Suggestion / Idea Ladder made by Ropes (Ratlines)

[josemendez]

One follow up question I have: 
Is there some kind of integrated LOD system or any other way you can think of to fade in/out the ropes? 

Physics systems often don't have LOD, because it would affect gameplay: for instance, if you were to use less substeps or less particles for distant ropes, rope behavior would be slightly different and that would mean the character would also react differently to it depending on distance to the camera. That's something you'd usually want to avoid if you're after consistent results.

Rendering-wise, LOD can happen either by using simpler meshes, simpler shaders, or both. Obi allows you to decimate and/or smooth rope meshes, you can use this to generate lower-resolution meshes for distant ropes without affecting physical behavior.
 

Would it make sense anyway if I use the compute (GPU) option

Not in your case. The baseline cost of GPU simulation is higher than a CPU one, and it only makes sense to use it if your simulation is really large (+5000 particles or so). Plus your character controller works in the CPU, so it doesn't really make sense to process physics on the GPU to then have to copy data back to the CPU. See:
https://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/manu...kends.html

(I guess the GPU cost also increases linearly with the particle amount)?

It increases linearly with particle amount, but the slope of the cost vs workload line is a lot less pronounced than CPU.

kind regards,