For the love of god and all that is holy, someone, HELP! My eyes! -Helgen start borked-

[tutch]

Why hello there!

 

I'm totally stumped by the following issue, which I have decided to show in video form for the cinematic experience. Basically, the vanilla start in ASLAL is completely going to hell in a handbasket as soon as I get off the cart.

 

35 seconds or so shows the initial signs of impending chaos, with it degenerating significantly from there.

 

!!!!EPILEPSY WARNING!!!!

 

Spoiler

 

 

It's such a confusing problem, and I'm on day 2 of trying to fix it. Note that other starts are fine, and I could for example, start in Whiterun and walk to Helgen, and no glitches would occur.

Any help appreciated. Modlist and plugin list attached.

 

modlist.txt plugins.txt

Edited September 27, 2021 by tutch

[Just Don't]

• 00:35 - 01:10: All I see is a lot of fog. If you don't like it check the mods you installed to add said fog/particle effect (in your modlist I can see both Obsidians mountain fog and Morning fogs).
• 01:15 - 01:30: Some Z-fighting going on in the mountains/snow. Old issue, you can read about it here. I personally had a recent experience because some camera mod was changing the default fNearDistance setting (from skyrim.ini, under Display).
• 01:32 - 01:35: Cart physics bug, likely because you're playing above 60 FPS. I see you have SSE Display Tweaks, that should allow you to play at higher FPS but you need to configure it correctly for that. Check mod description/instructions for details.
• 02:15 and the rest: shadow/structures heavily flicker. Something something bad LODs, I read if you use eFPS (which is in your modlist) you need to generate your LOD files with it disabled. Also your DynDOLOD output is above plenty of mods on your modlist. I always place it near the end to avoid conflicts (and re-generate it religiously whenever I make major/any changes to my modlist).
• The black flickering vision could be an effect of the previous or other poor interaction of mods. You'll need to deal with the things above to see how it behaves once that's sorted out.

That's a very long modlist, did you check if it was working fine at some point? That would certainly help you to pinpoint the relevant mods/tools you need to check and adjust.

Edited September 27, 2021 by Just Don't

[tutch]

Hey man, thanks a lot for taking a look!

 

Quote

Some Z-fighting going on in the mountains/snow. Old issue, you can read about it here. I personally had a recent experience because some camera mod was changing the default fNearDistance setting (from skyrim.ini, under Display).

 - The z-fighting you see only occurs during the intro which is why I fixate on it so much, and seems analogous to the intense flickering that is most visible towards the end of the clip, when I disable ENB to stop the flashing.

 

Quote

Cart physics bug, likely because you're playing above 60 FPS. I see you have SSE Display Tweaks, that should allow you to play at higher FPS but you need to configure it for that correctly. Check mod description/instructions for details.

- The cart physics is likely an unfortunate coincidence; FPS is capped at 60, I ran the intro multiple times, and obviously the one I recorded had a cart bug! xD

 

Quote

shadow/structures heavily flicker. Something something bad LODs, I read if you use eFPS (which is in your modlist) you need to generate your LOD files with it disabled.

- That shadow flicker is interesting, once again, anywhere I have tested outside of the intro sequence/quest, has perfect shadows. Weird!

 

I generated Dyndolod recently, but nice tip with efps, I might have missed that. About Dyndolod, I ran LOOT as a sanity check, and it moved a few things; thanks for pointing that out, I'll move it back down.

 

I'm worried that the black flickering is related to the z-fighting type artifacting, and depth buffer inversion looking nonsense. I truly hope it might just be a borked Dyndolod due to efps

 

About the modlist, I updated for ostim, and hadn't updated since early 2021. I refreshed a few things, made a few tweaks, and that was it, everything broke. Oh well! My fine tooth comb isn't fine enough it seems, but hopefully someone has had something similar happen, or else I'll keep prodding my modlist until something catches fire/explodes

 

EDIT: efps is disabled in the modlist, no plugin loaded, so I disabled it to gen Dyndolod, and didn't switch it back on again

 

Edited September 27, 2021 by tutch

[Shadowbroker3495]

As already mentioned in post # 2. Last part of cart ride there was texture shimmering and several pop-ins and pop-outs of a tower and whole structures. Most likely Dyndolod issue.

