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[Acetone]

Outerra includes many debug tools, but they are well hidden for normal user. Some of them may be usefull for moders, others for performance monitoring and a few are just fun.
I have tried to list some of them, fell free to search for other ones 

First, you need to go into your eng.cfg (yourname/outerra/eng.cfg).
Search for the "debug_keys" line and set the value to "true". You can now use the tools listed below :


Various tools

Alt+m and Alt+s : Occulus Rift mode
Ctrl+p : Flight path recorder
Ctrl+F4 : Recorder
Ctrl+F7 : FBX importer
Alt+F5 : Shader editor
Alt+c : command console (not the same as "p" key)
Alt+F8 : Reload Cubemap (environnemental reflexions)
Alt+F11 : Reduce exposure (not sure why it's usefull)

Bugged/Missing

Alt+e and Alt+s : spawn cubes (not working : they are missing on the public version directory)
Ctrl+k : weird spawn menu

Terrain tools

Alt+t : disable vegetation
Alt+i : display geographic coordinates on ground texture
Alt+n : elevation map. Repeat to toggle between various modes.
Ctrl+n : display terrain grid. Repeat to toggle between various modes.

Debug monitors

Alt+1 : Render tasks stats
Alt+2 : Gpu times
Alt+3 : Textures stats
Alt+4 : Sounds monitor
Alt+5 : Tiles monitor
Alt+6 : Memory tracker
Alt+7 : Models monitor
Ctrl+F12 : Show fps

Secret hidden features

Alt+v : basic night vision mode (warning : full green screen during day!)
Ctrl+i : basic thermal vision mode

[ZeosPantera]

THIS.. is a good post.

[PytonPago]

nice to have it at one list !

[Jagerbomber]

I picture you holding alt for every key on the keyboard. 

[Acetone]

I picture you holding alt for every key on the keyboard. 

That's not true, I also did it with Ctrl 
(and, in case you were wondering, I tested Alt-Gr too...)

In fact some of these shortcuts have already been posted by Cameni, but I figured out that spending some time to make a single list would be a good idea. It was worth it since two announced features (basic IR and night vision mode) were already accessible that way.

[PytonPago]

Wouldn't be bad it it was in the OTs options menu somewhere too ...

... also, would be neat do add some Temperature-texture to the vehicles (actually characters too - maybe even activity dependent), witch would show temperature distribution on the vehicle surface more realistically. Being ambient cold at spawn and heating up slowly when started (just coloration due to the time and local color on the texture).

P.S.: Try spawn some Urals/BTRs, go 200-500 meters height, move the camera slowly sideways in thermal vision and try to shoot them with the crater gun ! ... UAV Simulator ! !!

[Acetone]

Interresting fact :

Yesterday, when using both Terrain grid display and Show Fps tools, I realised that Outerra cannot go under 30 fps (in most cases). In fact the engine prioritize this minimum framerate over terrain rendering, and most specifically terrain procedural refinement. I've always wondered why terrain detail generation (when turning camera for example) was more visible in montainous areas or in the locations where I have placed a lot of heavy detailed buildings (Levi's GTA4 imports, for example).

In fact, when the polycount/detail of the scene is highter, the engine use terrain refinement as an adjustment variable. It's why sometimes the terrain seems to "lag" or seems "to be loading". Outerra is just taking more time to refine it because the scene is more heavy. It's a clever system to avoid FPS drops depending on the scenery density.

You can still go under sub-30fps in two specific cases :

-Your computer cannot support Outerra even at minimum detail level. I have only experienced it by testing the engine on a sub-powered laptop with a CPU integretad graphic chip.

-Since Outerra seems to not use LOD or occlusion culling(for the moment), spawned objects (vehicules and buildings) can kill perfs, simply by skyrocketing the polycount (number of polygons the engine have to handle each frame). With proper LODs (different levels of detail depending of the distance between object and camera) and occlusion culling (objects behind an other object or terrain are not rendered), engine performances should remain stable in most situations.
(However, it seems that the mercenary model already use LOD).

