If you had bothered to read my post, you would know that I said they had dual-processor systems back then. As in, two physical CPUs in a motherboard with two CPU sockets.
They most certainly did have multiprocessor systems in 1999 and from an application programming perspective, dual processor and dual-core are identical.
I read your post, I just didn't agree with it. The computers you're talking about weren't meant for gaming computers, they were professional computers meant for difficult computations.
Did YOU read what I wrote? or were you ignoring it so that you could feel right? Its called 'commonly used in every day household computers as though its something expected".
I read your post, I just didn't agree with it. The computers you're talking about weren't meant for gaming computers, they were professional computers meant for difficult computations.
Did YOU read what I wrote? or were you ignoring it so that you could feel right?
Yes I read your post. You insinuated that I smoked crack because you thought I said dual-cores were available in 1999 when in fact I said dual processors.
And the typical application of dual processor systems at that time is irrelevant. Though for the record, dual processor systems worked just fine for consumer use. They were no different from today's dual-core systems except for the fact that rather than having one CPU with two cores, you had two CPUs each with a single core. The technology was there and SOE claims that the EQ2 engine was diesnged to be scalable for the future. You can't have a scalable application without threads.
If SOE had bothered to properly write their application taking the time to divide tasks up into threads, performance wouldn't be an issue. As it is, the code is so bad that they can't even handle adding blob shadows without it causing a performance decrease over full-blown stencil shadows (which is quite an achievement I might add since blob shadows consist of nothing more than overlaying an alphablended circle shaped texture over the terrain).
The fact that dual processor systems were not common in what was then the present is also irrelevant. Dual-core processors intended for household use, by the way, were on the drawing board as early as 2002. The concept itself is nothing new.F
Furthermore, any application as complex as EQ2 should be threaded anyways. It's not just about the benefits on multiprocessor/multicore systems but the benefits in terms of modularity and code orginization. Threading allows an application to scale.
SOE made a short-sighted design mistake and now it's catching up to them big time.
Yes multi-core systems have been around for years - longer than you quote if you include server and supercomputer technology. No it was not mainstream except for uber-geeks. Your point is pedantic in the extreme and it is a bit of a non-argument to tell you the truth.
This....game....was...not....designed....for....the....present....but....the.....future The fact that dual processor systems were not common in what was then the present is also irrelevant. Dual-core processors intended for household use, by the way, were on the drawing board as early as 2002. The concept itself is nothing new.F Furthermore, any application as complex as EQ2 should be threaded anyways. It's not just about the benefits on multiprocessor/multicore systems but the benefits in terms of modularity and code orginization. Threading allows an application to scale.
SOE made a short-sighted design mistake and now it's catching up to them big time.
Actually writing code to be multithreaded is NOT something that would be done in any event unless you are specifically designing the code for multiple cpus. Writing code with multiprocessing is more common but doesn't support multicores without special work. Writing multithreaded code is difficult and until there are good tools in compilers and good techniques I'm afraid it won't be very common. It just isn't something that is easy to do or even easy to design for...
So just having the hardware is only the first step. There is now a whole step of software tools and development evolution that needs to take place before programmers will be able to really take advantage of muticores
I mean if you look at games that actually utilize multiple cores you can probably count them on one hand...
Interesting, she freaks out when I say the same thing, but when you say it she doesn`t protest. Thanks ethion. Apparently, you`re more believable than I am.
Actually writing code to be multithreaded is NOT something that would be done in any event unless you are specifically designing the code for multiple cpus. Writing code with multiprocessing is more common but doesn't support multicores without special work. Writing multithreaded code is difficult and until there are good tools in compilers and good techniques I'm afraid it won't be very common. It just isn't something that is easy to do or even easy to design for... So just having the hardware is only the first step. There is now a whole step of software tools and development evolution that needs to take place before programmers will be able to really take advantage of muticores I mean if you look at games that actually utilize multiple cores you can probably count them on one hand...
Ethion, you may have a point here in regards to writing code to utilize 2 cpu's. However, the issue regarding this topic as it began was with the overall performance of EQ2. Whether or not people admit it, given the graphics look and feel of EQ2, many other games tople it with much faster frame rates. Even games (i.e. Half Life 2) released during the same time frame EQ2 first came out blew it away. EQ2's game engine was poorly designed from the get go and SOE has failed to invest the time and money to overhall the engine. I'm an avid EQ2 fan and my hope is with the next expansion they will overhall the engine to support DX10, multi-cpu's, etc... so performance will be out the roof. This is SOE's hidden gold mine, but if they don't do something about the graphics engine in the next year, they will soon lose many of us to title on the horizon. Myself, I'm waiting to see how Warhammer plays out.
