UgridsToLoad - Fallout 3 and New Vegas

[zedas]

I'm thinking about modding up and playing Fallout 3 and New Vegas since I never got around to finishing the first and it's been a long time since I finished the latter. I've seen the discussion for Skyrim and why you should not up Ugrids in it and I see what's being said there(Been following Arthmoor since way back in Oblivion, you can take his word to the bank IMO). I'm curious do we suppose this would have been/ is an issue in the Fallouts as well? I believe I ran both of them at 7 and I don't remember any specific issues, but just because I didn't catch them doesn't mean they weren't there. I feel like a lot of things did happen before I got there in New Vegas, but I'm not really sure on that. So, I guess I'm wondering if the forum has any thoughts or knowledge on this?

 

Cheers

zedas

[zilav]

Never change grids to load in any of Beth games, they all use the same underlying engine which doesn't work well with larger loaded area.

[fireundubh]

uGridsToLoad=7 is generally safe. Anything larger decreases stability exponentially.

[Arthmoor]

All of their games from Oblivion onward default to 5. As far as I understand, setting it any higher than that in OB, FO3, or NV will result in what's known as the "bouncing landscape bug" which is highly amusing the first few times you run into it, but quickly becomes annoying afterward.

 

Basically, for reasons entirely unknown, you enter certain parts of the world map and suddenly find the landscape around you shifting up and down - not your character. If you were not moving forward fast enough at the time, you will find it very difficult to continue moving about.

 

This particular issue was fixed somehow in Skyrim. Might have been due to the change in physics systems, but nobody knows. Skyrim and Fallout 4 have a different issue in play though. Extending that distance means Papyrus events will be firing off MUCH further away from you than their designs were set up for. You can end up triggering quests and other random things far enough away that they break and you'll never know it until it's too late.

 

Bottom line is, it's not considered safe to touch this value at all. The game is NOT designed with changing it in mind, and likely never will be as long as they keep using this engine.

[zedas]

I do remember the shenanigans raising ugrids above 5 caused in Oblivion so I never touched it in that game and The LOD projects for Oblivion negated the need for it. It's a shame it can cause problems in FO3 and New Vegas cause the jump in visual quality between ugrids 5-7 is quite marked.

 

All of their games from Oblivion onward default to 5. As far as I understand, setting it any higher than that in OB, FO3, or NV will result in what's known as the "bouncing landscape bug" which is highly amusing the first few times you run into it, but quickly becomes annoying afterward.

 

Basically, for reasons entirely unknown, you enter certain parts of the world map and suddenly find the landscape around you shifting up and down - not your character. If you were not moving forward fast enough at the time, you will find it very difficult to continue moving about.

 

Well this is a revelation. I ran into this bug A LOT in New Vegas. I had assumed it was because there was an error in one of the big bugfix mods or my computer wasn't up to snuff. I thought I had to wait for the landscape to "catch up" sometimes and load the proper ground instead of the LOD for where I was. Heh I had no idea this bug was caused by Ugrid settings. The more you know. 

[MadCat221]

Even just bumping the number up from 5 to 7 nearly doubles the number of loaded exterior cells: from 25 to 49. The game engine just can't handle it.

[Roy Batty]

It will cause memory issues, havok problems and save game corruption too which is unrelated directly to the ugrids setting. This is with New Vegas, the engine was altered quite a lot by Obsidian and there's different bugs in it than Fallout 3.