obscure methodology that you have to use command-line or something to batch import, which no one will figure out unless Epic documents it.

[@ChuckWilsonWilsonsStudio]

I hate to say it, but it just seems they don't have enough people that know what they are doing. Seems like just a handful of people at Epic know what they are doing and carry the rest,,, sadly...

[@demenzunmedia]

The Unreal Engine is becoming a mess. It is poorly optimized, and has bad lazy code everywhere. I recently did a wide range of tests for my upcoming World Partition Series HLOD video, and creating HLODs on a 16321x16321 Landscape with Screen Size of 1.0 resulted in a total memory commit of 730GB, that is 500GB of RAM memory and 230GB of Page File. Pretty much no one but me is going to have a 512GB workstation to build those HLODs on. That is just really bad programming on Epic's part. The forums have lots of people who simply crash building HLODs with out of memory errors. For example a 64GB system has a default maximum Page File of 4xRAM or 256GB, for a total virtual memory of 320GB, which simply is not enough. And when I did my World Composition to World Partition Conversion test, it took 26.5 hours to complete, never going over 1% CPU usage or 1% GPU usage, and using a medium amount of memory. Just really lazy programming.

[@ChuckWilsonWilsonsStudio]

@@demenzunmedia I agree 100% Just shotty work and after years of lazy coding its catching up, we all love Tim for everything he has done with the Unreal Engine but there is something seriously wrong going on over at Epic , especially with the work force they have it shouldn't be a problem, they keep adding new features and still have problems that have plagued the engine for years.

[@demenzunmedia]

@@ChuckWilsonWilsonsStudio - I agree.

[@yujack5910]

@@demenzunmedia "Oh my God, why is it like this? All I see are superficial messages, generation after generation of huge, magnificent, stunning updates from the Unreal Engine, but I never expected it to have such a dark side."

[@demenzunmedia]

@@yujack5910 - Epic tends to just develop a feature just far enough to get it working, and then never complete it to the point of optimization or full features. Just look at their terrain systems as an example. There is the original Landscape, which supports heightmaps up to 8161x8161. Then there is World Composition that supports terrains in tiles up to 260km x 260km and larger. But it hitches when using 4033 and 8129 tile sizes, so it is really only usable with up to 32x32 tiles of 2017x2017 which is a 64km x 64km world. Importing more than 32x32 tiles will crash on 90% of computers with memory errors. So Epic added World Partition, which is only partially functional, it has been updated multiple times and most actor properties changed, so 5.3 is totally different than 5.1 on most WP settings, it is limited to a maximum 16321x16321 with Edit Layers enabled (16km x 16km), which is terrible compared to the older World Composition that it replaced. Now, on the Future Roadmap for Unreal Engine, Epic says that they are adding a new Fourth !!!! terrain system that is basically hacked onto the engine like the existing three systems, and it will be totally different again!!! Just finish and fix World Partition!!! Epic just replaces bad features with more bad features that are unfinished.