How to find who are breaking precombines

[yuser]

I have about 18-25 FPS at certain areas in Boston (Commonwealth Bank - Postal Square - Mass Fusion - Faneuil Hall). Decreasing shadows distance setting has almost no effect so I suppose this issue is caused by broken precombines. But I can't find what mods do this. I have tried to use "tpc" console command as described in this post and I have got "Preculling is enabled but disabled for this location."

I have tried to check FanneuilHallExt cell (0000e058) in FO4Edit. Among all of my mods only Damn Apocalypse touch this cell, but it doesnt change XPRI and XCRI records, so it doesn't break precombines, am I right? Also I have tried to disable some "suspicious" mods (which change something in this area as I know). But it didn't help. I have tried to apply in FO4Edit "only has precombined mesh" filter but it throw an error: "Overflow while converting variant of type (Cardinal) into type (Integer)". There is no option "bUseCombinedObjects=0" in my INI files. I don't have scrapping mods installed and anyways the most "poisoned" area (Boston downtown) doesnt contain any settlements.

So what also I can do to find who are breaking precombines?

 

Thanks in advance and sorry for my English.

[Thisisnotmyday]

Run Loot see if there are any conflict ? Fixed a few for me, rather loot pointed them out and I then rectified them.

[VIitS]

If a mod edits records that are part of precombined meshes without rebuilding them, precombineds and previs are automatically broken (this is intentional). The way you can check is to compare the "Version Control Info 1" subrecord (in the record header) of the precombined REFR records to the VISI and PCMB subrecords of the Cell containing them. If the date of any of the precombined REFRs is either blank (which happens if you copy using xEdit*) or newer than the VISI/PCMB timestamps, then precombineds and previs will be broken for that cell.

 

You can tell a REFR is part of a precombined mesh because the "Placed Object" descriptor will be surrounded by brackets (i./e. [Placed Object] for precombined REFRs, Placed Object for non-precombined REFRs). If you are using the most recent version of FO4Edit (4.0.3), it will have the VISI/PCMB timestamps decoded.

 

One other thing of note: since Previs (the thing you are checking with the tpc console command) is made in 3x3 cell grids, you want to check for all Cells that share an RVIS cell (as well as the cell referenced in the RVIS subrecord) with the Cell you checked tpc in. If Previs is disabled for one of those 9 cells, it is disabled for all 9.

 

One final note: did you check for any mods having ini files, and not just the Fallout4.ini/Fallout4Custom.ini? If a mod has a ini file with the same name as the plugin, its settings will be merged with your main ini settings at runtime. That said, a mod having that ini setting without being a scrap mod is a sign that you should stay far away, as that is a terrible idea. Even for Scrap Everything (which I am a co-author of), I provide the option but warn people against using it unless they know exactly what using it can cause. Any Scrap mod that isn't allowing you to set up settlements anywhere can just disable it on a per-cell basis, relying on the ini is just asking for complaints about performance impact.

 

*This is also intentional, as it prevents problems when people are actually using the Version Control system in the CK

[yuser]

Thank you very much for such detailed post.

 

 

 

If a mod edits records that are part of precombined meshes without rebuilding them, precombineds and previs are automatically broken (this is intentional). The way you can check is to compare the "Version Control Info 1" subrecord (in the record header) of the precombined REFR records to the VISI and PCMB subrecords of the Cell containing them. If the date of any of the precombined REFRs is either blank (which happens if you copy using xEdit*) or newer than the VISI/PCMB timestamps, then precombineds and previs will be broken for that cell.

This is forementioned FaneuilHallExt:

 

 

So as you described "Version Control Info 1" is differ from PCMB and VISI timestamps. But does this means that UFO4P breaks precombines? As far as I know they are quite finicky about this things. Also I tried to disable Damn Apocalypse and it didn't change FPS at all. There is also Depravity here, but I had installed it not long ago, but I have been experienced low FPS in this area much longer.

