MGE XE
A custom MGE build with shadows and a handful of performance improvements, hopefully with similar or better performance than regular MGE. Have a look at these screenshots.

Galleries
Charm of the West (recent)
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To the South
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Weight of Light
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046108.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046097.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046089.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046079.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046071.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046060.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046048.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293046009.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045995.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045981.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045961.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045952.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045601.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045593.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045583.jpg http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/26348-1-1293045571.jpg
Ascadian Afternoon
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Coastal
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Solar Dipole
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It works by utilising the distant land objects to cast shadows, so it only works outside. It is real-time and speed that Morrowind time passes makes the passage of the sun quite noticeable. There are some limitations, and some optimizations compared to standard MGE. There are several features from MGE that have been cut too; some MGE-specific MWSE commands, dynamic water, texture hooks, and MGE-drawn animated tree statics.

If you want to run MGE XE, you will have to regenerate distant land. As statics cast shadows, you will need a low minimum static size; I recommend 150. You can use 100 if you have a higher performance setup. Use the standard static override list included. Shaders need updating as well, as the HDR and shader chain setup has been changed slightly, so MGE XE comes with a selection of high quality shaders. You will also need to update your drivers and DirectX 9 to the June 2010 or later release, it fixes serious issues with the shader compiler from earlier versions. Unmodified shaders for standard MGE will not be loaded to avoid crashes or incorrect operation.


Install Instructions (updated)
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26348

0. You need http://sourceforge.net/projects/morrgraphext/files/Beta%20Releases/MGE%203.8%2B%20SVN%20builds/ installed and working already, and a Shader Model 3.0 card.
1. Update to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3b170b25-abab-4bc3-ae91-50ceb6d8fa8d. (This won't conflict with DX10+.)
2. Install MGE XE to the Morrowind directory.
3. Deselect mods from your load order that are made for MGE. (Standard MWSE mods will work, HUD mods will not.)
4. Run the new MGEXEgui. Generate distant land with 150 minimum static size. Use the provided XE static exceptions list.
5. Edit your shader chain to use the new shaders. The XE shaders are separate settings from regular MGE.
6. Bind "toggle distant statics" key in macro editor. This currently toggles shadows instead.
7. If you use Crossfire/SLI, turn off "Responsive menu caching" in the In-game tab, to avoid performance reductions as caching is SLI unfriendly.

Note that view distance in-game is set to maximum when you first load a game.

Recommended shader ordering: SSAO, DoF, Sunshafts, (Underwater effects), Bloom, HDR.
Also recommended: set timescale to 10 or 15 (or 1000) in the console to slow down the day cycle. The movement of the sun is very visible.

You may want to set transparency/adaptive anti-aliasing in your graphics drivers, if you want high quality grass/tree edges.
Don't expect everything to cast a shadow, remember that it's only distant land objects. Small objects will cast weaker shadows for their size.

There are some beta HUD mods for use with MGE XE available from the same download page, mostly upgrades of Yacoby's mods. HUD mods for previous versions of MGE are unlikely to work.


Reporting problems

All errors are logged to mgeXE.log in the Morrowind directory. Check there first if it crashes or white screens, it may explain why.
When reporting errors, always post mgeXE.log (in a spoiler tag to avoid clutter) and OS, video card details, and driver version.
Please report rendering errors with detailed information and a screenshot.


Known issues

MGE XE may crash more than usual. Please report what leads up to the crash, and the crash log from the more details link in the crash report window.

Reducing Morrowind options draw distance slider below maximum causes drawing errors.

Standard HUD mods don't currently function, along with other mods designed for MGE. There are upgraded HUD mods in development.


Uninstalling

MGE XE and MGE svn 178 are designed to be easily substitutable.

1. Replace d3d8.dll with the one from the the MGE svn 178 package.
2. (Optionally) Regenerate distant land, setting the distant static size back to its previous value.



Changes from SVN 178

• All objects in Morrowind view distance receive shadows.
  
• Distant land and grass culling is not delayed by a frame any more. Pop-in at the screen periphery no longer occurs.
  
