Generate LOS

Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:10 am

Under: http://www.creationkit.com/World_Menu#Generate_LOS

Did anyone have the guts to press that button? I want to, but I'm afraid of loosing things.

Please advise, thanks.
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Nicole Elocin
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:44 am

Are you talking about pre-computed occlusion? I haven't done it yet, as I'm still shaping the land, but I will be soon enough.

You could always just back up your entire data folder, then hit it and see what happens. My only worry is it estimates 50 seconds per cell calculating time, and my worldspace would be about 800-900 cells, which would take like 12 hours to generate...

Heck, I may try it in the next few days just to see what happens. For all we know, it may be broken or something. :shrug:
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jeremey wisor
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:39 am

Yeah, that's what I'm worried about, breaking everything!

The option is in World->Generate LOS

I think it's important so the world map looks nicer.
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sally R
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:15 pm

I'm not sure if that button does the same thing, or if it's just a shortcut. Precomputed occlusion has it's own section in the World LOD window, so I'm not sure why they'd have a seperate button, unless it does it's own thing or something. :/
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Blaine
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 2:07 am

I'm guessing it helps generate the world map, any suicide "person" out there that want to push the button?
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Shannon Lockwood
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:46 am

But the world map is just LOD. I can only think that LOS would be Line of Sight, which is what precomputed occlusion is (It doesn't load the LOD behind the giant mountain, etc). I just can't think of why they would have a seperate button for it again...

Screw it, I'm going to try right now. I'll just cancel and do it over night if it really will take 12 hours.
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kyle pinchen
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 12:34 pm

Fu!!!!!!! You're the man! Please report back with results!
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Meghan Terry
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:40 am

Well, so far: Clicking 'Generate LOS' in the toolbar simply opens up a new window. The new window has four generation buttons, a few debug options, and options for saving/loading data of some kind.

I tried clicking the buttons, but nothing happened, so I loaded a random part of my worldspace. Clicking buttons then, from top to bottom, generate a grid of blue squares in my worldspace along the ground, in 4 of the loaded cells. I continued clicking each button in order, and various other markers and boxes appeared in my worldspace. The blue square grid went around buildings and objects such as tall walls/fences. It appeared to be mapping out where the player could stand, and what they could see?

It did all of this very quickly, but as far as I can tell, only for the few cells that I had loaded. The generate buttons were for: Quads, Occlusion, LOS, and Grid. I clicked all four, after each click my CK puttered for a few seconds, then displayed a status update. After clicking all 4, I was left with this output:

Found 2091 quads in 590 quad groups in 86.29 ms
Found LOS between 590 quad groups using 8243133 picks in 17972.50 ms( 769047 simple LOS, 0 occlusion checks )
Constructed 6 cell grids in 118.99 ms

It saved the data in text delimited txt files in Skyrim/LOS. However it did not appear to alter, or save any data into my esp.

So all in all, I'm really not too sure what this has accomplished. I'm going to try precomputing occlusion for my entire worldspace now to see what happens.
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Eileen Collinson
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:38 am

I defined the extremes of my worldspace, and used my border region as a guide, resulting in 1149 cells, and an estimated 18.5 hour generation. I clicked compute, at which point it warned me, 'This will freeze the Creation Kit and may take a very long time!' I clicked okay, and low and behold it 'froze'. Task manager shows it chugging along at about 21-23% of my processor power (So about one core). I guess I'll just play games with the other three cores and let it run...

EDIT: I have a better idea, I'm going to do like an 5x5 cell region instead just to see what happens when it finishes.
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Holli Dillon
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 1:43 am

I did a 3x3 cell area, with an estimated generation time of 7.5 minutes. The good news is that it only took about 15 seconds... This leads me to believe it either didn't do it right (is broken), or the 50 second a cell estimate is only accurate if you're on a single core 0.8ghz processor from 1996. It generated no files that I could find, and when saving, the esp grew 1kb, so I think the data is saved directly into the esp.

If generation is always this fast, then I could generate occlusion for my entire worldspace in about 45 minutes. So, when the talk shows come on tonight, I'll try that. It will give me a 2 hour window for the generation to complete, which as long as it's linear it should be far faster than that.

I'll post my results after this test in about 5 hours.
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Stacyia
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:37 am

Well, that wasn't very productive. I started it and left my computer alone for two hours. When I returned it had an error saying an occlusion query had failed, and I clicked ignore and the CK 100% hard crashed. So yeah, I don't know. My experimenting is inconclusive on this. But the Generate LOS seems to do something, just only for the few cells you have loaded, making it only good for small areas, not massive worldspaces.
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NAkeshIa BENNETT
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 7:40 am

Sorry for not answering sooner, we are in different hour zones.

Anyway, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_sight_%28gaming%29 and it's used for example for enemies to see you, I believe in the CK it's used for that and for the World map, because atm my World map only has clouds and some statics, no landsacape at all.

But I'm just guessing....
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Lakyn Ellery
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 12:05 pm

Are you talking about pre-computed occlusion? I haven't done it yet, as I'm still shaping the land, but I will be soon enough.

