Flying NPCs and Alt+tab intolerance

[spontaneite]

First of all I'll say I'm running a damn low-spec PC.

 

Issue 1) Half my NPCs tend to spend the majority of their combat a foot in the air, or higher. I understand this is just something you have to get used to in Bethesda games, but it really does happen loads for me. Especially with big guys like mammoths, but also when I'm getting attacked by your usual wolf it tends to happen from directly above me - a lot of the time, I point my bow up and shoot the wolf out of the sky before it even gets near me. Amusing but irritating. My enemies don't respect the laws of gravity, and as I'm a reasonably law-abiding gravity citizen, I find this unfair. Could this in any way be due to my crappy PC? Issue generally occurs noticeably when NPCs are moving quickly.

 

Issue 2) For as long as I've had Skyrim, it has been completely intolerant of me briefly leaving it. For example if windows updater wants to tell me something and force minimises Skyrim, if I click on the game afterwards all I get is a black screen. Same for if I Alt+tab during gameplay or get pulled to the desktop in any other conceivable way. It is impossible to minimise my Skyrim without having to ctrl+alt+del it afterwards. Not a major issue and I can live with it, but I'm wondering if it's just me or if it's universal.

 

Cheers

[rac56tme]

Issue 2 is everybody. Or, more of us than not.

 

I have yet to find a good solution to it. Even if you DO get back in the game the windows mouse cursor comes with you, so you have two mouse cursors. Quite annoying.

 

I tried Simple Borderless WIndow but that resulted in CTDs on load screens.

 

Guess we're stuck in fullscreen forever.

[spontaneite]

Apparently so -_- well at least I know it's not just me.

[prod80]

alt-tab is a pain in the butt with skyrim... sometimes you alt tab back, it loads game and CTD right away...

 

The only possible workaround seems to be to open console "~" -> alt-tab to windows -> do whatever -> click on the Skyrim tab in the Windows task bar (this brings up the window, but not the actual game) use alt-tab again and select Skyrim while window is open -> Skyrim opens most of the time, and most of the time without a double mouse pointer.

[Georgiegril]

Regarding the flying NPCs,

This can happen if you have V-sync disabled.

It was also an issue some time ago with a particular patch, though I forget which.

If you are not using VSync, I suggest you verify cache through steam and make sure all of your mods are updated to the current patch.

[spontaneite]

I'm afraid I have no idea what V-sync even is. Don't suppose you'd be willing to shed some light for me? :P

As for updates, I do make sure to run the 'play Skyrim' from Steam every now and then to make sure everything is up to date. Not as frequently as I check NMM for mod updates, but still fairly regular.

[prod80]

v(Vertigal)-Sync

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing

All gfx card drivers these days come with the option to enable to disable V-Sync... Tearing happens when your FPS exceed your monitors ability (by a great deal to be exact, most monitors are quite tolerant) and you start to see weird vertigal lines (tearing). When you enable V-sync you FPS will be synced with your monitor's refresh rate to avoid tearing. Due to this the game will appear to go more smoothly, even with a lower frame rate (eg. 60 FPS while your system can do 150 FPS, the 60 FPS might look smoother with v-Sync as you wont have tearing)

[Georgiegril]

Well, if you don't know what it is, you probably haven't changed the setting. VSync means verticle sync. It synchronized your monitor refresh rate with your framerate. Generally you might disable it if you were capping your framerate. You should find that in your prefini file as iPresentinterval. 1 is on, 0 is off. It is also something you can set in your graphics driver. The default is on, though, so it is unlikely that you would have it off unless you actively did so.

 

Have you checked the discussion pages and readmes of the mods you are using? It may be a known issue with one of them. (the flying NPCs)

 

Edit: ninjad! ;D Well now you have 2 explanations of VSync,lol.

[WolvenEdge]

>ears up, head down< you almost had three. . . I signed in to answer and there were suddenly two answers to the question.

[spontaneite]

Ah, well thank you both for your responses. Just checked my .ini and it is indeed enabled, so I'm not entirely sure why my airborne opponent issues are so common. I might want to think of disabling it - I generally have an average framerate of 6 FPS or lower, but I wouldn't want the effects to get worse. Hopefully around Christmastime I'll have my gaming PC and I'll be able to play on max settings fluently without having to worry about all this FPS enhancing business....

 

Edit: It could be a mod issue, but to be frank I have so many enabled it could be anything. I do make sure to keep my saves clean, but with that many mods there's only so much you can do - and oddly, mods seem to make no difference at all to my performance. Even if I disable everything and test it in a new save I don't notice any fps increase.