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Freemanhl2

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    Skyrim

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  1. You don't have an instance of Skyrim already running? You should right click both TESV.exe to Skyrim4gb.exe, go to properties>general and make sure neither of them have "read-only" checked.. beyond this I can only recommend moving Skyrim4gb.exe out of the data folder and putting it into the same directory as TESV.exe.. I couldn't help but notice the file path for your game is "C:\Program Files (x86)\The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim\Data\skyrim4gb.exe" and not steam.. I won't jump to conclusions and assume you have cracked the game, but if you have this can obviously create problems because TESV.exe is not the original executable and god knows what has been changed in there. If however you do have a legit version in steam, try deleting TESV.exe completely then opening steam, right clicking Skyrim, go properties > local files, then VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME CACHE.. once it has completed steam will realize TESV.exe is missing and download you a new copy. Good Luck :)
  2. Some of you may have noticed the middle distance Level Of Detail in Skyrim is somewhat subpar in comparison to the amazing graphics at close range and far away (if you havent then you soon will). The game is obviously very good looking and I think Bethesda did a great job visually, but the engine shows some real inefficiency when it comes to CPU scaling and optimization. Heres what I have learned so far. The game world seems to be broken up into "grids" (cells, blocks) or sections that are loaded into view as the player moves around, the amount of grids to load is controlled by the variable "uGridsToLoad" located in the skyrim.ini. I am unsure if uGrids refers to a static division of the world itself, or simply an incremental distance from the players central position at which data is streamed into view. The default value appears to be 7 and the game is likely programmed to only accept odd increments (e.g. 7,9,11). 13 is the highest uGridsToLoad value that I have managed to run on my system (6gb RAM, i7 950 3.0ghz, GTX480 1.7gb), others with more RAM could possibly experiment with 15. To prevent stuttering the game buffers grids outside of the viewing area, the size of this buffer is controlled by the value "uExterior Cell Buffer" also located in skyrim.ini. For anyone interested in experimenting with these settings I have created a tutorial here. Here are some screenshots ive taken with different grid values (FPS @ Top/Left) uGridsToLoad=7 http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3300/tesv2011112500480182.jpg uGridsToLoad=9 http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/9489/tesv2011112500494074.jpg uGridsToLoad=11 http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1339/tesv2011112500510688.jpg uGridsToLoad=13 http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/4601/tesv2011112500524382.jpg As you can see the difference is astounding. There are gameplay implications aswell, I find myself discovering more in the game world when I can actually see it from a distance, even in the image above there is a fisherman and his boat visable only at level 9, something I might have overlooked at level 7. Enemies can be seen from greater distances also, allowing you to avoid certain confrontations. But in the end it just looks better =) There is a downside tho, even with a relatively high end PC any value above 7 is unplayable for me. I have experienced frame rates of 17fps and under with uGrids at only 9.. Including iPreloadSizeLimit=536870912 (I assume this fetches upto 512mb into RAM?) and fMasterFilePreLoadMB=128.0000 in Skyrim.ini did help a lot, but still unplayable.. So I experimented to see if it was a Graphics or CPU bottleneck and amazingly halving the resolution, turning off all anti aliasing, all filtering, and a whole bunch of other stuff did NOTHING to my frame rate! This game eats CPU for breakfast lol I guess extending the amount of grids increases the number of active NPCs..? Altering "fLODFadeOutMultActors" in SkyrimPrefs.ini does nothing because this only controls the amount of actors rendered on screen, I assume AI routines are still beeing processed in the background. There are ways to decrease the amount of detail while maintaining a higher uGrids value, using the [TerrainManager] settings in skyrimprefs for instance. I can decrease fTreeLoadDistance (distance to render trees), fBlockMaximumDistance (distance to render terrain blocks) and fGrassStartFadeDistance (distance to render grass) untill there's basicaly no grass, trees or any terrain detail in the game what so ever lol it makes Morrowind look practicaly photo realistic by comparison and still no effect on FPS, wich is really strong evidence this game could look a lot better if somehow the Graphics and CPU resources could be scaled independently of each other. Why not just increase the LoadDistance's and LODlevel's for trees, grass, objects, actors etc and leave the uGridsToLoad value at default? Because no matter how high you set these values they will never render beyond the visable grids, outside this area appears to be a completely seperate "skybox" and there is no ability to control visual fidelity or move assets in/out of this region. I think the only way to make this work is to mod some of the higher fidelity assets into the skybox, textures might be easy enough but most objects dont even exist in that space. Perhaps there are values deeper inside the game that allow greater control over CPU resources, number of active NPCs etc that we can scale back to increase performance? A solution could potentialy be very simple (or impossible) and I think the results are much better then any texture pack could achieve, what do you guys think? I will keep working on this but my programming knowledge is average, so I welcome anyone who wants to help =) I want to create a better draw distance combined with some higher resolution assets and a few tweaks and package it as a MOD.
  3. You only need to switch on .esp modifications. If you downloaded a texture mod, or any modification designed to override the original Skyrim files then no activation is required, the game will automatically use whatever is in the data folder, assuming the directory structure is correct.. You have to make sure you include all subfolders if applicable, for example "Data\textures\actors\character". Hope this helps :)
  4. I wonder if its possible to "transfer" everything from oblivion into the skyrim world map..? Then maybe give everything a next gen "update," swap out the bulk of the old textures with the skyrim ones, grass, rock etc replace all the trees.. It would be a huge undertaking tho, and im sure anyone with the know how has got better things to be doing with their time lol
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