Talk:Npc crow

How expensive is the "Think outside PVS" flag?

I've got a bunch of birds flapping around my level (on path_corner routes), but I'm pretty sure some of them are set to fly in and out of the PVS throughout. If this is going to work, I think I'm correct in believing that I need to set the "Think outside PVS" flag, right? Otherwise, as soon as they try and fly outside the PVS they will stop calculating their route and well, who knows what happens (they just go into a kind of stasis, I guess?).

My query is: how expensive is it to use the "Think outside PVS" flag on NPCs? I'm not familiar with the code, so I'm unsure whether the extra calculation is trivial for just a few birds, or whether it's actually quite complex (e.g. keeping lots of extra collision hull info in memory to allow it to keep pathfinding). If it's too expensive, then I'd obviously have to rework the birds' flightpaths, but if the performance cost is negligible, then it doesn't seem worth the effort.

Is anyone able to help? Thanks. --Giles 08:56, 12 Jul 2006 (PDT)

The flag is talking about the NPC's PVS, not the player's. I think. Nope, I'm right. You don't need it for the crows. --TomEdwards 09:49, 12 Jul 2006 (PDT)

Great, thanks. That answers one question, but um, what does it mean for an NPC to Think outside their own PVS then? Maybe I have completely misunderstood what Think means? We don't appear to have an article on it here, so I can't check. --Giles 14:51, 12 Jul 2006 (PDT)

Seems to me that it will make them consider entities across the map, even if they are completely out of view. I'm not entirely sure, though. --TomEdwards 23:55, 12 Jul 2006 (PDT)