Thanks, Simon!
There are two unique meshes in this scene, plus the terrain meshes. The same renders in windowed mode give 5-10 fps.
Testing indicates that rendering instances is much faster than rendering unique meshes, probably because you don't have to pass huge amount of data to the gfx card.
I don't know how this compares to merged meshes, but there is one variable that will work to increase the speed of referenced meshes. When meshes are merged, if any part of the mesh is drawn, the entire mesh is drawn. With referenced meshes, offscreen instances are culled. Plus, they are a hell of a lot easier to light and work with. Not to mention the option of LOD.
Plus you can use alpha-masked grass and not worry about your z-order getting screwed up, because you don't have to merge meshes for speed.
There are two unique meshes in this scene, plus the terrain meshes. The same renders in windowed mode give 5-10 fps.
Testing indicates that rendering instances is much faster than rendering unique meshes, probably because you don't have to pass huge amount of data to the gfx card.
I don't know how this compares to merged meshes, but there is one variable that will work to increase the speed of referenced meshes. When meshes are merged, if any part of the mesh is drawn, the entire mesh is drawn. With referenced meshes, offscreen instances are culled. Plus, they are a hell of a lot easier to light and work with. Not to mention the option of LOD.
Plus you can use alpha-masked grass and not worry about your z-order getting screwed up, because you don't have to merge meshes for speed.