Technical question; what does "Level GC strategy" mean?

[mjk45]

Marth said:

curl-6 said:

A set of patch notes for The Outer Worlds on Switch released today that they adjusted "texture streaming strategy" and "Level GC strategy".

Google isn't giving me any helpful answers as to what the heck "Level GC" means, so I wondered if anyone here with technical expertise might know?

GC in coding terms means "garbage collection"

As you play though a level the game loads assets and sets values all the time which fills up your memory but as some assets go out of your view and loading range and so they get removed.

But this doesent happen in a set pattern as the asses have different sizes means they allocate different spaces in your memory. So over time you get empty parts of memory that cant be used because they are to small.

Garbage collection reorganizes your memory and makes room for new assets to eliminate the useless small empty bits.

Think of it as defragmentation of your harddrive but for your memory and in real time. But it also tries to predict what goes out of use to make this process as fast and efficient as possible.

BTW, glad to know that the Outer Worlds asses have different sizes