• Grass lighting changed. All grass was effectively shaded by a single ambient light; it was pretty flat. There is some directional lighting now, as well as grass receiving shadows.
  
• Grass animation is somewhat different. Grass parts when the player is nearby.
  
• Shaders no longer affect the crosshair, nor spill over the screen during cell loading, nor screw with cutscenes.
  
• HDR resolve is now asynchronous and should cause less fps loss. Also uses less video memory.
  
• Shader chain double buffers instead of copying. clip no longer works, shaders must use flow control.
  
• thisframe and lastframe are no longer available in shaders. Use lastshader.
  
• tickcount is removed, there is a time variable instead with in-game seconds passed.
  
• There is no alpha-to-coverage. Personal opinion; alpha stipple is too noticeable.
  
• MW/MGE blending modifications. Allows for seamless water.
  
• Screen is no longer slightly blurred by half a pixel when MW/MGE blending is disabled.
  
• Windowed mode snaps to the screen edge to act like fullscreen, allowing Alt-Tab to work.
  
• New underwater surface effects, total internal reflection.
  
• InGame.fx has been replaced by a set of effect files that should be more easily substitutable.
  
• Redesigned GUI for simpler setup and use.
  
• Shader chain is separate from regular MGE as the shader interface is different.
  
• High quality selection of default shaders included.
  
• Minor shoreline turbulence animation.
  
• Screenshot enable checkbox now works like others since the screenshot code is patched. Just use PrintScreen, no macro required.
  
• Water shows up in the local map again, previous MGE versions did not allow it to render in the map.
  
• Scattering exponential fog, thanks to phal.
  
• Water wobble shader, also thanks to phal.
  
• Better sunsets, a modification of phal's sunshaft shader.

Should this run faster that the previous version?

Post of the year right here folks. I'm glad I came and checked up on this (I've been busy with my new install of oblivion).

Hrnchamd, if there is any way for me to help with my more powerful system, please let me know. I'd be more than happy to help develop this mod of the century.

I am using Morrowind Overhaul, assuming no other mods what do I lose form regular MGE by switching to this? For example do I lose trees, or just there animations? What do I gain(other than shadows)? Are you working a version that has everything?

Most people report it's a little faster outdoors, and it works a lot better with SLI setups.



I don't see any special MGE-animated tree options in Morrowind Overhaul, so trees should look the same. You will mostly get a bit more performance, high quality sky colouring, tuned shaders, improved underwater visuals, easier to use configuration. I can't add everything back because some of the features had design problems, but there's all the features that people normally use included.

heisse frauen? always nice to look at, but not what i wanted to show you :hubbahubba:
for me the link is working with no problems and 20 other people downloaded it too, can you try again and if its not working i can do screenshots instead of a video.

That was just me clicking it 19 times and it not working apart from the download counter.

Oh I must have missed read something, I thought you said something about no animated trees with this mod, I am using MW overhauled and there are a lot of animated trees in it. So basically there is no down side it seems, why is this not in MW overhauled then instead of the normal MGE, is this less stable? Its seems baffling that someone would use the regular one over this based on what your saying.

Edit: I reread the post it said: here are several features from MGE that have been cut too; some MGE-specific MWSE commands, dynamic water, texture hooks, and MGE-drawn animated tree statics.

So no lod trees? And by Dynamic water I assume you mean water that reacts to the pc moving it? While the latter is not a big deal the former I think is, I am I miss understanding?

Well, this is a beta version.
I don't like to include mods in a beta state in my pack, not sure if Hrnchamd will appreciate it, and plus, there might be some more problems to solve

Due to limited computing power, I am using a 3-4 max distant land cells and I had very noticeable white spots of land (if I understood correctly due to approximation of distant land mesh). For anybody with similar problems/setup, I just found that changing landBias function in XE Common.fx

float landBias(float dist){    //return -6000 * saturate(1 - dist/6000);    return -8000 * saturate(1 - dist/8000);} 

seems to work much better.
Also, maybe for the same reason (few distant land cells) everything had a slight blueish tint, I changed newskycol to a less saturated value and I like it much more.

