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[goodfella]

Ok, this is very weird, but I just read on the bethesda forums that the quality of shadows can be increased (really, amazingly increased) by reducing the fShadowDistance value.

Essentially, reducing the distance shadows are drawn, increases the quality of the shadows.

Original post

^Explains it much better with videos.


(sorry if old.)

 

[Haunted]

Ok, this is very weird, but I just read on the bethesda forums that the quality of shadows can be increased (really, amazingly increased) by reducing the fShadowDistance value.

Essentially, reducing the distance shadows are drawn, increases the quality of the shadows.

Original post

^Explains it much better with videos.


(sorry if old.)

what in the...

 

[Corky]

Ok, this is very weird, but I just read on the bethesda forums that the quality of shadows can be increased (really, amazingly increased) by reducing the fShadowDistance value.

Essentially, reducing the distance shadows are drawn, increases the quality of the shadows.

Original post

^Explains it much better with videos.


(sorry if old.)

derp, I really feel like I'm playing an unfinished game/beta.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

It's like the hit and toned down settings

Thanks Goodfella, I added that in a scrunched down form into the tips section. I've also overhauled and tightened up and shuffled a few things in the OP.

 

[Durante]

derp, I really feel like I'm playing an unfinished game/beta.

Ugh. Read up on how shadow maps work. It makes perfect sense that covering a larger distance would decrease effective resolution. (In fact, you don't even need to fully understand shadow mapping to appreciate this concept. Just think of a texture stretched over different sizes of objects)

 

[Wazzim]

I walked out of whiterun and look what was falling from the sky:

 

[JaseC]

I can't seem to play for more than half an hour, regardless of settings, without the game silently crashing to the desktop. I'm done with it until Bethesda get their shit together.

 

[Durante]

I can't seem to play for more than half an hour, regardless of settings, without the game silently crashing to the desktop. I'm done with it until Bethesda get their shit together.

Are you sure your system is actually stable under load?

 

[JaseC]

Are you sure your system is actually stable under load?

Considering Skyrim is the only game that constantly crashes, yes. I even played through the Battlefield 3 SP campaign just fine (in-game bugs aside, such as disappearing AI teammates).

 

[Corky]

Ugh. Read up on how shadow maps work. It makes perfect sense that covering a larger distance would decrease effective resolution. (In fact, you don't even need to fully understand shadow mapping to appreciate this concept. Just think of a texture stretched over different sizes of objects)

My comment wasn't really aimed at that specific setting exclusively, if it wasn't blatantly obvious already this is not a stable game.

 

[Shane86]

Anyone know if there's a console command to show fps?

 

[Durante]

@JaseC: Have you tried the Large Address Aware tweak? And are you on AMD or NV?

And if you're overclocking anything, try to dial back and test, games don't necessarily have the same load profile.

My comment wasn't really aimed at that specific setting exclusively, if it wasn't blatantly obvious already this is not a stable game.

I don't know how "blatantly obvious" that is, it's been running here for 30 hours without crashing (and that's actually with a lot of unsupported .ini tweaks and 2 mods already).

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Anyone know if there's a console command to show fps?

I would just use fraps, I couldn't find anything definitive that works for me and I've looked everywhere.

Also, on the note of crashes, I've had 2 since last night. It's been smooth outside of odd stuttering like going around corners in tight caves of all places. It plays great with a pad too.

 

[JaseC]

Have you tried the Large Address Aware tweak? And are you on AMD or NV?

I have indeed. I disabled it in an attempt to appease the engine in hope of running the game more stably. As for your second question, I'm running a factory-clocked GTX 570 with the drivers recommended in the OP.

And if you're overclocking anything, try to dial back and test, games don't necessarily have the same load profile.

The only component that is overclocked is the CPU, but it doesn't go above 65°C and has never had an issue at full load, even with many-hour strenuous tasks such as video encoding. Skyrim doesn't appear to max out my CPU, anyway.

Edit: For reference, it's a 3.2GHz E6420.

 

[Corky]

I don't know how "blatantly obvious" that is, it's been running here for 30 hours without crashing (and that's actually with a lot of unsupported .ini tweaks and 2 mods already).

