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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Technical question; what does "Level GC strategy" mean?

curl-6 on 03 February 2021

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?



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Metallox on 03 February 2021

Dunno, but how is The Outer Worlds running on Switch after this patch? I'm interested in the game.



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curl-6 on 03 February 2021
Metallox said:

Dunno, but how is The Outer Worlds running on Switch after this patch? I'm interested in the game.

I haven't tried the latest patch yet but the one that came out in October improved it quite notably over its very rough launch state.

You'll still get some slowdown in outdoor mob fights and towns/cities, but its never unplayable.



kirby007 on 03 February 2021

Afaik moving/deleting unnessary data



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vivster on 04 February 2021

Sounds like it has something to do with a cache. The strategy meaning the algorithm which decides what, how much and how long gets cached.



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mjk45 on 04 February 2021
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



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curl-6 on 04 February 2021
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.

Thanks.

So in terms of the actual game experience, what would this manifest as, maybe slightly better performance or streaming?



Pemalite on 05 February 2021
Marth said:
curl-6 said:

Thanks.

So in terms of the actual game experience, what would this manifest as, maybe slightly better performance or streaming?

I don't know about the exact performance of the game on Switch but it should reduce stutters that stem from having to wait on reorganizing.

Otherwise if it doesn't have those its simply a background change that maybe allows them to load higher res textures and other higher quality files earlier in some cases because they managed to free up more memory just in time for the loading. So reduce of popp in could also be a result.

Its hard to guess if the dev does not spell it out.

It might also mean more aggressive removal of objects and mobs in order to bolster things elsewhere.

I.E. Left 4 Dead when enemy corpses faded away faster.

But you are absolutely on the money.



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Alby_da_Wolf on 05 February 2021
curl-6 said:
Marth said:

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.

Thanks.

So in terms of the actual game experience, what would this manifest as, maybe slightly better performance or streaming?

GC requires computing power, but it prevents excessive RAM comsumption, so while it doesn't improve maximum performances, it prevents sudden degradation of them or even crashes and it can give more smoothness in the less serious cases when excessive RAM usage would just affect it. A better GC strategy can improve smoothness in normal conditions, preventing GC itself from affecting it when it's running.



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Mnementh on 05 February 2021
curl-6 said:
Marth said:

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.

Thanks.

So in terms of the actual game experience, what would this manifest as, maybe slightly better performance or streaming?

Garbage collection in general has a lot of results. For one it frees memory for new usage. But as it aligns the still live data together it can reduce the number of cache misses on modern CPUs/GPUs. A clever GC might make some assumptions about the data to make that even better. The downside of GC is that things freeze for the time of GC, or at least the parts that are affected by the GC (as the data has to be locked for the time of reorganisation). Clever GC strategies can help reduce this timeouts. So if the patch notes remarks "GC strategy" it may improve any of these parts or be as simple as freeing some object that was before overlooked. Without further details it is unclear how far reaching the effects.



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