#ifdef USE_SCATTERING    static const float3 scatter = {0.07, 0.36, 0.76};    static const float3 scatter2 = {0.16, 0.37, 0.62};    // static const float3 newskycol = 0.38 * SkyCol + float3(0.23, 0.39, 0.68);    static const float3 newskycol = 0.35*SkyCol+float3(0.278,0.3372,0.4627);

Now I can finally enjoy the MGE XE spectacular sunset
[EDIT]lowered change a little, was causing artifacts

So that is your only reason then(not saying that is a bad reason), there are no other issue, if I wanted to use this personally with MW overhaul, no conflicts with anything,etc?

Absolutely go ahead, it works fine (even better).

Cool beans, thanks for letting me know. I will try it out as soon as the op responds to my questions I had.

There is tree LOD, they're distant objects like everything else, but it doesn't support wind-animated trees if a mod requires it (not many use that feature).

Oh wind animated, I thought you meant all, thanks.

So say i type "set timescale to 10" in my console, will i need to type that every time i load my save? I guess my question is will it stay at 10 after i save and reload next time.

I'm not sure but you could have tried for yourself in the time it took to post Alternatively just edit the entry in the .ini

I don't see the option in the ini, maybe i am just blind

I'll be damned, I could have swore it was in there... there's timescale clouds! lol. My bad.

I'm getting some strangeness with grass that I wasn't getting in rev.186. As I walk toward grass, bits of each patch of grass disappear and reappear, creating a sort of "bobbling" effect. It stops once I get close enough. Graphics card is shooting AAA out the wazoo, dunno what's up.

Can't believe I missed this anouncement! This is the -only- thing stopping most people from switching over to XE.

But both versions of MGE you include are "beta" versions, aren't they?

Yes, but this is constantly updated by Hrnchamd and it's hard to keep the compilation updated that way. Better wait on a final stable release.

0.8.19 release

XE

Alt-Tab is functional in fullscreen mode. Returning to the game will be slow, DirectX kicks everything out of memory, so all of distant land has to be reloaded. Windowed mode is still the fastest way to support Alt-Tab.

Windowed mode now allows gamma correction. DirectX normally doesn't perform gamma correction in windowed mode, but there is a system function available that does the same thing. It affects the whole screen.

Limit on amount of grass visible raised, should stop grass popping.


Mods

HUD mods updated with readmes.

Close Inspection should behave better on switching objects, Time Display should look a little better.

Brilliant. Can confirm that Windowed Mode gamma correction is working now (affecting the entire screen as stated, but working), and more importantly, that Alt-Tab is working in fullscreen mode. I was able to tab back and forth a few times before it crashed, but then, that can happen even without MGE.

Haven't checked the HUD mods yet, not enough time left on my lunch break. I'm sure someone else will report on them. Thanks for the update!

nice, alt+tab is realy working now!

- timedisplay is looking much better, but could use some cleartype filter
- ownership indicator is indicating even containers wich i can loot without trouble (such as the guild chests, or the ingredient containers in balmora mages guild - maybe the problem is that these containers only get legal when you are a guildmember?)
- thirdperson crosshair still not working for me (german version), tried with ranged weapons, spells, etc
- my suggestion for clotikspection is hard to put in words (for me) here is how its behaving now:

• pointing mouse at object >> zoom is increasing
  
• pointing at nothing >> zoom is decreasing
  
• pointing mouse back at object WHILE zoom is STILL decreasing >> zoom decreases back to default first, before zooming in again

suggestion for 3. = zoom is increasing imediantly and NOT zooming out before

wich website for fileupload is working for you hrnchamd? i already did some screens of the interior-waterreflection bug wich i posted here, but the video is much better i think.

also i would like to know what "CHNameCreate.exe" in the mods archive is.

EDIT: one thing which is confusing me is the sunglare texture, is it just me or did you add it in again? i remember it was removed some betas earlier, or did i do it myself :blink: