Questions from a pre 1.5 player...

[AKcelsior]

Hey guys, this is my first post here on tech support so please go easy on me if these questions have definitive answers somewhere on page 99 or so. So I haven't played Skyrim since the pre 1.5 days and it seemed that the game was playing okay on my system. Coming back to Skyrim with patch 1.6.89.0 has introduced a few things that my system doesn't like. After doing a little searching I found the introduction of grass shadows may hurt performance.

 

Can someone please explain to me what grass shadows are? Is it when shadows are cast on grass from something else (ie: tree or player) or when the grass itself casts shadows on the ground? Also does adding the line bShadowsOnGrass=0 to both skyrim.ini and prefs.ini actually do anything? adding that line under [display] in both .ini files seems to have no effect visually, performance gains are negligible if there actually is any. By the way I also placed the variable under the [grass] section of both to see if it made a difference and once again the answer is no. Am I doing it wrong?

 

And lastly, I either just never noticed in the pre 1.5 days or this is a new(er) bug related to grass on my system but i've noticed that at night my torch/lantern doesn't actually illuminate the grass correctly. What I mean is that certain grass such as the white tundra grass will reflect my torch light while the majority of all other grass reflects no light. The effect while using a weather mod such as RLWC is absolute pitch black grass at night with light sources on it, which overall darkens the entire scene. Is there anyway to fix this yet?

 

BTW I'm running this game on a clean install of win7 sp1, core i3 2.13ghz, nvidia geforce 240m 1gig vram (updated to current drivers), 3gb ram. My game is also running with RLWC, Claralux, Vurt's, and Skyrim 2k textures.

Edited July 29, 2012 by akkalat85

[Septfox]

Welcome to the er, forum section. Have some punch.

 

ShadowsOnGrass causes grass clumps to be tossed through shadow calculations along with the rest of most opaque objects. Trees, characters, buildings etc. cast shadows on them. Basically, anything that blocks light from the sun, causing a shadow to cast, will cast a shadow on grass.

 

Anything that adds more shadow calculations to the game will hurt performance to a varying degree, particularly on a low- or mid-end card. Grass shadowing in theory is a rather simple type of shadowing though, so it shouldn't hurt the framerate on adequate hardware much, if at all.

 

Adding/modifying the line does have an effect: it needs to be under the [Display] section, and probably in both files. Setting it to 0 causes grass to be ignored when it comes time for the engine to recalculate shadows. Note that changing it and using "refreshini" in the console to reload configuration won't work, it needs a full game restart to take effect. Also, ENB's SSAO is a completely different creature, so it ignores any shadow settings while it's on.

 

What I'd do it find a grassy area with trees (but not too many, you want the sunlight to make you some shadow borders), get a good viewpoint, save your game, reload the game to reset the view to "neutral", record your framerate, exit the game, turn grass shadows off, reload your game, check framerate again. If it's gone up by a significant amount, congratulations, your video card hates grass shadowing.

Ah, that brings back fond memories of my Radeon x1600...it found any sort of shadowing in Oblivion repulsive and dropped frames like mad when forced to do it. Though certainly not to the degree my Mobility 9600 did. *sigh* Those were the days...

 

You can try adding/modifying bGrassPointLighting and b30GrassVS under [Grass] in Skyrim.ini, see if those have an effect on your lighting issue. Turning them on if they aren't already will almost surely affect your framerate adversely, but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

 

s'about the limits to what I think I know, as far as grass goes. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come in and educate us both.

[AKcelsior]

Welcome to the er, forum section. Have some punch.

 

ShadowsOnGrass causes grass clumps to be tossed through shadow calculations along with the rest of most opaque objects. Trees, characters, buildings etc. cast shadows on them. Basically, anything that blocks light from the sun, causing a shadow to cast, will cast a shadow on grass.

 

Anything that adds more shadow calculations to the game will hurt performance to a varying degree, particularly on a low- or mid-end card. Grass shadowing in theory is a rather simple type of shadowing though, so it shouldn't hurt the framerate on adequate hardware much, if at all.

 

Adding/modifying the line does have an effect: it needs to be under the [Display] section, and probably in both files. Setting it to 0 causes grass to be ignored when it comes time for the engine to recalculate shadows. Note that changing it and using "refreshini" in the console to reload configuration won't work, it needs a full game restart to take effect. Also, ENB's SSAO is a completely different creature, so it ignores any shadow settings while it's on.

 

What I'd do it find a grassy area with trees (but not too many, you want the sunlight to make you some shadow borders), get a good viewpoint, save your game, reload the game to reset the view to "neutral", record your framerate, exit the game, turn grass shadows off, reload your game, check framerate again. If it's gone up by a significant amount, congratulations, your video card hates grass shadowing.

Ah, that brings back fond memories of my Radeon x1600...it found any sort of shadowing in Oblivion repulsive and dropped frames like mad when forced to do it. Though certainly not to the degree my Mobility 9600 did. *sigh* Those were the days...

 

You can try adding/modifying bGrassPointLighting and b30GrassVS under [Grass] in Skyrim.ini, see if those have an effect on your lighting issue. Turning them on if they aren't already will almost surely affect your framerate adversely, but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

 

s'about the limits to what I think I know, as far as grass goes. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come in and educate us both.

 

Thanks a lot for the reply. After some testing I found no real performance loss/gain by messing with the above settings but I left bGrassPointLighting at 0 and b30GrassVS to 0 just to be safe. Nothing has worked so far for fixing the problem where some plants reflect light and others don't. Hmmm, sounds looks like I might just have to keep waiting and updating my video drivers and game patches and hope for the best.