Audley

Normal maps are a tricky thing in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. This is mainly due to some weird engine issue that causes the shaders to not render correctly. This is especially the case on terrain textures. If you look around you will see (depending on the quality of the textures) this horrible pixellation issue. You can prevent this some by using uncompressed normal maps. By using uncompressed normal maps your textures will usually look a lot better as well. The obvious downside is using more VRAM than necessary. Personally I don't see the point in using uncompressed normal maps on such small objects as no one is going to be looking at them for very long and the artifacting that could happen would be minimal. Simply put: the normal maps are twice as big as the diffuse maps because they were compressed (or not at all) with a different setting. Cheers, Audley

LOOT now only sorts and will move plugins that are conflicting. While I understand the functionality is the primary goal, there is something to be said about having a good organized and clean load order. LOOT does an alright job at resolving conflicts in the load order but does literally nothing in the organization department. This is why I only use LOOT for feedback when I am unsure about something. Personally I like to completely sort my load order by hand as I install mods.

Hey everyone thanks for all the interesting and unique answers! It helps me get to know you guys a bit more. Thanks for sharing! :)

Well, your load order isn't the best but it shouldn't be causing a repeated crash on fast travel. It's hard to know with a game like this what could be causing this. The problem with LOOT is that it it doesn't really account for the most optimal load order and really only fixes the largest issues. This is why a manual load order is always the best; or at the very least a tweaked LOOT load order. However, this isn't something I would really expect new players to know how to do optimally. Though like I said I doubt it's load order causing the issue. The first thing I would try personally is first backing up all my saves. Then I would go and delete both .ini files from my Mod Organizer>Profiles folder and then regenerate them. Go ahead and add in back the tweaks in the guide but leave out the light distance tweak and the grass fade distance tweak. They personally destroy my performance and could cause game instability. Make sure you aren't adding a lot of tweaks to your .ini files. They should be mostly vanilla. Then try your game and make a clean save and try to see if that fixes your issue. The second thing I would try is to first re-generate my Bashed Patch. However, before you do this you should make sure you back up and put somewhere safe your current Bashed Patch as you may need to revert if something goes wrong. After backing up your Bashed Patch, go ahead and re-generate it and make sure you follow the instructions carefully. Check those two things and if the crashing still continues we can move on from there. Cheers, Audley

Hello STEP community! Audley here. I am starting this thread because I have some random questions I would like to ask, but most don't deserve their own thread. I am hoping this can help us get to know each other a bit more. :) Where do you get your wallpapers and avatars from? Do you game on a monitor or T.V. and which is your preference? What is your resolution? TN or IPS (or other) panel? What is your favorite emoticon? Favorite Bethesda game quote? (...took an arrow to the knee) What do you call soda where you come from? Coke, pop, soda, etc. What is your favorite anti-virus software? Feel free to answer which ever questions you want. Now let me answer them: I get all my wallpapers and avatars from Wallpaper Abyss. Best collection I've ever seen. Monitor always. 1920x1080. I switched to an IPS and will never look back. From Fallout: New Vegas: "Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter." We call everything coke where I am from. Regardless of what it actually is. Avira Anti-Virus is the best IMO with Avast as a runner up. Cheers guys!