Ethion, you may have a point here in regards to writing code to utilize 2 cpu's. However, the issue regarding this topic as it began was with the overall performance of EQ2. Whether or not people admit it, given the graphics look and feel of EQ2, many other games tople it with much faster frame rates. Even games (i.e. Half Life 2) released during the same time frame EQ2 first came out blew it away. EQ2's game engine was poorly designed from the get go and SOE has failed to invest the time and money to overhall the engine. I'm an avid EQ2 fan and my hope is with the next expansion they will overhall the engine to support DX10, multi-cpu's, etc... so performance will be out the roof. This is SOE's hidden gold mine, but if they don't do something about the graphics engine in the next year, they will soon lose many of us to title on the horizon. Myself, I'm waiting to see how Warhammer plays out.
Oh I get it and agree fully. EQ2 has some serious engine issues as I've been trying to get it to play on max settings and it just won't work... I've got a quad core intel cpu pretty much top of the line. I got a 8800gtx. I now have 4gb of ram. I can play on high quality settings pretty good without much problem except for some reason in enchanted land where I fell like fps is lower then normal. Kinda odd...
I can put it on the max settings but it does get poor fps periodically depending on what I'm doing. But the real killer is it starts crashing with the directx renderer error... So I'm playing on high quality. One improvement over when I had 2g is that I don't have any swaping issues in places like neriak or qeynos harbor.
By comparison VG plays much better on max settings and looks much better and people are happy to tear VG appart about performance so I'd say EQ2 definitely needs help.. I think eq2's saving grace is that you can drop the settings down and get it playable one most hardware where with VG dropping the settings won't make it playable on crap hardware.
Has the performance gone down recently because it used to run ok for me. Vanguard runs better
I was referring to the ongoing issues with performance since EQ2 release. I think there were a few bugs after RoK, but they appear to have been resolved so performance is pretty much the same. This thread has provided a lot of insight as to why and what causes performance problems with EQ2 I was not aware of (such as shadows, bloom effect, flora, etc...). Since reading this thread I've set my settings to high quality and turned off shadows, bloom effect, and flora and now see a great performance gain. Also, I noticed the switch to swap file in certain zones and better understand why sometimes I was getting hiccups in certain zones. My complaint has been for the entire time EQ2 has been out. As others have stated: the graphics for EQ2 as far as an MMO go are phenomenal! However, when comparing the same graphics to other titles (i.e. half-life 2, bioshock, etc..) you can see how SOE really needs to devote time and resources to overhauling the graphics engine. With DX10 now available, this provides an excellent opportunity for SOE in the next expansion pack to provide DX10 support and improve graphics quality monumentally. I'm not sure how much trouble this would be, but I remember when Luclin came out and it has breathed continued life into EQ1 to live a 10 year life so far!
BTW, how is Vanguard? I've been thinking of trying it out.
I don't have any performance issues with EQ2 on high settings. I was subscribed to VG a couple weeks back, but too many bugs and performance issues with it and I kept crashing with some kind of memory leak(s).
I've been playing EQ2 for about a week and I haven't lagged anywhere, no hitching or crashes.
Good starting area to test lag out would probably be in queynos harbor next to the broker or maybe in Neriak. If you play in the newb zones you don't see much lag cuz there isn't much going on there. Raids are another area you have to dial things down, but of course that's with most MMO's accept maybe WoW. Blizzard really did an awesome job when it comes to performance and display. Wish SOE would learn from them because I love EQ2 and want to see it flourish for many years to come.
BTW, how is Vanguard? I've been thinking of trying it out.
Vanguard has improved a lot since release. If you have a high end system it would work fairly well. If you don't have top end you need to be aware that VG doesn't scale down near as far as EQ in terms of supporting lessor hardware. If you are unsure you should probably wait till the trial island comes out. I'm guessing sometime in march/april but that is just a guess.
I'd say that VG is now in a state that would have been reasonable for a new game release. Sad that it took a year to get there.
While VG performance is very good it still does have some hitching issues so when you go into an area for the first time it tends to be kinda stuttery till the textures are all loaded. Then the fps climbs back up to a respectable rate. It is hugely better now then at release but still not perfect.
I don't have any performance issues with EQ2 on high settings. I was subscribed to VG a couple weeks back, but too many bugs and performance issues with it and I kept crashing with some kind of memory leak(s).
