TES Skyrim 0.241

[jrista]

The new cloud effects look great, Boris! Skyrim is REALLY coming along with ENB now, one of the most realistic and immersive games there is.

Regarding performance, I thought I would just point out. I upgraded from 0.236 to 0.241, so a moderate jump. I've noticed in the last few forums that people have been saying, after EACH update, that they only experienced a 1-2fps hit. I would say, cumulatively, all the various graphics updates recently have incurred a grand total FPS hit of around 8-10fps. I used to get 30fps consistently with v-sync on with 0.236. I get 20fps consistently now, and if I disable v-sync, I get around 20-22fps.

That has moved the game out of the realm of playability, and into the realm of barely playable. I say barely playable, because it can be, if you aren't in combat or anything like that...but the quirky thing about Skyrim's game engine is that frame rates below 30 really kick the crap out of the scripting engine. It seems the game allocates a certain amount of time each frame for scripts to run, and with a lower frame rate, scripts run more slowly. That creates a really weird lag that gets a little worse and a little worse until you hit a higher FPS area (like a small, uncluttered interior) where things can "catch up".

I know you don't like to optimize your code, but I just thought I would offer the opinion that it could be very helpful if you did. If all of the graphics changes for the last five to seven versions only incurred a 1-2fps hit in total, that would be really good. But it has cost me at least 8fps (I run an SLI pair of overclocked 760's, which are about as performant as one 780), and that 8fps has indeed affected game playability. It is certainly up to you if/when you optimize, but I would like to officially request that the newest graphics features do be optimized at some point. I don't want to disrupt your momentum, you've been doing some amazing things with Skryim, and I don't want to see that stop! But I also don't want to see my frame rates drop to 15fps by version .250, either. ;P

I also wanted to ask about something else. I used to play the game only with a frame limiter (no v-sync), used to be 60fps, but I've dropped it to 40fps since the game seems to be fine so long as it runs faster than 30fps, and at 60fps it puts a little bit too much strain on my video cards. Since v0.236, I have found that I HAD to enable v-sync in order to eliminate a stutter that occurs when panning vertically (pointing my characters view up and down from horizon to the top of the sky). The stutter does not exist when panning horizontally. It is very disconcerting and gives me a headache when I play for more than a few minutes. If I enable v-sync, the stutter goes away, but my frame rates, which used to be around 45fps, drops to 30fps, and sometimes as low as 20fps (and now, with v0.241, it is ALWAYS 20fps.) The stutter does not seems to occur if I go back to versions prior to 0.236 (I have some, although not all, of the older versions, so I am not sure exactly which version introduced this stutter.) I know that the v0.22x versions seem to be ok.

Anyway, the stutter is a bit frustrating. It would be nice to have my frame rates in the 40-50fps range again, but v-sync will only allow 60fps, 30fps, 20fps, and 15fps, so even though I have the computing power to support a higher frame rate, I am not able to take advantage of it. At the very least, if the most recent graphics improvements were optimized, that might get me back up to 30fps, which is playable, if not ideal.

Well, thanks, Boris! You always do phenomenal work. I am stunned at how realistic Skyrim FEELS these days...it doesn't just look realistic, it feels realistic with the amazing water and the cloud shadows (I haven't yet seen sun rays...not sure why, although I simply copied in your default cloud settings without tweaking them yet, so I may just not have something configured right.)

[FiftyTifty]

To fix the stutter, you'll be trading one vice for another.

In Skyrim.ini add iFPSClamp=xx under [General].

With xx being your minimum framerate. Use a framecap to limit the fps to xx.

What this will do, is eliminate the stutter, but should you exceed xx the game will speed up. And conversely, if your framerate falls below xx, the game will go into slow motion.

[Tywele]

I agree with jrista: Yes to optimization!

[Aiyen]

Guess I could write a long story about optimization... but it all boils down to that I am quite happy with the current levels, and while I would not mind more, then it is not something that is super vital in my point of view. Most of it comes down to people not utilizing the best performance/quality settings for their machines anyways.
Heck from grass tweaks alone you can get up to 10 FPS with a quite small visual impact.
Using silly LOD mods that force in more models to be rendered, and mods that add a ton of new stuff to be rendered all eat up even more.


That said I would like to ask if the Volumentric rays can get an added feature!
Would it be possible to add a dynamic change in intensity on them where you can then set the phase?

As it is now, then at low intensities they are quite hard to notice unless you use really high timescales. Going to higher intensities is ofc. possible but the added color really can upset the weather settings if they are on all the time.
I have seen the rays being dynamic in other games, and thought it looked kinda cool, so would just like to know if it is something you would consider implementing.

[Darkstorne]

Boris, I would also love to see some more optimization. I adore pretty visuals, but I only have two 2GB GTX 560 Ti's, so I have to mix and match with ENB, picking which effects I want, and which I can live without to save performance. I don't use Depth of Field, and water displacement murders my frame rate.

