No Building LOD - Buildings just pop in.

[chapel16]

Where Distant Buildings would normally be, shadows take their place, this leads to them just suddenly popping in and it's very off putting and ugly.

 

Running the Broblivion mod pack.

[Hickory]

Run TES4LODGen after you have run BOSS and rebuilt your bashed patch -- it's vitally important that you run TES4LODGen after all other modding steps.

[Megatarius]

Does Broblivion come with Visible When Distant buildings? Because this is normal behavior of the game.

 

Try RAEVWD, and then use TES4LODGen like Hickory said.

 

 

I recommend not installing the LOD meshes for rocks, doors, stairs, and statues. These will suck your frame rates dry and are not necessary for seeing buildings in the distance.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Megatarius

[chapel16]

Run TES4LODGen after you have run BOSS and rebuilt your bashed patch -- it's vitally important that you run TES4LODGen after all other modding steps.

 

I did this, didn't make a difference.

 

Then I tried RAEVWD and it had the same effect, no difference at all.

I can post screenshots if you want, there's black shadows on the ground were buildings should bne.

Distant Buildings is definitely enabled.

 

I am using this mod pack:

http://broblivion.blogspot.com/

 

Only other mod I am using is Qarls Texture Pack 3 Redimized.

 

 

EDIT: I got it working with RAEVWD!

But it's really laggy, is there a lighter alternative?

Edited January 9, 2011 by chapel16

[Hickory]

First, you should not need RAEVWD at all. TES4LODGen generates all available worldspace LOD files (trees, rocks, etc). RAEVWD provides extras, like hi-res, Quarls, Window lights etc, hence the high lag. If you got the problem sorted with RAEVWD but not with TES4LODGen, then you did something wrong.

[chapel16]

First, you should not need RAEVWD at all. TES4LODGen generates all available worldspace LOD files (trees, rocks, etc). RAEVWD provides extras, like hi-res, Quarls, Window lights etc, hence the high lag. If you got the problem sorted with RAEVWD but not with TES4LODGen, then you did something wrong.

 

Is there any way to restore default, non RAEVWD distant buildings?

Thanks for your help!

[Hickory]

First, you should not need RAEVWD at all. TES4LODGen generates all available worldspace LOD files (trees, rocks, etc). RAEVWD provides extras, like hi-res, Quarls, Window lights etc, hence the high lag. If you got the problem sorted with RAEVWD but not with TES4LODGen, then you did something wrong.

 

Is there any way to restore default, non RAEVWD distant buildings?

Thanks for your help!

 

Yes. Uninstall RAEVWD thoroughly, and then run TES4LODGen again. Any time you install a mod that adds world content you should run TES4LODGen, but only after running BOSS, then building your Bashed Patch, since LOD is highly dependent on mod load order.

 

Edit: and don't forget your fade and distance settings in video options, as this has a bearing on when objects appear. If these are set too low, you will get the symptoms your described.

[Megatarius]

You don't have to uninstall it.

 

I said in the other post, "I recommend not installing the LOD meshes for rocks, doors, stairs, and statues. These will suck your frame rates dry and are not necessary for seeing buildings in the distance."

 

That's probably why it's laggy. Go through the folders it installs to and delete out _far.nif files that have names with rock, door, stairs, or statue in them. Those meshes are not necessary for seeing the buildings in the distance, and are high resolution to boot.

[Smooth613]

If you want to use RAEVWD and are experiencing too much of an FPS hit just use the 00 Core folder, nothing more. You will probably not notice any FPS hit with only the Core folder installed. It's when you start adding the other parts of the mod that you notice more significant FPS hits. Such as the City ESPs and architecture contained in folders 01 - 04. Of those folders 04, Wilderness Architecture offers the smallest performance hit. You also don't want to use folders 05 - 11 if you are struggling for FPS. Those are folders that contain the distant meshes for Statues, Forts, Rocks, and some High Detail Imperial structures.

