A modest approach to distant viewable objects, aka VWD. Lord Sheogorath will be pleased. Or throw pie at you. Depends on his mood.
This package performs a similar service for the Shivering Isles as the regular RAEVWD. The main difference is that all of the VWD objects are additions to the process. SI only included a very limited number of distant objects. The city walls around Bliss, Crucible and The Fringe, and the New Sheoth palace. Anyone who has played through SI knows though that there are a lot of large ruins, settlements, and mushroom trees all over the landscape. Not one of these has a distant object provided by Bethesda. So you run into a great deal of "pop-in" as the closeup versions load. So with that in mind I spent a few days generating low-poly meshes out of the missing pieces.
All of the meshes have been hand checked and had the following done:
* Collision data removed. If actual collision grids were still present, the branches have been deleted entirely. It's impossible to collide with an VWD object.
* Animation controllers removed. It is impossible to animate an VWD object, so this data is bloat.
* Geometry morphers removed. If a mesh had these, they've been removed, as they are only useful in animation.
* All NiStringsExtraData blocks removed. These are nearly always associated with collision.
* All BSX Flags removed. These are nearly always used for collision and animation.
* All NiSpecularProperty blocks removed. Leaving these in place causes visual anomalies, most notably the "every VWD turned yellow" issue.
* All NiBinaryExtraData blocks (tangent/normal spaces) removed. This data is not required for VWD meshes and helps tremendously in reducing memory usage.
* All parallax flags turned off. The distances involved make this useless anyway.
* All meshes have been assigned lowres textures instead of hires ones.
* Nearly all NiAlphaProperty blocks removed. If the mesh required it for transparency, it was kept. If this is left on a mesh that does not require it, visual anomalies can result.
* All NiVertexColorProperty blocks removed. These lead to some cases of black VWD objects.
* Optimization using PyFFI after the above has been done. [Note: Use of PyFFI has not been recommended since at least mid-2012. RAEVWD meshes were run through this process originally in 2008 when things were different.]
In addition to mesh work, all VWD normal maps have had their alpha channels removed since it serves no purpose. This will help some with VRAM, and eliminate issues with sparkly objects.
The typical VWD mesh comes out the other end of this process losing up to 75% of the data it was carrying with no loss of function. A fully optimized and functional VWD mesh will have only the NiMaterialProperty, NiTexturingProperty, and NiTriShapeData/NiTriStripsData branches left in its NiTriShape/NiTriStrips branches, and will have only NiTriStrips or NiTriShape branches attached to the scene root.
Compared with all of the other VWD options available, this is the most optimized, game friendly set of VWD objects there is. And the only one covering Shivering Isles at all.
My Patreon Page: https://www.patreon.com/arthmoor
Performance
Since Shivering Isles comes with very little in the way of natural VWD, performance is usually very smooth and stutter-free there even on modest systems.
Adding RAEVWD-SI to the mix is going to impact your performance. There's no solid way to say just how much of a hit you'll take, but you are guaranteed to take one on some level. This is also directly dependent on the number of mods in the Isles you have loaded. Since SI is relatively untouched compared to Cyrodiil, the hit shouldn't be excessively large. The lack of actual distant land around the area also helps greatly.
That said, in my particular instance I saw almost no impact on general performance and very little if any degradation in load times. Most likely a testament to just how small the Isles really are even when you can now see the sea of mushroom trees like never before.
The screenshots were taken with the following system:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2Ghz
8GB System RAM
AMD/ATI Radeon HD4870 w/ 2GB VRAM, Catalyst 10.6 drivers. Set to force 4xAA+16xAF.
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
Bomret's SI texture pack.
RAEVWD-SI using the reduced version of Bomret's textures for VWD.
Compatibility
The only thing this will conflict with is another VWD mod that affects the same files this one includes. Since to date there are no other VWD mods for SI, that shouldn't be an issue. But one never knows.
Known Issues
None at this time as modding for SI hsn't really taken off just yet.
Credits
Ismelda for the illuminated windows that have been borrowed from AWLS to provide illuminated VWD buildings.
The makers of Milkshape 3D, without that trial period none of the mesh work could have been done. At least not by me anyway.
side777 for help with getting the alpha channels stripped from all the normal maps.
Brumbek, for ongoing optimizations and visual improvements.
Disclaimer
This mod is not made, guaranteed, or supported by Zenimax, Bethesda Game Studios, or any of their affiliates.
Instructions
Requirements
TES4LODGen - needed to generate the distant view information.
Installation
The archive is provided as a BAIN package, which makes for relatively easy installation without the hassles associated with supporting OMODs. Manual installation should be fairly straightforward as each folder is named according to what it contains, but read on for the details anyway, ok? :)
00 Core - Contains optimized versions of the VWD meshes SI ships with, as well as the core textures required by the other modules.
01 City Plugin - The optional ESP used to activate VWD viewable buildings for New Sheoth.
02 New Sheoth Architecture - The various buildings and other highly specific landscaping pieces used for New Sheoth.
These are unlikely to be used anywhere outside the main city due to how they've been constructed.
03 Wilderness Architecture - Contains all of the man-made structured outside of New Sheoth. Bridges, settlement houses, statues, and the zealot camps.
04 Dungeons - All of the meshes used for the ancient ruins and the root dungeons.
05 Rocks - Contains the larger sized rocks found throughout the Isles.
06 Mushroom Trees - Meshes used for the Dementia and Maina mushroom trees, since they are not actual moving trees like the others.
07 Higher Detail New Sheoth Palace - Higher detail versions of the meshes used for the New Sheoth palace.
Visually more accurate than the default Bethesda meshes.
08 Higher Detail New Sheoth City Walls - Higher detail versions of the meshes used for the city walls in New Sheoth.
Visually more accurate than the default Bethesda meshes.
If you want it all, just enable all of the package options and you're off and running.
No DistandLOD folder is provided. In order to actually see the results of what you just did, you need to download TES4LODGen and run it. It's a wicked simple utility that processes VWD information based on _far.nif files provided and will tailor itself to whatever mods you have installed.
Uninstallation
Manually remove the files you installed, or uninstall it through BAIN.
Options
An optional ESP is included which places copies of trees and buildings and the ground structures of New Sheoth in the SEWorld worldspace. This allows you to see things behind the city walls that ordinarily are not shown.
The RAEVWD New Sheoth.esp file is not compatible in any way, shape, or form with Open Cities New Sheoth. Both plugins occupy the same space. If you are using OCNS, do not activate this. There is no module awareness provided since there's only one major city.
Requirements
RAEVWD-SI
RAEVWD-SI 1.7
