Is Oblivion meant to look like this?

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Is Oblivion meant to look like this? 56K Warning

Just bought Oblivion and I'm having trouble making it look good.

I've installed the LOD Landscape 1.1b mod, but it still looks rubbish, there is a massive change between the area of high details and that of low details:

Is there any way of pushing back the point where the good textures are rendered to?

This is what it looks like now:

 

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You need to go into your Advanced settings and change the radius at which the grass blades and other stuff are rendered.

Everything is maxed

 

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I installed that mod but forgot to but the textfile in, I'll do that now see if it helps.

The thing that most annoys me is the massive difference between the high detail area and the low detail area, and that its so close to me. Is that normal?

If you look at my first pic, the left of the lakeshore is low details while the right all looks great, frankly I think Morrowing looked loads better

 

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In the ini file (the one located in your my documents subfolder, not the default one in the oblivion main folder), there is a line called Ugridstoload=5 (if thats not it, try searching for Ugrid in the file). If you change the 5 to a higher number it will change how far out your comp draws the full detailed objects. The number has to be an odd number and I think 11 is the max, setting it to 7 will give a fairly nice visual increase without too much performance hit.

The only problem is it can sometimes cause some visual problems with the water when you are swimming, if you do get those problems I think turning off ripples solved it.

Give it a try as its easily changed back if you dont like it.

Mr-Xoc

That sounds good, I'll give it a try, I think I've already increased it a bit (I followed the Tweaktown guide), but I'll crank it up some more

 

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Looking better now

 

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Awesome! So what changes have you made from the original install to achieve that?

Good question

In game:

1280x1024
16xAF with Trilinear
HDR on
All distance sliders maxed

Mods:

4096 LOD mod (112MBs!)
Normal map LOD mod
Grass tiling mod
Better nightsky mod
Brighter torches mod
Natural environments mod

Ini Tweaks:

uInterior Cell Buffer=16
uExterior Cell Buffer=102
iPreloadSizeLimit=209715200
uGridsToLoad=9

 

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Have you tried natural environments mod? It's got some lovely alternative sky textures and bundles with some other interesting mods like darker nights and more weather types.

Oooops yeah I've got that on too

 

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You're a star, I had the omod version of that but couldn't be bothered to install a mod manager, that will do the job nicely

 

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Just downloading Qarls texture pack, replaces all the ingame textures with hi-res versions, will post up some screenies when its installed

 

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Added Qarls texture pack

 

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Look at the fossils!

 

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In game:

1280x1024
16xAF with Trilinear (set in CCC)
HDR on
All distance sliders maxed

Mods:

Qarls texture pack 2 (315MBs)
4096 LOD mod (112MBs)
Normal map LOD mod
Grass tiling mod
Shorter grass mod
Better nightsky mod
Brighter torches mod
Natural environments mod
High res book jackets mod
Cyrodil terrain map mod (25MBs)

Ini Tweaks:

uInterior Cell Buffer=16
uExterior Cell Buffer=102
iPreloadSizeLimit=209715200
uGridsToLoad=9

 

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Minstadave you utter swine!!
I was up until about 5am today installing mods & tweaking the ini file. Currently downloading qarls_texture_pack_2 now

I have to admit it's looking pretty good now -though probably not quite as nice as on your ATI card. By the way, is your card the 512mb or 256mb variety?

I have also installed Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul mod to improve the gameplay side of things. There's some interesting info about it here:
LINK

I was up to 4am dling the the texture pack

I'm on a 512mb X1800XT and its still thrashing the card in forests.

 

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That looks sweet Minstadave,

Im going to download some of these mods now.

Just one question though, dont some of the texture packs update the same textures and so over write each other ?

Quite probably, make sure you but on Qarls Texture pack last, so the highest res textures aren't over written.

 

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Also Minstadave - could you please paste links on where is the best location to get the mods

regards

mp4

Most are from here (free registration gets you files over 2mb):

http://www.tessource.net/files/cache/index.html

Qarl's texture mod:

http://qarl.rpgmods2.com/Qindex.html

 

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Bit of advice, never goto tesco on a sunday, in fact make that any day lol.

I just braved my local Tescos, they didn't have any food Stupid Sundays.

 

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If you select the Models and Textures and sort by times downloaded you find most of them:

http://www.tessource.net/files/cache/categoryid_29__orderby_downloads__dir_DESC.html

4096 LOD mod here:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=71419

Also get BTMod, makes the user interface much cleaner.

 

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Not sure I've installed Qarls texture files right. Should it show up in the data files list? Mine doesn't -mind you, neither do the landscape LOD thingies.

Managed to make my Oblivion look nice & pretty but it's a bit laggy now & has just crashed

Might reinstall it later tonight with some selected mods....

None of the texture mods do show up as mods as they simply replace the game textures, you need to have Oblivion Mod Manager installed, see the readme that comes with the Qarl texture pack, it takes you through where to download it and which settings to set.