I've always had a problem with dynamic lights disappearing in the distance after a while, especially since i use a darker nights mod and you really need any light source you can get.

I found the fLightLOD1 and 2 settings in the ini and took them up a few thousand notches to dramatic effect: the lights in cities at night look breathtaking now, as they should.

But i still have a problem. You see even though i have RAEVWD installed, it doesn't seem to have LOD versions of the light meshes in the towns(or oblivion gates for that matter but that's a different story), so when the towns get to such a distance that they switch to the _far mesh, the lights illuminating them simply dissapear, plunging them into darkness, unrealistically - thus effectively capping the distance at which you can see dynamic lights to no greater than that set by uGridsToLoad.

What i've tried to do is find the meshes for instance for the large torch fires AND their metal supports, extracted them from their BSAs, copied them to _far.nif versions, put those in the appropriate folders (Data\meshes\fire and Data\meshes\architecture\castle respectively) then went into the construction set and chose two light sources based on those nifs (in this case the metal torches outside the south gates in chorrol) and set those to visible when distant and saved and loaded the plugin.

No dice. when you back up far enough that the gate itself goes to lod, the torches also completely disappear as well. What am i doing wrong? can i get some help with this please? i'm trying to get the game to be a bit more realistic and have the cities dramatically light up the night, and be points of reference in the darkness. Thank you for your attention.

p.s. yes i did run tes4lodgen before playing.

Its impossible for real dynamic lights to be seen over a great distance.
But you can always push the game to its limits, like you already did in the INI.

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36397
SB IC Palace Tower Light Mod

LOD can be only static textured objects.
If you want a LOD light source then you need to create a LOD textured light.
It is doable for the windows, as seen in the following mod.

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19628
Animated Window Lighting System and Chimneys - AWLS

Well, given flightlod1/2 set to suitably high values you can see the lights at IMMENSE distances. Just use tcl to fly directly above a lit up city at night, rising vertically without drifting away from the city. The engine calculates only horizontal distance when deciding to switch to the _far .nifs so as long as you just go up you'll see that you can see those lights from very great distances (again, having first set the ini variables).

My problem arises when the distance from town is horizontal as well, and the engine switches to LOD meshes. Those don't seem to be able to reflect dynamic lights, even if the light sources are vwd. Is there no way around this? I already use awls, and it does look nice but i would have liked for instance to look down from frostcrag spire at night and not only see the window lights in Bruma but also the bonfires that dot the city, lighting it up.

The only workaround that i can come up with is setting ugridstoload to something obscene that will choke my system. That's obviously not applicable.

Hmm, I don't know that much about modding but would it be theoretically possible to bake "lit-up" versions of the wall textures for the _far nifs then put them on a script like the windows in AWLS to toggle between night and day versions?*

Do you guys have any other ideas?

*While one's at it, it should be done to the _far windows in AWLS as well, the daytime lit up cathedral windows in the distance that shut off as the engine switches meshes are a bit distracting.

Keep in mind there's a difference between a bright texture and a light source. AWLS doesn't have any light sources, as far as I know, the windows are just bright textures (accomplished via glowmap maybe?).

I want to say what you're trying to do isn't really possible, and that your only option is extremely high values for fLightLOD and increasing uGridsToLoad, which isn't really an option. But I'm not entirely sure, I just know that I've never come across a LOD light source.

I do know that if you want light sources on windows at night, you need to use Illumination Within because AWLS only deals in textures.

If it's possible to script texture changes to _far windows, nobody has yet figured out how. LOD objects are apparently much harder to change by script.

However, you could be on the right track with regards to "faking it". You could make _far meshes for the bonfires, etc, which like the AWLS _far windows are just coloured a bright yellowy-orangy colour. Similarly, you could modify the _far meshes and/or textures located nearby to the fires to make them look "lit up". These would show even during the day, but it would be less noticeable. The biggest issue with modifying existing _far stuff to look lit up is that tons of that stuff gets reused all over the place. So you'd end up with other places looking lit up even though they don't seem to be near any light sources.

LOD objects are impossible to change in any dynamic manner while the game is running. They cannot be lit (outside of the ambient light), scripted, swapped, or modified in any way while the game is running.

LOD objects cannot be changed by script at all, dynamic or otherwise.

Lighting also will not function past the transition distance, ever.

Therefore it is impossible to get the kind of lighting distance you want with this game. The engine simply does not support it.

Noy Ji'tat! Ah well, such is life. Thank you for taking the time to answer, guys.

Arthmoor, it's an honour to have your input. Your mods are awesome to the extreme.

Cheers.