Beyond MapMagic Menu FAQ

Can I use GPU nodes on runtime generation?

Yes, but...

There is no technical limitation from running GPU generation in runtime, but using GPU enhanced nodes is best suited for pre-generating the map because they run exclusively on the main thread.
If generating runtime maps with GPU nodes a custom loading screen should be used for the generation since there will not be UI updates during the generation.
Instead you can still use the optimized parallel nodes that will perform faster than equivalent MapMagic nodes at runtime.

Why can't I use parallel processing with GPU nodes?

We are looking into async GPU processing, but currently the Beyond Magic uses Unity default Compute Shaders with SetData() and Dispatch() methods.
Those are only accessible from the Unity main/UI thread.

How much speed-up should I expect?

For individual node, from 100% to over 20 000% *

GPU vs Parallel vs Original speed-up depends on many things:

• Your GPU (do you have integrated chip or some nice NVidia RTX GPU)
  • Only the GPU node speeds are affected by our GPU hardware
  • The larger your terrain is (1k, 2k, 4k) the more speedup you can expect from GPU processing
  • Dividing your terrain to hundreds of small chunks can have major negative impact on the performance!
• Your CPU (The more cores/threads your CPU has, the faster the parallel processing is)
  • Parallel implementation works quite differently compared to original node implementation.
  • Parallel implementation uses all available cores at the same time for single terrain chunk.
  • Dividing your scene to hundreds of small chunks doesn’t give you any more speedup.
• Terrain size
  • The larger the terrain the more speedup you can expect from the GPU nodes.
• Node comparison
  • Some nodes are pretty straightforward, such as Constant Node, and GPU processing them can actually be slower on small terrain sizes (512 or below).
    GPU should always be faster on larger terrain sizes (1k and up)
  • * Complex nodes, such as Erosion Node, the original node can take minutes to process with large terrain size and many iterations.
    You should expect to see speedups over 20 000% (yes, that much) when using the GPU processing!

Height Output Node gives me an error if I have Objects Node.

Try updating your MapMagic version.
There is a known issue with inherited ouput nodes on MapMagic that is being worked on.

If updating MapMagic doesn't help, you can also unpack "BeyondMapMagic\Extras\MapMagic GeneratorAssets fix.unitypackage", this will replace GeneratorAssets.cs in MapMagic's own code.
Be sure to have backup of the GeneratorAssets.cs before you attempt this.

If you are unable to update your MapMagic or it doesn't help, you may need to temporarily switch back to MapMagic's own Output nodes.

My trees just sunk into the ground!

Try updating your MapMagic version.
There is a known issue with inherited ouput nodes on MapMagic that is being worked on.

If updating MapMagic doesn't help, you can also unpack "BeyondMapMagic\Extras\MapMagic GeneratorAssets fix.unitypackage", this will replace GeneratorAssets.cs in MapMagic's own code.
Be sure to have backup of the GeneratorAssets.cs before you attempt this.

If you cannot do that or it doesn't help, try switching back to normal MapMagic Height node.

My Beyond node doesn't work right

Please export your graph and send the .nodes file to us at support@codersfrombeyond.com along with possible error texts and instructions how to repeat it.