I was just browsing google to find an Oblivion.ini tweak to increase the size and/or brightness/glare of the sun. I then saw a few more "performance" tweaks, or otherwise miscellaneous tweaks that I have never seen mentioned in a tweakguide or similar offering.

Any .ini tweaks that really helped your game? (the well known multi-threading tweaks seem to be outdated at this point, and I have not used them on this oblivion install, outdated or superceded by OSR )

Wondering about #1 and #2 the most, I have never seen bUseHardDriveCache before, I wonder if it would make a different with a fast HDD such as the Samsung Spinpoint F3 and some of the SSD's these days.

1. bUseHardDriveCache ?

From a GameFAQ guide describing bUseHardDriveCache:
"As far as I know this will cache some of the textures and whatnot onto your
hard drive from the game disk so that in the future when you load an area, it
should go faster and performance should be increased. More of a "long run"
kind of thing than something you'd notice, but it's harmless to turn on. It
defaults to 0 (which means off) so set it to 1."

2. iPreloadSizeLimit (something to do with the maximum memory Oblivion allocates to pre-load?)

3. uExterior(/Interior) Cell Buffer ?

4. bHighQuality20Lighting ? (Does this actually improve lighting? I'm using HDR)

5. bAllow30Shaders ? (Improves shaders or not used?)




6. Any other .ini tweaks that have helped your game or improved graphics!

-J

Anyone got any input on any of these .ini settings?

Maybe have a look at this thread:

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=881204&hl=performance+project

1. I wonder what the quote means. Oblivion doesn't load anything from disc on PC. Maybe Xbox users with a harddrive would benefit from it...if they could only alter the ini.

2. I think this doesn't do much. Back in the early days people told you to put it higher than default if you had 2gb ram or more. But it seems that was nonsense. For many people it didn't do anything or even decreased performance, for some it may have had a small positive effect. You might give it a try, but I think it's not worth wasting your time.

3. The number of cells that are kept in the buffer. When you switch from one interior cell to another one you get a loading screen. When you switch back you don't see one. That is what the setting controls. I'm not sure what the default is (I think 3 for interiors?), but that is the amount of cells kept in the buffer. If you have a good system you may set it a bit higher to avoid some possible loading screens.

Not sure about the other two, but so many people tried so many ini tweaks during the past four years that I doubt any of these settings make a huge difference (except for causing bugs, making the game look or perform worse maybe).

Personal experience - bUseHardDriveCache caused instability on my previous rig so I haven't tried it since then. bAllow30Shaders does work but that's only the first step. You have to force it (see the tweakguides link). iPreloadSizeLimit should be adjusted up from the paltry 25MB setting. uExterior(/Interior) should be adjusted too. bHighQuality20Lighting - I think this is only useful if you are using Bloom.


All these settings work the same as they did when the game was new...

Are you kidding, its talking hard drive cache here not game cd, Oblivion loads all its resources from the hard drive. And your mileage will vary greatly depending on the hard drive capabilities, and the controller capabilities (probably the most important variable here), & implementation & driver support(second most important). For instance a lot of VIA chipsets controllers don't conform to windows standards for hard drive caching, and hence you get an error message in windows when your try to use it. Also Matrox drives have a problem where turning on write caching slows down performance.

Useless on PC as the game runs from the harddrive already.



Raising this will rob the game of system RAM for other purposes and isn't recommended, especially if you're using AI hungry mods or large texture packs.



Same as #2. Not really a good idea to go messing with it if you want your game to remain happy.



Tried both of these, neither one seems to do anything at all. Even after you go through the hassle of doing the shader package rename. There is no visual difference in-game that I can see.


Some stuff I've poked and found does do things:

uGridDistantTreeRange - Default value 15. Setting this lower will reduce the visible distance on trees, and potentially improve frame rates, at a cost to realism. Raising it higher obviously increases the view distance on trees, potentially reducing frame rates for increased realism.

uGridDistantCount - Default value 25. Controls viewable distance for LOD buildings, ruins, etc. Especially useful when installing RAEVWD as lowering this to 20 or 15 will dramatically improve frame rates without having to turn distant objects off completely.

fQuestScriptDelayTime - Default value 5.0000. Controls how many seconds to delay quest scripts between checks. I don't know the lasting effects of messing with this, but doing so does speed up quest checks, at the potential cost of frame rates. Increasing it may help with performance in some cases, though it will be minimal at best.

uGridDistantTreeRangeCity - Default value 4. Does the same thing as uGridDistantTreeRange when you are inside a closed city worldspace.
uGridDistantCountCity - Default value 4. Does the same thing as uGridDistantCount when inside a closed city worldspace.

bEquippedTorchesCastShadows - Default value 0. If set to 1, this value will cause all torches equipped by either the player or by NPCs to cast shadows. Some systems may not be able to handle the performance cost of extra shadows.

bLocalMapShader - Default value 1. Set to 0, this changes the local maps from the parchment and faded brown coloring to a full color local map. IMO, the novelty of it wears off quickly.

fLightLOD2 - Default value 1500.0000.
fLightLOD1 - Default value 1000.0000. Both of these control how far away you can see light source radii. Setting either one much past 4500 leads to visual anomalies in the form of large colored blobs over LOD objects, and the same colored reflections in the water.

