Got new GFX card, but defaults to medium : IV

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:17 am

Hi all,

I just got an ATI HD5870 and 12 GB of RAM. Oblivion keeps defaulting to medium settings and looks like crap and is missing all the shaders and reflections and all that good stuff you normally get. I was wondering if someone could post an oblivion.ini file for a computer that is more modern and running at ultra quality. All the ones online are for 2006 generation cards.

Thanks!

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:29 am

Can't you just set most of the settings in Oblivion's menu? I don't understand why your shaders and reflections would look crappy, assuming you have the settings set to high or whatever.
I haven't loaded up Oblivion in a while, so I can't remember exactly.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:10 pm

All GPUs that came out after the games release default to medium. Just manually set it to ultra high and then go to the in game settings and make sure Textures is set to high too.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:58 pm

I installled the patch which allowed me to choose Ultra in the launcher. Those options weren't there before. The suns reflection on the water still looks pretty pixelated and the shadows look like crap. I was able to tweak the shadows in the INI file to be higher res, and I was able to increase the pop-in distance for grass to 15,000 (i think I can still go way higher than this). Still can't figure out the reflection resolution on the water or how to increase the resolution of the water surface textures. I installed all the LOD texture packs and whatnot too. I think I am being nitpicky, but would love for someone to post a config file that already has it preconfigured for a high end card.

Also, the launcher now tries to default my settings every time now so I need to avoid it.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:10 am

Yeah just avoid the launcher from now on. About your ini settings, well that's up to you to tweak as each system will react differently. Just search around for ini tweaks and you'll find lists that describe what each setting does. Although the info listed on http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_8.html is dated it still lists the settings so you will have an idea of what each one does. You can adjust from there on your own, just remember to backup the original. As far as your other issues with shadows, water, and such, there are many mods that well help reduce effects like this. There are 2 or 3 good water mods out there, you'll just have to choose which one you like best. There are texture replacers and overhauls for just about every aspect of this game, and multiple options too. You'll just need to search for mods on the popular websites. There are literally thousands of mods so just take it slow when modding and only add a few at a time, or one at a time is best. Make sure you use a Mod Manager to help you install, configure and avoid conflicts with multiple mods. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2097 is easy to use and is good to start out with. Also many mods come in "OMOD" format which basically means just point and click install. Then later on you will most likely want to (or have to out of necessity) move on to http://wryebash.netai.net/. It's more advanced and loaded with features superior to OBMM in many ways.

Search on the sites below for mods, there are tons.
http://www.tesnexus.com/
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/
http://www.tesalliance.org/

Enjoy, and good luck. :foodndrink:

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:06 am

Thanks for all the info! Yea, I have already tried installing a bunch of texture packs but those mainly affected the terrain. Also, I have the mod manager as that was how I installed the monster mod. I guess I just mainly need a water texture pack. Haven't been able to find one yet. I was able to fix a bunch more settings too. It's all trial and error. I wish they documented the ini file somewhere. I guess they think it's self documenting because the first letter gives you the data type and the rest of the variable is a string that is somewhat descriptive.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:24 am

I installled the patch which allowed me to choose Ultra in the launcher. Those options weren't there before. The suns reflection on the water still looks pretty pixelated and the shadows look like crap. I was able to tweak the shadows in the INI file to be higher res, and I was able to increase the pop-in distance for grass to 15,000 (i think I can still go way higher than this). Still can't figure out the reflection resolution on the water or how to increase the resolution of the water surface textures. I installed all the LOD texture packs and whatnot too. I think I am being nitpicky, but would love for someone to post a config file that already has it preconfigured for a high end card.

Also, the launcher now tries to default my settings every time now so I need to avoid it.

If you want to enable shader model 3 use you need to do a couple things :

bAllow30Shaders=0 - If set to 1, this option allows (but does not force) the use of Shader Model 3.0 on graphics cards which support it, namely Nvidia GeForce 6600 or newer, or ATI X1000 series or newer. This can potentially improve performance when using HDR rendering for example. Check your RendererInfo.txt file in your \Documents and Settings\User\Documents\My Games\Oblivion directory to see if your card supports SM3.0 next to the option '3.0 Shaders'. Note however that even by enabling this option, Oblivion still appears to use 2.0 shaders (check the 'PSTarget' and 'VSTarget' lines in Rendererinfo.txt). In any case, if you have one of the cards mentioned above, it cannot hurt to enable this option.

Update: To force the actual use of 3.0 Shaders after making the above change, you will also need to check your RenderInfo.txt file (see above), and on the last line of the file check which shader package it uses (e.g. Shader Package : 13). Then go to the \Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\Shaders\ folder and rename that particular package to something else (e.g. rename shaderpackage013.sdp to shaderpackage013._bak. Now copy shaderpackage019.sdp and paste it back into the same directory, and rename this new copy to the package name your card uses (e.g. rename it to shaderpackage013.sdp in this example). This will force Oblivion to use the Shader Model 3.0 shaders in the game, which may increase (or reduce) performance and typically shows no image quality difference.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:23 pm

Is there any particular reason for that level of hoop jumping for shader model 3? What would happen if you just edited the renderer.txt line to acutally use shader package 19?? That question has always baffled me.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:41 pm

Is there any particular reason for that level of hoop jumping for shader model 3? What would happen if you just edited the renderer.txt line to acutally use shader package 19?? That question has always baffled me.

