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What are uGrids and how do you tweak them?


amitchev

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************************************************CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION**********************************

 

Increasing/changing ugrids in the ini may corrupt/bloat/destroy save games. Thanks.

 

"I've been getting a lot of replies to a seperate post involving uGrids. From the what I read they sound kinda important so I'd like to find out what they are and what they do. "

 

 

They are settings in the ini files that determine how many world cells around are loaded into RAM at any one time.

 

How do you tweak them: Really, you shouldn't.

 

But if you must, change the number in ini folder to increase/decrease the number of cells loaded into memory at any one time.

Edited by BlackCompany
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The best advice I can give about Ugrids is to check out the nVidia tweak guide here. but the short version is...

 

uGridsToLoad=5 defines how many exterior cells are loaded when the player character is outside. Imagine a 5x5 grid with the player in the center cell, thus the game enigine loads an aditional 2 cells in every direction. This value must always be an odd number and is unlikely to work beyond 13 even on VERY high spec machines.

 

Important note: If you change this value upwards and save your game it is very difficult to lower it as the game WILL NOT load a savegame that has a higher uGrids value than the current .ini setting.

 

You must also increase the value of uExterior Cell Buffer=36 so that it is (uGrids+1)*(Ugrids+1) e.g.

Ugrids=5 uExterior=36

Ugrids=7 uExterior=64

Ugrids=9 uExterior=100

Ugrids=11 uExterior=144

Ugrids=13 uExterior=196

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  • 2 months later...

Skyrim is a 32bit executable it cannot use more that 4Gb of ram.

 

But the only way to know is to try it. Make sure you do a MANUAL SAVE & BACKUP YOUR INI before mesing about with these settings.

Edited by flobalob
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The best advice I can give about Ugrids is to check out the nVidia tweak guide here. but the short version is...

 

uGridsToLoad=5 defines how many exterior cells are loaded when the player character is outside. Imagine a 5x5 grid with the player in the center cell, thus the game enigine loads an aditional 2 cells in every direction. This value must always be an odd number and is unlikely to work beyond 13 even on VERY high spec machines.

 

Important note: If you change this value upwards and save your game it is very difficult to lower it as the game WILL NOT load a savegame that has a higher uGrids value than the current .ini setting.

 

You must also increase the value of uExterior Cell Buffer=36 so that it is (uGrids+1)*(Ugrids+1) e.g.

Ugrids=5 uExterior=36

Ugrids=7 uExterior=64

Ugrids=9 uExterior=100

Ugrids=11 uExterior=144

Ugrids=13 uExterior=196

 

^best answer^

 

before changing the ugrids setting you should open the console and type save ugridsdefault

this will give you a save file with a name rather than a number which you can go back to if raising the ugrids value makes your game unplayable. you will have to go back to the old ini settings and then load that save.

 

one side effect of having a high ugrids setting and very high view distances for actors is that things can happen too far away for you to do anything.

one example is the companion quest to deal with a wild creature.

I had to go to one of the mills and kill a bear that was terrorising everyone there. as soon as the mill came into view I could see the bear killing everyone.

from the time it came into view to when I got to bow range there were 3 dead and I couldn't do a thing to save them.

 

another example is if you use skytest or real wildlife.

Riverwood was just visible and then a mad troll tore through the village and I was too far away to do anything about it.

 

it does enhance the game and adds some excitement when combined with certain mods but be prepared to start a new character if you can't revert back to the default

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