z929669

Added

This is an artifact of the older card and drivers. I thought you sasid Vanilla STEP ... AO is not vanilla

Thanks for the info JawZ. I look forward to the comprehensive result. (I placed your list into a spoiler wrapper)

We encourage all members to add your system specs to the wiki via the STEP Portal <-- links at top of page. This makes it convenient to link in support forums or (even better) in your signature (see my sig below) and standardizes presentation for comparative purposes. These specs can also be linked from anywhere on the web. ... so if you post on Reddit (or a blog or whatever), you can add a convenient link to your system specs, courtesy of STEP Also note that you can create a mod page on our site, which is a welcome contribution that helps us out! (just be certain that the mod page does not already exist under a similar name... else we will have a redundant mod page)

@JawZ Thanks for joining us. If you PM Farlo or me on the Nexus, we will get you your fancy username tag on these forums. About your mod (and those like it). I really like most of the edits, but what kind of conflicts exist with RLwC 4.0? If they are complementary, great, and even if not, it is OK. I think adding a lighting "fix" solution is appropriate for Base STEP, and full lighting overhauls are great for a modular Pack add-on. Need to test how it all plays together though.

Don't really agree with you here. treeaspenaddon01.dds: TreesHD does indeed have a nicer wood texture, but the branches are worse, and the connected mushroom embedded in this texture will shine pure white when viewed in game. Overall, Realistic Mushrooms is much better. treereachaddon01.dds: Realistic Mushrooms may have a nicer mushroom texture attached when viewed separately, but otherwise its colors are just way too strong and shiny making it stand out extremely much. It looks very out of place. TreesHD wins, even with the slight issue it has with the texture not entirely covering the mesh. moratapinellabits01: Indeed mixed opinions, but you have to keep in mind that the world viewed texture and the inventory textures must match. This is the inventory texture only of the treereachaddon01 connected mushroom. scalypholiotabits01: Same thing again, but this time for the treeaspenaddon01. The Realistic Mushroom version of this one looks "bugged" however, because I think the lightmap is a little off, causing it to look very blurry and strange. Thus, HQ Food wins. mushroom01: I would agree with you that Realistic Mushrooms has a higher quality looking texture, but it suffers hugely from clipping issues which just looks terrible when viewed in your inventory (look at the whole lower part of the mushroom). This in addition to its colors that are too strong and shiny making it feel out of place makes the Hybrids version the overall winner. good advice. Agree with most, but for the first. I think the wood texture is more obvious to me I guess.

The problem is that in game, you will see the composite result of the texture after all layers are combined around the model. AFAIK, the model also defines aspects of texture behavior, and the shader computes even more of the net result. Thus, you are only seeing a small part of the issue when you look at texture primary channels only. You need to see what the alpha channel is doing as well to get a better idea from just looking at textures (i.e., view in DDSopt), and this is still not a complete picture. For that, you need to see the in-game result. The texture above is probably fine in game, but without seeing the alpha, it is not possible to know. Speaking of the preview though ... I have a feature request: Enable moving between textures using the arrow keys. Presently, the L/R arrow keys control tab switching behavior; however, I would assign these keys to functions within each tab. For the Preview tab, I want to use the L/R arrows to go between textures and the U/D arrows to switch between primary/alpha.

That much RAM is necessary for some 64-bit processes that will use up every bit of RAM available that it needs. This may not be efficient memory handling, but there are unfortunately programs out there that do this. Data-crunching apps like SPSS will use 16 GB RAM to sort 300 million records containing a hundred or so fields (and you will also not be able to use your box in the process :P ) ... but I would never do this on my personal computer, which for me is a pure home built (about my 12th build over nearly 1.5x as many years. I am no hardware expert, but I know pretty much how to recognize the best info when I need it ... see specs below ... I want a SSD and a 7970, and I am good to go for a few more years). All that said, I would never build anything but last one or two season's top build.

No worries, I have, and if all is roughly equal with v1.75 with Diverse trees, there is about a 10% FPS impact and a fairly significant VRAM demand. Constraining the 2048 normal maps to 1024 using DDSopt helps a lot with the VRAM issue with minimal quality impact.