What can I say, sometimes people win the lottery as well, exceptions doesn't make the rule. You're miraculously lucky if you've played 30 hours without a single crash to desktop.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

What can I say, sometimes people win the lottery as well, exceptions doesn't make the rule. You're miraculously lucky if you've played 30 hours without a single crash to desktop.

That's true. I've been very please and the game is just amazing but have crashed twice. I hope they patch the visual performance and such up. Maybe it's a driver issue so I hope we see an AMD variant on that front as I have a 6970.

 

[Durante]

What can I say, sometimes people win the lottery as well, exceptions doesn't make the rule. You're miraculously lucky if you've played 30 hours without a single crash to desktop.

With ~800k people or so playing the game, it could just as well be that having the game crash often is winning the lottery. You can't really say one way or the other from forum posts, you'd need statistical data. Regarding "luck", Oblivion and the Fallouts crashed every other hour for me just like everyone else.

 

[Haunted]

Now now, don't argue with one another, we're all on Team "let's get Skyrim to look amazing" here.

It does crash, it does have the usual Bethesda bugs. Not as many game- (and save) breaking so far, though! With .ini tweaks being figured out and mods starting to roll out in higher and higher frequency (I've already seen the obligatory chainmail bikini one haha), it's just looking better and better.

No thanks to Bethesda, except for the (as usual) amazing groundwork.

 

[Durante]

Now now, don't argue with one another, we're all on Team "let's get Skyrim to look amazing" here.

It does crash, it does have the usual Bethesda bugs. Not as many game- (and save) breaking so far and with the .ini tweaks and the mods that are starting to roll out (I've already seen the obligatory chainmail bikini one haha), it's looking better and better.

No thanks to Bethesda.

No, lets argue about that one. From anything I can tell they did a much better job regarding both stability and performance than any of their previous games, and they should be commended for that.

Of course it's not as stable and fast as Modern Warfare or Mass Effect, but such comparisons are neither useful nor fair.

 

[iNvid02]

actually i only had one crash out of about 10hrs of play, that happened the first time i played - it closed the game from the main menu (hadn't even started yet), it was because my sound settings were at 96khz instead of 44khz.

the only other bugs i've experienced are flickering, fixed that for the most part by using aa and af through nvidia inspector. oh and nvidia drivers crashed twice randomly but thats it.

all forgivable in my book considering the scale, how nice it looks and how fun it is

 

[KKRT00]

You really shouldn't need to do anything. You don't even need the usual ArchiveInvalidation method to get the new files working. So long as he's put the meshes and texture folders in his Skyrim/Data folder they should work.

Have You ever had a situation when they werent working?

I dont see any difference at all with Better Faces, Armor and Cloth Improvement ;\

 

[Corky]

With ~800k people or so playing the game, it could just as well be that having the game crash often is winning the lottery. You can't really say one way or the other from forum posts, you'd need statistical data. Regarding "luck", Oblivion and the Fallouts crashed every other hour for me just like everyone else.

That is correct, technically I might very well be one of the unlucky few who are having crashes and bugs with the game ( but really? ) and with regards to statistical data, other than it being totally disingenuous to actually try to provide actual data at this point I can refer do the bethesda forums and threads like this. Obviously a 60 person poll doesn't even come close to give an actual view of the situation, but hey it's a start.

 

[Wazzim]

I would just use fraps, I couldn't find anything definitive that works for me and I've looked everywhere.

You can use MSI afterburner too, works great and it also shows the temp/fan speed.

 

[Durante]

That is correct, technically I might very well be one of the unlucky few who are having crashes and bugs with the game ( but really? ) and with regards to statistical data, other than it being totally disingenuous to actually try to provide actual data at this point I can refer do the bethesda forums and threads like this. Obviously a 60 person poll doesn't even come close to give an actual view of the situation, but hey it's a start.

I would argue that people who have problems are much more likely to post in forums than those playing the game without problems, at least this close to release. I'm an exception because I am addicted to GAF.

(But I agree with you that it's impossible for us to say for certain one way or the other at this point in time)

 

[Puppet Shadow]

The Large Address Aware fix, is this only needed if you have a 32 bit versions of Windows?


