niston
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Posts
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Everything posted by niston
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Questions: Is it possible to create satellite maps for FO4 with xLODGen? And if so, how?
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Diamond City LOD is good as well now, the MF building is there:
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Reporting back after running Beta82 without the "no vertex colors" option: I could not see any difference in the worldspace LOD on my flights from Concord to Boston Airport, whether the option was on or off (it's currently night tho). But enabling it appears to fix the exterior LOD in Goodneighbor and Hotel Rexford. I didn't check in Diamond City yet, but assume it is the same. Thank you so much!
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Yes! Running Beta 82 with "no vertex colors" option appears to have fixed the issue! Will retry without the option and post results.
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Thank you. Running the Beta82 now, will post results.
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Have some news regarding the exterior LOD issue. I managed to find someone else with custom Commonwealth LOD installed, and I asked them to verify if they can see the Mass Fusion building from inside Diamond City. They can't see it. WIth vanilla LOD, that building is visible from there. I have also undertaken extensive vertibird flights over the map, with custom LOD installed. I could not discern any defects in the custom LOD for the Worldspace.
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I think we established affirmatively that, what is being shown is LOD Level 32 in fact - by adding a single Overpass piece to that LOD level (giving it a Level 3 mesh to use) and it promptly showing up in the presented scenery after regenerating LOD. If I remove the Level 3 mesh from that piece of overpass STAT and regenerate the LOD once more, the piece has vanished again from the scenery. Now if something appears or vanishes, depending on if it has a Level 3 mesh - What kind of LOD level are we looking at then, if not Level 3 (32)? We've also checked out a bunch of BTO files, and they look like their vanilla counterparts (except for where changes were made, like the Airport, or that Overpass Piece). What's more, the BTO for 32 LOD Level look like the LOD we see, missing most buildings and -most notably- the overpass pieces! I've thought about a potential mod that maybe hides LOD. But, even ignoring the fact that the only mod for this particular rexford interior cell in my LO is my own, which really does quite the opposite of hiding LOD, the theory doesn't hold for various reasons. In the beginning, we've done testing with absolutely no changes to the load order or to any settings, only adding/removing generated LOD. Yet we observe and documented a rather striking difference between vanilla LOD and generated LOD, only and solely depending on generated LOD files being present or not. If that hypothetical mod which hides LOD existed in my LO, it would have been active all the time and thus also hidden the LOD in the vanilla screenshots. Which is quite obviously not the case. So it's unlikely to be a runtime setting that causes it. I've also generated LOD with zero plugins active, but the result is unchanged. So it's not a design (generation) time thing either and becomes really extremely unlikely to be a plugin causing it at all. And for the sake of completeness, I just tried one last thing, which is to apply LOD that has been generated with zero plugins active, to a game that has zero plugins active. I coc'd to the rexford cell, used TFC and went up a bit. What we see is this: I then removed the generated LOD, coc'd to the same goodneighborhotelrexford cell, used TFC and went up a bit, to see this: We observe the very same discrepancy in level of detail, in a game with zero plugins, using a LOD that was generated with zero plugins active. So, No. It's not a mod doing this. Furthermore, as reported earlier, this strange behavior is not limited to this particular cell. We can observe it in Diamond City, we can observe it in Goodneighbor, we can observe it in Interior Cells that have Exterior LOD. It's really the common denominator here; All these places use Exterior (Commonwealth) LOD. Meanwhile, it appears that "game world" LOD, ie not the Exterior LOD of an interior cell, is working perfectly fine/same as vanilla. There is no discernable discrepancy looking at the Boston Skyline from Fort Strong, whether there is new LOD installed or not. Nothing is missing from the scenery. Now I can accept the fact that the observed behavior cannot be rationally explained atm. I will keep you posted, should I find out more.
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I have already packed the LOD files into two BA2 archives, Main and Textures and associated them with a plugin. I've further activated that plugin in the load order and removed the loose files. It made no difference, as described. The generated 16.* LOD level BTOs look more detailed than the 32.* ones, as is presumably expected. In particular, they show the overpass pieces. As a final measure, I removed ALL plugins from the load order (empty Plugins.txt) and ran LODGen. Applying these LOD files to the game, the result is the same: It is using Level 32 LOD and -as a result- entire buildings are missing from the presented scenery: Maybe also to note that the white/rusty skyscaper facade is purely statics. It is entirely missing from the 32 LOD as well. Same for the black/dark gray building to the left of it. Using the vanilla LOD, these buildings are there, just not very detailed - Which is why I propped them up with some statics. The log file for this run can be found here: https://x0.at/3Hv.txt Makes me think this might well be a general problem. Probably just no one noticed it so far, because who goes to check out the Exterior LOD in Goodneighbor or some interior cell... I'd say if you were to install FO4 and run lodgen, you'd notice the same behavior in Goodneighbor, or Diamond City, or any Interior Cell that has Exterior LOD.
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But you said yourself: We're not looking at the same LOD level in the 2nd screenshot. So the Game must be using a more detailed LOD level for the background scenery when there's only vanilla LOD. But it stops using that more detailed LOD level as soon as there are generated LOD files around. And when the generated Files are deleted, the Game uses the more detailed level again. For whatever, obscure reason that might be.
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But we already checked. I mean I took the exemplary Overpass piece. There are no overrides to it except the BGSM from the LODGen resources. We also checked the BTO there. It looks as expected for LOD Level 32. When I told the overpass piece that it has a LOD mesh for Level 3, it appeared in the 32 LOD after regenration. Also I don't use a mod manager, so there are no virtual filesystem tricks involved or anything suchlike, which could be a source for confusion. It's just that the game does not use 32 with the vanilla LOD, but uses it as soon as there are generated LOD files around. You have to admit, it makes no sense.
