Hey guys,

I'm just going through my .ini after it reset with the patch and setting it how I had it before. When I come across this line fTreesMidLODSwitchDist

I'd never touched this because I haven't changed much in my .ini files, mainly just the shadow stuff. Both my .ini files were set to Ultra before tweaking. This line which I never touched in my old .ini was set to 3600.0 but in the new .ini genrated after the patch it is set to 10000000. I don't know if I'm imagining it but I thought my frames were worse, could this be the cause? Anyone know what it does or if I should set it back to 3600 which is what I had before the patch?

Edit: The line ScreenshotIndex also changed from 7 to 2 with the patch. Again I have no idea what this line does and I'd never touched it.

Edit Again: iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=10
iMaxDecalsPerFrame=30

Both these values have been upped to 25 and 100 respectively too.

Also fShadowBiasScale=0.3000 has changed to 0.1500 again I never edited it before.

More changes here too:

Before
[Decals]
uMaxDecals=250
bDecals=1
bSkinnedDecals=1
uMaxSkinDecals=50
uMaxSkinDecalsPerActor=40

After
uMaxDecals=1000
bDecals=1
bSkinnedDecals=1
uMaxSkinDecals=100
uMaxSkinDecalsPerActor=60

Can anyone who had an Ultra .ini saved somewhere on their HDD from before the patch confirm these numbers all seemed to have been upped? I'm thinking maybe my old .ini started as High and then I manually chose the Ultra options in the game setup rather than using the Ultra preset and perhaps these options are changed only by using the presets or something. I dunno, just seems odd I had everything maxed on my old one for sure, but maybe I didn't use the Ultra preset.

Yes, those are the High and Ultra numbers (Before and After).

BTW: ScreenIndex is just the next number that your screenshot will be labeled. Changes as you take screenshots.

Okay thanks very much.

Got to admit the jump from 3600 to 10 million seems rather massive from High to Ultra, but it doesn't seem to make a visual difference so I'm going to set it how I had it before.

I set both my .ini files to read only because I don't like the patches messing with them. Once I have them set the way I like, that's the way they're going to stay.

Actually when the patch is about to come out i turn read only off because i like my patches to work, and if it needs to change ini value's because of a change from the patch then it needs to do it, but i like my games to work so meh to each his own.

What happens to the game when you take a screenshot with a read only ini file? I would suspect that it crashes since the game is looking for a file to write to but can't. Maybe?

I got fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=5000.0000 on high

I wouldnt worry too much on that one, that s LOD stuff (level of details) and doesnt hit much your GPU
maybe they ran test and felt it s safe to set it to ... basicaly ... infinite (which is what that big number probably is)

If your system cant handle it, try dropping to high. I found it reduce the amount of crashes to near zero

They did a good job on lower settings, even droping down to verry low it still look decent
It s not like the problems oblivion had (looked like crap on low !!!)
The real difference (in Skyrim) is sight distance for stuff like grass and tress in the far away distance

I'll take a proper look at that setting tomorrow, because if you got 5000 on high and I got 3600 on high before the patch, something still may have changed like you say. I would test things more but if you see my other post at the top of this forum at the moment, whenever I quit Skyrim I get a laggy PC until I restart, this makes testing settings and mods etc rather tedious

Yeah, the before are actually a mix between Medium & High. Another one that stands out as medium is the iShadowBiasScale.

Give me a moment and I'll post an spreadsheet showing the differences.

Ok, this isn't definitive but it's someplace to start: http://home.comcast.net/~dreadful/skyrim/skyrim_ini.xlsx

wow, really useful thanks, favouriting this thread now for future reference!