» Wed Mar 09, 2011 12:06 pm http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1046403
A modest approach to distant viewable objects, aka LOD.
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/301-really-aevwd/
http://www.moddb.com/mods/really-aevwd
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20053
You're all familiar with the various LOD packages, right? Some provide more than others. Some ar geared specifically toward super-high end machines. One isn't even designed to be played and will cripple anything currently on the market today. For the rest of us, myself included, we'd just like to enhance the visual experience without crippling the game. None of the available packages has been fully optimized, usually with large amounts of unnecessary data still attached.
In order to address these issues, I've decided to compile into one source as many useful LOD objects as can be reasonably applied to the game from the following sources:
AEVWD Large: Enhanced lowres textures, Imperial City meshes, Skingrad castle meshes, and the 3 daedric shrines it comes with.
AEVWD Fixes: Frostcrag Spire (requires the official DLC to be activated).
UOMP: Battlehorn Castle (requires the official DLC to be activated).
Oblivion: City wall meshes only.
Brumbek: LOD illuminated windows, optimized lowres texture pack, optional QTP3 lowres texture pack, as well as several mesh and texture fixes.
Me: Machine regenerated all architecture, Ayleid ruin, and Imperial fort meshes for better quality and lower polygon counts. UOP corrected versions were used for the reductions wherever possible.
The overall goal is to provide enhanced LOD visuals while also trying to preserve performance as much as possible. This all stems from my realization that even with a high end graphics card, full detail LOD meshes and textures are simply out of the question. The VRAM usage is causing large amounts of stuttering when trying to swap out the memory and not even Streamline 3.1 can keep up. This package has brought the VRAM usage under control and has had a huge impact on overall lag and stuttering.
All of the meshes have been hand checked and had the following done:
* Collision data removed. If actual collision grids were still present, the branches have been deleted entirely. It's impossible to collide with an LOD object.
* Animation controllers removed. It is impossible to animate an LOD object, so this data is bloat.
* Geometry morphers removed. If a mesh had these, they've been removed, as they are only useful in animation.
* All NiStringsixtraData blocks removed. These are nearly always associated with collision.
* All BSX Flags removed. These are nearly always used for collision and animation.
* All NiSpecularProperty blocks removed. Leaving these in place causes visual anomalies, most notably the "every LOD turned yellow" issue.
* All NiBinaryExtraData blocks (tangent/normal spaces) removed. This data is not required for LOD meshes and helps tremendously in reducing memory usage.
* All parallax flags turned off. The distances involved make this useless anyway.
* All meshes have been assigned lowres textures instead of hires ones.
* Nearly all NiAlphaProperty blocks removed. If the mesh required it for transparency, it was kept. If this is left on a mesh that does not require it, visual anomalies can result.
* All NiVertexColorProperty blocks removed. These lead to some cases of black LOD objects.
* Optimization using PyFFI after the above has been done.
The typical LOD mesh comes out the other end of this process losing up to 75% of the data it was carrying with no loss of function. A fully optimized and functional LOD mesh will have only the NiMaterialProperty, NiTexturingProperty, and NiTriShapeData/NiTriStripsData branches left in its NiTriShape/NiTriStrips branches, and will have only NiTriStrips or NiTriShape branches attached to the scene root.
Compared with all of the other LOD options available, this is the most optimized, game friendly set of LOD objects there is.
Performance
Since I can only draw one meaningful comparison here, I shall do so. I didn't think to take a before shot of what it looked like before this project began. I didn't think I was going to offer it up as a VWD mod until halfway through this.
Tamriel VWD Enhanced, mixed in with parts of AEVWD Large, majority of it in full detail meshes+textures: 892MB VRAM @ 15FPS
Really AEVWD, when installed with all of its options: 475MB VRAM @ 18FPS
Shot of the scene being tested, after everything was done: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/20053-1-1222633270.jpg
As you can see, your FPS may not shift much, but the VRAM usage is astounding. And at least from where the shots were taken there's only a minor difference in detail. It will become more noticeable up close, but that's one of the limitations.
The screenshots were taken with the following system:
AMD Phenom 9850 2.5Ghz (quad core)
AMD/ATI Radeon HD4870 w/ 1GB VRAM, Catalyst 8.12 drivers. Set to force 8xAA+16xAF.
QTP3 Redimized
QTP3 Reduced Lite - with only landscape and architecture used.
Brumbek's optional QTP3 lowres textures for LOD objects.
Zacharot's 2048x2048 distant land textures.
All Natural (weather mod with hires graphics)
Open Cities Full + Blood&Mud + Leyawiin Reborn, version 3.1.1
Optimized Distant Land MAX 1.1 - further optimized using PyFFI
Other graphics enhancers
Screenshot location is on top of White Gold Tower in the Tamriel worldspace, facing west toward Chorrol. This is an ideal location for LOD testing because there is next to nothing in the near view other than the tower mesh itself. Clear weather was chosen through the console to eliminate skew from All Natural's excellent weather graphics. So what you see is 98% LOD and 2% whatever else. The VRAM savings alone are quite impressive.
There are also extra LOD objects present due to the addition of several other mods with buildings and such, Verona Bay is visible in the shot in the middle right for instance.
I think on more normalized systems that aren't as completely bogged down by massive amounts of enhancers will do quite a bit better with this LOD package.