At first when I read the title I thought this was going to be a thread about Alcoholics Anonymous and I was confused. Then it hit me. :P Anyways, in the order from my favorite to least: Supersampling/Downsampling (2-5 FPS hit at 2560x1440; never tested 4K) MSAA + MFAA + Transparency Multisampling (if avilable) (1-2 FPS hit) SMAA and Edge AA (0 FPS Impact) FXAA (0 FPS Impact) Driver enforced AA (0 FPS Impact)I've never used Temporal or Subpixel as they are not included in New Vegas ENB. (I don't think?) Aside from Downsampling, MSAA is the way to go for most games for me. If you have a 900 series (I have a 970) GPU you have access to MFAA which improves MSAA and removes some performance hit. The performance hit with MSAA and MFAA is next to none. My only issue with it is that after 4x sampling it stops to make noticeable improvements, and doesn't work as well with up close/small objects as it does with large and far away objects. SMAA is the best in terms of pure software AA however it doesn't work in Fallout as well as it does in Skyrim for whatever reason. If I could have my way I would use both MSAA + MFAA for far away objects and use Software AA for up close objects. My ONLY issue with Downsampling aside from the FPS hit is that with it can cause the image to look blurred. You need to find the right balance of bluriness and sharpness. At some point I imagine AA will be mostly obsolete as we gain more pixels and stronger GPU's. I think if I used Downsampling at 4K + SMAA there would be zero aliasing, but with 4k the performance hit would be a bit too much on my card. Driver enforced AA is practically useless in nearly every application. Only a few seem to work. GeForce experience when I click the optimize settings button for Skyrim turns on 8x MSAA plus Downsampling and that makes me laugh. I wouldn't use more than maybe 2x MSAA if you are using Downsampling. All in all aliasing doesn't bother me as much as some people. Really thin objects like fences and wires bother me, but that's about it. In fact 2x MSAA is usually more than enough for me. I only use more than that because it's available and doesn't offer much of a performance hit. I have a 970 and I bet if you were running SLI 980 TIs you could run just about most things with the best AA settings. When I bought my 970 I was so surprised at the performance of the card I cannot even imagine how good things run on a 980 or higher. One thing you forgot to mention is something like Film Grain or a Sharpening Shader. Combined with SMAA or FXAA (which blurs the image) it can make things look less aliased in my experience. Here is what I am running currently for New Vegas: 2560x1440 Downsampling with 40% blur EdgeAA enabled in ENB (because why not?) Film Grain shader enabled after AAWith the Film Grain it helps the image retain its sharpness after AA has blurred it without causing much (if any) aliasing. P.S. My actual favorite thing about Downsampling is that it causes words to look super smooth and round. Edit: New Vegas ENB has Accumulative AA along with EdgeAA (not sure if this is another name for Subpixel or Temporal) however it's broken in New Vegas as it causes thin objects like rugs and wires to glow pure white.

I love merging mods. However, the only two sections where I don't merge things are the UI section and the quest mods section. Quest mods have too many records to merge them (the ones that are ESP's). Not only does it take forever, but they often fail to merge completely. I tried to merge some of Someguy's mods together and they all failed. Only the smaller quest mods merge well. Like The Collector for instance. Also, even if you could manage to merge a bunch of quest mods I imagine it would cause FPS drops and bloating due to the massive amount of records. :\

Thank you for your suggestions Toska! :) Aside from the stuff Mono listed above, while I was testing Caesar's New Regime a year ago there was a lot of issues. It's a good mod but not very polished. It hasn't been updated since 2013 and I doubt it will see an update anytime soon to fix the various issues. My main issue with it is balance issues. As for the House of Horrors mod - it looks really cool and is something I will probably play myself at some point. However, there isn't really room for it in the guide right now. Perhaps if we ever do an "optional" quests section then we will fit it in there.

URWLNV Ultimate Edition actually has a patch for ILO (I believe). However, like every weather mod for New Vegas that adds rain/snow it suffers from the same issues. The rain meshes/textures are too high quality and during storming will cause your FPS to drop by 30 or more; regardless of how powerful your rig is. This happens with Nevada Skies as well as Project Reality and RWLE. The rain meshes also cause the famous "Junknado" issue in certain situations. I am not sure why this happens but I know xCamo and RoyBatty are looking on fixing this for RWLE. These are reasons why I stick to the regular Realistic Wasteland Lighting only. The only weather mod that adds rain that is not affected by the above issues I believe is Hitman's 47 Weather mod found on the GUN to go with his ENB. The weather mod uses the meshes/textures from the Honest Hearts DLC for rain and stuff. However, the weather mod doesn't really look good by itself as it's made to go with ENB and I don't think it covers the DLC. :\

I'm working on it... slowly. However, due to current health issues the ETA is unknown. :\

Which version did you install? You will need the x86 (32-bit) version. If you get the x64 version only then you will most likely still get the error.

Happy holimadaymas to you too SparrowPrince. These days I just hope I can make it to January before I need to go back to the hospital. I don't really want to spend *another* holiday season locked up. However I am still holding in there... hoping to be able to spend Christmas with my family. Who only knows there all I really have these days aside from my online friends. With no friends outside of the internet I don't know why my family guess I would rather spend all my time on the computer. At least on here I know where I am accepted and where I am not. It has been a great pleasure (and gift) to get to know a great many people here on the STEP forums. Between the all day crying sessions, the crippling depression, and my inability to keep food down, knowing I have a few friends on here has helped. I especially would like to thank Phazer11 for being there at midnight when I was feeling especially alone. And thank you to all the staff who are more friendly and helpful than any other forum I know. *raises wine glass filles with sparkling grape juice* Here's to 2016. I am hoping I get there.

