Elder Scrolls 4: oblivion

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Doom_Machine

New Member
i'm not really into rpg's but i liked fable so i picked this up over the weekend, played it 9 hours straight and have to say this game really amazed me, not just graphic wise but the depth and detail of it all, you can even sit in a chair and read books, pick up any item, steal things ala thief 3...apparantly one of the guys who made thief worked on this part of the game too.

i think the textures are buggy on some video cards, on my 6800gt textures looked blurry up close like most games and shadow defects..etc, however same hardware and video driver with my 7900gtx and it looks perfect.

with the following driver tweaks i obtained visual quality so good that every object looks round,smooth and detailed up close and at angles, no polygonal edges...even fear and quake 4 didnt touch this level of detail.

like i said these same tweaks looked like crap on my 6800gt plus ran like a slideshow so still buggy as of yet, theres complaints about the graphics on other forums but apparantly few have seen what it can truely do.

84.25 beta (optimized driver specifically for oblivion)
forced AA/AF to 16x
image - high quality
trilinear opimization- off on for better peformance with less quality
anisotripic mip filter- off
anisotropic sample optimization- off
gamma correct aliasing - on
transparancey aliasing - super sampling
negative lod bias - allow, only if using high AA
render frames ahead - 0 ...experiment with 2 or 1 first..this tells how many frames it will hold in advance of being displayed, for this game in particular, using 2,1,0 can help free mouse lag or prevent freezing.

to maintain constant 30+fps outdoors, i simply changed transparancy aliasing to multi-sampling but was nice to see the game with supersampling and know how good its possible to look.

ingame i personally think that turning off "show distant land" looks much better since theres no reason to see plain objects that havnt loaded yet and looks much more realistic.

most of the sidequests are fun, theres one where you go inside a painting and all the trees n stuff look like an oil painting, the a.i. isnt much better than any other game but its still buggy and a new patch may work it out better, the audio is top notch, you can hear all the birds and wind through the trees..dont care for the music though so it can be turned off.

overall i have to recommend this game for further looking into even if your not an rpg fan.
 
I have it for the Xbox 360 and I'm addicted now. It's just so fun to go around be able to punch/kill anyone...but then you're arrested, fined, or killed. I like using the 3rd person view but it's much harder to play while using it.
 
found a few .ini tweaks...anyone have more?


change uExterior Cell Buffer=36 to uExterior Cell Buffer=72.
change iPreloadSizeLimit=26214400 to iPreloadSizeLimit=500000000.
change bUseThreadedTempEffects=0 to bUseThreadedTempEffects=1.
change bUseThreadedParticleSystem=0 to bUseThreadedParticleSystem=1.
change iThreads=3 to iThreads=100.
change iOpenMPLevel=10 to iOpenMPLevel=25.

After all the above changes this is how the game looks like, you can see the FPS on the top right of the screen (screenshot)


Now on to the settings that will have screenshots and the gained FPS/quality listed.



SIntroSequence
What it does: The company movies in the beginning will be skipped and the Oblivion loading time will show right away.

How to do it: Search for the following string SIntroSequence=SIntroSequence=bethesda softworks HD720p.bik,2k games.bik,game studios.bik,Oblivion Legal.bik and change it to SIntroSequence=



bAllow30Shaders
What it does: Oblivion 3.0 shader support is turned off by default (guess that means they don't 'really' support it), by changing this option you can turn it on for cards that support shader 3.0. For ATI cards all Radeon X1K support shader 3.0.

How to do it: Change bAllow30Shaders=0 to bAllow30Shaders=1 and you are set.

What do I gain from it: This change gave me a 5FPS performance boost on top of my 25 FPS I had after all the above tweaks/settings. I am not sure about the change in quality of the image as I didn't take a screenshot of this change.



uGridDistantTreeRange
What it does: It seems to have something to do with how far the trees render. I say 'it seems' because it only added one extra treeline for me on the horizon, but this tweak, together with the two below will give a nice effect.

How to do it: Change uGridDistantTreeRange=15 to uGridDistantTreeRange=30.

What do I gain from it: The change ment a 1 FPS drop on my system. That's acceptable as I want a nice looking game that is playable, not a high FPS game that misses all the extra's. (screenshot)



uGridDistantCount
What it does: Together with the above tweak it shows you the trees in the far distance which adds to the realism of this game.

How to do it: Change uGridDistantCount=25 to uGridDistantCount=50.

What do I gain from it: This time the impact was a bit higher, a 4 FPS drop putting my current FPS at 25, still well above my acceptable limit. (screenshot)



uGridsToLoad
What it does: This tweak changes how much grids are loaded around you. The standard setting is 5 resulting in blury fields ahead of you. Increasing this will have an impact on your performance but also a more than equal impact on the quality of this game. This tweak will also (in conjunction with the above two tweaks) add a lot of extra trees in the far distance.

How to do it: Change uGridsToLoad=5 to uGridsToLoad=9.

What do I gain from it: As I said the impact was pretty much noticable as I lost another 4 FPS. But the results are very nice, just compair this screenshot with the others above. (screenshot)



bForceFullLOD
What it does: It will force the game to always use full Level of Detail on trees close to you, resulting in nicer looking trees. Sorry for not having a screenshot of this.

How to do it: Change bForceFullLOD=0 to bForceFullLOD=1.

What do I gain from it: I didn't notice any FPS drop nor did I notice a very noticable change in the quality of the trees, but I didn't check out the trees from up close after I used this tweak.



iMinGrassSize
What it does: The iMinGrassSize tweak will change the density of the grass around you.

How to do it: Change iMinGrassSize=80 to iMinGrassSize=160 or anything between it for some extra FPS.

