Detect Life effect does not highlight all NPCs?

[mystraven777]

Hello!

I my most recent playthrough, using it in cities, I notice that my Detect Life spell and Aura Whisper shout do not pick up all NPCs. I could swear that they did highlight everything in previous playthroughs. The auras will flicker on and off as I pan my view or recast the spell, often grabbing everyone for a fraction of a second and then flickering off on some. Anyone knows of a mod that could mess with Detect Life? My install is pretty bog standard. Bar that, anyone knows of a property or script I could edit to increase the target cap?

 

This guy seems to have encountered a similar issue last year, but no one ever replied to him:
https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/7485956-detect-life-only-highlights-9-living-things/

Someone on the UESP Wiki also seems to have encountered a similar issue, with the same lack of answers:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Detect_Life_(spell)

 

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[SilentPrayerCG]

Today noticed same problem. But i never tried it before in crowded places, or tried but it was long time ago, maybe on LE...

I tried disable all plugins, and then coc riverwood, added book to inventory and it's same.

It's look like amount of affected by this spells npc's is hardcoded, or depends on something.

 

upd

checked on second pc, where is skyrim with less mods, and it's ok, also particle effect itself look different, so there is a chance that whatever overwrite this effect is culprit.

or i guess I'm wrong about mesh, it's probably look brighter because enb (checked without enb yesterday, it's not culprit)

 

upd

i found source of culprit, it's something within ini file

there is no such behavior with default "medium" preset, also effect it self not that bright now

i used beth.ini ultra preset before

 

upd

so if you open beth.ini, don't change anything, close it, press "save changes" it's still change something that Detect Life begin act like this.

 

upd

found culprit, as i suspected

it's line

[Particles]
iMaxDesired=6000

 

bethini adds it, it's absent in default skyrimprefs.ini, i wonder what value is default, because yesterday i tried raise it drastically and it wont help, so it's probably suppose to be smaller than 6000

in one of mods i saw recommendation to set iMaxDesired to 1500 i think, I'm not sure which mod was that, maybe EmbersXD.

 

it's 750 by default apparently https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:SkyrimPrefs_INI/Particles

 

double checked, yes, 750 is ok (i guess skyrim adds it at the end of prefs when started), also 1500 as recommended in Embers XD works ok too.

Edited September 27, 2020 by SilentPrayerCG

[QaxeIsKaze]

iMaxDesired=1500 did the trick for me. Thanks.