Hmmm yea as far as I know, no one has been able to solve the issue or come up with a solution other than doing what's said in the thread. I was running a 760 but after I bought my 970 last week the issue seems to have gone away completely. It seems as though it happens randomly targeting about half the people that use ENBoost. Weird. Boris cannot solve the issue as he cannot replicate it. Wish I knew what caused it because I tried everything on my old card. :\

Millenia's work is pretty good. One of my main inspirations for me starting to mod. :)

Huh seems like for once there is an issue I don't seem to have. Either I don't have this problem in my game or I just don't notice it. Is it worse in one game than another..? And was the issue fixed in FO4 or does the issue happen in that game too?

Okay Phazer try this Starfield out and see what you think: Link

While I may not be able to find better textures for your planets I can probably come up with a nicer starfield.

Well I am pretty baffled as to why FO4 cannot even maintain a reasonable frame rate. :\ Not sure if it's on my end or what but either way I give up. I'm asking for a refund and buying something else.

I was pretty excited to play the game but sadly I am getting terrible performance issues. Even on the *lowest* settings at 720p I can barely make it above 40 FPS... plus massive stuttering. I tried running it in borderless windowed mode but that did nothing. I even tried re-installing my drivers but no luck. I wasn't expecting to play on max but I thought I could at least play at 60 FPS on medium. The game is completely unplayable for me. :\

As someone who lives in the desert, how is rain not realistic? It rains in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, etc. just like in other places. I'm not entirely sure where people get the idea that there is no precipitation in the desert.

I realize this and my opinion still stands... the setting does not work properly for some users. I do not know why, but for me it will cause my game to stutter severely. It always happens in the same area and when I look in the same direction but goes away when the setting is turned off. I've talked to Boris about it and he cannot replicate it on his end so he has not tried to fix it. Happens solely in New Vegas as ENBoost works fine in Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

One setting I know I have heard stories of tanking people's FPS (even on 980Ti's) is the bHookLightCriticalSections setting in your StutterRemover.ini file. Double check it is set to 0 as I know it destroyed my FPS by 40+ FPS or more in certain areas. Another setting I recommend is to disable the games V-Sync and disable the stutter remover's FPS control (set bManageFPS=0) and then go into your Nvidia Control Panel (or use Nnvidia Inspector) and force Adaptive V-Sync. Only use your GPU to manage V-Sync. This is what I do because the games V-Sync is completely borked; causing FPS issues and weird game speed issues all around. Oh, and since you're using an ENB it is a known problem that the ENBoost can cause serious issues on Nvidia cards regarding FPS (though some people won't admit it). Try turning off the ReduceSystemMemoryUsage and just see if that helps with the FPS drops. ENB is practically broken for Fallout and I recommend switching to a SweetFX or ReShade preset if you can find one. :\ Edit: typos

Firstly, I am sorry to be the one to tell you this but VRAM doesn't stack in SLI. So regardless you still have 12GB of VRAM in total. Which to be honest is still fine for now even at 4K. Other than that I would manually set the VRAM amount in your ENB Local .ini file and completely ignore the test thing if it is not showing the correct amount. According to STEP it would be: 12,228 (12GB) - 350 = 11878. This way you can bypass the autmatic VRAM tester and it will go off of what you put down.

My opinion would be to completely ditch NVR3 and stick ONLY with FCO 3.0. as the definitive of the two. The reason people are having any issues with FCO 3.0 is because they are trying to use both NVR3 and FCO. While I understand that it's great to have the best of both worlds, until someone makes a compatiblity patch for the two they are not fully compatible with each other. Stick to one or the other; not both. You will thank me later.

I'm also using an Nvidia card. In fact the stuttering issue only seems to affect people with Nvidia cards. Either way ENB for Fallout is broken for me. :\ Edit: The stuttering issue only goes away for me after switching to my integrated graphics from my CPU.