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Well then. I have no idea why the Game behaves differently with the generated LOD than it does with the Vanilla LOD.
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I have these settings in the Pref file: [TerrainManager] fTreeLoadDistance=75000.0000 fBlockMaximumDistance=250000.0000 fBlockLevel2Distance=110000.0000 fBlockLevel1Distance=90000.0000 fBlockLevel0Distance=60000.0000 fSplitDistanceMult=1.5000 bShowLODInEditor=0 Look ok to me? Probably even ULTRA default or something. Are these relevant for the LOD generation, or only in-game?
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But no, it makes no difference if the new LOD is in BA2 Files or not. So, IDK. There is no setting to tell an interior with exterior LOD what kind of LOD Level to use, AFAIK.
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I was not going to pack everything for my initial testing. It was expected that the process would not yield satisfying results at first
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Yes, but the point is, I think, the same thing apparently happens for interiors (as opposed to Worldspaces like DC and Goodneighbor) as well: The Game does not show the same level of Exterior LOD, depending on if there are loose LOD files or not. I will have to pack some BA2 archives to see if that perhaps makes a difference.
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Ok, so we are now *inside* Hotel Rexford. This is an interior cell that has sky lighting and Commonwealth LOD. Set up as follows: and Now, I have carefully restored the Hotel to working order and we are using TFC and looking out slightly towards the southwest, located a bit above the 4th floor of the restored Hotel as it exists in said interior cell. You can see a small part of the 4th floor at the bottom edge of the screenshot. I've also carefully propped up the LOD with "real" statics a bit in the near field, as to give a better "immersive experience" when looking out the windows. With Vanilla LOD: With regenerated LOD: Unfortunately, the same thing is going on here. The Overpass is different, not to mention the large swaths of buildings missing entirely. We are very likely not looking at the same level of LOD either here, once new files have been supplied. The "real" statics I've placed can be seen in both screenshots. This is also the reason why I started looking into xLODGen - I wanted to have a bit more detailed LOD when looking out my Hotel
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Also, let me try one more thing. How does it look from a skylit interior cell, with commonwealth LOD? I happen to have one right in Goodneighbor...
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Ok, reporting back from Diamond City! We can observe the same phenomena at work here. We enter the city, do a TFC and go up, looking towards the Overpass. In Vanilla: With regenerated LOD: One thing we immediately notice is the absence of the Mass Fusion Building in the regenerated LOD. The Overpass is... different as well. So it appears, here too, another LOD level kicks in, as soon as we supply new LOD files via filesystem. It remains to be seen if this also happens when using BA2 packed files. The other oddity is the weirdly out-of-place seemingly floating skyscraper in the background, with the regenerated LOD. But that's probably just the perspective and the fact that the Mass Fusion building isn't there.
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Ok so we've moved to, uh, Fort Strong, I believe? Looking towards Boston Downtown, it looks like this in vanilla: After regenerating the LOD and reloading from the same spot: It appears the LOD is proper. We can even see the changes I've made to the airport in this picture! So the whole thing appears to be an edge case with Goodneighbor? I will investigate from Diamond City as well.
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So we're looking at the generated 32.0.-32.bto file in Nifskope: It's what we see in game with the regenerated LOD files present: A few skyscrapers, the Prydwen, and -most notably- the Overpass piece, for which I've created the override with the Level 2 Mesh name, copied into the Level 3 field. If we look at the vanilla mesh for this: We can see that it is the same, minus that particular overpass piece. So we can already conclude that it is like you say: We are not looking at the same LOD level in these screenshots. But it seems illogical! What makes it switch the LOD level for Goodneighbor; Apparently depending on loose LOD files being present or not? Also, does it influence the LOD level elsewhere? Lets investigate...
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Ok, let me regenerate the LOD. I will then check the 32.* BTO file in nifskope, to see if it looks like what I'm seeing in game with the generated LOD active, yes?
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How do I check a BTO (what is a BTO?) if it includes all the LOD or not?
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But that ultimately fails to explain the difference we see, doesn't it? There is absolutely no change to any of those settings and the load order for first and second screenshots is exactly the same. The only difference is the generated LOD files.
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That makes kind of sense what you say. However weird it seems that the Overpass is not shown in LOD Level 32 then? I mean, you could probably see these structures from space... The question then is, why the discrepancy? What makes it apparently switch to another LOD level when using the generated LOD? Especially when the difference is just mesh and texture files?
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Both screenshots are taken in the same way: - I'm in Goodneighbor - I type tfc - I navigate up, turn about 180° and move a little bit forward roughly towards the North First screenshot was taken with generated LOD active. Second screenshot was taken with vanilla LOD active. Since there were no other changes by me other than to delete the generated LOD files (meshes/terrain and textures/terrain) between first and second screenshot, I must assume we are looking at the same LOD level in both screenshots. What is the significance of the INI settings? Do they influence LOD generation? They are unchanged between both screenshots if that matters? I have these settings: fShadowLODMaxStartFade=1500.0 fSpecularLODMaxStartFade=2000.0 fLightLODMaxStartFade=3500.0 fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=5500.0000 fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=7500.0000 fMeshLODFadePercentDefault=1.2000 fDecalLOD0=800.0000 uLockedObjectMapLOD=16 uLockedTerrainLOD=32 fLODFadeOutMultObjects=20 fLODFadeOutMultItems=5 bReflectLODObjects=1 bReflectLODLand=1 bReflectLODTrees=1 Not sure if something's wrong, but wouldn't that affect also the vanilla screenshot then?
