I downloaded Streamline to fix the stutters I have in my frame rate. I have not installed it yet, and here's why...

When I went to TESNexus to DL it, the note on the file said "requires V 3.1 Open Beta Patch". So I downloaded that too, but there is no documentation with it...no Read Me...and there are several folders. How can I be sure that all folders are supposed to be used? Does anyone know?

Here it is all the Streamline open beta documentation I have:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AIUWS2G8

But if you are after stutter only...I highly recommend OSR instead:

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1068356

:foodndrink:

YES, I highly recommend OSR over Streamline. Especially version 3.1. I ran into so many problems with 3.1 that I finally gave up, installed OSR and my stutters are gone, my FPS has improved and my head doesn't hurt so much!!

Problems with SL 3.1:

1) Gave me FEWER FPS.
2) Gave me MORE stutters
3) Fog setting from the "Streamsight" section would never go away...even after disabling it in the .ini and reinitializing it.
4) Corrupt "Streamsaves"

Now, keep in mind, I have a great deal of modding and tweaking knowledge. I have never had any problem diagnosing and fixing my own problems with my games/mods. But I will be damned if I could figure out why a program that had every single option turned off could still screw with my game so much. I think I will go so far as to say: I HATE Streamline 3.1. :swear:

Never had any of those issues.

Neither had I. Streamsight, for me, is essential as I like RAEVWD and Unique Landscapes and...more. The only other component I use is Streamsave (and no corrupted streamsave ever).

Streamline WITHOUT the patch is probably not a good idea. WITH the patch it's only a minor annoyance in some cases. It was never intended to address stuttering issues either. It does exactly what it says, despite some of its oddities.

I've disabled Streamline now for the time being, relying only on OSR, and I'm going to see how I get on with that. So far it seems OK, even with UL and RAEVWD (but my rig is my rig, and not anyone else's, of course).

Streamsight is the only feature of Streamline I'd want to go back to, but while I liked the effect it gives in exterior locations I really don't like what it does in interiors dungeons. Usually it sharply reduces the amount of fog, but doesn't seem to set the clipping distance correctly, with the result that I'd have this really immersion-breaking wall of solid grey retreating ahead of me in the distance. This was particularly noticable in dungeons with quite a bit of AI activity going on. Without SL this is still happening - more so in fact - but the clipping distance is successfully hidden by the ambient haze, so I don't notice it nearly as much.

A significant number of people find Streamline ineffective or counterproductive. Including me. On the other hand a significant number of people find Streamline a significant benefit. It is rather popular, so I guess the people who like it outnumber those who don't. There is also a small 3rd category who say that streamline version 2.1 helped but later versions are not so good.

OSR 4.1 is, in my highly prejudiced opinion (I wrote it), an option with fewer downsides. It just plain helps, and for some people and some settings it helps a lot, like night and day. When installing it, do read section 4 of the readme, particularly the parts about bReplaceHeap (an off-by-default option that can greatly improve performance) and MaximumFPS (a matter-of-taste setting that a significant number of users do not like the default value for).

OSR and Streamline are compatible, and for the most part do different stuff that can supposedly complement each other. So you can use both together. Some care should be taken however when setting up maximum and minimum FPSes for the two however, as OSR can make it difficult for mods to accurately measure framerates near or outside of OSRs limits.

Indeed. When using OSR and Streamline together, you'll definitely want to disable the Streamsmooth function and let OSR take over frames management. Otherwise you're asking for a world of hurt as the two will fight over it with each other.

The purging function is the main reason I stick with it at this point, because so far none of the other mods that handle PCB purging have been as reliable.

Streamsight is definitely useful with RAEVWD and the oblivion.ini tweak for uGridDistant*. The interior handling is crap, but I dug around and modified that problem away with my copy of Streamline. No more indoor fog interference that way.

When you say you dug around . . . I'm assuming you mean in the source code, rather than just modifying an INI setting somewhere? Is there any chance you've made that version of Streamline available? The indoor fog weirdness is the main reason I don't use Streamsight.

I would be most interested to learn more details about what you did here, so I can modify my own Streamline setup.

No, it hasn't been made available anywhere and I'd not be planning to do so without permission from the proper people.

What I can do is provide quick directions on how I suppressed it, which doesn't seem to have any negative side effects. I'm going to assume you or anyone else wanting to do this has knowledge enough of the CS to do this. If someone reading this doesn't, you shouldn't ask for more detailed help because you could mess up the plugin if you're not careful.

Edit the "SLfogscript" script. The first 3 lines of it should read:

Begin Gamemode  if ( SLv.Streamsight == 0 )	return

You want them to read:

Begin Gamemode  if ( SLv.Streamsight == 0 || Player.IsInInterior == 1 )	return

Save the script, then make sure you save the plugin, and then go load the game. It should be immediately as obvious as these two screens:

http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8187/beforezs.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8493/afternv.jpg

Here's what I did:

Edit Oblivion.ini and set:

uGridDistantTreeRange=15uGridDistantCount=15

This makes all distant trees and other objects (made visible by RAEVWD) disappear at ranges above 15 cells. This will do a lot for your framerate when using RAEVWD.

