Question on Spyrimpref line : V

» Sat May 26, 2012 8:21 pm

So i've been reading thru the forums trying to figure out the best way to mitigate the issue with fog in dungeons and cities. I usually lose 7-10 FPS, dropping to around 25, making it noticeable. I read on the Nexus forums that lowering the following line from it's default down to 50 should help with fog.

[Particles]
iMaxDesired=750

My question is, what else does this line affect? I dont want to lose quality in my spells or in other parts of skyrim, just kill off my issues with the clustered fog in dungeons and what not.

» Sun May 27, 2012 9:34 am

You will probably loose some detail in particles (smoke/fog/steam, snow etc), but I think you'd have to take a screenshot to see what you are missing or not. I'm not sure if lowering this number will actually help, since there are plenty of commands in both .ini and prefs.ini that doesn't do anything, regardless where you set it. Setting dynamichdr to 0 for example, won't turn of the HDR. So I'm not sure if this really works, why don't you try it out?
Changing the maxdecals and maxdecalsperframe to lower numbers does work, although many things will look less detailed, but I noticed some performance increase right away.

» Sat May 26, 2012 11:10 pm

iMaxDesired=750 - This variable in SkyrimPrefs.ini controls the maximum particle count for particle effects like smog, fog and especially fire and spells. Experimentation revealed only minor changes in most smoke and fog effects, but a very noticeable change in fire (e.g. from torches) and spell effect density. For example, as this variable is raised, the Flames spell shoots increasingly larger amounts of flame from your hand; while at a value of 0, all flame from the spell is removed from view. The screenshot comparison below shows the difference between a value of 0 and a value of 950 for this variable, and the fire on the torch as well as the output of the Flame spell are both clearly affected. Changing this setting may have a notable performance impact around such effects, depending on your system.

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide/Skyrim-MaxDesired-0.png

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/shared/images/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide/Skyrim-MaxDesired-950.png

http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1