pack A Real Explorer's Guide to Skyrim

[Daagar]

Whiterun Outskirts are included - there is a post at nexus confirming.

 

I don't mind the FPS drop from JK's stuff so much - I seem to get 27-33fps on my system, which is fine. The big issue I have is waiting for it to load in the textures for the first time, though I think this is a matter of limited vram (2GB) and texture thrashing moreso than JK's mods. Once textures are loaded, it is smooth even if somewhat low fps. And then I turn around... aiiieeee.

[Pretendeavor]

Alright, so did a little test. No ENB at all.

 

Whiterun gate looking at market without JK - 47 fps.

Whiterun gate looking at market with JK - 25 fps. (this is about 20 frames as stated but puts me into the 20s as I stated before)

 

Whiterun Dragonsreach looking over the city no JK - 52 fps.

Whiterun Dragonsreach looking over the city with JK - 25 fps. (ouch! 27 frames down.)

 

Mesh differences perhaps.

 

In any case, I can visibly see it chug when I walk through towns and it bugs me too much to use. It does look very nice but think it goes a little overboard in places which might cause the performance hit.

 

 

I have exactly the same problem. Whiterun FPS with JK's goes down to about 10-20 FPS when overlooking the city or looking at the market, without it's 10-20 FPS more.

 

Following your guide Nearox and reducing VRAM didn't help the issue at all. Maybe my CPU is limiting me, since I have an AMD Phenom X4 955 with 3.2 ghz, but a R9 270x with 4 GB VRAM.

Probably going to have to deinstall JK's mods. Anyone knows about places similar with an Whiterun FPS drop and JK's or ETacs installed?

I might be able to help you here.. I have had these exact issues with my installation of SRLE and JK's mods through REGS, and experienced this in these exact spots. My solution was decreasing fShadowDistance (I had it set at 8000, now at ~3000-4000, still experimenting), This gave me like 35 FPS instead of 20 in the worst spots.

 

I have "only" a single GTX 970 and an i5 3570k OCed to 4.3 Ghz. The OC (from 3.5) gave me a couple of FPS, initially giving me the impression my CPU was bottlenecking, but in the end the only setting I found that could drastically improve those problem areas (another one is looking at the city from the Skyforge) was fShadowDistance.

 

For me this issue wasn't limited to JK's Whiterun and I personally can't stand FPS below 30 (or even 40 for that matter). Due to the lower fShadowDistance I can now see shadows popping in quite clearly and it can be disturbing when some trees are missing the shadows while others are not, but imo it's worth the FPS gain in JK's towns and for example ETaC.

 

Not sure if it will work the same for you guys but try it out I'd say. No other setting related to shadows gave me an increase this big btw (tried all kinds of shadow resolutions and the various iShadowXxxxxx options)

Edited January 4, 2015 by Pretendeavor

[Nearox]

I might be able to help you here.. I have had these exact issues with my installation of SRLE and JK's mods through REGS, and experienced this in these exact spots. My solution was decreasing fShadowDistance (I had it set at 8000, now at ~3000-4000, still experimenting), This gave me like 35 FPS instead of 20 in the worst spots.

 

I have "only" a single GTX 970 and an i5 3570k OCed to 4.3 Ghz. The OC (from 3.5) gave me a couple of FPS, initially giving me the impression my CPU was bottlenecking, but in the end the only setting I found that could drastically improve those problem areas (another one is looking at the city from the Skyforge) was fShadowDistance.

 

For me this issue wasn't limited to JK's Whiterun and I personally can't stand FPS below 30 (or even 40 for that matter). Due to the lower fShadowDistance I can now see shadows popping in quite clearly and it can be disturbing when some trees are missing the shadows while others are not, but imo it's worth the FPS gain in JK's towns and for example ETaC.

 

Not sure if it will work the same for you guys but try it out I'd say. No other setting related to shadows gave me an increase this big btw (tried all kinds of shadow resolutions and the various iShadowXxxxxx options)

That might be a contributing factor indeed, out of necessity with my GPU I have worked with fShadowDistance=4000 for a long time. 

[Neovalen]

I might be able to help you here.. I have had these exact issues with my installation of SRLE and JK's mods through REGS, and experienced this in these exact spots. My solution was decreasing fShadowDistance (I had it set at 8000, now at ~3000-4000, still experimenting), This gave me like 35 FPS instead of 20 in the worst spots.

 

I have "only" a single GTX 970 and an i5 3570k OCed to 4.3 Ghz. The OC (from 3.5) gave me a couple of FPS, initially giving me the impression my CPU was bottlenecking, but in the end the only setting I found that could drastically improve those problem areas (another one is looking at the city from the Skyforge) was fShadowDistance.

