Landscape LOD NormalMap Fix
From Oblivion Mod Wiki
| Author: | BlueSteel |
| Thread(s): | GamingSource |
| Version: | 1.0 |
| Last Updated: | April 30th, 2006 |
| Download(s): | TES Nexus |
[edit] Description
This mod fixes the big dark blocks on the distant LOD landscape. Something similar was already released by Loreroth, but his mod caused slowdowns on videocards with 256MB or less. This mod improves the image quality without sacrificing performance.
Works great in conjunction with shaja's Landscape LOD Texture Replacement; both mods combined still fit perfectly in 256MB of video memory.
[edit] Detailed technical information
The original normal map files were in 1024x1024 resolution, and compressed with DXT1. This caused some very ugly block artefacts, like what can be seen in the unmodified game. Loreroth changed the files to be uncompressed, which fixed the blocks, but increased the video memory usage quite a bit. My approach is similar, but instead of creating huge uncompressed 1024x1024 files, I resized the images to 512x512 before saving them uncompressed. This results in files that are only slightly larger than the original files, but still offer far better quality because of the lack of compression.
[edit] Reviews
[edit] Review by Kal Choedan
This makes a very good combination with a Landscape LOD Texture replacement. This replaces the normal maps on distant terrain, resulting in an improved appearance of shadows on distant terrain. It uses more memory than the default textures but shouldn't have a performance impact on a graphics card with 256MB of video RAM. Still higher quality versions are available for those with even more video memory.
[edit] Review by Danny Kim
Good mod. The black blocks were horrendously tormenting to look at, and this fixes that. If you have less than 256mb VRAM though, go without this, or go with this and turn a few of the video settings down. Don't even think of using this if you have 64mb VRAM, Hypermemory, or Turbocache GPUs.