From the link:

This is an application that assists in making applications large address aware. When a 32-bit application is Large Address Aware, it can access up to 4 GiB on x64 operating systems and up to 3 GiB on x86.

Seems good.

64-bit versions of Windows require no modifications to the operating system to benefit from this application; however, in 32-bit versions of Windows, you must increase the user memory setting.

Wait, what?



Just woke up (waiting for the coffee to kick in), but don't these two points contradict each other?

 

[subversus]

damn, this game have a manual. I hope it clears how to use scrolls. It seems that I knew the spell already yesterday and the scroll didn't work.

 

[Durante]

Just woke up (waiting for the coffee to kick in), but don't these two points contradict each other?

No. In 32 bit OSes, you need additional modifications to your OS configs in order for the (modified) LAA game binary to actually be able to use more than 2GB. On 64 bit OSes no additional steps beyond modifying the binary are required.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

You can use MSI afterburner too, works great and it also shows the temp/fan speed.

In the screens themselves? I use MSI religiously for OC and fan control so I may give that a shot. Love fraps as it is tough

 

[subversus]

no, the manual doesn't explain how to use scrolls.

WHAT THE FUCK. I'm pressing A when select them, what should I do next?

 

[Cptkrush]

Only had one CTD so far and it was before I changed my sound settings to 44100Hz or whatever it is. Since then it's been smooth sailing, however, when the game loads I get blue borders on my screen like it's in windowed mode and when I alt tab, I have to select the game two times for it to come back.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

UPDATE 1.1 NOTES

BUG FIXES
General optimizations related to stability and performance.
Essential followers recover properly if player fast travels away.
Fixed rare instances of dragons flying improperly though objects after player exits an interior.
Fixed rare instance where the a music track would not stop playing properly.
Autosave message properly displays when going through a load door.
The fifth level of the Light Fingers perk correctly calculates the Pickpocket skill bonus.
Enchanting an item to improve the Sneak skill properly calculates the bonus to the player's Sneak skill.
Enchanting an item to improve the Lockpick skill properly calculates the bonus to the player's Lockpick skill.
Corpus Enchanter perk properly calculates bonuses to stats for the player’s new enchantments.

QUEST FIXES
Fixed rare issue where a character would not arrive properly to the Thalmor Embassy during Diplomatic Immunity.
Rescue/Attack on Fort Neugrad will trigger properly if player travels to Fort Neugrad by foot.
In To Kill an Empire, Gianna will now talk to player with certain diseases.
Fixed rare instance of Civil War battle not starting properly if player receives a Companions quest from Farkas.
During Brelyna's Practice, fixed rare issue where the player could be permanently invisible.
Triggering combat in Largashbur no longer stops progression to The Cursed Tribe.
Fixed rare instance where fighting a Civil War battle during The Fallen would prevent the Jarl of Whiterun from accepting their axe in Message to Whiterun.
In The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, fixed rare instance where Arngeir would not teach player the last word of Unrelenting Force.
In Taking Care of Business, fixed issue where Brynjolf would not give player this quest if Talen Jei was dead.

 

[Corky]

Only had one CTD so far and it was before I changed my sound settings to 44100Hz or whatever it is. Since then it's been smooth sailing, however, when the game loads I get blue borders on my screen like it's in windowed mode and when I alt tab, I have to select the game two times for it to come back.

what was your setting before you changed it?

I looked at the fix and the suggestion is to change to 24 bit 44100 Hz, mine was at 16 bit 44100 Hz, could this be the source of my CTDs?

 

[Wazzim]

In the screens themselves? I use MSI religiously for OC and fan control so I may give that a shot. Love fraps as it is tough

I don't know if it's possible to let it show info in the screens themselves but it has a build in screenshot feature so I don't see why not. Just go to 'settings' in MSI and click on the 'Information on screen' tab (I have it in dutch so it may be described differently in English).

EDIT: Yes, there is an option for having the FPS show up in screenshots. It's in the same tab.

 

[squidyj]

I do think the game looks incredible at times.

But technically, Witcher 2 blows it away in so many key areas. Once Skyrim gets better textures/shaders, it should be interesting to compare.

