Edit 1: phaedrusQ was right on the money I have one other question though. Is there any point in using VWD mods w/out LoDGen?

I added AEVWD, and sometime later during the install I remembered to use LoDGen. Soon as I did, my fps dropped from 35 to 15, and that's w/out npcs or combat :brokencomputer: I reconstructed my Bashed Patch back to a save where I know I had better fps walking down the road. Not just deactivating the esp's, but removing the entire BAIN/OMOD archive. No effect however, so I suspect that the new distant LoD has crippled my 1gb GPU. So I'd like to make sure that uninstalling AEVWD will remove the changes, or does something special need to happen to return my rendering distance to normal?

Delete your oblivion\Data\DistantLOD folder, (this is what TES4LODGen creates)

make sure to disable any VWD omods/esps if you plan to re-run TES4LODGen again.

That did the trick Got into a fight w/ a Guard, a Traveler, and some Goblins. Even at 20fps, the performance difference was huge. I have just one more question now that I'm thinking about it. Is there any point in using VWD mods w/out LoDGen?

Some mods package their own DistantLOD folders, but the vast majority require TES4LODGen for the distant visuals to display nowadays.

Were you using Really AEVWD, per chance, or something else? That one is fully optimized to minimize performance reduction, and I'm running an average of 20fps with a modular install of it on my 512Mb card, along with all the other VWD that so many of my other mods add. I say modular because even using full RAEVWD is going to require PyFFI and a stronger GPU than I have because this aspect of the game is so badly optimized.

Yes, I was (or rather still am) using RAEVWD. However, I installed the entire package, including high-res castles & bridges. Combined with full FCOM spawns (no reduced anything), I believe the game simply had too much stuff to render that far in the distance. Ah well :shrug: I still have a very respectable LoD, and Vibrant Textures does wonders. Thanks for the info everyone.

Nope. Won't need PyFFI, all of RAEVWD was run through that already.

Erm, to clarify, I meant PyFFI of the vanilla meshes.

And it shows. I should point out that even w/out LoDGen, AEVWD still provides a tremendous upgrade to visibility.

I disabled a couple of mods one time and forgot to re-run TES4LodGen. I was later greeted with the rather peculiar sight of some buildings in the distance that would suddenly vanish as I got closer. It took me about ten minutes to figure out why I had these 'Ghost Buildings', obviously the Distant Lod files from those mods were still active in the TES4LodGen folder even though the mod itself wasn't.

I ended up deleting the entire folder and doing away completely with RAEVWD and TES4Lodgen, personal preference as I value a decent FPS rate over pretty distant visuals.