It is not volumetric for I don't think, because that controls the fog that creeps around the distant mountains. I would try setting the following to start: FogColorMultiplierDay=0 FogColorCurveDay=0

This is the result of an alpha mask I think. It may or may not be an issue in game. Looks like a shared texture.I didn't notice this in-game. I was actually in search of the moss texture that is on the side of the Whiterun outer walls (never did find it) and ran across those couple textures that I posted.DDSopt seems to remove redundant texture information at each mip level. If you look at many alpha maps, you will find that the black portion will overlap with the crappy-looking edges in the primary and the new black parts of the converted version will mask that stuff. By removing the additional unnecessary texture information in the primary channel, DDSopt may be enabling more efficient rendering in game (but I am not sure about that!)

OK, I will take this to mean that having these files in the Wiki INI is appropriate then ... ? ... and thanks for all of the recent feedback on the latest barrage of questions!

This is the result of an alpha mask I think. It may or may not be an issue in game. Looks like a shared texture.

It is a fog-related variable under Environment. Not in front of my INI at present, so I can't be more specific. maybe FogStartFadeDistance or something?

see my sig for link to benchmark results. this is as close as we currently have. Indeed, textures (and all GPU data) are partially loaded into system RAM. There are many discussions on this topic throughout these forums (mostly back and forth between s4n and me) ... check the "Performance" thread adjacent to this one.

What you are seeing with these normals is that they have been converted but not re-normalized, thus, this is 'de'-normalized and looks strange. You will need to use an application that can normalize the image to see the result that will appear in game (Gimp or Photoshop have NM plugin viewers).

STEP does not conflict with the TPC ;) SGD is great IMO... it simply has too many variants. It would work very nicely with Automated Variants though. The BCF makes it substantially *less* tedious to install a custom config.

Yes' date=' but's just 2 of the 3 in the folder. First is okay as-is. OK, I have never once even noticed that the very bottom of the dropdown gives % options ... :P I am guessing the fix is to never use this method (or don't choose any 2:1 constraints)

When you say "transparency in the alpha", do you mean 0% opacity? Like the alpha being used as a mask rather than for variations in opacity? Is the term "100% transparency" redundant, in your opinion? FYI, we are maintaining a working INI on the wiki that essentially will include our findings. We will append the updates to the end of each applicable section, and these will reflect our hacks to get a working result. From this, you will likely know the proper solution. I will check with the new update, but the new INI does not account for one case I found what I believe is the alpha being used as a mask for a glow map. This results in the black horn candelabras I think, since it appears as though the alpha masks the primary channel with regard to all but the glow. Can you confirm that I am interpreting properly? clutter\candles\horncandles01.ddsAlso, there are a number of issues with landscape textures, where pieces of the primary channel itself are masked. I have no idea why this happens, as I cannot see anything strange happening in the alpha on these: ; Serious HD - Some spaces between rocks & particles are black landscape\rocks01.dds landscape\rocksedgetrim01.dds landscape\tundrarocks01.dds landscape\fieldgrass01.dds landscape\fieldgrass02.dds landscape\icefloes.dds landscape\volcanictundragravel01.dds landscape\dirt02.dds ; Skyrim HD - Some spaces between rocks & particles are black landscape\riverbededge.dds landscape\riverbededge1.ddsDoes it make sense for us to control for these still?

Well, we DO care; however, it might be better said that "we are not interested," at this time unless the host is Starac and he is knowingly making his content available for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, the source is simply one of "us," which is acceptable for personal use, but not for STEP --or the Nexus for that matter, so it is a moot point.

Discussion thread: Heart of the Beast by NsJones Wiki Link

To really affect frame rates (rather than VRAM), you need to lower your shadows or back down certain other INI settings. The piece in the current guide RE 50 FPS is basically saying that ... "If you are not at near or above 50 FPS at this point, begin backing down some of the INI settings we just recommended" This would have come just before mod installation, and is a very important time to reflect upon and record before going ahead and modding the hell out of the game. Otherwise, you will have no clear idea of your performance change, given no reference point. ;)