Strange Banding/Striping/Crosshatching on shadows

[phonix420]

I've run into this problem in the past with Skyrim LE and it caused me to quit after 100s of hours of modding so I'm hoping this doesn't happen here with Fallout 4.

I get these weird stripes/grid/crosshatch patterns on textures in the game. It's most noticeable with ENB on, but can be seen without as well.

 

In the picture above it's noticeable mostly on the shadows on my character's face.

 

You can see it in textures sometimes too, especially with ENB DOF enabled:



It's so hard to describe, almost like artifacts or something. In the above photo you'd have to zoom in and look very closely to see the little lines here and there.

It has this crosshatch pattern to it:

 

Also notice the hair, the Anti-Aliasing seems messed up, but it could be unrelated. The weird shadow is what I'm most concerned with fixing.


Now for some more info:

I'm honestly not sure if this is something new or not. I've been setting up a Fallout 4 install for about 2 weeks now, hours and hours of researching and merging mods and making compatibility patches. I've been checking and testing constantly but still haven't really gotten to playing it yet. I finally had everything set up, and was just doing some final checks of my character model and textures when I noticed this problem, and then immediately noticed it everywhere else. But it's so glaring to me I think I would have noticed it earlier when I was testing between mod installs.

So then I tried a vanilla game but the problem remained, so I reckon it can't be a mod issue.

 

I really thought it was Ambient Occlusion. When I disable SSAO/HBAO+ and also disable SSAO in ENB the problem is much less noticeable but I can still see it if I look closely at some stuff in game.

I tried reverting my ini's to default then setting everything to Ultra. The problem remained.

I then used BethINI with the "High" setting and "Recommended Settings" ticked. The problem remained.

Used Bilbaos config tool to change Shadow Resolution to 2048/3000/4096 quality improved but problem remained.

Tried the old "iBlurDeferredShadowMask" trick and tried 3/6/10 as values, didn't seem to change anything.

Made many other ini tweaks that were suggested online. All lowered game fidelity but issue remained.

Fallout4Prefs.ini
https://pastebin.com/DjWp5jaq

Fallout4.ini
https://pastebin.com/a4yBNFCq
Fallout4Custom.ini

https://pastebin.com/c6YZJcra

Fiddled around in Nvidia Control Panel and Nvidia Inspector, although I did this during my installation and I feel like it could have made a bad setting and caused this whole thing. I tried defaulting everything but the issue remained in-game.


Here are some other users who have/had the same issue:

This post talks about AA being the culprit. I tried disabling AA and also tried FXAA but the problem remained:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6324176-shadows-pixel-grids-antialiasing/

This guy gets it around his gun:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgamingtechsupport/comments/3tumbk/fuzzy_grid_showing_while_playing_fallout_4_seems/

 

Another from FO4:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/312265256995024543/

This one is in Skyrim but is identical issue:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/973037-grainygridded-shadows-using-enb/

And another:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/29w09n/does_anyone_know_what_would_cause_this_pixelly/

I've done all the things mentioned in these posts but none have helped.

Or is this something that everyone has and just lives with? I don't see this in other people's screenshots but maybe they're doctored or just picking better angles. I know I spent hundreds of hours trying to fix neck seams in Skyrim and Fallout only for people to tell me I'm overreacting and that everyone has neck seams it's Bethesda's fault not mine.


Anyways thanks for sticking through this post if you made it this far I thank and commend you. I ask that you please take the time and make any suggestions you may have as I'm willing to try anything at this point. If all else fails I'll drop FO4 and go find a new game, but I'm kinda sick over the fact I've got about 100 hours invested into just setting up this current FO4 install and I haven't even gotten around to playing it yet.

[phonix420]

 

And shadows on walls and stuff are striped/banded like above^^

[bill8872]

I really don't notice many of the shadow issues you show in the pics. Some I do, but I just ignore them. I think every Bethesda game has the neck seam issue, so I also ignore it the best I can. ENB can, and sometimes does make the little things more noticeable, which is part of the reason I don't use it.

