Water Performance Issue : Fallout 3

» Sat May 28, 2011 8:18 pm

I'm not sure if this should be in Hardware, but I believe the problem is mod related.

LO:

Spoiler

Anchorage.esm

ThePitt.esm

BrokenSteel.esm

PointLookout.esm

Zeta.esm

CALIBR.esm

StreetLights.esm

CubeExperimental (EN).esm

DarNifiedUIF3.esp

Hi-Res Weapons & Ammo Textures.esp

Hi-Res Weapons & Ammo Textures - The Pitt.esp
. Requires: The Pitt DLC

StreetLights - Wasteland.esp

CALIBRxMerchant.esp
. Requires: CALIBR.ESM

MiniHideout.esp

Dragonskin Tactical Outfit.esp

DragonskinBonusPack.esp

Fellout-Full.esp
. Note: Either Fellout-Full.esp or Fellout-SOTD.esp please

Fellout-BrokenSteel.esp
. Requires: BrokenSteel.esm

Fellout-PointLookout.esp
. Requires: PointLookout.esm

Fellout-Zeta.esp

megalight.esp

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Unrecognised mod files:
Reorder these by hand using your favourite mod ordering utility.
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Unknown mod file: PowerArmorTraining.esp
Unknown mod file: PowerArmorTraining_MedicArmor.esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century Weapons.esm
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Vendor).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Containers).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (NPC_Settler).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Vault 101).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (RivetCity).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Raider).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Slaver).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Chinese Ghoul).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (SuperMutant).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Talon_Regulator).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (Brotherhood_Outcast).esp
Unknown mod file: 20th Century v5 ALIVE (TEST Container).esp
Unknown mod file: a6EnergySniperRifle.esp

Whenever I'm near water, my framerate drops drastically. http://s903.photobucket.com/albums/ac239/powermapler/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot131.jpg http://s903.photobucket.com/albums/ac239/powermapler/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot132.jpg

I'm running the game on max settings. AA is at 4, and vsync is off. I'm also using NMC's texture pack and a few clutter packs. I don't see how any of this would affect water, though. Turning off Fellout does increase performance, and simply turning down the water settings makes a small difference, but it's not worth it. I've only noticed this in the past little while, and I might be missing a blatantly obvious setting somewhere.

» Sat May 28, 2011 12:55 pm

Anyone?

» Sat May 28, 2011 11:56 pm

Apart from Fellout, none of your mods should be affecting water. And Fellout as, to my knowledge, never been resposinble of such a drastic loss of performances.

Does turning off water reflection help with your framerate ?
In my game, I've set the size of the water reflections texture to 512x512 wich seems to have helped a lot with my perfomance (you need to tweak your ini for this).

» Sat May 28, 2011 10:27 pm

http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_6.html

» Sat May 28, 2011 1:07 pm

Apart from Fellout, none of your mods should be affecting water. And Fellout as, to my knowledge, never been resposinble of such a drastic loss of performances.

Does turning off water reflection help with your framerate ?
In my game, I've set the size of the water reflections texture to 512x512 wich seems to have helped a lot with my perfomance (you need to tweak your ini for this).

How would I go about doing this?

http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_6.html

Thanks. I was looking at that before, but most of the options didn't make a huge difference. I'm going to mess around with the settings a bit more.

EDIT: Just dropped all water settings to the lowest they'll go and my fps hit the 60 cap. Then I disabled soft reflections, put water reflections on medium, and dropped multisampling to low with everything else on and my fps dropped to 20 again. :blink:

EDIT2: The problem seems to be depth fog. But I need my depth fog.

Any ideas of a workaround?

» Sat May 28, 2011 12:02 pm

Thanks. I was looking at that before, but most of the options didn't make a huge difference. I'm going to mess around with the settings a bit more.

EDIT: Just dropped all water settings to the lowest they'll go and my fps hit the 60 cap. Then I disabled soft reflections, put water reflections on medium, and dropped multisampling to low with everything else on and my fps dropped to 20 again. :blink:

EDIT2: The problem seems to be depth fog. But I need my depth fog.

Any ideas of a workaround?

If it's any help, here's my settings (they've served me well):

Spoiler

System (Bit long in the tooth, I know... :rolleyes:)

Processor: Intel? Core?2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16GHz
Memory: 2GB Corsair TwinX XMS2, DDR2 @ 667MHz
Video Card: 640MB Asus GeForce 8800 GTS
Monitor: 20" Samsung SM206BW Black Widescreen LCD, 1680x1050, 3000:1, 300cd/m2, 2ms
Sound Card: Creative SoundBlaster Audigy 7.1 Audio PCI-E
Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3

Fallout 3 Launcher Settings:

AA: Off
AF: 4

Detail:

Texture Quality: High
Radial Blur Quality: Medium
Depth of Field: On
Transparency MultiSampling: Off
Decal Cap: 10

Water:

Water Refractions: On
Water Reflections: On
Reflection Quality: Low

Soft Reflections: Off
Full Scene Reflections: On
Full Detail Reflections: Off
Water Displacement: On
Depth Fog: On
Water Multisampling: Medium

Shadows:

Enable Shadows: On
Shadow Quality: Low
Shadow Filtering: Medium

Max Interior Shadows: 4
Max Exterior Shadows: 2

View Distance:

Object Fade: 7
Actor Fade: 6
Grass Fade: 5
Specularity Fade: 10

Light Fade: 25
Item Fade: 4
Shadow Fade: 4

Distant LOD:

Tree LOD Fade: 20
Object LOD Fade: 38
Land Quality 100

I think the only reason fellout might cause issues is because of the changes made to how foggy/murky the water, ie they've been removed to give the effect of cleaner water. But I'm thinking, especially for large bodies of water, that some degree of fogginess needs to be retained for performance reasons.

I don't really think there's anything else you can do, other than to start making some compromises in quality for a bit of extra performance.

~Xeph'

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:59 pm

Interesting. There wouldn't happen to be a way to disable that feature of Fellout, would there? (Or maybe overwrite it in the .ini....?)

EDIT: And yes, like you said, it's only the large bodies of water where I get this problem. I don't even want to think about what the Tidal Basin will be like. :cold:

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:48 am

Interesting. There wouldn't happen to be a way to disable that feature of Fellout, would there? (Or maybe overwrite it in the .ini....?)

EDIT: And yes, like you said, it's only the large bodies of water where I get this problem. I don't even want to think about what the Tidal Basin will be like. :cold:

Yeah. Stick this after Fellout: http://www.mediafire.com/file/yogl0otfi2z/Fallout 3 Water OverRider.zip

:)

» Sat May 28, 2011 7:51 pm

Yeah. Stick this after Fellout: http://www.mediafire.com/file/yogl0otfi2z/Fallout 3 Water OverRider.zip

:)

Ah, thank you so much. It worked beautifully, and personally I prefer the murkier water anyway.

» Sat May 28, 2011 10:20 am

Ah, thank you so much. It worked beautifully, and personally I prefer the murkier water anyway.

No worries!