Possible solutions to FPS issues:
1. uGridDistantCount in the Oblivion.ini file is set to 25 by default. Lowering this to 20 or even 15 will provide a dramatic improvement.
2. If lowering uGridDistantCount is not enough, selectively removing parts of the architecture meshes RAEVWD provides will help the most.
Installation
Simply unpack the archive to your Data directory. Everything should fall into place. If prompted to overwrite files, answer yes.
Or unpack to a separate location and only put in what you want, you don't have to use it all.
You can also make an OMOD of this using OBMM if you wish, to make removal easier later if you want.
No DistandLOD folder is provided. In order to actually see the results of what you just did, you need to download TES4LODGen and run it. It's a wicked simple utility that processes LOD information based on _far.nif files provided and will tailor itself to whatever mods you have installed.
Uninstallation
Manually remove the files you installed, or deactivate the OMOD if you made one.
Options
An optional ESP is included which places copies of buildings and trees behind the city walls and deletes the stock vanilla LOD houses. Kvatch and the Imperial City are not covered by this ESP. If you want the IC, use the second optional ESP file.
The ESP is 100% module compatible with Open Cities, and Open Better Cities, in any combination thereof.
Cathedrals have not been placed where missing since the Unofficial Oblivion Patch and some other mods address this. If you're not using the UOP, uh.... why not?
The cloister in Anvil as well as Benirus Manor have also been left out since the UOP deals with these as well. The UOP places the full detail mesh, so don't worry
The optional ESP is *NOT* compatible with most of Better Cities. Bravil and Chorrol will show up in LOD. Anvil, Bruma, Cheydinhal, Leyawiin, and Skingrad will be empty behind the walls. That includes Bethesda's crappy LOD houses. The compatibility method used has no way to fully fit in with BC. So if you're using BC, it may be better to avoid using the RAEVWD Cities.esp file at all. If you install this and complain about missing LOD behind the walls of the mentioned cities, I'll know why and also know you didn't read this
A second optional ESP is included for use with the Imperial City. Be advised that activating this additional ESP is going to impose a steep hit on your FPS. Mine dropped 6-8 frames after activation viewing the IC at a distance. Lower powered rigs may struggle with this. So this ESP option is not for everyone. There may also be a large additional FPS drop as you approach the city because the full size meshes needed to be placed behind the walls in order to make the LOD work at all.
The Imperial City ESP file should not be used in combination with Better Cities as they provide their own LOD placements and this will cause duplication with it.
Compatibility
The only thing this will conflict with is another LOD mod that affects the same files this one includes. Otherwise there's no issue.
Known Issues
If you are not using the optional ESP, there will be no LOD objects behind city walls other than what Bethesda supplied. If you want that solved, activate the ESP, but see the compatibility notes above. This may also add an increased burden on your system since city architecture and trees aren't normally available.
Sometimes when viewing the world at odd or extreme angles, the LOD objects will turn bright yellow or completely black and then revert to normal when you move. One known reason for this is another LOD mesh that has specular properties enabled on it. Another known cause are LOD meshes with vertex color properties. Since all of the meshes supplied by RAEVWD have been cleaned of these problems, look to LOD meshes provided by other mods and contact their authors for assistance in getting those fixed as they know their meshes best. Not all causes of this problem have been identified yet, so there may not be anything to fix.
Sometimes you will see red, blue, or green reflections in the water where LOD should reflect instead. Possible causes for this are LOD meshes with collision data still attached, BSX flags still attached, or parallax flags which are still set. Since all of the RAEVWD meshes have had these properties removed, another mod which supplies LOD objects is likely to blame. It is also possible that some textures with RAEVWD could be causing this, so if you can identify which reflections are causing this, we can attempt to track down a way to fix it.
Occasionally only part of a mesh will go black. If this happens, that part of the mesh is missing a texture assignment. If this happens with an RAEVWD mesh, please report it in the official thread. If it happens with an LOD mesh provided by another mod, you'll need to take that up with its author.
When used with bloom lighting, the LOD objects may always show up as black. Provided you are *SURE* the lowres directory is in the right place in your textures directory, the only fix for this is to switch to a different lighting method. I'm not sure if normal lighting works, but switching to HDR will resolve this issue. There is no known way to fix this otherwise.
Credits
Silverglade for his work on AEVWD Fixes.
Bomret for compiling the work on Illuminated AEVWD.
Igge for all his work on AEVWD Large, and the normal AEVWD.
Kivan for all his hard work on the UOP and UOMP mesh corrections.
Brumbek for providing several new lowres textures, numerous mesh/texture fixes, new illuminated windows, and his optional QTP3 matched set.
The makers of Milkshape 3D, without that trial period none of the rebuilt mesh work could have been done.
Licensing and Legal
Redistribution is strictly forbidden without prior consent. This means do not upload it anywhere unless you have obtained permission from myself (Arthmoor).
Non-English translation versions may be uploaded without permission on the following conditions:
1. All mod files contained in this archive are retained with their current names.
2. No alterations are made to the contents of the plugins or master file other than those necessary to translate the English text.
3. No alterations or additions are made to the meshes and textures other than those necessary to translate English text.
4. This readme is included, in ENGLISH, exactly as it is written in the version it was downloaded with.