Btw, where do you do this and how? Thanks.

It seems its usefull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_space_ambient_occlusion
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marie breen
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:58 am

Sorry for not answering sooner, we are in different hour zones.

Anyway, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_of_sight_%28gaming%29 and it's used for example for enemies to see you, I believe in the CK it's used for that and for the World map, because atm my World map only has clouds and some statics, no landsacape at all.

But I'm just guessing....
Oh my god that actually makes a lot of sense. I was thinking line of sight in terms of LOD and loading things, not enemies! This is ungodly helpful, as I have an area where bandits seem hypersensistive and can see the player magically from very far away.

Btw, where do you do this and how? Thanks.

It seems its usefull: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_space_ambient_occlusion
You do it in the World LOD window just like statics/trees/land in the CK. I'm just not sure if it will work. I'll have to try again at some point later on to see if I can make it fully work. I'll probably do a tutorial on it when I figure it out, as there seems to be literally no information on it, and it's a pretty important step to optimize medium/large worldspaces.


EDIT: I just tried this in the Skyrim worldspace, it generates based on navmesh, which is why I had it not generating in random areas in my worldspace, as I don't have it fully navmeshed. However it still appears only to do it in the loaded cells, with no 'do entire worldspace' option. Maybe you would only do this around dungeons as it's not needed in the open wilderness?

DOUBLE EDIT: This may be important! You can do this for interiors too! That may be how to stop people from seeing you through walls. I figured roombounds would help that, but perhaps LOS is required as well? Luckily it generates VERY fast indoors, so testing it should be easy. I'm going to go see if it helps one of my dungeons.
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Bonnie Clyde
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:19 am

I added LOS to a few of the cells where stealth seemed perticularily hard, and where enemies constantly psychically knew I was there through walls or seperate floors/areas, and it didn't help whatsoever. I kind of think this may not be used in Skyrim, and is just leftover or something? They never mention it in the tutorials, and there's no documentation. I think roombounds/multibounds are all you can do to help prevent this. (If the bandit isn't loaded via roombound, he can't detect you?)
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Ells
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 3:57 pm

After looking at filesizes and both versions in TES5Edit, I think it's safe to say that LOS Generation is not actually a feature, as it saves literally no data, and does nothing at all. It must be left over from previous games. :shrug:
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Justin Hankins
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 3:25 pm

LOS Test

How the Test Works

Test mode for Search Behavior. To use, select LOS Test from NavMesh menu, right click on a point to set a start for the search, then right click a second point to set a destination (where you think what you’re searching for is); it will then draw triangles green or red based on visibility (green triangles are seen from the start location, red are not) and will build a path to the best unseen location. Used for combat to search for enemies.

From Fallout GECK.

So it's a tool to figure out in the CK what actors can see and what they can't see when searching along a certain path.


EDIT: Actually that's a different button, but I guess this one does roughly the same thing. It's a testing tool for line of sights of actors.
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BethanyRhain
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:44 am

Hi all again and sorry for late replies. It must do something because it's needed.

Anyways, go to your http://www.creationkit.com/AI_Data_Tab and try to manipulate "Aggro Radius Behavior" for your problematic foes, you might solve your problem.

Going back to LOS, I truly believe it's used because we have functions for it:
http://www.creationkit.com/HasLOS_-_Actor
http://www.creationkit.com/OnGainLOS_-_Form
http://www.creationkit.com/OnLostLOS_-_Form
You can even register for it:
http://www.creationkit.com/RegisterForLOS_-_Form
http://www.creationkit.com/RegisterForSingleLOSGain_-_Form
http://www.creationkit.com/RegisterForSingleLOSLost_-_Form
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Nadia Nad
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:31 am

LOS is a thing, of course, I just don't think it's calculated using the 'Generate LOS' tool. I think it's simply done via navmesh and what meshes actually block their view.
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jennie xhx
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 8:53 am

I hope you are right, but I'm afraid you aren't. When I get the time I might run some tests with that functions and report back.
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Kelly James
 
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Post » Tue Nov 20, 2012 9:17 am

I know for a fact that Line of Sight is not calculated through navmeshes, it's calculated in runtime by collisions. It's also illogical to calculate LOS by navmeshes, the fact that you can't walk somewhere doesn't mean you can't see something. Pathing and seeing are completely different things with different rules, and pathing is a lot more complex to calculate in runtime than seeing. Line of Sight is always in a straight line (assuming we ignore mirrors) and is thus true or false, there's no significant benefit in pre-calculating line of sight.

It's obvious that the Generate LOS features only provide information about the scene for the world builders, like where complete blind spots are because actors can't move in a position where they have LOS with that spot. It also shows where collisions that block line of sight are located. Like Alexander said, it doesn't save any data to the loaded plugin and if you choose Save it saves information in a .txt file located in Skyrim/LOS folder. It's a folder outside the data folder, and no such TXT files are distributed with the vanilla game, plus Line of Sight checks in modder's dungeons work equally well (or bad) as in vanilla dungeons.
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jessica Villacis
 
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