Actually I think The Witcher 2 walks all over Skyrim artistically. In terms of color and balance I have to say Skyrim feels quite bland. It's been a plast to play it and a lot of the vistas have been really great but it's using features that draw the color palette towards neutral and in that way the visuals start to become tiring because there are only so many snow covered peaks and the areas that should be lusher and greener still seem somewhat desaturated from what they ought to be, lending a grey bleakness to a lot of the scenery.

Ugh. I really wish this GTX570 had more VRAM, it really seems to be the limiting factor for new releases for me.

 

[Corky]

Ugh. I really wish this GTX570 had more VRAM, it really seems to be the limiting factor for new releases for me.

having x8 aa raped my vram and made the game unplayable, without it the game is hovering anywhere inbetween 400-800 usage at 2560x1440 on my 1gb card. You shouldn't be limited with 1280 or w/e

 

[Puppet Shadow]

No. In 32 bit OSes, you need additional modifications to your OS configs in order for the (modified) LAA game binary to actually be able to use more than 2GB. On 64 bit OSes no additional steps beyond modifying the binary are required.

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks!

 

[cyberheater]

I have indeed. I disabled it in an attempt to appease the engine in hope of running the game more stably. As for your second question, I'm running a factory-clocked GTX 570 with the drivers recommended in the OP.



The only component that is overclocked is the CPU, but it doesn't go above 65°C and has never had an issue at full load, even with many-hour strenuous tasks such as video encoding. Skyrim doesn't appear to max out my CPU, anyway.

Edit: For reference, it's a 3.2GHz E6420.

I've got a Pentium Dual Core E2180 2GHz overclocked to 3GHz and a GTX460 overclocked to 800MHz. I've had no crashed. Stock settings so far. Have not tweaked any ini files.

 

[DoctorZ]

messing with fShadowDistance=XXX some more

I've found my preference to be 1500, a bit blocky, but much more detailed than 8000 and dont get as much fading in of shadows close to me.

at 400 the shadows are very detailed and smooth, but they have a small radius and fade in a bit more than my liking. 8000 and they look like a pixelated mess.

I tried the shadow fixes in the OP and recommended settings from others, but I've found just changing the fShadowDistance= setting gets the shadows to my liking without any hit to framrate.

Find an area with trees, then look at the tree's shadow on the ground. Make a save. Then edit the fShadowDistance to 400, 2000, 4000, 8000 and reload the save each time, the shadow quality decreases as you go up. I dont really care about far distant shadows, I'd rather the ones I can see up close be detailed. Maybe some people want vistas of trees and towns to have detailed shadows. But I'm over the shadow issues.

I also fixed my ugridstoload=9 save to 5 and removed it from my ini. The game feels a lot smoother and haven't noticed any of the weird flickering anymore, still on one set of mountains though. I dont know if ugridstoload has any effect on stability or other visual bugs, but I think I prefer it at default for now.

 

[Durante]

Only had one CTD so far and it was before I changed my sound settings to 44100Hz or whatever it is. Since then it's been smooth sailing, however, when the game loads I get blue borders on my screen like it's in windowed mode and when I alt tab, I have to select the game two times for it to come back.

Hey! finally someone else who has that. It's the exact same for me. And you also don't have CTDs. I'm happy to trade having to alt-tab twice for the game being completely stable.

 

[Kyaw]

I haven't had any random crashes apart from the my own fuckup ugrid crashes in the 12 hours or so game time.

The only performance problem i have with this game is the fact that it's only using 60% of my GPU.

Also i heard from the Bethesda forums that shadow rendering is done on the CPU?!

 

[Durante]

Also i heard from the Bethesda forums that shadow rendering is done on the CPU?!

Without reading anything about that claim I can tell you with confidence that it's complete bullshit.

 

[Phandy]

Guys, I remember reading that Using the Large Address Aware stuff (LAA) has problems with steam and VAC. Something to do with the fact that you are modifying a games .exe.

Does anyone know if that is the case here?
Is it worth playing outside of steam if using the LAA?

 

[TheOctagon]

No, lets argue about that one. From anything I can tell they did a much better job regarding both stability and performance than any of their previous games, and they should be commended for that.

