Always foggy and hammer pounding in Bannered Mare

[akmatov]

Most of the way through a CORE install and checking periodically to be sure all is well by opening Skyrim.

 

With all the mods things look pretty good visually, it is like everywhere is covered in a thin mist or as if you are looking through a soft focus filter.  Did a Fast Travel to Riverwood, arrived just outside the gate looking in.  And everything looked great, bright, sharp and colourful. Then after about five second if flipped to soft, dull and grayish.  More weird, Fast  Travel to Whiterun and the problem is gone.  Fast Travel back to Riverwood, problem is still gone.  Any ideas on this?

 

Going into the Bannered Mare in Riverwood there was a constant banging sound like a mallet against the wall, quite loud.  Checked a few other places and either not there or much fainter.  What the heck?

[akmatov]

UPDATE: Not just in the Bannered Mare, out in the open in the Whiterun Valley to and from Riverwood there is a weird noise and although I've not had a problem on foot, a horse has the ground shifting under it and it slids backwards.  Help

[Shadriss]

For the first, likely it was a weather shift to a foggy weather. Second, it's likely physics going wild... is your FPS going above 60 FPS? The havok engine wasn't designed with that in mind.

[akmatov]

That was exactly the issue.  Very likely I missed it, but the STEP Guide should inform the ignorant, ppl like me, that the fps Must be capped under 60, 58 seems best for me - without the cap I was running as high as 115 and being anywhere near water things were crazy, not to mention the floating cattle.  This should be in large red letters at the very start, as well as how to fix it.

 

The STEP Guide is a resource about which I have very mixed feelings.  Some of it is excellent and some of it is outdated and even a bit sloppy.  Outdated is ofc inevitable, but sometime in the last two years a quick review of STEP v2.10.0 would seem reasonable.  At least one mod is no longer available and several have changed, one mod only has SE choices and no longer seems designed for LE.  Also, the 'detailed instruction' are sometimes anything but detailed, some assuming more knowledge than others. I learned about how to 'set directory' and how to 'hide' elements of a mod by the more detailed instructions of a few.  There also seems a lot of focus on updating detail graphics, which is very nice and makes a big difference, but little on broader issues.  Not intended to be negative, but just a bit frustrated and concerned as my mod count is well over 100 and I wonder if this may cause issues.  

 

Well, back to finishing up this install so I can finally actually play more than my Test Toon.

[Shadriss]

OK, take this in the spirit intended, and not as the semi-angry diatribe it could come off as.

 

First, STEP is under no obligation to 'inform the ignorant'. The FPS issue with Havok has been a well known and documented issue, dating from the original release of the game back in 2011. There are a large number of similar things, none of which are mentioned  in 'large red letters at the very start'. Most of these are easily searchable, easily corrected, and not in the scope of the guide to correct. These have nothing to do with modding your game, they have to do with running your game.

 

Second, and following somewhat the last point, they are also under no obligation to maintain anything. There are, to my certain knowledge, a grand total of two people who still work on the STEP project on something resembling a full time basis (and one of those, I'm not certain of). In the time since 2.10 was released, if you had read around these forums (and especially in the announcements) you would note that there has been a LOT of work going on in the background to bring in a new site, a new content management system, and a completely updated STEP 3.0 for Skyrim LE. This milestone is approaching fairly soon. What you consider 'reasonable' was not possible based on those two things alone.

 

STEP is not intended to address 'broader issues', as it is now and always has been a 'Vanilla +' type guide.

 

As to your concern about mod count... Take a look at Lexy's Legacy of the Dragonborn: Special Edition sometime. It's well over 500 mods and 100 GB of downloaded mods cobbled together. You are in NO danger of anything there, unless directions and best practices have been ignored.

 

I get where you are coming from, but I would advise you to be more informed about things before you start throwing things out as you just did. While I know you don't intend to be negative, it's very hard to see your statement as anything but. I again remind you that this project is maintained solely at the discretion of TechAngel and Z. The fact that this guide is still around is a testament to it's flexibility in the face of time. It is known that STEP 2.10 is not current - there are numerous threads on this forums that talk about this, with workarounds and recommendations associated. I'd recommend doing a search or taking a look around.