Flicking distant mist (.264)

[Noobsayer]

Running into a really odd problem with mist, and I haven't been able to find anyone else posting about it. As per the title, distant mist flickers for me in some places. It's especially noticeable around Winterhold, for instance.

 

Weird thing is, I went to record it with FRAPS so I could post a short animation here, and it doesn't flicker so long as I'm recording. Tested this multiple times, stops flickering every time. Videos show no flickering.

 

I found where .264 supposedly fixed a flickering issue with AO, but turning AO off completely had no effect on the flickering for me. So apparently this is something different. Turning MIST off does 100 percent reliably stop the flickering.

 

Any ideas? =/ GPU is a GeForce GTX 780.

 

Bonus question. Is there a way to "trick" enb to thinking it's foggy weather?  How does it know? I want to use stronger AO settings but then mountains and LODs (College of Winterhold especially noticeable) get dark smudgies on them and it's ugly. I think (?) fog fade range might help, if ... yanno ... it were foggy.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Noobsayer

[hishutup]

uh... I haven't had that issue.

 

What is your GPU?

[Noobsayer]

Sorry, I got interrupted while posting earlier. Didn't actually mean to submit yet. GPU is a GeForce GTX 780. CPU prolli bottlenecking it a little but nothing major (and hopefully that changes after Christmas ;) )

 

EDIT: typing fail

 

EDIT 2: Should also add I redownloaded the .264 binaries to make doubly sure I had the latest, and same deal.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Noobsayer

[Aiyen]

Saw this the other day.... currently looking into it 

[Noobsayer]

Saw this the other day.... currently looking into it 

Wonderful. At least it's not just me, and someone who actually knows what they're doing is on it, lol.

 

I was managing a sort of "groundfog" effect with it that I think could work well for what I want with some more anchors/tweaking, but at higher densities especially the flicker is super distracting (for me personally, at least).

[Aiyen]

As far as I can tell then the issue is because of the volumetric fog on the far mountains, and the breath effect of Wet n cold... once you exhale and the effect overlaps, a transparency issue happens and you get flickering in the fog. 

 

You can sort it out by lowering the opacity level of the volumetric fog for those specific weathers. It is not the most optimal solution but it helps. 

 

At least that was the issue I was having with it anyways. Hope it helps! 

[Noobsayer]

HMMMMMM. Not optimal but definitely better than flickering. Thanks for the heads up, I'll try that out tonight!

[Noobsayer]

Yep, lowering the opacity/removing Wet and Cold breaths seemed to do the trick. Definitely wouldn't have thought of W&C, thanks for the rescue :)

 

While I'm on Mist, though. I cranked the density/lowered the vertical fade a ton so I could better see how anchors worked. In some places -- around Whiterun for instance -- I managed a really heavy groundfog look that I really enjoyed. However, I ran into a couple of problems I wasn't able to solve. I'm hoping you guys can point me in the right direction.

 

1) Not sure the technical term. Colour banding? Ugly gradient lol? You can see it a little around the College in the distance here. While I didn't experience this around Whiterun at night I did get it pretty heavily in Riverwood at night, too.

 

2) White glowy blotches around Riverwood, when there was no lightsource I could see. I didn't mess with the opacity or anything between playing in Whiterun and going to Riverwood but the mist seemed to behave very differently to light (both were overcast nights). Apparently I didn't screenshot that. Will try to reproduce and edit one in.

[Aiyen]

In order for me to help I am going to need you to be consistent! That means learn the weather ID´s and use the same one and see what you can reproduce in different locations. 

 

Also make sure to take screenshots! :) 

 

 

I cant answer nr 2 due to the above.... nr.1 I can. All color banding is due to exceeding the dynamic range of your settings. You can adjust your tonemapping, or try to get some dithering and/or sharpen into the mix to see what you can fix. However if you mean it with very greyscale gradients then those are impossible to remove entirely, since well.. those are always hard to remove due to the very high contrast between them. 

 

Hope that helps. 

[Noobsayer]

Yeah unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce it, either, lol. Will play with tonemapping! Thanks, I really probably should have thought of that myself. So many moving parts to ENBs, though; gets a little overwhelming. :)