DROPPED The Skyrim Distance Overhaul (by Grieche)

[z929669]

Woops, read that wrong ... however, as Torm stated (and me as well), thsi mod mostly applies to those that can launch with max distance detail settings ... and I am not sure by Torm's post if his frame hit is due to distance settings or this mod. Need clarification.

 

Also, the minimum recommended system is better than Torm's laptop I think, and that is what matters most. Additionally, we need to bump up the min system I think. Otherwise, we hamstring STEP:Core for everyone ... and the average user system improves over time. Min system should be only a small step down from the average gamer system as of today (anyone have those stats?). I am thinking i3 quad core (or AMD equivalent) should be min as of 2.2.9.

 

We will be identifying mods for a "performance" install for those running dinosaur systems, but that is not the priority.

[DoubleYou]

We can mention it as a potential performance-heavy mod in the Troubleshooting section.

[torminater]

I needed to lower the distance settings with only STEP extended already , to get a rather good FPS. However, the only thing I changed in between the two testing runs, was to add SDO with all full settings in it's installer. Didn't change any ini settings. I didn't get any visible difference by adding SDO, but I did get that massive FPS drop. Probably because of the objects being force-loaded but still not rendered because of my distance settings.

[z929669]

OK, that is good to know. Obviously, this mod has a performance impact that increases quickly as the system decreases. Ideally, we would have someone test it on the current STEP min system to be sure.

 

This mod does add a ton to the game though without need to use uGrids.

[TechAngel85]

I agree with this being Core and raising the minimum system requirements a bit. Will have to research the average for each requirement. I can do that later this weekend if no one beats me to it. The performance impact over the gain is completely acceptable for the average system, IMO. I only lose 2-4 FPS with this mod active. For now, marking this as a performance-heavy mod as DoubleYou suggest is more than efficient. Users that have older systems can choose to  skip the mod as long as it's not included in the STEP:Core Patch.

[DoYouEvenModBro]

The only mod that this mod conflicts with is the LOD files from Skyfalls/Mills, right? I don't think STEP recommends those anyway so I guess I'm good to just plop this into my Load Order, assuming I deactivate the skyfalls/mills LOD files?

[DoubleYou]

I assume we're installing the Skyfalls and Skymills patch.

[DoubleYou]

Are we disabling Skyrim Distant Detail when this mod is installed?

[TechAngel85]

SRB can probably provide the patch in the STEP Patches.

 

Unless they conflict, I don't see why we would disable Distant Detail. Do they cover the same things?

[DoubleYou]

The patch is a texture...

 

I don't know, but it said in the OP that this mod wins over Distant Detail, and Distant detail is not a clean esp, so we might be in favor of removing it.

[WilliamImm]

Distant Detail is pretty much made redundant by this mod. Just simply.

[oqhansoloqo]

I'm having a strange "atomic bomb"-looking giant fire (a big glowing ball where the fire should be) near Whiterun (don't know if all giant fires look like that in my game but I assume that are all doing it).  I installed the main esp and the 4 optionals.  When looking at the atomic bomb giant fire I get pretty large FPS drops.  I do have some extra mods in addition to STEP Extended.  Perhaps it's an incompatibility with RLO?  That's the only mod I can think of outside of STEP that might affect the lighting of the fire and cause a strange effect on it.

 

Anyway, I disabled the giant fire optional esp and the problem is no longer there - I guess my giant fires just don't flicker now when far away.  Doesn't bother me.  The FPS drop when looking at the normal-looking giant fire has gone away it seems.

 

EDIT: and I cleaned the esps too, btw.  after getting the problem I tried the non-clean version of the esp file and that was messed up also.

Edited April 10, 2014 by oqhansoloqo

[dunz]

I get the same giant ball of fire and FPS drop being reported by oqhansoloqo.

[TechAngel85]

Confirmed. Deactive the SDO - Full-LOD - Giant Campfires.esp We'll not be using that one for STEP.

 

EDIT:

Reported to author.

[oqhansoloqo]

I don't know about you guys, but for me, I ran a comparison of my FPS with SDO and without it.  It drops my FPS from about 60 to about 30.  That's pretty bad.  It makes a lot of the distant details pretty, but kills the gameplay.  And some people said they were getting only 2-4 FPS drop?  Here's my computer: Intel I7 950 (3.07GHz), 8 GB RAM, 64-bit Win 7, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 4GB VRAM (EVGA FTW), 1080p resolution.  My setup is pretty good...

Edited April 11, 2014 by oqhansoloqo