 

For me this issue wasn't limited to JK's Whiterun and I personally can't stand FPS below 30 (or even 40 for that matter). Due to the lower fShadowDistance I can now see shadows popping in quite clearly and it can be disturbing when some trees are missing the shadows while others are not, but imo it's worth the FPS gain in JK's towns and for example ETaC.

 

Not sure if it will work the same for you guys but try it out I'd say. No other setting related to shadows gave me an increase this big btw (tried all kinds of shadow resolutions and the various iShadowXxxxxx options)

That might be a contributing factor indeed, out of necessity with my GPU I have worked with fShadowDistance=4000 for a long time. 

Brilliant how well that worked. Min FPS is up to 30+ now... and its smooth not choppy. Wondering if i can live with the shadow pop tho... lol

[Nearox]

Brilliant how well that worked. Min FPS is up to 30+ now... and its smooth not choppy. Wondering if i can live with the shadow pop tho... lol

Oooh, I forgot to mention but SSAO also played a major role in FPS slowdowns on my system with JK's / ETaC.

 

You can try the settings Aiyen posted a while ago in the Vividian ENB thread here and see if it helps. I didn't get any artifacts with these settings, plus I also lowered SizeScale=0.65 to =0.50 (as is the default of Vididian ENB). There's a bit of quality loss with the rest of the settings, but to me it was acceptable. 

 

I'm pretty sure I saw Boris mention once that there probably won't appear artifacts with SizeScale and SourceTextureScale as low as 0.3 or 0.35. 

 

Could also try disabling SSAO completely for testing purposes just to observe whether it is a major culprit.

 

EDIT: Neo I believe you are using the HQ version of Vividian right? In that case I'd try disabling just the complexIL and complex AO and supersampling parameters first.

 

[sSAO_SSIL]

UseIndirectLighting=true

UseComplexIndirectLighting=false

UseComplexAmbientOcclusion=false

UseAmbientIndirectLighting=true

SamplingQuality=2

SamplingPrecision=2

SamplingRange=0.31

FadeFogRange=1.0

 

SizeScale=0.65

SourceTexturesScale=0.5

 

FilterQuality=2

FilterType=2

AOAmount=1.85

AOAmountInterior=1.75

ILAmount=2.0

ILAmountInterior=2.0

AOIntensity=1.5

AOIntensityInterior=1.0

AOType=1

AOMixingType=0

AOMixingTypeInterior=2

UseOldType=false

EnableDenoiser=true

EnableSupersampling=false

ILType=0

EnableComplexFilter=true

[phazer11]

Still getting the potato heads. Doesn't seem to matter where I place my merge patch or the Non-Essential Children's patch which I have loading after my RS Children merge patch. Tried remaking the bashed patch etc. Ideas?

[Daagar]

Whiterun Outskirts are included - there is a post at nexus confirming.

 

I don't mind the FPS drop from JK's stuff so much - I seem to get 27-33fps on my system, which is fine. The big issue I have is waiting for it to load in the textures for the first time, though I think this is a matter of limited vram (2GB) and texture thrashing moreso than JK's mods. Once textures are loaded, it is smooth even if somewhat low fps. And then I turn around... aiiieeee.

So - on a whim I tried out a couple of settings. I enabled "enableCompression" in enblocal.ini, and I set "Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames" to 1, and 'Single Display Performance Mode' in my nVidia control panel. Texture thrashing has abated almost completely. Note that this does nothing for FPS, but I'm fine with a smooth 30fps. I can now walk out of Dragonsreach and look across JK's Whiterun with only a bearable amount of chunking as the textures first load in, and then smooth sailing running around the city after that.

[Nearox]

Still getting the potato heads. Doesn't seem to matter where I place my merge patch or the Non-Essential Children's patch which I have loading after my RS Children merge patch. Tried remaking the bashed patch etc. Ideas?

Is that with SRLE? Hmm I believe someone reported here something similar a while ago, I believe it was related to merging  ETaC - Complete RS Patch.esp Patch - Inconsequential NPCs - RS Kids.esp Patch - Interesting NPCs - RS Kids.esp . Try to keep the default SRLE RS Children merge patch and just BUM those 3 individual patches to be loaded after it. Hope that helps. 

 

I updated the regs-srle instructions to reflect that.

[darkside]

Still getting the potato heads. Doesn't seem to matter where I place my merge patch or the Non-Essential Children's patch which I have loading after my RS Children merge patch. Tried remaking the bashed patch etc. Ideas?

I merged them in this order without renumber Form ID. No potato head.