I've been playing EQ2 for about a week and I haven't lagged anywhere, no hitching or crashes.
With GU3 release VG is working much better. If that is the version you were running and you were crashing a lot then I'm not sure what to say other then it doesn't happen for most people.
For a challenge in eq2 on fps check out neriak, qeynos harbor, or maybe enchanted lands. I'm not sure what it is about enchanted lands but I'll add it to the list as for me the framerate in that zone seems lower then most other places.
If you want to see a truly bad engine that struggles on the latest technology, try Vanguard! Though even that I've been told has improved dramatically over the last 6 months.
yep !
EQ2 is really a polished game, VG is a PC destroyer
One thing I can say I love about EQ2 are the spell affects. Launching nukes and seeing the whole screen shake like a meteorite hit nearby is awesome! I downloaded a raid video of Vanguard and from the video, the spell affects on Vanguard really sucked. Casters would launch spells at the mob and they all looked the same and was like a ball of goo moving directly to the target; no up or down, no speeding up or slowing down, just blah! I think the theory behind Vanguard is much more sound than EQ2, but EQ2 is much more spit and polished for graphics, but the graphic engine still suffers requiring unrealistic amount of resources compared to other games on the market. Again, hoping the devs at EQ2 update the engine in the next expansion to support DX10, but I'm not holding my breath. SOE management are money grubbing b#%@#$. And they really need to get a podcast host like Major Nelson at Xbox. Public relations is one of the reasons they fail horribly.
I was getting worse performance than Crysis on very high settings, put EQ2 on extreme and getting a very stuttery 30FPS and the games graphics arn't even good. With Crysis i can run it at very high with a smooth no slow down 50-60FPS.
Using 3870 crossfire.
Badly optimized but hey atleast it's not as bad as Vanguard or SWG.
I'm not going to finish reading this thread, but I had to put in my $.02 I have: Athlon64 4600, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600 I run on High Quality, 1280x1024x85Hz, and only have lag in Neriak occasionally. This post, as many on these forums, seems almost like a guerilla marketing ploy to bash the game.
Sorry, but don't feel the same way. Most of us who are making comments love EQ2. However, it's been a known issue since release that EQ2 has performance issues. Like many have pointed out, turning down shadows, flora, etc.. make the game enjoyable, but when compared to games that came out when it did (i.e. Half Life 2) and games today, it's graphics engine needs an overhaul. There's no reason why someone with today's high end system should have to dial anything down on a game that is going on 4 years of age. It utilizes more ram than most high end title that are out today and has graphic quality comparable to games over 4 years old. Our gripe is simply to let SOE and the community know what needs to be done to ensure the success of EQ2 for years to come and not to bash the game we love.
Eq2 works well on high settings for me. It is rock solid and never crashes for me. On very high or extreme I get random crashes and graphic glitches. I'm not sure what setting is causing a problem and really don't want to bother playing around to figure it out. Basically it takes about 30 minutes playing for something bad to happen on these settings.
I have a pretty high end system. I have a quad core intel cpu, 8800gtx 768mb, 4gb ram.
On high settings the graphics are no bad they are not as good as extreme but they are close and performance is great. One issue with EQ2 is the memory usage. The game is a memory hog and before I upgraded to 4GB I'd run out of memory on high in places like neriak. Memory usage for EQ2 would get upto like 1.5+ gb and with stuff running in the background like firefox etc I'd just run out of memory and start swaping which would cause big lag spikes in neriak and qeynos harbor to name a couple spots. Now I don't get any lag spikes.
I really think that EQ2's graphics engine could use a major rework. I don't think it scales as well as SOE intended, at least not upwards. I personally put the graphics engine and the combat system as the two things I think are eq2's weakest points. BTW I do not equate graphics engine with graphics artwork or design. The graphics artwork in eq2 I think is very good.
Back on VG to people saying it is worse, I disagree. On VG I can now put everything on max and I'm not having any problems. Last night I did a lot of running around going through many zones to test out the new patch. I wanted to see swiming was fixed and see how sitting worked. In any event, VG still has a little bit of hitchiness when you enter a new area but quickly settles down and is very smooth. I'll be interested to see what the FPS is on EQ2 when the new update comes out. On VG my fps in the worst of times only drops to around 25-30. In many area's it is 60+.
Before people jump me for being a VG fan, I'm not advocating VG. VG has many other issues with quests and aliveness and eq2 is incomparably more polished and feels much better. I keep watching VG hoping to see it improved because I do think it could be a great game with a lot of work.
