Whenever i go anywhere near the huge patches of grass (sadly, no pokemon come out and attack me) my FPS drops from 50-60 to at best 30. What is going on here? I Can play maxed Skyrim at near max settings (minus shadows, which are at low) and still get about 50-60 FPS, I can play most MMO's at near or MAX settings and get 60+ FPS.

The grass has a lot of polys.
There are mods that can minimize and/or optimize the grass for you. But 30 FPS is still very playable.

meh, i am so used to 45 at least so while it IS playable it gets annoying. thanks for the info, sort of guessed it was somthing like that.

I doubt my framerates have ever gotten above 30.

*shudder* I could NEVER play like that. It scares me just thinking about it.

A tip passed along to me by Acadian some time back helped some slow spots in my game without a mod. In the ini file found in Users find the line:

iMinGrassSize=80. Change 80 to 160 to make the grass more sparse.

Mine is capped at 30fps by OSR (Oblivion Stutter Remover). I count myself lucky when it gets that high. Course my Cyrodiil is loaded down with hi res textures, extra villages and NPCs, and lots of VWD (view while distant). As to low poly grass, I use such a mod. Depending on how low you go, the difference in quality is readily apparent up close. But further away it's not so noticeable or bothersome. You get used to it, then don't give it a second thought. In any case I find prefer the trade off of lots of free standing grasses at reduced quality over a lesser amount of higher quality grasses. Heck, I even added in some delux modded grasses (which receive the benefit of the low poly mod).

i have OSR as well, but changed it to not have a cap instead.

IMO, I prefer playability over graphics, always have.

I've never had a playability issue with framerates unless they start dropping below about 20-25. I tend to push the limits graphically.