Interesting Water LOD Interaction with Realistic Waters 2 on Alpha 180

[LF111]

I've noticed an interesting effect on distant water LOD after updating from 3.00 Alpha 173 to Alpha 180. I use Realistic Waters Two for my water mod and I use doodlum's Sky Reflection Fix to solve the uh... sky reflection problem, therefore allowing me to leave bReflectSky enabled in Skyrim's .ini files. Yesterday, I updated from RWT 5.6 to 5.7.1 and updated DynDOLOD to Alpha 180. Generating LOD caused the reflection bug to return; you can see the images here. The only way to get rid of this bug is to disable bReflectSky in the .ini files, but this has negative impacts on water reflections and is something that I never had to do in the past. Using Sky Reflection Fix should prevent you from having to disable bReflectSky, but when generating LOD with Alpha 180, it no longer does so. Turning DynDOLOD off (while leaving bReflectSky on and not touching the load order) solves the bug, as does reverting to my previous LOD generation from Alpha 173. The problem appears to specifically be an interaction between Alpha 180 and either RWT 5.7.1 or Sky Reflection Fix. I haven't tried generating without either of those mods on, so I cannot confirm if it is solely a DynDOLOD issue (though I'd imagine there'd be a lot more reports if that were the case). 

Summary: Alpha 180 appears to be causing a water LOD reflection bug to appear that wasn't there before, holding load order and .ini settings constant. 

I've already reached out to the authors of both of those mods, but I thought I'd make a post here to cover all my bases. 

 

 

 

Log | Debug Log (I have no idea why the debug log is so massive, and since I was unable to get it to fit on Paste.ee, I've attached the link to download it on Ufile)

Edited September 13 by LF111

[sheson]

7 minutes ago, LF111 said:

I was testing the ini settings in-game with getini and setini, so they were making it in.

The new water wheel created by the test esp shows up as wet much further out, see here. It still fades into the "dry" look at further distances, but it is significantly less noticeable. If you were in-game and actually running through Anga's Mill, you probably wouldn't notice the fade at all. 

Setting the mentioned INI settings to 10.0 should increase the distance before this effect happens. If you already set 10.0, test with 20.0

[LF111]

Setting all of the LightingShader settings to 20.00 with setini (and then verifying with getini) one-by-one until all were at 20 did not result in any change from the pictures in my last reply; the wheel still returns to the "dry" state at the same distance (though, again, it's much better than it was before). 

[sheson]

fEnvmapLODFade[Start|End] 1.0 - this is about the distance it changed after walking backwards.

fEnvmapLODFade[Start|End] 10.0 - same distance as above but now it "works"

With 10.0 it stays the same also far outside the active cells.

The wheel works the same in DynDOLOD. The reason this full model is treated differently seems to be the IsFullLOD flag. If the distance seems shorter with DynDOLOD activated, it is because of the settings/game engine doing things differently, presumably dynamically adapting to things or workload.

[LF111]

Apologies, but what then is there for me to do to "fix" the problem (or at least get the wheel to match the properties of the one in test.esp)? (also, you probably don't need these, but here's proof that I actually am making these tweaks). Modify/create a rule during LOD generation? Or is this just some weird thing that I have to accept? 

Edited September 16 by LF111

[sheson]

11 hours ago, LF111 said:

Apologies, but what then is there for me to do to "fix" the problem (or at least get the wheel to match the properties of the one in test.esp)? (also, you probably don't need these, but here's proof that I actually am making these tweaks). Modify/create a rule during LOD generation? Or is this just some weird thing that I have to accept? 

The first picture seems to show that the lower vanilla waterwheel having the problem while the top one from the test plugin is OK?

[LF111]

Yes. It still fades out at further distances (about the point shown in the bottom pic), but it's probably not going to be noticeable when actually playing the game and not just testing (and as we've discovered, adjusting the envlodfade settings for some reason aren't doing anything for me). In any case, it's vastly preferable to the current situation, so whatever you did to the test.esp wheel is good enough for me. 

