GUIDE Fear and Loathing in New Vegas - Feedback

[oqhansoloqo]

I had to make a lot of extra tweaks to get 2K textures and efficient antialiasing to run nicely in my setup.  Do you plan on putting any section on how to do that?  Basically, I had to use FNV4GB (otherwise my game would be able to start up into the main menu but not load the actual 3D game), ENB injector version (for ENBoost, fake fullscreen, and to run SMAA; the wrapper version ran with bad performance with FNV4GB), SMAA (for efficient antialiasing).  I also did some graphics card driver tweaking through NVIDIA Inspector.  Basically, I applied ideas from Skyrim S.T.E.P. tweaking, but I had to modify concepts a bit to get things working correctly... enough that I think it warrants an actual separate guide (versus trying to the tweaking guides in STEP for Skyrim to figure it out) to explain the differences.  I think the most important thing that I did that a lot of people might not realize is using the injector version of ENB instead of the wrapper version.

Edited June 10, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[EssArrBee]

I've had weird issue with the latest version of MO and ENB with both Skyrim and FNV. I had planned on troubleshooting and testing a lot more last week and this one, but I just haven't had time. I'm doing some peer review and I have large grant proposal for a new round of funding so I can finally get out from under doing defense projects. If I had time to do some real testing then I'd consider just about everything like I was a couple months ago. Time is the only dimension in the universe we can actually prove exists and it is the only one we can't escape.

 

Other people can always submit a proposal if you put the work in yourself and I could add it to the guide or make a separate page and link to it from my guide.

[oqhansoloqo]

Here's a simple one for SMAA:

 

[spoiler=SMAA]Recommended Anti-aliasing Method - SMAA (this may be better to use than driver-based AA, game-based AA, or ENB-based AA)Link to instructions here (with modifications to those instructions below the link):https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENB#tab=SMAAEdit falloutprefs.ini instead of skyrimprefs.ini.Refer to Fallout New Vegas root directory instead of Skyrim root directory.

 

 

 

 

I really don't have enough knowledge to expertly recommend settings within the enb .ini files.  I do not know for sure what differences there are between Fallout and Skyrim from a more technical understanding, but just what seemed to work nicely for me.  I realized just now also that you did mention using the ENB injector instead of the wrapper.  I didn't see that note previously.  So I think that at least mentioning that SMAA can be used is important.

[oqhansoloqo]

You know what?  After more thorough testing I discovered on my computer that the game runs WAY better when not using ENBoost.  Using the ENBoost function of ENB was causing bad stuttering in certain areas.  I disabled that and it improved drastically.  Then after reading someone's observation in a Skyrim forum in the STEP forums about running the ENB dlls in general, I discovered that the game runs even better when the ENB dll file is not used at all.  Supposedly it drains some performance just from being run, even if you don't use the ENB graphical features.  Obviously not running it at all means that I can't use SMAA now, but all I did was just use the game's AA instead and I use the maximum (16).  Works great.  I don't think the game's AA is quite as nice looking as SMAA, but the smoother FPS is worth it.

Edited June 12, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[EssArrBee]

Try a driver AA for something a little nicer at the same performance. If you can get SGSSAA from Nvidia Inspector then that one is quite nice, but probably the most demanding. Try 4x on that and it should do the job. I don't recommend the combined driver AA methods, they eat FPS like crazy. There is a 4x SGSSAA with 8x some other method and it just brings framerate to a crawl. But, damn if ins't pretty, I tested it on Skyrim a while back and was so happy with the look and wish I could run it on a better system.

[oqhansoloqo]

A couple ini tweaks I did that made things look much better visually in the game:

 

iMinGrassSize=40bGrassPointLighting=1iMaxGrassTypesPerTexure=4

 

As far as driver AA goes, I'm having a little trouble understanding what you mean.  Here's what I ended up doing: I set iMultiSample=0 in the game ini to effectively turn AA off in there.  Then I went into Nvidia Inspector and tried to find SGSSAA (which I assume to translate to "Sparse Grid Super Sampling Antialiasing") in the "Antialiasing - Setting" dropdown.  I could not find that option in that list.  I decided to leave that setting on "Application-controlled / Off".  Above that, I set "Anti-aliasing - Mode" to "Enhance the application setting".  Then in "Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling" dropdown I found "8x Sparse Grid Supersampling".  I set it on that.  Is that what you are referring to?  My FPS are still good with that.  I didn't take screenshots or anything, but I think grass is looking even better with that setting... a lot better.

Edited June 13, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[EssArrBee]

I'll look into those INI settings, I use grass size of 50 I think for a little more performance and the typespertexture is set to 4 for the WFO mod, maybe I forget.

 

The types of AA that Nvidia Inspector is providing can differ from game to game so the Transparency supersampling is probably it, but if you use sparse grid and it looks good then stick with it. No reason to rock the boat. I don't expect any screens either, I have no reason to think you would lie to me anyways. This is by far the most honest internet community I've ever a part of. That probably speaks more to the places I hang out on the internet though...

[oqhansoloqo]

God, I'm so stupid...  Tinkering around with AA some more, and re-reading about SMAA I realized that I was wrong about not being able to use SMAA without ENB.  All I have to do to get it to work with FNV4GB is make sure to keep SMAA's dll in its default "d3d9.dll" filename and then place that file into FNV4GB's "exes" folder, leaving the rest of SMAA's files in the game directory.  When running FNV4GB, it will automatically run d3d9.dll thinking that it's the d3d9.dll that comes with ENB.  :)  SMAA on ultra setting seems to do an outstanding job of smoothing edges.  I mean, I can't even see the jags on edges.

[hellanios]

Will you add glowing ghouls?

[OrdinaryM]

Well I didn't feel like getting too off topic on the other forum so i came here. I've ran into an issue with the UI, Unified HUD is upscaling the main UI back to the huge vanilla sizes. Anything to do other than a whole new install of the UI section?

[EssArrBee]

Are doing the INI tweaks correctly because that is what determines the size. Put them in the MO INI editor.

[OrdinaryM]

https://puu.sh/9sIrB/a5d619edc6.png I think so.

[EssArrBee]

Will you add glowing ghouls?

 

When I start to do more testing I will consider it. I know I said I'd do more a couple weeks ago, but a research opportunity came up that I can't turn down. It takes up most of my time, so I just check the forums for people that need help, but I can't really test. To tired by the end of the day from doing a grant proposal. It will happen though, just might take a little longer than I thought. 

https://puu.sh/9sIrB/a5d619edc6.png I think so.

Lets try doing it with the INI Editor instead of the way I posted in the guide. The beta may handle INIs differently as well, we debated that before the BSA handling. 

[OrdinaryM]

No luck. Edited both fallout.ini and falloutprefs.ini. When I hide the main menu hud file in unified hud it loads the HP and AP and all that correctly (smaller) but it also breaks everything.

[EssArrBee]

Did OneHUD detect DarnUI, because that HUD effects are all added from that mod for a bunch of stuff? Unified HUD just allows all the HUD stuff to work together at the same time. Adds the PN stuff, the JIP effects, and a few others, to the HUD.