When regular texture streaming is used (not virtual textures), the largest mips are always loaded for ISM mesh textures whenever the camera is inside the bounds of the ISM even if the instances are very far away. For example, inside an ISM for a forest where the trees are spawned procedurally.
The workarounds for this are to
Open the ISM_bug level in the attached project and run “stat streaming”.
Alternately:
Expected:
VisibleMips memory is low because only the smallest mip is needed for the instances.
Actual
VisibleMips memory is high because the largest mip has been streamed in because the mip streaming is based on the bounds of the ISM component and the camera is inside the ISM component bounds.
There's no existing public thread on this issue, so head over to Questions & Answers just mention UE-361876 in the post.
| 0 |
| Component | UE - Rendering Architecture |
|---|---|
| Affects Versions | 5.4, 5.6, 5.7 |
| Created | Jan 22, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Updated | Jan 22, 2026 |