 

RSChildren_CompleteUSKP.esp (Name of the merged esp)

  RSChildren_PatchUSKP.esp

  Patch - Falskaar - RS kids.esp

  Patch - Wyrm - RS kids.esp

  ETaC - Complete RS Patch.esp

  Patch - Inconsequential NPCs - RS kids.esp

  Patch - Interesting NPCs - RS kids.esp

  RSChildren_PatchBooksofSkyrim.esp

  RSChildren_PatchNEC.esp

[phazer11]

I fixed it. Turned out it was PerMa it wasn't remaking the patch fully or something so I deleted the PatchusMaximus esp and had it rebuild from scratch. Magically fixed everything lol.

 

Oh hey I don't think anyone answered my question. What do I need to do to go from Dawn of Riften to JK's Riften besides change from Riften NavFull to Riften NavLite, and such?

[cstarkey42]

A couple things in regards to yesterday's discussion:

 

1.  I stopped in the inn in Dragonbridge, which I never do, and found that there was a good deal of clipping inside the inn.  I assume this is from Realistic Room Rental and JK but I didn't investigate it further, I just noticed it when I walked in.  I went to Morthal and didn't see any in the inn.  I realized, however, that I'm using Better Town Textures ( another benefit of switching to JK from ETAC ) and that BTT has a patch for NSUR, so most of the buildings looked like they should.  A few had the Vivid farmhouse style of roof though, which I'm assuming are new buildings that JK added.  It works well though, as there are only a couple it does break the monotony of the town.  I really like JK's Morthal, with BTT, compared to ETAC's, with Jenna's textures, as now it looks and feels like a creepy, run down town in the middle of a swamp.  It still has a wall but it's just a bunch of sticks tied together and really seems to blend in with the surroundings quite well.

 

2.  I lowered my shadows to 4000 and am experiencing a much smoother game.  The pop in is hardly noticable, I think, and I've come to terms with it by telling myself that the near shadows are supposed to have higher detail at lower values so it's a bit of a zero-sum game.  I also added vivid's classic grey mountains so they better mesh with SDO's lod, which did help the entire scene run together much more consistently and seemed to help hide the shodow pop-in.  After that I tried adjusting my SSAO settings ( thanks, Nearox ).  I use the high quality setting from vividian so I just set complex IL and supersampling to false.  I also lowered SMAA to high and set all of the AA in the enblocal to false.  Boo-Yow ( RIP SS )!  The quality loss is there but I feel it's very negligible, especially on a performance/quality basis.  Finally I dropped CWO ( I'm still pre-CW ), ran the cleaner, then got cocky and dropped footprints as well.  Game runs silky smooth ( well, relatively so.  If I want it to be ultra silky smooth I'd have to drop down to vanilla, or close to it ).  Hell, I might even bump it back up to 7 on the ugrids.

 

Hope this helps.

Edited January 6, 2015 by cstarkey42

[darkside]

Quick question

 

1) If I install ETaC complete without Dragon Bridge South, can I use Fight Against the Thalmor IV - South Dragon Bridge without conflict?

 

2) Can we still install FAtT I and FAtT III with REGS version 4.0.3 with old replacement esp(s) from REGS version 3?

Edited January 7, 2015 by darkside

[Teabag86]

Quick question

 

1) If I install ETaC complete without Dragon Bridge South, can I use Fight Against the Thalmor IV - South Dragon Bridge without conflict?

 

2) Can we still install FAtT I and FAtT III with REGS version 4.0.3 with old replacement esp(s) from REGS version 3?

I would say yes to both. 1 definitely. 2 I'm 99% sure that would be fine. Cheers

[Pretendeavor]

 

 

 

  Finally I dropped CWO ( I'm still pre-CW ), ran the cleaner, then got cocky and dropped footprints as well.  Game runs silky smooth ( well, relatively so.  If I want it to be ultra silky smooth I'd have to drop down to vanilla, or close to it ).  Hell, I might even bump it back up to 7 on the ugrids.

 

Hope this helps.

 

I never really thought of dropping Footprints, so I just tried it.. and I'm very happy with the overall smoother feeling, wow. To avoid being biased (thinking removing it SHOULD improve my game) I tested it by standing still and looking and in certain 'problematic' directions in ETaC's Dawnstar for quite a long time with a clean save without footprints installed.. It would drop to like 38-40 FPS at times, but it mostly stayed above 40. Then installing footprints on that save and doing the exact same thing again, the game managed to drop to 28-32 FPS when looking in the exact same directions after a lot of NPCs had left their footprints. Really amazed at this, thanks! Guess I underestimated the influence of scripts..

[darkside]

Any recommendation of mods that re-texture individual towns which compatible with JK's towns (Not major cities)?

 

I saw cstarkey42 mentioned Better Towns Textures . Reportedly works with JK's towns. This mod covers Dawnstar, Falkreath, Morthal and Winterhold. I still try to figure out how it works with JK's technically.

 

I really like new textures from ETaC, which need new meshes.

 

All JK's town use default farmhouse textures. 

Edited January 8, 2015 by darkside