Change FPS at which trees stop swaying in wind?

[mrspongeworthy]

I know it sounds strange, but I'm artificially locked at a maximum of 24fps because I'm running vsync on a 1080p stereoscopic display. (Skyrim, BTW, looks phenomenal in this mode). It isn't a first person shooter, so surprisingly 24fps works just fine for the most part (same for DAO, Fallout 3 and FNV.) However, because the Skyrim engine assumes I don't have sufficient performance, I don't get swaying trees. Does anyone know of a way to change the threshold at which Skyrim will drop tree-swaying? Thanks!

[fms1]

If your only getting 24 FPS in that setup then you probably don't have enough video card performance to get the trees to sway without getting CTD's out the waszoo. You could try to lower screen resolution,or go to single display, or buy a beefier video card, and then it will run it.

 

EDIT: My bad, I made a foolish assumption that since you weren't getting tree sway, and you didn't know which values to change for them (that you obviously didn't turn those settings down yourself), that Skyrim thought you didn't have the hardware to run a high enough setting to include them.

Edited April 30, 2012 by fms1

[Rennn]

That's not what he said. It's locked at 24 fps, he has the performance to exceed that, but does not. It wouldn't cause CTDs in this case.

 

Why are you locked at 24 fps anyway? If I double that it comes out to 48, so you're running stereoscopic 3D on a monitor with a refresh rate of 60? I didn't know that was possible. :blink:

It's probably a stupid question, but will that work with any monitor then, assuming you don't mind having a refresh rate in the 20s? I know I'd need to buy peripherals for it.

 

I don't know the answer to your question, btw. There's a chance it can't be changed, but I don't know why Bethesda would force something like that when they don't even cap the ugrids, which is way more likely to crash your game at a high value.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Rennn

[PopReference]

Have you tried adding this line to the Skyrim.ini:

[Trees]

bEnableTreeAnimations=1

Edited May 1, 2012 by PopReference

[mrspongeworthy]

Have you tried adding this line to the Skyrim.ini:

[Trees]

bEnableTreeAnimations=1

 

Well, no, but what the heck, I'll give it a try!

[mrspongeworthy]

That's not what he said. It's locked at 24 fps, he has the performance to exceed that, but does not. It wouldn't cause CTDs in this case.

 

Why are you locked at 24 fps anyway? If I double that it comes out to 48, so you're running stereoscopic 3D on a monitor with a refresh rate of 60? I didn't know that was possible. :blink:

It's probably a stupid question, but will that work with any monitor then, assuming you don't mind having a refresh rate in the 20s? I know I'd need to buy peripherals for it.

 

I don't know the answer to your question, btw. There's a chance it can't be changed, but I don't know why Bethesda would force something like that when they don't even cap the ugrids, which is way more likely to crash your game at a high value.

 

I'm not completely aware of all the technical details, but the bottom line is that refresh-rate and frame-rate locking on 3D is extremely important. I can say that, if I disable vsync, I start feeling ill within a few minutes of playing, and I get no type of motion sickness whatsoever in actual physical activities (including boating). It's really awful. So staying locked at 24fps is the upshot (this is also the frame-rate of 3D blu-ray movies). I can lock to 60 if I'm willing to run in 720p, but the difference in quality is just staggering (pixel scaling 720p up to 1080p on a 1080p display looks terrible).

Edited May 1, 2012 by Mr_SpongeWorthy

[eltucu]

However, because the Skyrim engine assumes I don't have sufficient performance

Um, Skyrim doesnt makes that sort of decisions based on your current performance. You configure the details and thats what you'll see in the screen, regardless of your actual performance.

[fms1]

If you manually set it after it auto sets your low\ med.\ high\ ultra.

[eltucu]

That autosetting is made taking in account your CPU and GPU model, not the actual performance you're having ingame. If the game doesnt knows what CPU and/or GPU you're running on, regardless of your fps, it autosets itself to low settings.

[mrspongeworthy]

However, because the Skyrim engine assumes I don't have sufficient performance

Um, Skyrim doesnt makes that sort of decisions based on your current performance. You configure the details and thats what you'll see in the screen, regardless of your actual performance.

 

That's incorrect. If that were the case, that would be great. I miss the days when games had options for everything you could turn off and at your discretion. But unfortunately that is no longer the case in most games (no way to turn shadows off is a clear example). In the case of the swaying trees, the skyrim engine dynamically assigns them to sway or not based on your frame rate *at that moment* while the game is running. Find a spot where you can look at the trees and have a poor frame-rate. What you want is to find a spot where your framerate will drop below 30 when looking one way, but go above that range looking another way. You'll see that in the range of 30-33 fps the trees stop swaying. Below that - no swaying. (So, because Bethesda thinks I'm too stupid to check a box that says "trees sway" or "trees don't sway", I'm stuck with unswaying trees even though I generally have to power to run them fine. Developer's should never assume that they know what their consumer's machines are actually capable of. Just give us the options and let us choose on our own, thank you.)

 

I tried the line:

 

[Trees]

bEnableTreeAnimations=1

 

But unfortunately it doesn't help. I guess it isn't really a big deal, but I love the swaying trees and it is a shame that it is disable due to an erroneous assumption on the part of Bethesda.

 

Anyone else have any potential solutions?

 

Thanks!