It looks like renderingInfo.txt looks like a log file that is just telling you what it is using for rendering. I moved 19 to be the file for 7 (which is what I was using) and the white reflection of the sun on the water still looks pretty macroblocky. It's so weirrrd!

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 5:59 am

Ah, so, it isn't using that to initialize anything, it is just telling you what it wants to use. That makes sense. Thank You.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:16 am

and I was able to increase the pop-in distance for grass to 15,000 (i think I can still go way higher than this).

No you can't. Grass will only appear in cells that are fully rendered. That's controlled by the uGridsToLoad setting, which should be 5 by default. You really don't want to go any higher than that or you'll run into a number of problems in the game. Anyway, the max distance of grass appearing in those fully rendered cells is 12,000, anything over that value won't be seen in the game. So you're already well past that point. Even that 12,000 won't always make a difference, since you need to be in the middle of a cell and looking at one of the corners for it to have an effect. 10,000 for the most part is pretty much the max grass that you'll be able to have pop in at any time.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 12:06 pm

No you can't. Grass will only appear in cells that are fully rendered. That's controlled by the uGridsToLoad setting, which should be 5 by default. You really don't want to go any higher than that or you'll run into a number of problems in the game. Anyway, the max distance of grass appearing in those fully rendered cells is 12,000, anything over that value won't be seen in the game. So you're already well past that point. Even that 12,000 won't always make a difference, since you need to be in the middle of a cell and looking at one of the corners for it to have an effect. 10,000 for the most part is pretty much the max grass that you'll be able to have pop in at any time.

Cool thanks, I would have never known that. I did try to increase the gridsToLoad variable to 9 earlier and all the textures started glitching on the water. Took me a while to figure out what made that happen, but i finally found out it was that var lol. The game is looking decent, but not too amazing like I had hoped haha. I remember being much more impressed playing it on the 360 5 years ago. I guess Crysis puts it to shame now

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:13 am

I did try to increase the gridsToLoad variable to 9 earlier and all the textures started glitching on the water.

Be thankful you didn't run into the Mexican Jumping Bean bug. Every so often you'll come across a cell and any character/creature that tries to enter it, including you, will start jumping up and down repeatedly. You're no longer able to move forwards, you just stand there going up and down until you put the UGrids back down to 5.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 12:53 pm

Be thankful you didn't run into the Mexican Jumping Bean bug. Every so often you'll come across a cell and any character/creature that tries to enter it, including you, will start jumping up and down repeatedly. You're no longer able to move forwards, you just stand there going up and down until you put the UGrids back down to 5.

LOL that sounds awesome. i think i want to try that now just for fun

Anyone know the options to make it keep more of the maps cached? I hate loading, and I have 12GB of ram and it's not even using 1 GB.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:46 am

IIRC it is a combination of a couple settings :

iPreloadSizeLimit=

uInterior Cell Buffer=
uExterior Cell Buffer=

EDIT : From the tweak guide :

uInterior Cell Buffer=3

uExterior Cell Buffer=36

The above values determine how many cells (whether for interior or exterior areas) are buffered into RAM. Note that usually the value of the Exterior Cell Buffer variable is automatically set by the engine based on the size of the uGridstoLoad variable. The higher that variable is, the higher the engine will raise this value. However if you want to smooth out your FPS, try manually setting a higher value for both of these, depending on how much RAM you have. For 1GB I recommend doubling the values (6 and 72 respectively). For 2GB of RAM, I use 16 and 102 respectively. For higher amounts of RAM, try raising them higher, however note that you should also raise the iPreloadSizeLimit value below.

iPreloadSizeLimit=26214400 - This setting appears to determine the maximum amount (in bytes) of RAM allowed for preloading game data. The higher the value, the more chance you have of reducing stuttering. The default value equates to around 25MB (divide the setting by 1024 to get KB, then by 1024 again to get MB). For those with 1GB of system RAM, try doubling the variable to 52428800. For those with 2GB, try double again at 104857600 (100MB). You can raise these values even further to experiment, however note that raising this to a large amount doesn't force all the game data to sit in RAM, and can actually cause crashes. I suggest the maximum anyone should set this to should be around 262144000 (250MB), even for 2GB of RAM. Make sure to raise your Cell Buffer values accordingly (see above).

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 4:08 am

And to fully take advantage of your large amounts of ram, you need the Large Address Awareness patch, and a 64 bit operating system. (which I assume you already have.) But, even then, the game will only use right about 3 gb of ram.....

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 6:22 am

And to fully take advantage of your large amounts of ram, you need the Large Address Awareness patch, and a 64 bit operating system. (which I assume you already have.) But, even then, the game will only use right about 3 gb of ram.....

Yes, Oblivion is a 32 bit program. By default the max it can use is 2 gig of RAM, though you can increase that to 3 with a Large Address Aware patch. You'll never get to use up all of your 12 gig though. You'll have to wait until some company actually releases a 64 bit game. That could take awhile, most people are still using a 32 bit OS.

» Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:04 pm

Thank you very much for that!