The problem: when the first exterior cells in the game get loaded, the game seems to forget to load the DistantLOD mesh data for those cells. Trees are fine, since they aren't meshes, but the buildings and such seem to just... disappear as I walk away from them and the cells get cycled out from near distance to far distance. This only happens for the first set of exterior cells the game fully loads, it is just forgetting to load in the DistantLOD mesh data for them.

I am seeing this more often now with Open Cities installed because this problem only affects the first set of cells that are fully loaded into the game and with Open Cities this means the issue gets plopped down in the Tamriel worldspace. With closed city worldspaces, the problem is confined into an area where DistantLOD data is not really important, and so you don't notice it very often.

Is anyone else sharing this? It's not game-breaking or anything, but it is still annoying.

Can't say I've ever noticed anything like that before.

I'll have to get a screenshot, then.

Right now it's most noticeable in the cities because I am using the City Architecture in RAEVWD.

I did find this happening in my game with Frostcraig Spire, and the issue affects all saved games loaded after the "glitch" save, until I quit and restart. It is occuring randomly, I tried to duplicate the issue with the same Load Order and save.

Well, for me the symptoms manifest as the distant buildings failing to load for the first set of exterior cells the game loads. Exiting and reloading sort of fixes the problem, but in reality it's only changing the cells that don't get their DistantLOD data loaded.

I was able to avoid this happening rather easily with Better Cities, because in that case the first exterior cells being loaded was a closed city worldspace (where it is near impossible to notice this problem), but ever since installing Open Cities, the issue has become a lot more noticeable.

However, as I have said, this is one of those little problems I can live with. At least I can properly pick Nirnroots again... :rolleyes:

Perhaps I'll try disabling the DistantLOD when I shut the game off, and re-enabling it once I go outside for the first time? This way it loads after the game loads the cells up. I'll give that a try next time I fire Oblivion up.

HA HA!!! I HAVE BEATEN THE BUG!!!

It is caused by making modifications to the DistantLOD folder after TES4LODGen has been run. Why this happens is completely beyond my comprehension, but what it does mean is that my current method of handling Frostcrag Reborn's VWD data (dump it in after TES4LODGen is finished) will no longer work.

However, this does NOT apply to plugins that are only loaded during LOD generation to modify the DistantLOD data that TES4LODGen is working with and then removed from the LO afterward (thank God). This means that can still deal with Frostcrag Reborn's missing D-LOD data. I'll just whip up another LOD toggler plugin for it!

Hooray! :celebration:

I love this game sometimes. Just the smallest misstep all it takes to make it angry at you and not function right.

This makes me ponder something I hadn't given serious thought to before.

A number of mods provide their own DistantLOD folders. My standard practice is to create a complex BAIN package from such mods, moving LOD files to their own sub-package. That sub-package is generally the last numerically, clearly labeled archival only. An example might be "07 DistantLOD folder ARCHIVAL only". When I prepare the mod for installation in Wrye Bash, I of course don't flag that sub-package. It doesn't load and thus is no threat to TES4LODgen.

I caught on to this early on, but it's possible a few of my earliest packages might have escaped treatment. It's also possible that a 7z I deemed didn't need to be remade includes DistantLOD info I know nothing of. And, and this never dawned on me until reading your post, what of those mods that come with BSAs rather than loose data files? I rarely dismantle and examine those BSAs unless I suspect they house enough meshes to warrant PyFFi treatment. I have no idea whether or not those BSAs contain DistantLOD folders, and no easy way to disable them if so.

Now we get to the meat of the matter. I'm always monkeying with my Oblivion installation. If nothing else, a great many mods need periodic updating. These days especially I'm experimenting with some of the "Lush and Gaudy" grasses, the more subtle of which blend in rather nicely with my otherwise straight-laced color-scheme. I've not yet hit upon an ideal combo of those grasses (I'm getting closer). What I tend to do, when I see a grass that doesn't look natural in its surroundings, is save the game, exit, launch Wrye Bash, switch a particular grass from, say, lilac to soft gold, anneal, exit, re-load the game, and check my change(s). I never re-run TES4LODgen at these times because those grasses do not themselves have any sort of far-distant info LODgen works with.***

When I anneal I generally first anneal the mod itself, then to be safe click "anneal all". When I do this, wouldn't it load any mod-created DistantLOD information I didn't catch while preparing BAIN packages? This would of course overwrite TES4LODgen created files in that folder.

This is all just food for thought at this stage. I'm gonna look through my packages and see if I missed separating any DistantLOD folders. Not sure I'm up to unpacking every BSA, at least not in one fell swoop. Or am I making to much of this? Is it a big concern?

*** My normal practice is to run TES4LODgen after any and every change. These grass substitutions are an exception.

-Decrepit-

You do not need to re-run TES4LODGen unless you've made a direct change to your load order, Ive found. Installing replacers and mergeable mods doesn't seem to have an effect.

However, in light of this new evidence, I would recommend you set up BAIN to ignore DistantLOD completely, since the old method of distributing D-LOD data in the mods is 1. obsolete thanks to TES4LODGen, an 2. I can now confirm this method is incompatible with TES4LODGen.

But like I said, you can still use plugins like the Kvatch Rebuilt LOD Toggler, those do not cause this bug to occur. And because of that, it is now quite possible to fake dynamic Distant LOD in this game, too.

In short, you have to choose between using DistantLOD packages provided by mods or using TES4LODGen. You cannot use both.