Abrubpt LOD transition

[SoulsCollective]

Fallout III has been working great for me, bought the GOTY version in the recent Steam sale and once appropriately set up (ie. with ALchemy entries, DLC moved, iNumHWThreads set, etc etc) has been working near-flawlessly. Occasional corrupt audio glitches, but these are transitory and to be expected when having to twiddle ALchemy settings to get the radio to work properly and I'm not overly fussed by this, haven't experienced any CTDs or other mysterious crashes - very happy up until yesterday. Have been dialing in performance/IQ tradeoff to suit my machine, increasing block load distance, tree load distance, fade-in distance, shadow resolution, water reflection resolution, etc, both via the launcher and .ini tweaking. Had reached great IQ levels with FPS still silky smooth and no crashes, was very happy, and then moved on to raising anti-aliasing and anisotropy above 2xAA and 4xAF, which I'd left things at while tweaking other settings.

 

Big mistake.

 

Performance at 8xAA and 14xAF is still silky smooth and the Capital Wasteland looks great - except raising AA seems to have done something strange to LOD settings for the ground textures. There is now a 'moving cone' of LOD ground texture difference centred directly on the camera viewpoint (ie. it moves appropriately between first- and third-person views, and expands appropriately when zooming in/out in third-person), outside of which ground textures will be crisp, but inside of which they will be slightly blurred.

 

(apologies for small screenies, have had to crop in order to maintain high enough quality to demonstrate problem while fitting in with hosting restrictions)

 

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/collectiveLAN/Misc/ScreenShot11024x768.jpg

 

First screenshot shows ground texture LOD from third-person just outside Lincoln Memorial looking towards Washington Monument - using my 1337-haXX0r MSPaint skills I have highlighted the area of transition. Moving the camera will cause this cone of fail to move as well, blurring the ground texture where previously it was crisp and 'crispening' bits that were previously blurred, and moving the character forward will move the cone forwards - it's very distracting moving through the Wastes with ground texture 'crispening' in behind you.

 

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/collectiveLAN/Misc/ScreenShot21024x768.jpg

 

Second screenshot is taken in same spot without moving character, just zooming in slightly - as you can see, the cone of fail has moved in appropriately.

 

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u80/collectiveLAN/Misc/ScreenShot01024x768.jpg

 

Last screenshot is taken in first-person, turned to the left - again, cone of fail has moved in appropriately.

 

This is very distracting, as I'm sure you can imagine, and quite frankly puzzling as well - I've tried the obvious step of changing AA/AF levels back to 2x/4x, but this has not helped - neither has disabling AA and AF entirely. I've also tried downloading a higher-res pack for the ground textures, which is nice and shiny but still affected by the LOD cone of fail. I'd appreciate any help or ideas anyone can offer.

 

Machine specs:

i7 920

eVGA Classifed E760

3*2GB DDR3-1866 CAS-8

2x (Crossfire) HD5870

Auzentech X-Fi Prelude

Windows 7 Pro x64

Fallout III GOTY version, fully patched through Steam

 

Running several mods, but no issues seen before changing AA settings. Load order from FOMM:

Fallout3.esm

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch.esm

PointLookout.esm

Zeta.esm

ThePitt.esm

Anchorage.esm

BrokenSteel.esm

Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow.esm

Hairday.esm

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Point Lookout.esp

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Mothership Zeta.esp

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - The Pitt.esp

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Operation Anchorage.esp

Unofficial Fallout 3 Patch - Broken Steel.esp

RRR+ANCH+PITT 1.0.esp

Helmetless Camouflage Stealth Suits.esp

FireLightFix.esp

VATS Normal Weapon Degradation.esp

Sensible Dismemberment.esp

Wasteland Weather Overhaul .9.esp

ACE2.0b.esp

WastelandMastery.esp

Echo_UseBothGloves.esp

Improved Turret Hacking.esp

GalaxyNewsRadio80[M].esp

Item Weight Overhaul.esp

Persona_and_Secret.esp

ShellRain.esp

Amy_Armor.esp

Enhanced Weather - Rain and Snow in Fallout.esp

PlayerChildVoiceFix.esp

enhancedsnipersandsilent.esp

 

Total active plugins: 32

Total plugins: 35

[SoulsCollective]

No ideas?

[SoulsCollective]

i can has halp pls?