Modder ‘pritster5’ has released a really interesting mod for Skyrim: Special Edition, Skyrim Project Optimization. This mod basically aims to improve performance in almost all interiors of Skyrim by using Occlusion Culling.
Pritster5 has used a feature called Occlusion Culling, where he manually put occlusion planes in some spots of the interiors to improve performance. As the modder noted, what these occlusion planes do is un-render parts of the cell/objects/NPC’s that are not being seen by the player, in most cases behind a wall or above/below floors. And thanks to this technique, performance is significantly improved in interiors.
This mod is currently compatible with all mods available for Skyrim Special Edition. However, compatibility may break when and if a new mod adds occlusion planes/cubes on the same interiors as this mod does.
Essentially, this mod is a must-have for those already using graphically demanding mods such as Realistic Lighting Overhaul (RLO), Enhanced Lights and FX (ELFX) or custom ENBs. Still, owners of weaker systems will also see a performance increase thanks to this mod in vanilla Skyrim Special Edition.
Those interested can download the mod from here.
As a bonus, we’ve included a below a video that also features some other mods that improve overall performance in Skyrim Special Edition.
Enjoy!
UPDATE:
The creator of this mod is RGabriel15. Pritster5 has ported the mod from the original Skyrim to Skyrim Special Edition.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Sadly it is outdoors that performs questionably at times, for instance in Solitude. I’ve never had framerate drops indoors.
The video was informative though.
Poor performance in Skyrim? This mod list must be for old computers, or the Xbox One X.
Jokes aside these could be great for SkyrimVR.
I saw this mod on the Nexus when it was released a few days ago. I’d give it a try if it wasn’t for its issues with ELFX plus the fact that interior settings never drop below 60fps on PC anyway. A great mod for those with lower-end PCs who don’t use interior lighting mods.
I never understand why some developers don’t do this themselves. Isn’t removing the polygons the player doesn’t see a basic thing when it comes optimising games?
On modern engines, sure. Many newer engines do this by default on the fly, without the developers needing to do a thing. This engine is prehistoric in technological terms.
The creation Kit doesn’t have any form of automatic culling beyond the very basic view frustum culling. This mod adds culling in interiors to boost performance. (Long hallways behind walls no longer get rendered since the player cant see them.
I see. Bethesda simply uses an archaic engine.
Or is too lazy to do it manually like the millions before them did. Optimization by hand used to be a big thing.
Wow, My port of the mod got featured! Awesome! ALL Credits to RGabriel15 though. He’s the original author who put in the work of placing the Occlusion Planes.
Hey John, could you please update the article to give credit to RGabriel15?
I only ported the mod and forwarded some conflicts with USSEP, he’s the guy who actually did the legwork and placed the occlusion planes. I even explicitly state that I (Pritster5) only ported the mod, and that the original was created by RGabriel 15 on the mod page specifically for this reason.
Please update the article asap.
interesting. says something about many plugins though. I’m only running about 5 mods iirc but I’ll try it out soon.
Yeah basically if you have 50+ plugins, the loop implementation in the game code becomes very performance heavy and drops the performance significantly. The mod I linked replaces that loop code with a better implementation and adds a mutex lock (basically something that prevents concurrent jobs trying to perform at the same time on a thread). This significantly improves performance.