it'll be the game engine keeping track of all the npc's, objects, quest stages etc. there will be a lot of npcs with their own set daily schedule and so on. i would assume that graphics rendering is of a lower priority than that to make sure that npc's, objects and quests fire off correctly and are in the right places, i could be wrong though.
Game engine keeps a low level tracking of npc's AI packages i.e. routines thats simply to prevent every npc from exiting their houses etc as soon as you enter an area instead they'll all be at their locations doing whatever they're supposed to be doing already. Everything else is stored as data within the savegame and loaded when the cell loads
Graphics level is more to do with drawcalls and texture size a medium or low settings level simply uses lower mipmap resolutions of textures i.e. instead of 2k or even 1k they'll be 512kb instead as well as lower shadow resolutions in bethesda games they're very cpu intensive. Its all pretty basic stuff
In the Digital Foundry video they left a pile of bottles randomly on the floor in a toilet booth and then coming after visiting 10 other planets and the bottles were still there exactly as they placed them. The game engine is keeping track of everything it seems. No wonder it is cpu heavy.
Its not preserved by cpu cycles its preserved by the savegame Havok or whatever they're using now stores the position of every object affected by havok physics in the savegame everytime that cell loads it loads the x,y,z co-ords of every clutter object (objects that move). Most objects are static so unaffected
Traditionally in bethesda games if you enter console command resetinterior <cell i.d.> for an unloaded interior cell it'll reset the havok'd object and they'll all be returned to their default position and your savegame will be slightly smaller as it removes all the havok data for that cell
This is just basic videogame ABC I'd really like to know what DF are smoking
When he did the Digital Foundry intro i was expecting Digital shilliries due to seeing it on this forum so much.
DF are idiots.
7 minutes it's been upoaded and you've watched it already?!
That negates anything because?