Then, in Streamline's sl.ini I use:

set SLv.MinDistanceFog		to   20000; Min distance before fog starts (0%)set SLv.MaxDistanceFog		to   86000; Max distance before fog ends (100%)

in order to make the fog appear around the same distance.

The net result is better framerates since the engine doesn't have to generate so many distant objects, and more immersive gameplay as the fog not only hides the pop-up of those distant objects, but also makes the world seem bigger when you no longer can see directly from one city to another since the distant lands are covered by fog.

For even better performance, you could reduce the distances even further. If you change the distant settings to 12 (cells), you must set the fog to 17000/71000 instead, etc. The corresponding values are found in the file "Streamsight Fog Ranges.mht" that comes with the Streamline docs

Also make sure to re-initialize Streamline, as it only reads its own ini file after re-initialization.


For the record, I use the following features of Streamline:
1. The fog (obviously)
2. Manual streamsaves (I have turned off all automatic saves, and relies on manual Streamsaves most of the time)
3. Purging before each save.

I think the streamsight feature makes Tamriel apperar more vast. That and streamsaves are the only reason I use Streamline.

Thanks for all the input. Looks like I'll be trying OSR instead.

Thanks, Arthmoor, that's very helpful. I think I'll go ahead and make that change.

It's been long enough since I've used Streamline that I had forgotten how it was implemented . . . I was thinking it was an OBSE plugin (dll), which I was leerier of. This seems easy enough to fix.

Thanks again!

Thanks for this. I gave it a try, and I'm not entirely sure it's having quite the right effect. What I noticed was that after I went into a dungeon from an exterior in clear weather, then the dungeon interior was unusually clear, while after going into the same dungeon from the exterior during bad weather (so there was more fog) the dungeon was hazier than it would have been without Streamline running. Looking at what your change does (suppress all SL fog/clipping processing if you're in an interior) it looks like this is causing any fog/clipping settings SL set for an exterior to be carried over in some way into a subsequent interior.

Nonethess, thanks again

I'm gonna have to go check up on the wiki how to edit scripts or something. After trying Arthmoor's tweak, the constuction set wouldn't let me save any changes because:

Script 'SLfogscript', line 35:
Script command "con_SetClipDist" not found.

Hope I figure it out soon, because http://i50.tinypic.com/1539nvn.jpg is the only reason I'm not using Streamsight.

Does anyone know of any other mods that add distant fog?

You have to open the CS using OBSE in order to edit Streamline scripts.

The shortcut for Obse_loader.exe has to be changed to load "obse_loader.exe -editor" in order to load the CS with OBSE.

Ooooohhh, that makes perfect sense, thank you :thumbsup:

:dance: So far, Arthmoor's tweak is working perfectly. and thank you showler for your help.

so, here's the http://i50.tinypic.com/1539nvn.jpg...

and the http://i48.tinypic.com/2wfk21e.jpg...

I'll post any problems I encounter here.

I applied your tweak, but when going into an interior cell from an exterior cell, it seems the Streamline Fog settings are somehow carried over with me. Now if I save and reload after I've entered this interior cell, then yes, the Streamline fog settings aren't kicking and your script tweak does its job.

Tried to deactivate all weather and light mods but it wasn't the issue.

I have another problem with streamline. Always when I open the local map in my inventory and then go back to the game, all trees are rendered in low quality and I have to restart. When I set tree adjusting to zero it doesn't help. LocalMapShader in the ini was also tested by me, no success. Streamline is really cool, but this bug is rather annoying. Sometimes (if it's dark f.e.) I use the local map alot...

Try turning off streamsmooth completely: set SLv.FPSsmoothing to 0 . Remember to If you make changes to the sl.ini file after you have installed and played with Streamline active, you will
need to initalize the mod with the new sl.ini values for them to take effect. You can do this in the SL Main Menu by choosing the "Special Actions" button, and choosing the Re-Initialize option.

Test to see if this fixes your issue.
Are you using OblivionStutterRemover ? If yes, what are your fps settings and what are your corresponding streamsmooth settings?

OK, I've tested now Oblivion without ANY plugin (Oblivion.esm only, OSR deleted, no SL) and this bug still persists. (I also tested it with Streamline on and all components of SL off, reinitializing, etc). But I'm pretty sure, that it started with Streamline. Maybe bc I had NPFRO running before. I hope this hadn't ripped my FCOM install. This is now the fourth installation day, grrr...

(I know I had this problem ~1-2 year ago with SL running, but I had other problems too, so I didn't follow this further)...

Maybe it has something to do with the oblivion.ini settings themselves??? This is a tricky one I would say...