iShadowMapResolution - Default value 256 (after last official patch). I have not observed this to do anything truly noticeable in terms of performance or visuals, but leaving this value at 256 has been shown to cause crashes. I set this for 1024 and all seems well. If it helps with visuals, so much the better.

bUseWaterReflectionsMisc
bUseWaterReflectionsStatics
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees
bUseWaterReflectionsActors - These 4 all default to 0. Setting each to 1 allows water to reflect images from the things near it while playing. Activating these has a small hit to perfomance, usually not enough to notice unless on older machines. The trade-off for visuals is worth it though if you can get away with it.

bForceFullLOD - Default value 0. Setting this to 1 forces all trees to load in full detail once you are close enough to see the 3D models. May have an impact on performance in areas with a lot of trees, but also helps avoid "pop in" as you get closer to them normally. Not to mention the visuals are much better.

fGrassEndDistance - The distance at which grass view distance ends. Maxing the in-game slider goes up to 8000, but you can raise it higher still here at the cost of performance.
fGrassStartFadeDistance - The distance at which grass starts to fade out in the distance. Maxing the in-game slider hits 7000 but this can be raises higher at the cost of performance.

fDlgFocus - Default value 2.1000. This controls the zoom distance when talking to NPCs. Setting this to 4.5 virtually eliminates the zoom.

nicely laidout arthmoor thanks

Indeed, thanks for that Arthmoor very informative! I did not know about the uGridDistance in Cities settings. May have to check that out.

I changed my uGridsToLoad from default of 5 to 7 just yesterday, and I found it makes a fairly big nice difference, especially in the mid-range LOD no longer being the LOD textures but the full-res green that it should be. If I knew how to make a .gif for comparison I would as I have two photos comparing them, it is really a nice visual change to get rid of the nasty LOD in the mid-range area. A setting of 9 looks even better but it bumps up the VRAM usage quite a bit.

EDIT: Scratch that, making a .gif right now if anyone is interested, I really liked the difference but it adds some to VRAM. BUT, far327 with your findings on your thread about physical memory i've been at 1200mb VRAM with no CTD for quite some time, although it seems to add/create stuttering quite a bit getting over your video cards VRAM limit.

I took a look at the link above to the TOPP (The Oblivion Performance Project) and it looks like the author of MMM looked at this setting and others for quite some time to find the useful .ini settings. Contrary to what you say Arthmoor, I'll just throw this quote out from the above link. (You can find it a bit down the page if you want to see the rest, there is quite a bit more about this setting)

Describing iPreloadSizeLimit:

"A high end machine with 2gb of RAM doesn't need to set their cache at 1gb, that's just insane. They need instead to evaluate what they run and see what setting value they need. If they had Oblivion+mods, FCOM, and QTP3 they would need: 1+2+3, or around 6x default (157286400), which is roughly 153mb of Oblivion cache."

This is interesting, but may be outdated so not sure if this still applies or may just be false all together.

-J

Important parts highlighted for better reading pleasure.

Just so you know, raising the uGridsToLoad setting is known to cause problems... usually screwing up your water and the bouncing landscape bug.

Hmm.... yeah, I read something about that but didn't notice any issues immediately. When you say screwing up your water and creating these bugs, can they all be reverted/fixed by switching back to the default uGridsToLoad?

I don't want to mess with the setting if it is going to permanently screw my game, but so far it seems to be working good.

Talk with your hands (one of my favorite mods) recommends 6.0 which I use with no problems.

http://www.makeagif.com/wgHqQY

You can see the differences between uGridsToLoad setting, including FPS and VRAM usage in a .gif I made. Look at how the ground to the left changes for the better and doesn't look so awful up close. Goes from uGridsToLoad = 5, 7, and 9.

So is the consensus changing this setting will screw up your game? I really like the results of 7.

Some not mentioned yet

[Display]

bDoTallGrassEffect=1 (set to 0 for default) 1 enable taller grass

[GethitShader]

fBlurAmmount=0.1000 - default is .5 or .9 ..This will lower the amount of blur on screen when you get hit ..Could save some fps for some once again..

Yes. The bouncing landscape bug is no fun and strikes pretty much at random as you're wandering. If it hits while you're not moving, the game becomes unplayable because you can't start moving again.

It also seriously messes up water LOD and sometimes causes patches of missing water up close.



I've never seen any tangible benefit from doing this at all. The fact that it chews up more system memory would only lead my game to crash sooner as it exceeds the RAM pool that much faster. Considering 2GB isn't a "high end" machine anymore that should tell you something about how dated the information is now.

Sooner or later you will notice the player or the NPCs "jumping" in place, unable to walk. They are constantly about to fall through the ground. This is the biggest problem, and when it happen you will end up reverting the setting back to normal. :shrug:

Dang, that's too bad. I really liked how it made the closer LOD look green and perfect instead of dark/brown/ugly. I assume there is no other way to achieve the same effects without these bugs. I'll try the ForceFullLOD setting and see if that makes a nice graphical difference and won't even bother messing with the PreloadSizeLimit I guess.

I think, for card that use 3.0 shaders, you get a performance boost. Minimal as it may be.

Edit - ...about the bouncing. I play my game with uGridsToLoad set at 7. When the bounding issue occurs it is only that particularly grid. You can run right through it and you will 'land' on the other side. Of course it svcks but, for me, its worth the difference it makes in the landscape. The water bug is no biggie, I just ignore it when I see it.