 

Otherwise RAEVWD is the most optimized distant viewing mod available. All of the meshes are PyFFI'd and low-res for optimal performance**. None of the meshes are high-res unless you use folders 10 and 11 which are appropriately named High Detail.

 

Below is some information pulled from the ReadMe, which hopefully everyone using this mod has read?

 

All textures are Low-Res, unless noted.

 

AEVWD Large: Enhanced lowres textures.

UOMP: Battlehorn Castle (requires the official DLC to be activated).

Oblivion: City wall meshes only.

Brumbek: VWD illuminated windows, optimized lowres texture pack, optional QTP3 lowres texture pack, as well as several mesh and texture fixes.

Me: Machine regenerated all architecture, Ayleid ruin, and Imperial fort meshes for better quality and lower polygon counts. UOP corrected versions were used for the reductions wherever possible.

[/line]

**Next is the information regarding the optimization done to the meshes.

All of the meshes have been checked and had the following done:

 

 

* Collision data removed. If actual collision grids were still present, the branches have been deleted entirely. It's impossible to collide with a VWD object.

* Animation controllers removed. It is impossible to animate a VWD object, so this data is bloat.

* Geometry morphers removed. If a mesh had these, they've been removed, as they are only useful in animation.

* All NiStringsExtraData blocks removed. These are nearly always associated with collision.

* All BSX Flags removed. These are nearly always used for collision and animation.

* All NiSpecularProperty blocks removed. Leaving these in place causes visual anomalies, most notably the "every VWD turned yellow" issue.

* All NiBinaryExtraData blocks (tangent/normal spaces) removed. This data is not required for VWD meshes and helps tremendously in reducing memory usage.

* All parallax flags turned off. The distances involved make this useless anyway.

* All meshes have been assigned lowres textures instead of hires ones.

* Nearly all NiAlphaProperty blocks removed. If the mesh required it for transparency, it was kept. If this is left on a mesh that does not require it, visual anomalies can result.

* All NiVertexColorProperty blocks removed. These lead to some cases of black VWD objects.

* Optimization using PyFFI after the above has been done.

 

In addition to mesh work, all VWD normal maps have had their alpha channels removed since it serves no purpose. This will help some with VRAM, and eliminate issues with sparkly objects.

 

The typical VWD mesh comes out the other end of this process losing up to 75% of the data it was carrying with no loss of function. A fully optimized and functional VWD mesh will have only the NiMaterialProperty, NiTexturingProperty, and NiTriShapeData/NiTriStripsData branches left in its NiTriShape/NiTriStrips branches, and will have only NiTriStrips or NiTriShape branches attached to the scene root.

 

Compared with all of the other VWD options available, this is the most optimized, game friendly set of VWD objects there is.

 

 

[/line]

And finally; Dealing With FPS Drain.

 

 

If after installing this you find that FPS is still suffering, you can try the following:

 

1. uGridDistantCount in the Oblivion.ini file is set to 25 by default. Lowering this to 20 or even 15 will provide a dramatic improvement.

2. Use Oblivion Stutter Remover. It will help reduce the impact of loading the extra resources as you change cells.

3. Install and configure Streamline to manage fog distance, and if ncecessary, set up the FPS manager too.

4. If you run Better Cities, try dropping the Imperial City VWD optional package they provide and re-run TES4LODGen.

5. If you're using any of the optional ESPs from RAEVWD, deactivate them and re-run TES4LODGen. The extra city architecture, especially at the Imperial City, can be harsh.

6. If you used the higher detail city walls and/or IC bridges, drop those.

7. If you used the ships and shipwrecks, drop those.

8. If none of that is enough, you may need to leave out all or part of the architecture folder entirely.

 

Unfortunately if none of that works, this mod may simply be too much for your PC to handle at all. It may be time to consider some hardware upgrades. For RAEVWD, the most effective hardware upgrade will be a new CPU.

 

 

[Hickory]

<shakes head and moves on>