Little experiment on my rig (Intel core I3-3.40Ghz, AMD Radeon R9 200 series) :


Droping below 30fps at :
Faces in view : 1851659
batches in view : 2565
faces in shadows : 1936469
batches in shadows : 2670

Between 15/25 high poly Levi's buildings and 26 Bt67 (not static model, fully working planes with JBSIM running for each one of them, wich is probably not helping a lot for the framerate).

Not bad.

[cameni]

I realised that Outerra cannot go under 30 fps (in most cases). In fact the engine prioritize this minimum framerate over terrain rendering, and most specifically terrain procedural refinement. I've always wondered why terrain detail generation (when turning camera for example) was more visible in montainous areas or in the locations where I have placed a lot of heavy detailed buildings (Levi's GTA4 imports, for example).

This can be controlled by adjusting requests-per-frame parameter in world.cfg. It tells the maximum number of terrain tile tasks that can run per frame, by default set to 6.

[Levi]

#Acetone

Also, the airplane (BT-67) uses lots of materials (86 to be precise), and each material is using 1 draw call, from what I understand. So this may drop several frames as well...

[PytonPago]

LODs are there ... the models arent done in all of them ...

[SpaceFlight]

Outerra includes many debug tools, but they are well hidden for normal user. Some of them may be usefull for moders, others for performance monitoring and a few are just fun.
I have tried to list some of them, fell free to search for other ones 

First, you need to go into your eng.cfg (yourname/outerra/eng.cfg).
Search for the "debug_keys" line and set the value to "true". You can now use the tools listed below :


Various tools

Alt+m and Alt+s : Occulus Rift mode
Ctrl+p : Flight path recorder
Ctrl+F4 : Recorder
Ctrl+F7 : FBX importer
Alt+F5 : Shader editor
Alt+c : command console (not the same as "p" key)
Alt+F8 : Reload Cubemap (environnemental reflexions)
Alt+F11 : Reduce exposure (not sure why it's usefull)

Bugged/Missing

Alt+e and Alt+s : spawn cubes (not working : they are missing on the public version directory)
Ctrl+k : weird spawn menu

Terrain tools

Alt+t : disable vegetation
Alt+i : display geographic coordinates on ground texture
Alt+n : elevation map. Repeat to toggle between various modes.
Ctrl+n : display terrain grid. Repeat to toggle between various modes.

Debug monitors

Alt+1 : Render tasks stats
Alt+2 : Gpu times
Alt+3 : Textures stats
Alt+4 : Sounds monitor
Alt+5 : Tiles monitor
Alt+6 : Memory tracker
Alt+7 : Models monitor
Ctrl+F12 : Show fps

Secret hidden features

Alt+v : basic night vision mode (warning : full green screen during day!)
Ctrl+i : basic thermal vision mode

This information would fit onto the wiki page too.

[Acetone]

-> Cameni, Levi and PytonPago

Thanks for these informations! I've set requests-per-frame in world.cfg to 10. Seems to improve terrain procedural refinement speed, without crash so far.
Anyway, I was also wondering if my current gpu_lag is not a little bit high (between 50 and 90), does anyone else have similar results? My bet on the infamous ATI's OpenGL drivers (Catalyst 14.4 for me)...

[Levi]

-> Cameni, Levi and PytonPago

Thanks for these informations! I've set requests-per-frame in world.cfg to 10. Seems to improve terrain procedural refinement speed, without crash so far.
Anyway, I was also wondering if my current gpu_lag is not a little bit high (between 50 and 90), does anyone else have similar results? My bet on the infamous ATI's OpenGL drivers (Catalyst 14.4 for me)...

My gpu_lag is between 15-45 on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 TI, driver version 337.88 WHQL.

[HiFlyer]

-> Cameni, Levi and PytonPago

Thanks for these informations! I've set requests-per-frame in world.cfg to 10. Seems to improve terrain procedural refinement speed, without crash so far.
Anyway, I was also wondering if my current gpu_lag is not a little bit high (between 50 and 90), does anyone else have similar results? My bet on the infamous ATI's OpenGL drivers (Catalyst 14.4 for me)...

My gpu_lag is between 15-45 on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 TI, driver version 337.88 WHQL.

Gpu lag? Where are you seeing that?

[Levi]

Gpu lag? Where are you seeing that?

Make sure you have "debug_keys" enabled, then press CTRL+F12 and you should be able to see it next to "FPSs"