Vanguard runs like crap because they are using the Unreal 2 Engine, which was never designed for large, seamless open-ended environments.
The Unreal 2 engine uses what is known as BSP or Binary Space Partitioning. BSP is a way of determining visible polygons and breaking up a scene into chunks so that it is less computationally expensive to render. BSP works well for indoor environments and environments with more pedestrian geometry but it falls flat when you move outdoors. That's why the Quake Engines and the Doom 3 engine were never that good with outdoor environments.
The biggest problems with BSP are that it is not good at handling dynamic geometry and it's not good at handling insane poly counts both of which are characteristics of large outdoor environments. BSP Trees are precalculated and built ahead of time. If you've ever built a level for a BSP engine such as the Quake series, you know that saving a level you created in a format that the game can run takes a lot of time because you have to build this tree.
If the geometry changes at all, the tree has to be completetly rebuilt. This makes BSP unsuitable for dynamic geometry such as that found in landscape foilage because rebuilding a BSP tree can take hours.
That's why with BSP engines, outdoor environments are generally small and have artificially created barriers. If you want a large outdoor environment in a BSP engine without the barriers, you have to divide the land up into different zones or levels. And you can't use BSP for things like the trees unless they are static so you loose the performance benefits of BSP.
Unreal Engine 2 has other useable methods besides BSP (Such as a Dynamic Scene Graph) but BSP is where most of the optimization effort for the engine went to and BSP is what the engine handles best.
Comments
If you had bothered to read my post, you would know that I said they had dual-processor systems back then. As in, two physical CPUs in a motherboard with two CPU sockets.
They most certainly did have multiprocessor systems in 1999 and from an application programming perspective, dual processor and dual-core are identical.
I read your post, I just didn't agree with it. The computers you're talking about weren't meant for gaming computers, they were professional computers meant for difficult computations.
Did YOU read what I wrote? or were you ignoring it so that you could feel right? Its called 'commonly used in every day household computers as though its something expected".
Yes I read your post. You insinuated that I smoked crack because you thought I said dual-cores were available in 1999 when in fact I said dual processors.
And the typical application of dual processor systems at that time is irrelevant. Though for the record, dual processor systems worked just fine for consumer use. They were no different from today's dual-core systems except for the fact that rather than having one CPU with two cores, you had two CPUs each with a single core. The technology was there and SOE claims that the EQ2 engine was diesnged to be scalable for the future. You can't have a scalable application without threads.
If SOE had bothered to properly write their application taking the time to divide tasks up into threads, performance wouldn't be an issue. As it is, the code is so bad that they can't even handle adding blob shadows without it causing a performance decrease over full-blown stencil shadows (which is quite an achievement I might add since blob shadows consist of nothing more than overlaying an alphablended circle shaped texture over the terrain).
damicatz... apparently I need to spell this out for you because you can't wrap your head around it...
dual... core... processors... or... dual.... processors.... were.... NOT.... common.... in.... household..... computers.... at...... the.... time.... this..... game.... was.... released.
It was not thought of that they were be common any time soon or the programming would have included programming for dual cores.
Now lets stop this. You know I'm right, you just don't want to admit it. Stop making stupid claims.
This....game....was...not....designed....for....the....present....but....the.....future
The fact that dual processor systems were not common in what was then the present is also irrelevant. Dual-core processors intended for household use, by the way, were on the drawing board as early as 2002. The concept itself is nothing new.F
Furthermore, any application as complex as EQ2 should be threaded anyways. It's not just about the benefits on multiprocessor/multicore systems but the benefits in terms of modularity and code orginization. Threading allows an application to scale.
SOE made a short-sighted design mistake and now it's catching up to them big time.
Yes multi-core systems have been around for years - longer than you quote if you include server and supercomputer technology. No it was not mainstream except for uber-geeks. Your point is pedantic in the extreme and it is a bit of a non-argument to tell you the truth.
Actually writing code to be multithreaded is NOT something that would be done in any event unless you are specifically designing the code for multiple cpus. Writing code with multiprocessing is more common but doesn't support multicores without special work. Writing multithreaded code is difficult and until there are good tools in compilers and good techniques I'm afraid it won't be very common. It just isn't something that is easy to do or even easy to design for...
So just having the hardware is only the first step. There is now a whole step of software tools and development evolution that needs to take place before programmers will be able to really take advantage of muticores
I mean if you look at games that actually utilize multiple cores you can probably count them on one hand...