[sheson]

15 minutes ago, LF111 said:

Yes. It still fades out at further distances (about the point shown in the bottom pic), but it's probably not going to be noticeable when actually playing the game and not just testing (and as we've discovered, adjusting the envlodfade settings for some reason aren't doing anything for me). In any case, it's vastly preferable to the current situation, so whatever you did to the test.esp wheel is good enough for me. 

The test esp does the same thing as the DynDOLOD.esp. It places a full model with the IsFullLOD flag.

This is a shader or post processing effect. A fix is to increase the settings in the SkyrimCustom.INI . Only changing them in the game with console commands does not seem to have an effect.
I my test I could also increase the distance by lowering the fov to 15 before starting to walk backwards. That could mean, the less models require this effect, the further away it is shown on the visible models.

If the modified vanilla bottom wheel fades out earlier than the test wheel, then it seems like the engine fades out  the effect based on god knows what.

Unsetting the Envmap_Light_Fade flag on the BSLightingShaderProperty in the NIF does not seem to have an effect.

[LF111]

11 minutes ago, sheson said:

A fix is to increase the settings in the SkyrimCustom.INI . Only changing them in the game with console commands does not seem to have an effect.

Man I am SO sorry for dragging this on, setting the envLODfadestart/end settings in the custom ini instead of through console commands fixed the problem for me on the vanilla wheel. I should've tried doing it that way earlier.

Between that and the new LODGen executable fixing the water reflection bug, all of my issues have been solved. Thank you for going back-and-forth for days on this.

[sheson]

26 minutes ago, LF111 said:

Man I am SO sorry for dragging this on, setting the envLODfadestart/end settings in the custom ini instead of through console commands fixed the problem for me on the vanilla wheel. I should've tried doing it that way earlier.

Between that and the new LODGen executable fixing the water reflection bug, all of my issues have been solved. Thank you for going back-and-forth for days on this.

No worries. It's great we finally solved all issues.

In the meantime I also had a quick look/test with editing the CS shaders. At some point the ENVMAP bool is not true anymore, so this looks like something that is determined in the game code.

[z929669]

On 9/14/2024 at 9:46 AM, sheson said:

Replace C:\Skyrim DynDOLOD\DynDOLOD 3.00-68518-Alpha-180-1724627136\DynDOLOD\Edit Scripts\LODGenx64Win.exe with this version https://mega.nz/file/IUYk3J5C#dpWyLBQodYSaSvD3BwhBiNUxgGWtHr7UgFxv1fE4xHY

Start DynDOLOD in expert mode and select the desired worldspaces and click the Execute LODGen button to generate new object LOD meshes. See https://dyndolod.info/Help/Expert-Mode#Execute-LODGen

Replace old object LOD meshes with the new ones. Hopefully that fixes it.

Just here to confirm the fixed LODGen version resolves this issue for me as well; although, I didn't even know I had this issue until I tested it. See this post for details:

 

[z929669]

Will this LODGen fix be included in Alpha 181?

[sheson]

5 hours ago, z929669 said:

Will this LODGen fix be included in Alpha 181?

Yes of course. That is how it works.

[D1Z4STR]

Does the Sky Reflection fix and water correction have anything to do with this setting in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini?

; set to 1 to add ShowLocalMap flag, opening/closing map causes water to reflect references with the flag set (requires [Water] bReflectSky=1 in Skyrim.ini) - can cause CTD when opening map
GlowLODLocalMap=0

I am not quite sure what this setting does exactly

[sheson]

5 hours ago, D1Z4STR said:

Does the Sky Reflection fix and water correction have anything to do with this setting in DynDOLOD_SSE.ini?

; set to 1 to add ShowLocalMap flag, opening/closing map causes water to reflect references with the flag set (requires [Water] bReflectSky=1 in Skyrim.ini) - can cause CTD when opening map
GlowLODLocalMap=0

I am not quite sure what this setting does exactly

No it does not.

This is a DynDOLOD 2 setting which does not work in DynDOLOD 3 anymore. The setting used to set a flag on base records to make glow LOD references show in the cube map reflections  in addition to the terrain. object and tree LOD. The flag changed names in xEdit from Show Local Map to Show In World Map. Setting the flag can still cause CTD depending on the circumstances.

[D1Z4STR]

Thanks for clarifying Sheson. No need for me to ever use this setting.