I like to play at 40+ fps, but can just about handle drops to 30fps every now and again. If I enable this lighting, I may well have to disable SSAO to keep the frame rate up. Optimization could let me play with both

However, I'm buying a new GPU in 2014 (mainly for ENB ), and I get the feeling your core audience already has fantastic GPUs and don't care about optimization. So I really don't mind if you don't optimize. Besides, it's your free time - work on whatever you enjoy most Just know that if you do decide to optimize, I (and many others) will be very grateful.

[CruNcher]

CruNcher, give these settings in SkyrimPrefs.ini a try.

fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=20000000.0000 ; default was 10000000.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=15000000.0000 ; ditto

fBlockMaximumDistance=500000.0000 ; default was 250000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=140000.0000 ; default was 70000.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=70000.0000 ; default was 35000.0000

0 effect on that fade in or better fade outs @ that points

i wonder the way i test has todo with that using directly from the menu coc Riverwood instead of starting a new game, but im not sure why this should impact it


@Darkstorne

Optimization is important i see it with my new Skyrim install using 0 mods it's a big relief to get rid of all the mods (especially if it's over to debug where performance drops come from in the mod chain by having to much especially older ones that where abondened @ some time and don't get updated anymore), though im fighting with the default visual engine behavior currently much more.
Though in terms of Visual Quality normally first you try to reach the max possible then you optimize and seeing Boris adds and adds features and changes them a lot of times it doesn't seem to make sense to optimize them currently

@FiftyTifty
i guess their might be only 1 hard solution to this killing the lower quality LOD mesh change in CK for the objects that behave strange (transition right in your direct view distance) ?

[ENBSeries]

Version updated, download again
Increased performance of water displacement (parallax occlusion mapping).



Stuttering is not happen because of ENBSeries, it's drivers+game. Mouse movement by one axis is frame rate dependent (f*ng bugthesda) and i can't fix that. SLI is unsupported absolutely by my mod and i won't rely on it's performance difference between versions, for me nothing changed by fps when sun rays disabled and didn't anything which may affect performance seriously, for single card of course.
To optimize or not - this is not the topic of discussion, mod is always optimized (except first releases of some new effects) if compare to other games, if they have similar effects. More than that, optimization is one of my powerful sides as developer. Amount of features is too high by standarts of any games and this implanted to already awful slow game.

[CruNcher]

I never tried the whitcher but would you say Red Engine 2 beats Bethesda in Quality/Performance compared to Skyrim + ENB ?

I guess with Red Engine 3 Bethesda has absolutely no chance anymore with this old relic CE (Gamebryo) foundation if they don't massively improve it beyond ENB ?

[ENBSeries]

Witcher 2 game is far more superior by all means.

[jrista]

Guess I could write a long story about optimization... but it all boils down to that I am quite happy with the current levels, and while I would not mind more, then it is not something that is super vital in my point of view. Most of it comes down to people not utilizing the best performance/quality settings for their machines anyways.
Heck from grass tweaks alone you can get up to 10 FPS with a quite small visual impact.
Using silly LOD mods that force in more models to be rendered, and mods that add a ton of new stuff to be rendered all eat up even more.

Trust me, the issue is not for lack of trying more optimal settings. I have all the performance tweaks I can stand without visibly reducing quality. I eliminated all LOD mods a long time ago (for stability reasons, as it happened to be.) I've compressed all my textures, eliminated texture packs I can live without. I've disabled ENB DOF (I did that a while ago, actually, kind of interferes with gameplay, and gains me about 4-5fps, although guess I could reduce the DOF quality and maybe gain 1-2fps and still be able to use it...not that that would solve my 20fps problem). I used to play with SSAO/SSIL at a much higher level, and was still able to attain 30fps+. I've reduced SSAO to 60% of my scree now, well below the 80% it used to be, in order to maintain the performance I am getting now, and I am still at 20fps most of the time. I've been on a long-term march towards lower quality in order to maintain the playability of the game with each new version of ENB. I know that there is a cost to the visuals...but I think the per-visual cost could be reduced to maybe 1/4fps each, rather than 1-2fps each.

I applaud all the new graphics features, but personally, I don't think they can remain unoptimized forever. I'm ok if Boris doesn't bother optimizing until he is done adding all the graphics features he wants to, but I don't think optimization should be foregone entirely. It should be done at some point, because each and every new graphics feature is sucking frame rate down by 1-2 fps. Add another several new graphics features, and I'll be stuck playing the game at 50% SSAO and 15-20fps...and that really bums me out, especially if I could be back up to around 30fps if some optimization was done.

I totally understand that optimization is the ugly, boring, gritty part of coding. I'd hate it too. In the long run, though, it's what will polish off ENB in the end, and make it not only a means to make Skyrim utterly beautiful, but also keep it playable for a lot of users as well. Not everyone wants ENB just for the sake of screen archery, in which case 15fps isn't an issue to start with. All I am saying is, I'm putting my vote in for optimization to occur at some point. Doesn't necessarily have to be right now, but it would be great if it was done before Boris calls it quits on Skyrim ENB entirely.