CruNcher wrote:8 or 9 then if 9 triggers these direct NPC AI activation problems their would only be 8 left no matter what he is saying about the center cell, and how soon is no reason really it doesn't fix anything it just puts it further away from you to happen so if it happens earlier that's no problem for me knowing it can't be fixed @ all.
And i have no problems these problems are in the Generic Game Design with the default ULTRA ugridstoload of 5 and they are to perceptible braking the Gameflow directly im not like someone who stands on the mountain looks down and sees the lod and starts to cry because he has such a powerful machine god dammit (i care about direct Gameflow brakes, stuff that happens in your direct view distance especially on huge objects some meters in front of you), but i didn't experienced them before because i only concentrated on 1 subsystem.
Though this still doesn't fix the stuck texture fading (close distance lod terrain texture fade in) which is also visually very problematic in the Gameflow, and which i till now could find no information about anywhere except what Boris has analyzed, and isn't related to the ugridstoload value.
uGrids really does have to be set to odd numbers. Your character resides in the center cell of the NxN grid. At 5 cells, you are at the center cell, surrounded by 24 more cells. At ugrids 7, you are surrounded by 48 cells, ugrids 9 by 80 cells. Always evenly distributed around you. How do you calculate which cell you occupy when using even numbers for uGrids? You can't...you would always end up residing at the intersection of cells, which would complicate the mathematics of dealing with the ugrids stuff. Someone actually posted some of the code for the cell loader, and it is definitely dependent upon odd values. I am unsure what would happen with even values, although I suspect it would clamp down to the next lowest, or up to the next highest, odd value.
As for stability, you MUST make sure you have a very, very, very stable load order in order to use uGrids higher than 5. It is best to eliminate scripted mods, particularly those that employ cloaking scripts, and anything that attaches scripts to every actor (i.e. wet & cold, footprints.) One of the issues with uGrids higher than 5 is the fact that scripts run in all the loaded cells, which can become overwhelming for the engine. There is no question increasing uGrids improves your distance quality...although all it really does is push the LOD out farther.