 

The screen flashing starts the same second player character leaves cart and touches ground. I assume it is because character has now technically entered Helgen cell. Shading calculation probably different when character is inside a 3D object (cart). You don't seem to use any custom Helgen mods so rather strange, when it works at any other locations. Somehow flashing seems to be related to player character.

 

You are using a lot of ENB mods. Did you update them lately? Maybe a shader conflict but then why only at that location. Strange problem.

 

Just an observation from your mod list

 

+Cleaned ESM's

 

Be careful doing that. Sometimes it can do more harm than good. Especially the vanilla ESM's.

 

You seem to use 4K textures everywhere. You have enough GPU power and VRAM to support that? 60+ fps on Skyrims crappy gfx engine is impressive, if you are actually using 4k resolution. Just asking to rule out hardware limitations.

 

[tutch]

34 minutes ago, Shadowbroker3495 said:

As already mentioned in post # 2. Last part of cart ride there was texture shimmering and several pop-ins and pop-outs of a tower and whole structures. Most likely Dyndolod issue.

 

The screen flashing starts the same second player character leaves cart and touches ground. I assume it is because character has now technically entered Helgen cell. Shading calculation probably different when character is inside a 3D object (cart). You don't seem to use any custom Helgen mods so rather strange, when it works at any other locations. Somehow flashing seems to be related to player character.

 

You are using a lot of ENB mods. Did you update them lately? Maybe a shader conflict but then why only at that location. Strange problem.

 

Just an observation from your mod list

 

+Cleaned ESM's

 

Be careful doing that. Sometimes it can do more harm than good. Especially the vanilla ESM's.

 

You seem to use 4K textures everywhere. You have enough GPU power and VRAM to support that? 60+ fps on Skyrims crappy gfx engine is impressive, if you are actually using 4k resolution. Just asking to rule out hardware limitations.

 

Indeed, it's very odd. I even went to Helgen (and got the Alternate Start event), went to Winterhold, Solitude, and walked around Tamriel. Absolutely fine, but the intro murders everything. I'm going through all landscape mods that could cause issues with newest Dyndolod, and making sure I have purged all LOD files before gen.

 

I cleaned the ESM's to see if that was a possible cause; if needs must, I can just disable that to get vanilla masters back. Is it no longer the thing to clean masters? Thansk for the heads up.

 

And I'm very lucky to have a good rig (RTX 3080, 64gb RAM, and a 9600K overclocked to hell to keep up lol) and I try to be reasonable and only go for 4k on larger things, and get 4k/2k mixes where possible.

 

The cart -> Cell is interesting, would it be worth looking at the cell specifically in SSEdit? The ENB is a clean install and redownload, to be safe (using NVT ENB, looks lovely)

Edited September 27, 2021 by tutch

[Tlam99]

4 minutes ago, tutch said:

vanilla masters back. Is it no longer the thing to clean masters?

cleaning those is not recommended. It can cause glitches very late in game. 

Once I had a glitch missing structures to the final fight Miraak, just water, no island the way to him. Caused by a cleaned Vanilla Master.

Never clean masters

Shadowbroker is right

[Shadowbroker3495]

Considering screen flashes seem somehow related to player character, maybe also investigate these mods

 

-Immersive First Person View 8
-Immersive First Person View
-Improved Camera Custom .ini
+Improved Camera - INI Tweaks
+Improved Camera
+Customizable Camera

 

Part of your recent updates?

 

[tutch]

16 hours ago, Shadowbroker3495 said:

Considering screen flashes seem somehow related to player character, maybe also investigate these mods

 

-Immersive First Person View 8
-Immersive First Person View
-Improved Camera Custom .ini
+Improved Camera - INI Tweaks
+Improved Camera
+Customizable Camera

 

Part of your recent updates?

 

So as you can see, only Improved Camera and Customisable Camera are active, and indeed unfortunately, both are untouched, and were part of the working modlist. ?

[Th3GhostKing]

Did you ever find a solution to this? I'm also playing a very heavy load order (about 500 mods) and everything seems to work except the intro. For me I either have this soon as I try to start, or sometimes it holds off till I get off the cart the cart then starts. It's driving me nuts and hope you managed to find a solution you can share lo

[longjohn119]

I had this problem with Licentia from Wabbajack recently. I messed around turning off/disabling things but on the 4th try I just said to hell with it and just played through it (Hardest part was finding that damned door where Raloff is. Once you get inside the Helgen Keep and get your bindings removed the problem goes away and never comes back

Edited March 31, 2022 by longjohn119