What do I gain from it: I didn't check this tweak yet since I only changed it a few minutes ago, I do however know that it works as I changed it before and it gave me some extra FPS. Anything between 80 and 160 will do, where 80 is the standard density and 160 gives you the most FPS increase without any real noticable quality loss (quality here means large gaps between bushes of grass, the quality settings of the grass will stay the same).



fGrassEndDistance & fGrassStartFadeDistance
What it does: Increase the range of the loaded grass around you.

How to do it: Change fGrassEndDistance=8000.0000 to fGrassEndDistance=80000.0000 and fGrassStartFadeDistance=7000.0000 to fGrassStartFadeDistance=70000.0000. I tried anything higher but that didn't change anything for me. It might be because it just fills the grids that are set to high quality in the uGridsToLoad tweak so high-end users might try to increase that setting to see an increase in this setting.

What do I gain from it: My FPS didn't drop after these tweaks. I took the screenshot from a different place where you can see the increase in grass distance, my FPS here is 'low' but still playable for me. (Before / After)



bEquippedTorchesCastShadows
What it does: I am not sure if torches cast shadows without this setting enabled but I saw it disabled, enabled it and checked ingame. It looked awesome, I can image this looking really great inside dungeons.

How to do it: Change bEquippedTorchesCastShadows=0 to bEquippedTorchesCastShadows=1.

What do I gain from it: No change in FPS, but a nice change in shadow quality. See for yourself. (Sun shadows/ Torch shadows)



bDoStaticAndArchShadows & bDoActorShadows
What it does: Even tho I had all shadow settings enabled ingame I noticed these two having a zero behind them so I changed it. Didn't see any differences, but who knows, shadows are always nice.

How to do it: Change bDoStaticAndArchShadows=0 to bDoStaticAndArchShadows=1 and bDoActorShadows=0 to bDoActorShadows=1.

What do I gain from it: No clue.... My best guess would be that you'd gain shadows, somewhere, somehow, sometime...



bUseWaterReflectionsMisc & etc etc
What it does: The following water settings really increase your water reflection quality. It looks great (and thus I made some nice example screenshots).

How to do it: Change the following settings from 0 to 1: bUseWaterReflectionsMisc, bUseWaterReflectionsStatics, bUseWaterReflectionsTrees, bUseWaterReflectionsActors, bUseWaterReflections

What do I gain from it: (Almost) perfect looking water. (Before / After with uGridsToLoad set to 5 / After with uGridsToLoad set to 9)
As you can see with uGridsToLoad set to 9 you get some rendering errors in the water (top right) but those are minimal and in my opinion not worth leaving this setting alone or reverting uGridsToLoad to 5. The choise is yours tho.
 
Yeah, my friend has it too, its just sooo much to do, go where ever you want, rob houses, pick pocket people, really good fun!

Yasu, where are you on it? My friend has played it for hours, and has only done like 3 quests, though theres about 30 in the do to list, hes being roaming about loads.
 
i woldnt mind having my house similar designed as some of the ones in game...with modern trimmings of course, i can just picture where i would want my 200 inch projector screen at in each place :)

gamejackal says i've played for 13hrs 35min...not bad for me actualy, works perfect with gamejackal btw if you dont want to mess with disc swapping
 
Got the game and then realized just how bad I need a new Graphics card! Perhaps a new mobo and video card in a couple months then.
 
"This loading setup was obviously implemented to keep framerates manageable. For the most part, it's excusable considering the stunning graphical heights Oblivion is able to reach in other places. Still, the loading stutter may bother you and the framerate as well. While the game runs at a steady clip in dungeons and indoors, you'll notice a performance hit when traveling quickly through outdoor areas and in crowded towns. These framerate drops don't so much affect the gameplay, but remain an annoyance as it takes you out of the experience. On high end PCs these framerate and loading issues are diminished, but most PC and all Xbox 360 gamers will have to put up with them to enjoy the otherwise visual delight that is The Elder Scrolls IV."
from http://pc.ign.com/articles/698/698405p5.html

i wonder if my pc is good enough to "diminish" these framerate and loading issues?
 
Never really found any loading issue's myself. More just an all around low Frames. This is with rather high game settings, however, I do not want to lower the quality of the games appearance. I'd rather wait a couple of months to enjoy it the way it where meant to be. As for you Beyond, I'd think that you should be fine with your setup.
 
No it is a single player rpg... i'm not sure if any posted up the requirements for the game but here they are Minimum Requirements:
Windows XP
512MB System RAM
2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
128MB Direct3D compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
8x DVD-ROM drive
4.6 GB free hard disk space
DirectX 9.0c (included)
DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
Keyboard, Mouse

Recommended Requirements:
3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
1 GB System RAM
ATI X800 series, Nvidia GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

Media Size: 1 DVD-ROM (no CD edition)
 
this game even makes my 7900 GTX break a sweat, i can get the visuals to look truely astounding but at some dogged frame rates though, probably not worth bothering much of an upgrade less you get the absolute best out there at the moment.
 
Well for myself I was considering the 7900GT or possibly the GTX. Thing is I need to spend money on the motherboard so most likely GT. This is a considerable upgrade from my 6800GT so I'm thinking it'll be worth it.
 
Blue said:
Well for myself I was considering the 7900GT or possibly the GTX. Thing is I need to spend money on the motherboard so most likely GT. This is a considerable upgrade from my 6800GT so I'm thinking it'll be worth it.
Click to expand...

definitely...

sidenote: blue, why'd you switch monitors?
 
if you're having issues with low frame rates in outdoor areas with the high detail grass you can turn them off by dropping into the console and typing "TG"... this will disable the animated grass and may help you in outdoor areas.
i dont like the way the game plays on my system but its getting a little long into the tooth now... upgrade time when i get money lol
 
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