I loaded a level with a scene of building-structures. All of them were MDL's .

18 large MDL's

The default.c dbug panel shows vis = 18 when the whole level is behind the camera 'me', and not in view.

Is the vis- bugged or is the engine counting a large area behind and out of the view as visible and rendering it to some extent? It seems a mdl must be quite far behind the camera to not be counted.

I assume it's checking the large BBOX's and the polygon flag doesn't change this.

But still...

These would mean in a MDL level I need to cut up models into smaller mdls that fit well within a square BBOX? Or is this just a odd waste of rendering power to keep 'live' a large space behind the camera?

{UPDATE}
ent - confirms it's rendering

Odd, walk through till nothing is visible and 18 drops to 17, then stand still and pan left or right ->>> Vis drops to 0 and ent drops to 0, then pan back to center vis goes back to 17 and ent as well.

The size of the rendered area center behind the camera is very LARGE!