---
Ethion
Interesting, she freaks out when I say the same thing, but when you say it she doesn`t protest. Thanks ethion. Apparently, you`re more believable than I am.
Ethion, you may have a point here in regards to writing code to utilize 2 cpu's. However, the issue regarding this topic as it began was with the overall performance of EQ2. Whether or not people admit it, given the graphics look and feel of EQ2, many other games tople it with much faster frame rates. Even games (i.e. Half Life 2) released during the same time frame EQ2 first came out blew it away. EQ2's game engine was poorly designed from the get go and SOE has failed to invest the time and money to overhall the engine. I'm an avid EQ2 fan and my hope is with the next expansion they will overhall the engine to support DX10, multi-cpu's, etc... so performance will be out the roof. This is SOE's hidden gold mine, but if they don't do something about the graphics engine in the next year, they will soon lose many of us to title on the horizon. Myself, I'm waiting to see how Warhammer plays out.
Has the performance gone down recently because it used to run ok for me. Vanguard runs better
Oh I get it and agree fully. EQ2 has some serious engine issues as I've been trying to get it to play on max settings and it just won't work... I've got a quad core intel cpu pretty much top of the line. I got a 8800gtx. I now have 4gb of ram. I can play on high quality settings pretty good without much problem except for some reason in enchanted land where I fell like fps is lower then normal. Kinda odd...
I can put it on the max settings but it does get poor fps periodically depending on what I'm doing. But the real killer is it starts crashing with the directx renderer error... So I'm playing on high quality. One improvement over when I had 2g is that I don't have any swaping issues in places like neriak or qeynos harbor.
By comparison VG plays much better on max settings and looks much better and people are happy to tear VG appart about performance so I'd say EQ2 definitely needs help.. I think eq2's saving grace is that you can drop the settings down and get it playable one most hardware where with VG dropping the settings won't make it playable on crap hardware.
---
Ethion
BTW, how is Vanguard? I've been thinking of trying it out.
- hopefully it will be available in the near future (they are working on one)
EQ2 fan sites
Good starting area to test lag out would probably be in queynos harbor next to the broker or maybe in Neriak. If you play in the newb zones you don't see much lag cuz there isn't much going on there. Raids are another area you have to dial things down, but of course that's with most MMO's accept maybe WoW. Blizzard really did an awesome job when it comes to performance and display. Wish SOE would learn from them because I love EQ2 and want to see it flourish for many years to come.
nuff said
EQ2 fan sites
Vanguard has improved a lot since release. If you have a high end system it would work fairly well. If you don't have top end you need to be aware that VG doesn't scale down near as far as EQ in terms of supporting lessor hardware. If you are unsure you should probably wait till the trial island comes out. I'm guessing sometime in march/april but that is just a guess.
I'd say that VG is now in a state that would have been reasonable for a new game release. Sad that it took a year to get there.
While VG performance is very good it still does have some hitching issues so when you go into an area for the first time it tends to be kinda stuttery till the textures are all loaded. Then the fps climbs back up to a respectable rate. It is hugely better now then at release but still not perfect.
---
Ethion
With GU3 release VG is working much better. If that is the version you were running and you were crashing a lot then I'm not sure what to say other then it doesn't happen for most people.
For a challenge in eq2 on fps check out neriak, qeynos harbor, or maybe enchanted lands. I'm not sure what it is about enchanted lands but I'll add it to the list as for me the framerate in that zone seems lower then most other places.
---
Ethion
EQ2 is really a polished game, VG is a PC destroyer
One thing I can say I love about EQ2 are the spell affects. Launching nukes and seeing the whole screen shake like a meteorite hit nearby is awesome! I downloaded a raid video of Vanguard and from the video, the spell affects on Vanguard really sucked. Casters would launch spells at the mob and they all looked the same and was like a ball of goo moving directly to the target; no up or down, no speeding up or slowing down, just blah! I think the theory behind Vanguard is much more sound than EQ2, but EQ2 is much more spit and polished for graphics, but the graphic engine still suffers requiring unrealistic amount of resources compared to other games on the market. Again, hoping the devs at EQ2 update the engine in the next expansion to support DX10, but I'm not holding my breath. SOE management are money grubbing b#%@#$. And they really need to get a podcast host like Major Nelson at Xbox. Public relations is one of the reasons they fail horribly.
I was getting worse performance than Crysis on very high settings, put EQ2 on extreme and getting a very stuttery 30FPS and the games graphics arn't even good. With Crysis i can run it at very high with a smooth no slow down 50-60FPS.
Using 3870 crossfire.
