How to force 3D tree lods to load within cell at short distance?

[Megaloblast]

Basically, the 3D tree lods for EVT look so damn good I want them to load much, much sooner.

 

The 3D tree lods are already quite dark so I was thinking it might work well to have them load at the end of my shadow distance which is set to - fShadowDistance=5500.0000

 

I'm also hoping that by loading fewer full mesh trees, the performance impact of having 3D tree lods will be nullified. 

 

Is this possible?

 

Is this is a simple as tweaking these settings, and if so, what values would be recommended?

 

fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=

fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=

fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=

Edited October 26, 2016 by Megaloblast

[Megaloblast]

I found this post by shreddit13 that had a similar idea - https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/4olhbf/im_trying_to_come_up_with_ini_settings_so_my/

 

So if it's not possible to have them load sooner, I suppose then that the only option to optimize performance is to decrease the value of "fBlockLevel0Distance=distance for object LOD level 4" to load fewer hybrid trees. Is there no way to maintain a high level of detail for distant landscape then if this setting governs both the 3D lods and landscape lods? 

 

Would I simply need to add a mesh rule for 'mountaintrim' to load Lod4 meshes in Lod8? I'm mostly concerned about my mountains looking highly detailed. 

[sheson]

There is the loaded cells and everything beyond that is LOD. Type tll in console, what you see now is the loaded cells, what went away is tree/objects/terran LOD.

 

The minimum size for load cells is the uGrids of 5, which is 5x5 cells around the player. It can only be larger.

 

The ini setting fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance, fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance, fTreesMidLODSwitchDist effect detail on full model trees in loaded cells only.

 

If you generated 3D ultra trees, which are typically only in static LOD level 4, you can lower its distance fBlockLevel0Distance to try to regain some performance/memory.

 

As you suggested, you could then use mesh rules to add/update a few select LOD objects to use LOD4 LOD models in static LOD level 8. That would again require more performance/memory again but with some testing maybe less than the trees. I would look at mountaincliff, mountainpeak and mountainridge though. Those are the big rocky tops.

Edited October 26, 2016 by sheson

[Megaloblast]

Thanks Sheson. You're the man.