Everyone is correct in that all the little issues your pointing out is Bethesda;s fault, and there really is very little that can be done with it.

I really noticed how lazy they got when I scrap ground item's. So yes I just ignore most of them and just have fun lying the game.

[JimmyRJump]

I used to play around with SSOA settings and stuff when both the game and an ENB made use of it or lower godrays settings. It worked more or less over a year ago, but with later game updates (and with using more and more 4K and 2K HD texture mods) the stripey effect seems there to stay. So, I learned to live with it. It's either that or stop playing the game, but since it's nothing game-breaking, I happily ignore it.

[jones177]

Hi

 

It is only a non issue if you play at 4k resolution. The pattern is 4x smaller.

 

In Skyrim SE switching off screen space ambient occlusion can get rid of it. https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/6454156-strange-grid-pattern-on-skin-and-other-textures-skin-especially

 

AA is terrible in Fallout 4. At 1440 or 4k it can be turned off.

 

There were some poor choices made in the games visual design if the target resolution was 1080. At that resolution there are not enough pixels to render near-distant objects like tree branches & fire escapes. A Lot of the effects used in the game are designed to mask this.

 

Later

[phonix420]

I feared this might be the case, and I appreciate the feedback. I'm really picky about visual anomalies like this since I like to do some screen archery. Since posting this I've indeed gotten used to it. I also turn god rays off to get rid of the blurring around models.

 

Anyone have good game/shadow/Nvidia inspector Ini tweaks they could share or point me to? Preferably geared toward a good balance of gameplay/visual fidelity.

 

I have an i5 6600k, GTX 1070, 16gb DDR4 I get 60fps everywhere but in the city which can go as low as 30fps in places (is this normal for my specs?)

 

I've considered doing DSR but I really prefer an average of 60fps.

 

Thanks again for your replies they've found me well.

[JimmyRJump]

Have a look at BethINI.

[jones177]

Hi

 

DRS won't help. The effect is applied after.

 

You might want to try it anyway. If you play at 1080 your GPU can handle 4x. Use it instead of AA.

 

Your Boston frame rate is too low for your CPU/GPU. Make sure your shadows distance is set to medium. Your lows should be in the high 40s

 

My low with a i7 6700k are in the 50s & my i7 8700k must be over 60 because I have not seen one yet.

 

Later

[JimmyRJump]

...()...Your Boston frame rate is too low for your CPU/GPU. Make sure your shadows distance is set to medium. Your lows should be in the high 40s

 

My low with a i7 6700k are in the 50s & my i7 8700k must be over 60 because I have not seen one yet...()...

Downtown Boston, Swan Pond and the complete Freedom Trail are known for sinking fps. There's a mod that does away with the fps mess in the Boston Area but I haven't tried it yet. 30fps is quite normal there even with an NVidia 1080ti.

 

And going over 60fps is at your own risk as the game's engine is capped at 60. Going higher might seriously screw with visible physics with cars and brahmins dropping from the sky and other such oddities. I'm on an i7-3770K and an MSI RX470 8GB and have between 40 and 60fps everywhere with drops to 30 in downtown Boston. Using mostly 2 and 4K textures in 1080p.

[phonix420]

Thanks for your replies. I've played around with my shadow distance settings and am getting lows of around 45 now, lowest areas are at DC entrance and just outside goodneighbor but frame rates are much more stable now. I also went through my load order and removed anything with worldedits except BostonFPSFix. I figured I had some exploration mods and such that broke precombines. Also Scrap Everything is gone now in place of the safe version of Junktown.

 

I also had an issue today where I derped and filled up my SSD while working in MO2 and it corrupted my modlist.txt because there was no room to save it. It totally messed things up and I had to revert to a backup from 2 days ago and go through everything enabling and disabling trying to replicate where I was at. Lesson learned.

 

I fixed it and tested my load order today I think it's stable now, finally time to play some. Wish me luck.