Badly optimized but hey atleast it's not as bad as Vanguard or SWG.
I got better ram and gcard now.
4gb pc6400 ram
8800gt 512mb alpha dog edition
3800+ x2 amd
guess what? fps drops in gfay with everything maxed out and with 1440x900 res, cba trying other zones. the processor is bottlenecking but still...
I'm not going to finish reading this thread, but I had to put in my $.02
I have: Athlon64 4600, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600
I run on High Quality, 1280x1024x85Hz, and only have lag in Neriak occasionally.
This post, as many on these forums, seems almost like a guerilla marketing ploy to bash the game.
Sorry, but don't feel the same way. Most of us who are making comments love EQ2. However, it's been a known issue since release that EQ2 has performance issues. Like many have pointed out, turning down shadows, flora, etc.. make the game enjoyable, but when compared to games that came out when it did (i.e. Half Life 2) and games today, it's graphics engine needs an overhaul. There's no reason why someone with today's high end system should have to dial anything down on a game that is going on 4 years of age. It utilizes more ram than most high end title that are out today and has graphic quality comparable to games over 4 years old. Our gripe is simply to let SOE and the community know what needs to be done to ensure the success of EQ2 for years to come and not to bash the game we love.
Eq2 works well on high settings for me. It is rock solid and never crashes for me. On very high or extreme I get random crashes and graphic glitches. I'm not sure what setting is causing a problem and really don't want to bother playing around to figure it out. Basically it takes about 30 minutes playing for something bad to happen on these settings.
I have a pretty high end system. I have a quad core intel cpu, 8800gtx 768mb, 4gb ram.
On high settings the graphics are no bad they are not as good as extreme but they are close and performance is great. One issue with EQ2 is the memory usage. The game is a memory hog and before I upgraded to 4GB I'd run out of memory on high in places like neriak. Memory usage for EQ2 would get upto like 1.5+ gb and with stuff running in the background like firefox etc I'd just run out of memory and start swaping which would cause big lag spikes in neriak and qeynos harbor to name a couple spots. Now I don't get any lag spikes.
I really think that EQ2's graphics engine could use a major rework. I don't think it scales as well as SOE intended, at least not upwards. I personally put the graphics engine and the combat system as the two things I think are eq2's weakest points. BTW I do not equate graphics engine with graphics artwork or design. The graphics artwork in eq2 I think is very good.
Back on VG to people saying it is worse, I disagree. On VG I can now put everything on max and I'm not having any problems. Last night I did a lot of running around going through many zones to test out the new patch. I wanted to see swiming was fixed and see how sitting worked. In any event, VG still has a little bit of hitchiness when you enter a new area but quickly settles down and is very smooth. I'll be interested to see what the FPS is on EQ2 when the new update comes out. On VG my fps in the worst of times only drops to around 25-30. In many area's it is 60+.
Before people jump me for being a VG fan, I'm not advocating VG. VG has many other issues with quests and aliveness and eq2 is incomparably more polished and feels much better. I keep watching VG hoping to see it improved because I do think it could be a great game with a lot of work.
---
Ethion
Vanguard runs like crap because they are using the Unreal 2 Engine, which was never designed for large, seamless open-ended environments.
The Unreal 2 engine uses what is known as BSP or Binary Space Partitioning. BSP is a way of determining visible polygons and breaking up a scene into chunks so that it is less computationally expensive to render. BSP works well for indoor environments and environments with more pedestrian geometry but it falls flat when you move outdoors. That's why the Quake Engines and the Doom 3 engine were never that good with outdoor environments.
The biggest problems with BSP are that it is not good at handling dynamic geometry and it's not good at handling insane poly counts both of which are characteristics of large outdoor environments. BSP Trees are precalculated and built ahead of time. If you've ever built a level for a BSP engine such as the Quake series, you know that saving a level you created in a format that the game can run takes a lot of time because you have to build this tree.
If the geometry changes at all, the tree has to be completetly rebuilt. This makes BSP unsuitable for dynamic geometry such as that found in landscape foilage because rebuilding a BSP tree can take hours.
That's why with BSP engines, outdoor environments are generally small and have artificially created barriers. If you want a large outdoor environment in a BSP engine without the barriers, you have to divide the land up into different zones or levels. And you can't use BSP for things like the trees unless they are static so you loose the performance benefits of BSP.
Unreal Engine 2 has other useable methods besides BSP (Such as a Dynamic Scene Graph) but BSP is where most of the optimization effort for the engine went to and BSP is what the engine handles best.