Maxing Havok - Skyrim Spanked!

[thesapien]

Well, I've been tweaking Skyrim shadows for a long time now, mostly my tweaks where optimized for Medium and High range PC's, but, with my latest tweak I've focused to increase overall Ultra shadow quality and performance. I've learned a lot on how Skyrim shadows work, how different values work and how game react after applying them. All my knowlege is based on my trial and error expierience and so far, my observation where fairly accurate. I've also learned about some additional tweaks, that can be applied to increase overall game presence, like uGridsToLoad or iMinGrassSize.

 

I'm big on shadows, too, mainly because they seem so bad in vanilla Skyrim. But everything I've read either seems wrong or has other trade offs in quality. Some things that are supposed to increase quality seem to also decrease quality in another way, oddly enough.

 

But what I've found is that 2 things are most important to "fix" because they are the worst culprits, IMO.

 

1) Blur shadows. Misnamed, I think. Should be called soft. But because they are thought of as blurring, everyone, including the devs, thinks lowering the value is better. This makes them more pixelated and blocky! So the lower you go the worse they look. I've found that going higher, much higher, is far better so that shadows will then look more solid and have better gradients on curved surfaces. My setting in SkyrimPrefs.ini:

 

[Display]

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=30

 

The devs set this at 3 for medium, 2 for high, and 1 or 0 for ultra, if I remember correctly, and that's all backwards.

 

2) Update Shadows. This is when shadows update suddenly based on the sun's new position, something that is kind of jarring in how quickly they move and stop, move and stop, and move so quickly that they flicker like crazy. To have them move more slowly seems to help fix this a lot. My setting in Skyrim.ini:

 

[Display]

fSunShadowUpdateTime=10

 

Makes the shadows update/move to new position over a longer interval, around 8 seconds, then pause for a shorter time, around twice that, then repeat.

 

Edit to specify the above setting are from different ini files.

Edited February 3, 2012 by thesapien

[Ganon2020]

I realize I left out "uExterior Cell Buffer=64" because I found that adding it caused instability. I was testing uGrids up to 13 but couldn't get it to load.

 

Well, did you actually use that number while testing uGrids at 13? That would likely be the problem.

 

It specifically states in the Official Nvidia Tweak Guide (Advanced Tweaking Section) that you take the uGrids number, add 1 to it then square it. (i.e. 13 = 196)

 

I currently run on uGrids set to 9, and I've had no problems.

[MorwynKelm]

I did use the corresponding uGrids for each cell value I tried. So;

 
uGrids 5
Exterior Cell 36

uGrids 7
Exterior Cell 64

uGrids 9
Exterior Cell 100

uGrids 11
Exterior Cell 144

uGrids 13 
Exterior Cell 196

As I mentioned, I ran into stability problems so I use 7 and it's a good mix of perf/vis. Mostly due to limitations of my vram, 2GB total. The LOD values also appear to be affected by the uGrids settings. If you use uGrids 5 but have LODs set to 50, it seems to cap at 15. But if you use uGrids 7, LODs seem to cap at 21 or 22, which suggests that each value of uGrids is equivalent to 3 LODs. So using uGrids 9, you could optimize your LODs to roughly 30 to take full advantage of the uGrids tweak without overkill.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Morwyn Kelm

[sirchet]

Thanks for inviting me to this discussion.

 

For what it's worth, I really just followed what was put out by nVidia about the best settings for Skyrim.

I have to say that my game runs very smoothly, 50-60 FPS with the in game options maxed.

I'm currently running 39 mods and 16 plug-ins

The custom ini settings have always intrigued me, but we need to remember that these settings are very subject to each different machine and that persons perception of the "perfect" picture.

I would very much like to here how you guys have maxed your performance without giving up any eye candy.

 

I love the screen shots Morwyn Kelm, your sig rocks too. I was just playing a little New Vegas before typing this.

 

My specs:

 

Alienware Aurora

Intel Quad Core i7 930 @ 2.80 GHZ 2.80 GHZ 2.80 GHZ 2.80 GHZ

6 Gigs Ram

nVidia GTX480 1.3 Gigs (card ram)

Liquid cooled also

Using a 40 inch HD TV as a monitor (1920x1080 native res)

Could put up a picture but it just looks like the standard Alienware box with the funny lights and faces. ;)

 

[thesapien]

Thanks for inviting me to this discussion.

 

For what it's worth, I really just followed what was put out by nVidia about the best settings for Skyrim.

I have to say that my game runs very smoothly, 50-60 FPS with the in game options maxed.

I'm currently running 39 mods and 16 plug-ins

The custom ini settings have always intrigued me, but we need to remember that these settings are very subject to each different machine and that persons perception of the "perfect" picture.

I would very much like to here how you guys have maxed your performance without giving up any eye candy.

 

I love the screen shots Morwyn Kelm, your sig rocks too. I was just playing a little New Vegas before typing this.

 

My specs:

 

Alienware Aurora

Intel Quad Core i7 930 @ 2.80 GHZ 2.80 GHZ 2.80 GHZ 2.80 GHZ

6 Gigs Ram

nVidia GTX480 1.3 Gigs (card ram)

Liquid cooled also

Using a 40 inch HD TV as a monitor (1920x1080 native res)

Could put up a picture but it just looks like the standard Alienware box with the funny lights and faces. ;)

 

 

Damn, that HD TV is the way to go for gaming. My 30 inch monitor with a native resolution of 2560x1600 really pushes my Radeon HD 4890 with over twice the number of pixels as yours. My i7 920 never seems to be the issue with gaming, so I'm guessing your i7 930 just feels like it's walking briskly when playing Skyrim. Anyway, your system looks like eye candy isn't much of a problem.

[thesapien]

Does anyone consistently use anti-aliasing? I confess to always turning it completely off and just going with FXAA on instead.

[redneck1st]

As for me I'm running a simple little rig for which I built a couple of years ago.

 

Intel I7 qued core 3.0 ghz on an intel Mobo

4x4 gig ram chips for a total of 16gigs of ram

Coolermaster full tower case

47" 1080p flat screen tv for the monitor

Onkyo 7 disk stereo surrond sund system.

Edited February 3, 2012 by redneck1st

[MorwynKelm]

24" Dell 2408WFP Digital. Native resolution for me is 1920x1200@60Hz.

 

It's perfect.

 

Lots of great info in this thread already, awesome! :)

[zorndyken]

try this for tweak .ini files

 

 

Skyrim Configurator Maker

http://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/skyrim/

[MorwynKelm]

^^ I have, and unless they have recently fixed/improved it, I'd suggest everyone stay away from it. The configs I had it make for me contained many "blank" entries and values that were flat wrong. Yeah, unless it's been fixed, it's to be avoided.