 

 

 

You can tell a REFR is part of a precombined mesh because the "Placed Object" descriptor will be surrounded by brackets (i./e. [Placed Object] for precombined REFRs, Placed Object for non-precombined REFRs). If you are using the most recent version of FO4Edit (4.0.3), it will have the VISI/PCMB timestamps decoded.

As far as I can see they all are in brackets and no other mods change particular placed objects.

 

 

 

One other thing of note: since Previs (the thing you are checking with the tpc console command) is made in 3x3 cell grids, you want to check for all Cells that share an RVIS cell (as well as the cell referenced in the RVIS subrecord) with the Cell you checked tpc in. If Previs is disabled for one of those 9 cells, it is disabled for all 9.

Broken previs' affects FPS too?

Is there an easy way to find neighbor cells in FO4Edit? I don't understand this system with "Block x,y", "Sub-block, m, n". Of is there anywhere a map with this numbers (coordinates)?

 

 

 

One final note: did you check for any mods having ini files, and not just the Fallout4.ini/Fallout4Custom.ini? If a mod has a ini file with the same name as the plugin, its settings will be merged with your main ini settings at runtime.

Yes, I'm aware about that. And I mentioned all INI files in my firs post.

 

 

[VIitS]

So as you described "Version Control Info 1" is differ from PCMB and VISI timestamps. But does this means that UFO4P breaks precombines? As far as I know they are quite finicky about this things. Also I tried to disable Damn Apocalypse and it didn't change FPS at all. There is also Depravity here, but I had installed it not long ago, but I have been experienced low FPS in this area much longer.

You need to look at the Version Control Info 1 value for the placed object records, not for the cell. If the VC Info 1 of any placed object is newer than the VISI/PCMB timestamps, that is what breaks previs and precombineds

 

As far as I can see they all are in brackets and no other mods change particular placed objects.

 

Here is a screenshot to show what I mean:

 

The top 5 are part of precombined meshes, the bottom five are not. In general, if a mod touches a REFR record (placed object) that is part of precombineds and has vanilla values for VISI and PCMB, it probably breaks precombineds and previs

 

Broken previs' affects FPS too?

Is there an easy way to find neighbor cells in FO4Edit? I don't understand this system with "Block x,y", "Sub-block, m, n". Of is there anywhere a map with this numbers (coordinates)?

 

If anything, I would expect previs to have a greater impact in most cases. And the easiest way to see what cells share a previs block are by looking at the RVIS:

If you go to the cell listed in the RVIS and look at the "Referenced By" tab then sort by signature, the CELL records you see are almost certainly the neighboring cells that use the same .uvd previs file. In this example, you would want to look at 03000BC2 and see what other cells have that same value (as well as looking at if that cell breaks precombineds/previs, it is the center cell of the 3x3 block).

 

Yes, I'm aware about that. And I mentioned all INI files in my firs post.

Just wanted to make sure, some people only look in the Documents\my games\Fallout4 folder, while the ini files from mods are in the Data folder (or if using MO2, the mod's folder)

[yuser]

If you go to the cell listed in the RVIS and look at the "Referenced By" tab then sort by signature, the CELL records you see are almost certainly the neighboring cells that use the same .uvd previs file. In this example, you would want to look at 03000BC2 and see what other cells have that same value (as well as looking at if that cell breaks precombineds/previs, it is the center cell of the 3x3 block).

And this allowed me to find the culprit! It's Corrunda's Goodneighbor. This mod changes Goodneighbor (obviously) but for some reason also it edits some cells outside around it, like this:

 

 

Probably leftovers from Creation Kit? I have deleted these edits and my FPS have jumped from 25-28 to 37-40. And there are no any visiable problems after this. I think 40 FPS at the heaviest area in the game is quite acceptable with my mods setup.

 

VIitS, thank you very much!

Edited May 20, 2020 by yuser