JimboUK

The GECK is supposed to have something to help with lighting optimisation if it worked, but it refuses to for me, it just turns everything grey. https://geckwiki.com/index.php/Bethsoft_Tutorial_Lighting#:~:text=Performance and Optimization,-Performance is always&text=Let's open up the preferences,appear in shades of blue.

I'm not aware of any proper research being done, I've been experimenting with pushing the limits of this for years and I've found the following to be the main issues... Memory limits, although these can be mitigated by keeping the number of different textures down. Scripts, they work but not in a timely manner, with large numbers of NPCs in combat some will just stand there watching until finally realising that they're supposed to be involved, however this might be a symptom of a low frame rate, not the cause. High poly outfits and weapons, best avoided unless it's for screenshots. Lights, combined with NPCs these will tank the frame rate quicker than anything else. While "try it and see" doesn't sound ideal it really is the only way, if you're aware of what causes issues then you can avoid those issues while planning, you can also make use of things like occlusion planes to keep the number of rendered NPCs down. Under the hood this game is basically Oblivion, a game that started development in 2002, it's never going to be able to do what newer games can.

I don't know if this would be possible, can an audio marker or invisible radio be made to follow the player around? then there's a problem of being able to adjust the volume. It doesn't help that the audio on the PC version is a bit of a mess, things like reverb, sounds fading correctly don't work properly, the difference between the audio quality on the Xbox version and PC version is like night and day.

I remember bookmarking posts that I thought would have a link added later and I was rarely wrong, they tended to stand out as not looking quite right.

Open the console and click on one of the legionaries, you'll see an ID at the top of the screen, if that starts with anything other than 00 then he's been added by a mod, the first two characters of that ID will match the load order number/mod index of the mod that added him.

The world has always had idiots in it, the only difference now is the internet has given them a voice.

My worldspaces don't have trees which is probably why 10,500 works, I just scrolled down to the bottom of that page it does mention 13,000 being the height for tree LOD so 14,000 makes sense.

The Wiki suggests a height of at least 10500, it's what I've used and not had any issues. https://geckwiki.com/index.php/World_Spaces

I don't know what to suggest to be honest, I'm going to keep playing with it and I'll post back here if I find a solution. I'm wondering if there is an issue with dark hair anyway, I wanted a black haired version of a blonde NCCS follower I have, I duplicated the follower, changed the hair from 124/102/82 to 20/20/20 and dropped her into the world, but in game she didn't look quite right, her skin tone was darker. I checked her face data in FNVEdit and it had changed, it was easy enough to fix by copying the data from the blonde to the black haired one but it shouldn't have happened because I never touched anything that would change that data in the GECK.

Does the problem persist with lighter hair? I ask because this has been annoying me for a while now, this texture along with many others are OK with light hair but starts to discolour once the hair gets darker which shouldn't happen. With other hairs it doesn't happen at all as you can see here and here, I've compared the working _hl textures and they're set up the same as the others and all DXT5.

I usually disable the grass because of it.

Those are missing meshes, open the console, click on one and an ID will be shown at the top of the screen, the first two characters of that ID will be the load order for the problem mod, try reinstalling it.

Authorise what? some details would help.

I remember being told that they removed references from the main game in patches when they added DLC's to save memory, I think it was in one of Triangecity's videos, that said they were working within the ridiculous memory restraints of consoles, 512mb for the 360 and 256mb+256mb for textures on the PS3 so things might have been tight. But yeah, textures are the real villain, resolution should be as well but it doesn't seem to make a massive difference, I was messing around with 8K (7680 × 4320) and it was fine with NMC's medium textures, it just looked awful because you could see every imperfection. @Grogrokl It shouldn't have done, maybe another plugin is putting it back or you loaded an earlier save.

In addition to the above ESM's can make mods harder to remove mid game, for example a mod that disables the bar in the Goodsprings pub and replaces it with tables could be removed mid game if it's an ESP but not if it's a ESM, removing the ESP version would see the tables vanish and the previously disabled bar reappear, removing an ESM version would see the tables vanish but the bar remain disabled because that change is now in your save.