How much do specularitylight fade affect performance? : V

» Sat May 19, 2012 4:14 pm

I have the bars slide 2/3 of the way right now and im wondering if my fps will take a big hit if i max them out.

» Sat May 19, 2012 12:19 pm

I tried to increase them super high and super low then compared with screenshot images. I saw no visual difference and felt no FPS difference. Not really sure what they do honestly, since I saw no difference at all.
I did this in and outside Whiterun.

» Sat May 19, 2012 6:02 pm

I don't have the best pc. But for me, they both lag my game if I put them too high. Specularity is the shininess that you see on walls and objects. The higher the slider is then farther objects have shine. The light slider does pretty much what you'd expect, the higher the slider then lights that are farther away are rendered.

» Sat May 19, 2012 6:46 pm

I don't have the best pc. But for me, they both lag my game if I put them too high. Specularity is the shininess that you see on walls and objects. The higher the slider is then farther objects have shine. The light slider does pretty much what you'd expect, the higher the slider then lights that are farther away are rendered.

That's wrong I think. I did this near a light and I used a really high number and low number and saw no difference whatsoever.

» Sat May 19, 2012 1:05 pm

Like peber said, specular lighting/distance controls how far away you can see objects shine. However, this really only comes into play outdoors. In a shop, everything is close enough so that changing the setting won't make a difference. However, if you go into the wilderness and drop a shield, sword or anything else that shines and then walk a distance away from it, playing the slider will dictate how far away you can see the shine of objects.

To answer your question OP, the effect on performance is so small that it usually never takes more than a few FPS (in the worst scenario). The effect isn't obvious, however is just one of those things that adds a nice touch. Keep in mind that if you modify the game to display buildings/objects further on the landscape (using a mod or .INI tweak), this will begin to slow down performance because there are more distant objects that will be shining.

In terms of light distance, I'm not 100% what it does (peber sounds right for that as well), however if it does increase the distance at which you can see light sources this would be a much larger drain on resources. Try putting specular distance at the max, it shouldn't hurt performance much at all. Play with light distance during the night and see what happens.