Skyrims limits and my skyrim modding project

[aleksanderdev]

Hi.

Im new to this forum and though I'd introduce my self and my skyrim project aswell as post my problems i have encounterd. 

Go to the bottom to read my problems, need help with explaining shadows, ugrid problems and the mystery of the 3,2 gb memory limit :P 

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Introduction:

Im a skyrim enthusiast and want to get the best out of the skyrim, pushing it to its limits. 

My goal is to make skyrim as beautifull as possible. Becuse i love to play the game, i have a strong computer capable of doing so. But also becuse i have an assigment to make a new music video for Miracle of sound's sovengard song. And this song deservs the very best.

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My pc build and gaming setup

Z77Sabertooth

Nvidia GTX Titan 

Intel I7 3770K@5Ghz 

Corsair Vengeance 1866 MHZ 16GB

 

Im currently playing on 3 monitors @ 5760x1080. 

Want to play with semi 3D. 3D on the senter monitor only. 

I got a game buttkicker that makes my spine rumble everytime a dragon flys by and shouts. 

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Mods:

Realistic lighting Overhaul

Enhanced lights and FX

Climates of tamriel

Water 1.6

ENB Skyrealism Vibrant. This is the only enb iv tested so far that dosnt overbloom things into a fake fantasy world.

Texture pack: I gatherd all the mods from the Texture pack combiner pluss a few others

and manually picked out the best tex and mesh from each.

I am very happy with the result :D

I can try to find the SRO link i used to download with if any one wants it

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Skyrim Titan benchtest: If anny one is intrested

After i got my Titan i did some testing and her's a little graph showing the results of my modded skyrim.

As you can see skyrim used 5,2 GB Vram :P Wich is exactly why i bought titan. 

With the same settings with my GTX 680 4GB the game crashed wheneever it went above 4gb Vram. Atleast I'm pretty sure that the vram was the issue as its no longer there with Titans 6GB

I tested it quit thoroughly. 

The fps during the test was unplayable but this was with the sharpshooter and 8AA

 

With AA=0, 3D off and lowerd Ini settings i can play at 40-50 Fps @ 5760x1080 with the mods listed above.  

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Goal:

My goal is to be able to play the game @ 60 fps with Surround Semi 3D, AA 8 and hige tweaked ini settings. With all the other mods listed above. 

The 1 titan i have is damn good but its still not powerfull enough, so I have orderd a second titan. 

Should have it within a few weeks. 

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Problems:

Static waterfalls, water loosing its details and shadows.

This are the only things left I am not happy with in skyrim.

 Sadly there is no way to increas the distance before the lod shallow detail consumes the beautifull water and and makes waterfall static. 

 

I was hoping that my powerfull PC build would allow me go higer with the Ugrid setting and thus getting better water distance but apperently not. 

7 Ugrids seems to be my limit with my save game. I was able to start a new game with ugrids 9 and ran down to the riverwood without crashing, i can also load saved games that are within a house, but game crash as soon as i exit. 

With ugrids 9 it did not see any difference in the distance at which water is loaded.

 

Hers a picture showing the ugly gray non reflectiv water in the distance.

 

Is there any way of replacing the lod water with new textures? 

or any way to make waterfalls dynamic at distance? 

This rly sucks as skyrim looks increadibly beautifull.

(picture is not representativ for my current modded skyrim) 

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Shadows explainations needed

fShadowLODMaxStartFade, its in my skyrim.ini? Is it the distance before shadows starts to fade to nothing, than it must be higer than the shadow distant. Should it not be in the prefs?   

fShadowLODStartFad this is found in the prefs whats the difference between the 2? 

 

The iShadowMapResolutionPrimary are found in both the Skyrim and Prefs.ini, which one is being used or overrides the other? 

iShadowSplitCount. This is how many shadows an object can give off? 

 

iActorShadowCountInt. 

iActorShadowCountExt.  Ammount of shadows being renderd from npc's?

iShadowMode?? I have it set to 5

 

iShadowMaskQuarter ?

iShadowFilter ?

 

Bdeferredshadows=1 it fixed issues with shadows in 3D , but cant see any difference with it on or off in skyrim without 3d. No fps impact ither.  

Would be nice if we could put each shadow setting to tests and write a guide in a new post to cover what each setting acutally dos and how they affect eachother? 

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Resume:

 

So im not sure what to do at this point. 

With my titan its quit safe to say that it isnt the vram cusing the problem with ugrid 9-11 

Thinking it might be something with the memory as skyrim apperently cant utilize more than 3,2GB. But im not sure as task manager shows skyrim at 2,2GB memory usage.

I tried papyrus allow max located memory set to 4gb, didnt help.

Any other mods you could suggest to make the game look better? 

I doubt theres anything more i can do with texture and meshes. 

And i think WATER is the best water mod out there? 

 

 

Hope to get to know some of you fellow skyrim graphical enthusiasts :D 

 

 

 

[JudgmentJay]

From my experience if the game has to load too many things at once you'll either get infinite loading screens or a crash. uGrids is obviously the biggest factor, but other culprits can be z-fighting tweaks, distant object mods, and mods that add alot of objects to the game like Expanded Towns and Cities, Civil War, etc.

 

Like many others with very high-end PC builds, you've discovered that while your PC can handle everything you can throw at it, the Skyrim engine can't.

[aleksanderdev]

I know that the skyrim engine is poorley done, espesially with the shadows being done by the cpu.

And there is a certain limit like the 3,1GB.

Guess we have to do our best with filling out this limit the best way we can.