resolution of textures in SR:LE

[hellanios]

can anyone (preferably neovalen himself) provide information about the subject ?

[Jormungand24]

Given the sheer quantity of texture mods SR incorporates, there is only 2 options to avoid the 3.1GB crash. Either the 1k texture packs for the exterior mods, or keep using the 2k packs and resize the normals to 1k. My guess is current testing will try out 2k textures with 1k normals for stability and he will aim for that as the texture resolutions. If it is not enough and the 3.1GB limit is still a problem, then down to the 1k packs for exteriors, and 2k for interiors.

[hellanios]

hmmm interesting.. i hope neovalen or someone who is working on the project will shed some light. some question applies to weapons and armour.

[youtoo]

what does 2k textures with 1k normals mean? this is something you do in ddsopt right?

[phazer11]

If you look at your textures folder (if you extracted it to loose files) and in many loose file mods you'll notice there is a texturename.dds and then in most cases either a texturename_n.dds or texturename_msn.dds etc and those last two are normal maps which give the object some sense of depth.

 

As for the OP I think I've seen Neo say many times that he's only using 1k textures for the exteriors ad I think 2k with 1k normals in the interiors.

[Neovalen]

Given the sheer quantity of texture mods SR incorporates, there is only 2 options to avoid the 3.1GB crash. Either the 1k texture packs for the exterior mods, or keep using the 2k packs and resize the normals to 1k. My guess is current testing will try out 2k textures with 1k normals for stability and he will aim for that as the texture resolutions. If it is not enough and the 3.1GB limit is still a problem, then down to the 1k packs for exteriors, and 2k for interiors.

 

This pretty much sums it up. Aiming for highest resolution that will not cause problems. As for how to do 1k normals that's DDSOpt yes.

[hellanios]

''As for the OP I think I've seen Neo say many times that he's only using 1k textures for the exteriors ad I think 2k with 1k normals in the interiors.''

 

How can we do that, too?

[statmonster]

I think most of his are currently 2k with 1k normals, though there are quite a few with lower resolutions. Whether this will be sustainable will only be determined by testing.

 

There is a feeling (well by me anyway...) that having small items with high resolutions is pointless - for example CaBaL's excellent armor retextures stick to 2k for the cuirasses but use 1k for boots, gloves and helmets.  A 2K texture of a rabbit is pointless (it's small, fast moving and generally not examined at close range so you will never see the detail...), a 2K texture of a mammoth makes more sense...

 

There are two ways to get lower resolution textures.

 

1. Where a mod author has lower resolution version download that.

 

2. Where they do not use DDSOpt to reduce the resolution of your main texture files aka speculars (*.dds) to 2048 x 2048 ("2k") and normals (*_n.dds or *_msn.dds)to 1024 x 1024 ("1k" or "half size"). You can go lower if you need to such as 1024 x 1024 and 512 x 512 respectively. The reason to put the normals at half sized is that the level of detail in them is not nearly as important as the main texture file in determining quality. You should also keep in mind that some (many?) authors do not

compress their files which leads them to be larger than necessary so running DDSOpt an help with memory even if you do not reduce them - however this can be a a bit tricky as some files seem to lose a lot of quality when compressed - WATER for example seems to run best when it is not compressed.

 

STEP has some very good guides to how and when to use DDSOpt - though it will be a bit confusing when you first try to dive into. Neo has been working on a keystroke by keystroke description of how to do this but as I recall at this point you really need to use the STEP guide to set up DDSOpt first.

[hellanios]

Yes, I know about the ddsopt guide but how can we choose to use 1024 for exterior etc and 2048 for interiors, weapons and armour? a guide on how to do that would be really appreciated. :)

[Jorus]

Perhaps there is some hope in the near future. Boris Vorontsov recently took position on this issue :

14 july 2013

 

Just now saw on Nexus post about Skyrim crash when reaching 3 gb limit. This can be solved at cost of performance unfortunately. Forget about generic changes, they all will not work when you have hi-res textures installed, i know this because of experience in searching large address aware incompabilities and fixing them in game sources, it's very complex task, do not expect it to be fixed by official patch. Well, half year ago already tried that and in 0.096 patch too, the problem was not just lower performance, but the bugs on water surface. Will try again and write here results.

We'll soon see some results I guess..

 

EDIT:

Soon was bloody fast ! :) Here is the changelog of his experiments. (check ENB forums)

Graphic mod / patch ENBSeries 0.192

 

Decription copy-paste:

• Added memory reducing feature to partially fix crashes when many mods installed or moving fast in environment, parameter ReduceSystemMemoryUsage=true enabling such a fix. If this will not be enough, i'll do different changes.
• Added UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics variable to enbseries.ini which allow to disable all graphic changes in the mod and free it's resources. The goal of this is to use patch features of the mod (memory fix, speed hack, frame limiter, etc).
• Mod is faster than vanilla game when UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true or when it's disabled via UseEffect=false.
• Improved frame limiter to make it more stable, which is important when vsync disabled.
• Increased performance of reflections, did cpu optimizations.
• Removed SkipShaderOptimization parameter.
• Replaced all quality parameters in GUI by their text named drop down boxes.
• Added new GUI window and moved in to there buttons "save configuration", "load configuration". Also added button "apply changes" which reloading and recompiling all data (same as Backspace key usage).

The best results from new version will have users with huge amount of video memory and 64 bit OS. Fix is not working 100% against out of memory crashes, this is not possible at all, but if not enough what i've done, let me know and will do deeper changes. If memory fix not work, write your videocard model, vram and ram sizes, OS, short description which huge graphics mods installed, what kind of level of details changes in skyrimprefs.ini changed and (if modified) memory pool properties from there. Performance absolutely the same on my hardware with ReduceSystemMemoryUsage set to true or false, but not sure about AMD videocards.

[statmonster]

I was just writing abut this in another thread. Sounds very interesting. However it should be noted that he has had some negative issues with the beta test of .192 so it will be a bit of time before this is ready for prime time. But still very interesting...

[rootsrat]

Yes, I know about the ddsopt guide but how can we choose to use 1024 for exterior etc and 2048 for interiors, weapons and armour? a guide on how to do that would be really appreciated. :)

 

You just have to download relevant files from mod pages. Any mods that provide exterior textures (roads, rocks, trees etc.) you would download in 1K version (if available of course). Any mods that provide interior, character or weapons and armours you would download in higher resolution.

 

There is no guide required.

[Luisangre]

Think I may just go all 1k textures when SR comes out.

The simplicity of having all textures at a consistent resolution/ knowing that you will be well below the memory crash limit all the time is a good positive.

Or 1k textures for all and 2k textures for weapons/ armor/ npc.

[torminater]

Fair enough. Though a mix of 2k for diffuse maps and 1k for normal maps would still keep you well clear from the 3.1 GB. (I'm hovering at about 2.6 max)

[Ganda]

and how much Vram are you using? I only have a 2Gb ATI radeon 7870, doubt I can use that :/