My LOD Texture Pack!

[CaptNKILL]

Ok guys, I know most people are probably totaly satisfied with the texture pack someone posted earlier (the one made by Shaja), but I decided to take it a step further and make even more detailed textures. I also highly recommend using it with the Normal Map LOD texture pack too... it gets rid of the blocky crap.

The originals were 1024x1024, Shaja's were 2048x2048, mine are 4096x4096.

This pack is over 80Mb, so I need a good place to host it if anyone is up for it.

Here are some comparison shots:

NormalMap Mod Only:



Shaja's Texture Mod:


My Texture Mod:


As you can see, it doesnt make much difference really far away, but it will deffinitely help with those horrible "half way points" where you are walking up on the edge of the LOD terrain and theres nothing but a nasty blur, even with Shaja's pack.

If anyone wants to host, post here.

Here are some more screens I took using my mod:





By the way, I'm going to include the URL for this thread in the readme for the mod, so check back often and post feedback. If you notice any glitches at all, post here so we can figure them out. Chances are, any glitches will be fixable with .ini settings, since we may run into memory\cache issues with such large textures. So the forums here are the best place to discuss such things.

EDIT: You can get the normal map texture pack here:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/i...owtopic=330112

EDIT2: Here is some other good info for people who plan on using this mod:

Originally Posted by Corrodias

1) If you're not seeing the different textures being used, you might have to make an ArchiveInvalidation.txt file. Instructions are here.
...

3) If you want better regular ground textures, Jarrod is working on those.

Originally Posted by BlueSteel

A warning to all users with 256MB graphics cards: You will run out of texture memory using this mod. It won't change the overall framerate much, but there is noticable stuttering while turning around once all onboard memory is filled up.

This won't be noticable right after loading a savegame, but after a short while (after the next couple of cells are loaded) turning around won't be as smooth as usual. Some textures will have to be cached in system memory, causing the slight pauses when these textures are copied back to the graphics card.

I did a few tests with Video Memory Watcher. Without any replacement textures, the texture usage hovers around 200-240MB. Using the 2048x2048 textures (mainland only) and the normal map package, texture usage exceeds 256MB already, and a little bit of system cache is used. Once I started using the 4096x4096 textures, the system cache is very heavily used and the stuttering while turning around is very noticable. At some occasions the overall framerate drops too, probably when more than 256MB of textures are used in one frame.


So for 256MB cards I would not recommend using this mod, the "original" texture replacement mod is the better option for now. I'll do some more tests tomorrow, and let you know if I find a better solution.

[killahsin]

this is 4k textures right?

edit reread yah. hmm maybe you should talk with shaja and incorporate this with her mod and the normal map one into one huge lod mod? heh

[Bah!]

I hope you don't mind i put a link to this thread on the Oblivion forums in hopes of finding a host for your files.

I'm dying to get my hands on em.

[jAkUp]

Here comes the floods I can definetely see the better looking textures on the hill to the right in your mod Captn.

Also, Captnkill, upload it to www.yousendit.com for now.

[MUYA]

I wonder about the performance diff between 512mb cards and 256 MB cards witH Capt's new textures. Could somebody with both..erm test performance please

[nV`andrew]

upload it now!

[Achilles17]

What kind of impact did this have on preformance compared to Shaja's pack?

[superklye]

You still need a host? My buddy's band's site has 1TB/mo of bandwidth and is using nowhere NEAR that. And since I'm the webmaster...

[Bah!]

Such a tease..upload the damn thing already!!!!

[zoomy942]

does it slow down performance?

[joedoebell]

Originally Posted by CaptNKILL

As you can see, it doesnt make much difference really far away, but it will deffinitely help with those horrible "half way points" where you are walking up on the edge of the LOD terrain and theres nothing but a nasty blur, even with Shaja's pack.

Could we get some screen shots comparing the halfway points in this texture pack, to the normal texture pack and Shaja's pack? Are you changing the textures for those points? Or are you just saying that the contrast between your LOD textures and the halfway point textures is less than hers (her textures are a bit darker than yours it seems).

[CaptNKILL]

Sorry guys, been occupied all night

Im trying yousendit.com right now... its taking forever to upload

Kyle, if it uploads alright on yousendit.com, feel free to upload on your buddies site too. I was going to stick it on tes source like all the other mods, but you have to email them for files over 50Mb, and the email link is broken.

BTW guys, I've been using it all night to make sure it doesnt have any problems. I also did some .ini tweaks because I was noticing stuttering before (with and without the texture pack, but it seemed like there was more stuttering with it) and my load times seem to have increased a bit but the game doesnt skip and jerk all the time like its caching things. If anyone runs into more skipping\stuttering than usual, or has some missing or strange looking textures, try this:

uExterior Cell Buffer=64
iPreloadSizeLimit=209715200

A word of warning though. I pretty much just changed these at random in hopes that it would fix my problems. I didnt have any problems with them, but I know something increased load times quite a bit while smoothing out the gameplay. Both of those settings are much MUCH higher than the defaults. I wouldnt recommend trying them without 2gigs of ram, and if you have any problems, set them back to defaults (id recommend just commenting out your original settings with ; so you can set them back if it doesnt work).