Of course it's not as stable and fast as Modern Warfare or Mass Effect, but such comparisons are neither useful nor fair.

You can only really speak anecdotally about Bethesda RPGs, but my take so far is that Skyrim's a step on from New Vegas (which I appreciate is Obsidian) in terms of performance and stability. That's been the only one so far I could make Large Address Aware and basically push to these obscene levels without any noticeable hit or crash problem. I still don't think I'm at the limit of Skyrim yet, and I'm using ancient graphics card drivers, too. People with Nvidia cards waiting for driver updates are betting on the wrong horse, if you ask me.

What does seem obvious is that this is less an 'overhauled' Gamebryo than one with lots of bells and whistles stuck on top, some of which might well be causing the unique problems some people are having. Just look at the weird way the new shadows behave, almost like they're not an integral part of the scene. And those horrible radial blur and DoF effects that wreak such havoc with framerates - I turned those right off.

It's too early to really talk of quest bugs, etc. The inventory's not as awful as people make out, though you can tell the idea of keyboard control just wasn't in Bethesda's head until the very last minute. The character generation is awful, and just the latest dumbing down of the same FaceGen tools that were a helluva lot more complete in Oblivion than Fallout, which itself was like molecular biology next to this abomination. FaceGen itself is incredibly versatile and makes proper, attractive, asymmetrical faces; but the way these games hack features off and impose presets makes a monster of it.

I think there's a lot of hidden complexity in Skyrim that makes it more sensitive if you decide to mess with the rules a bit. A lot has been taken (not directly, obviously) from popular Oblivion environment mods, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot more swapping of meshes and textures between day and night variants than before. That's more load on the technology. Messing with the global time modifier seems to have more violent side-effects than before, too.

In all, though, I'm impressed. Didn't expect to get such good results after just a day of using old Oblivion tweaks. People will complain about it being Gamebryo again but I'd much rather have a game where you can just pop down the console and do everything you're used to than some ghastly scenario where everything's locked down and you're having to relearn from scratch.

 

[Kyaw]

It was this thread: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1260131-the-truth-behind-skyrim-performance/

Also what's this talk of DoF and Radial blur? I have them enabled and still don't see any such effects in game.

Edit: Is it just me or is there no noticeable shadows indoors? (Solitude Inn)

 

[LiquidMetal14]

To add an item in the PC version of Skyrim, hit Tilde(~) to bring up the developer console, and enter this code:

Player.additem XXXXXXXX "###"

where XXXXXXXX is the item code, and ### is the amount you want. Here is a list of the item codes you can use with this cheat:

0000000f - Gold
0000000a - Lockpicks

LIST VIA IGN HERE

 

[Linearskillz]

Skyrim Pro Tips that Help with Mouse Control and Physics Glitches

I wrote a blog post on the subject. Since I don't plan on keeping multiple places updated constantly, I'll link for you guys here:

http://linearskillz.wordpress.com/2...help-with-mouse-control-and-physics-glitches/

This explains how to fix mouse lag caused by vsync, and fixes physics and mouse y-axis going bonkers when your FPS goes too high as a side effect of turning off vsync. Most of this info was taken from these forums but it was strewn all over the place, so I've collected it together.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Skyrim Pro Tips that Help with Mouse Control and Physics Glitches

I wrote a blog post on the subject. Since I don't plan on keeping multiple places updated constantly, I'll link for you guys here:

http://linearskillz.wordpress.com/2...help-with-mouse-control-and-physics-glitches/

This explains how to fix mouse lag caused by vsync, and fixes physics and mouse y-axis going bonkers when your FPS goes too high as a side effect of turning off vsync. Most of this info was taken from these forums but it was strewn all over the place, so I've collected it together.

Gonna link that in the fixes or tips section, thanks

 

[subversus]

ok, so I understood how to use scrolls. You should just select the spell and then raise your hands.

 

[DoctorZ]

After playing around with ini settings, shadows, AA etc. I just noticed this on some rocks. Any idea how to get rid of it? Tried every AA option I have and even went back to default ini files.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Linearskillz, make sure you edit the info in that link (if needed) as I have that listed in the OP. So you can fix things or alter things on your own accord.