Ugrids=7 in SSE

[Distortedrealms]

So I can't seem to find much on this subject for SE as google just loves to only give me endless results of uninformed parrots saying its harmful, yada, yada, ad nauseum. I used ugrids=7 for years on LE and never once had a problem and the game looked superior but that's not the point here. The problem I have is I just can't seem to get the setting to work at all on SE. Putting ugrids=7, and all other necessary lines, seems to make no difference at all. Things just pop in within eye sight like it does at 5. I use MO and have altered the profile specific INI files so that's not the problem. Does SE not have that option like LE?

 

Any ideas?

 

Please understand I know Dyndolod has its purpose but ugrids=7 was superior for short range elimination of pop-in and is what I would love to have again.

[anjenthedog]

do you mean "uGridsToLoad" ?

 

and did you also set uExterior Cell Buffer according to the value you used for uGridsToLoad?

[Distortedrealms]

Yeah sorry, was shortening it for convenience.

 

What I changed in ini:

uExterior Cell Buffer=64

uGridsToLoad=7

iGrassCellRadius=3

[traison]

Probably not the answer you want to hear but my understanding and personal experience is that uGridsToLoad is what we used to do back in LE before DynDOLOD existed. uGridsToLoad is the workaround, and DynDOLOD is the fix. Why people say its glitchy is that increasing that value does mess with certain quest scripts. It is possible some of this might have been fixed by the unofficial patch, however that is just a guess.

 

As for why you may not be seeing any change in your game. Changing the uGridsToLoad value just moves the edge where things pop in a bit further away. The problem is still going to be there. Other than that, I find the skyrimcustom.ini file does not work for all settings. If you were using that, maybe try finding the file uGridsToLoad should be in, and edit it in there. Also in MO its possible to include ini files with mods to override ini settings, check that.

 

Edit: That is assuming this value actually still works. Not used it myself since switching to DynDOLOD. I mean is anyone doing this hack anymore?

Edited September 3, 2022 by traison

[anjenthedog]

 I don't use dyndolod.  I've only played SE. (~mar 2019 - now). Afaik it's not a hack, it's simply an ini setting. At least for 1.5.97. Can't say for the 1.6x+

 

I use

 

uExterior Cell Buffer=36

uGridsToLoad=5

 

In addition, as I recall, you don't just willy nilly set the values. The one is dependent on the other. there's a simple equation to set one or the other based on the other or one (if you see what I mean), but I don't recall where I originally saw it. 

 

If I increase beyond the values above, game lag becomes intolerable for my system. Presumably, some of that is based on one's video card memory or something. idk. All I know is that 5 and 36 are the values that maintain stable operation on my computer. (I tried increasing it a long time ago ~1.5.80 or just after I moved up to 1.5.97, and ran into serious problems (it did increase the overall grid size covered, but my system wasn't able to cope). Possibly due to my middling 1060sc 6G card, idk.  (computer itself is solid, video card seems on the low end from the hardware noted by a lot of people)

 

Edited September 3, 2022 by anjenthedog
more stuffs

[Distortedrealms]

 

It may just be different on SE after all. After some more deep digging I came across a post explaining ugrids don't work the same as it did in LE and are tied to Large reference settings in skyrimprefs.ini Sure enough, upping it to 21 from 11 seemed to do what I was looking for. Thanks for the time you guys gave in responding.

 

As far as Dyndolod is concerned, I do love the look, but sadly it is just the final straw on the camels back before it breaks. What I mean by that is I get a pretty stable 60fps on my rather large mod list at all times except looking towards Falkreath, or the road to Riverwood from Helgen. When I add Dyndolod, even on low, I will suddenly get fps drops introduced everywhere that impact my gameplay more than the visuals help. As far as when I played LE, ugrids at 7 was beautiful and never resulted in performance costs unlike Dyndolod. perhaps i will try again lowering the atlas sizes even further but then that defeats the purpose I imagine.

[hamletsdead]

I almost always set my game in SSE to uGridsToLoad=7, uExteriorCellBuffer=64, and then run DynDOLOD on top of that. My game runs perfectly and I have virtually no popping bushes, grass, trees or buildings ever. Jumping from 5 to 7 won't break your game, and although it's more demanding on your system (because you're loading those extra cells and everything in them), on my system I haven't even bothered to quantify the FPS hit -- because it's just not big enough to make a difference in-game on my rig.

 

On my last rig (1080 Ti), I could still play at 1440 and get 45-55 FPS outdoors, 60-90 FPS inside, with uGrids = 7 and slightly less than 1000 mods. On my new rig (4090), I'm running at 80+ FPS outside and up to 220 FPS indoors, on uGrids = 7, with 1815 plugins. And, as I said, I don't really notice an appreciable FPS hit doing it that way. The only thing I've always noticed is that stupid giant near Whiterun is harder to get to -- but now they have a mod to make him a lot more powerful, so he takes longer to kill (which means on uGrids = 7 you still have a chance to get there). I have never noticed any other quest breaking, ever. 

[traison]

3 hours ago, hamletsdead said:

220 FPS indoors

 

Flying cheese and forks everywhere!

 

Seriously though, while it's been a long time, I seem to recall one specific quest I had issues with in LE/pre-Le that was directly caused by upping ugrids. It was the one where the female bandit comes running out of a ruin, then fights off some bandits. When you speak to her she says they're pathetic and that she's leaving to join another gang. I recall that scene never played out. Could be wrong tho, like I said, been a while since the good 'ol days.