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About this mod
Adds and/or fixes North Marker, Distant LOD, LOD Clip Volume to make interiors more immersive.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Atomic Bomb ... BOOOM !!! ... No glass ...
Overview
This mod will add missing and fixes current Distant LOD. Almost all interiors capable of showing the exterior are affected. This is a huge change and directly impacts on your gaming experience ... on top of this the cells of interest do now use Sky Lighting, so you can see sun and moon phases inside the interior. Its a perfect copy of the outside, but with a fixed special interior weather (which is always sunny). The sun, lens flar, etc. all equals the exterior worldspace except for the interior lighting setup and image templates, etc. which still work like before.
In the following a more detailed overview:
Spoiler:
Show
Most interior glass/windows have been disabled which allows player char to see the exterior world (LOD). This will add a total new layer of atmosphere to the interiors of interest, gameworld. Most of the glass windows can be disabled without any issues:
BldGlassSolid01
BldGlassTrans01
BldGlassTrans02
BldGlassTrans03
BldGlassTrans04
BldGlassTransExt01
BldGlassTransExt01Opaque
BldGlassTransExt01OpaqueOnesided
BldGlassTransExt02
BldGlassTransExt02Opaque
BldGlassTransExt02OpaqueOnesided
Any of these windows use an emmitance called "FXLightRegionSunlightOffAtNightGlass [REGN:00171638]" which handles the color/light per night by a fake region which is tied to an interior weather reference. In the effect remover file all of these use a black light which disables the emmitance and entire glass will be transparent leaving only the window frame visible.
In order to accomblish the changes, proper cell oprientation was set, using NorthMarker, LODClipVolume, Exterior Worldspace and Offset. Its is very important to properly sort your mods or patch them yourself in order to make the mod function!
NOTE: The image slideshow should show some of the changes, together with many developer screenshots concerning the LODClipVolume sphere. The alignment of that spere tells the game where to cast light from interior and exterior. Since it can only be a sphere there might be few dark places around the interior cell when looking outside a window.
Weather in interior is always "default", meaning it will always be sunny/clear. I added DLC weather support for Far Harbor and Nuka-World which is missing in the vanilla game.
Fyi, weather can be changed, it can even be as in any exterior region, all weather types. However, the weather from the outside will never be equal when transfering to the inside and vice versa. This is an engine limitation and as of now, there is no mod which can fix this.
BldGlassSolid01
BldGlassTrans01
BldGlassTrans02
BldGlassTrans03
BldGlassTrans04
BldGlassTransExt01
BldGlassTransExt01Opaque
BldGlassTransExt01OpaqueOnesided
BldGlassTransExt02
BldGlassTransExt02Opaque
BldGlassTransExt02OpaqueOnesided
Any of these windows use an emmitance called "FXLightRegionSunlightOffAtNightGlass [REGN:00171638]" which handles the color/light per night by a fake region which is tied to an interior weather reference. In the effect remover file all of these use a black light which disables the emmitance and entire glass will be transparent leaving only the window frame visible.
In order to accomblish the changes, proper cell oprientation was set, using NorthMarker, LODClipVolume, Exterior Worldspace and Offset. Its is very important to properly sort your mods or patch them yourself in order to make the mod function!
NOTE: The image slideshow should show some of the changes, together with many developer screenshots concerning the LODClipVolume sphere. The alignment of that spere tells the game where to cast light from interior and exterior. Since it can only be a sphere there might be few dark places around the interior cell when looking outside a window.
Weather in interior is always "default", meaning it will always be sunny/clear. I added DLC weather support for Far Harbor and Nuka-World which is missing in the vanilla game.
Fyi, weather can be changed, it can even be as in any exterior region, all weather types. However, the weather from the outside will never be equal when transfering to the inside and vice versa. This is an engine limitation and as of now, there is no mod which can fix this.
Installation
This mod can be in/-uninstalled anytime and will offer two files:
1) The main file, with only the LOD and North Marker changes/fixes
2) The effect file, with the window glass, lighting, mist, etc. disabled
The optional plugin is ESL-flagged, don't count against normal ESP/ESM limit. The main file however is a simple ESP to reduce issues i had during development.
Patches are available in the misc files section.
This mod does not affect precombined meshes or PreVis data.
Compatibility
Map marker mods must be loaded before if not and one of the map marker is off, the entire off-setting is off. 1° difference already cause the entire LOD to screw. Therefore do not reset the current NorthMarker coordinates.
Any interior mod must be loaded before or will override the coordiante fixes/additions due to how the game handles overrides. Patching is almost inevitable.
Let me know which mods should be patched.
↑ Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch - UFO4P by Arthmoor is fully patched and must be loaded before
↑ Previsibines Repair Pack Stable Branch - PRP by BenRierimanu must be loaded before (a patch for OG and NG users is available in the misc files section)
↑ Interior Distant LOD Fixes (FX version)
↑ Interior Distant LOD Fixes (SCOL version)
‣ Interior Distant LOD Fixes (Main version)
↓ Interior Distant LOD Fixes (Patches)
Technical Issues
The LODClipVolume burns the interior cell into the LOD, which causes the LOD to be transparent at some point which might be visible when taking a closer look at the outside/exterior, i did my best to trick the game and FOV to minimize unimmersive moments.
Few interiors cells will have horrible xyz-fighting depending on view when taking a closer look at the LOD, exterior fake worldsapce. Good example, LaytonTowers01. There is probably nothing which can be done since its an engine limitation kept from good old Oblivion. Maybe i found a workaround.
Developer Notes
The following must be done in order to patch the interior cells, yet part of the mod:
In written text, you should patch:
- Add "Show Sky", "Use Sky Lighting", "Distant LOD only" to "DATA - Flags (sorted)" tab
⠀- Replace "Distant LOD only" by "Sunlight Shadow" if the interior cell uses real Sunlight since the game can only handle of flag at a time
- Keep XILW - Exterior LOD to enable the correct world orientation for the interior cell
⠀- Keep the NorthMarker rotation and DO NOT change the rotation it is required to tell XILW the correct orientation on the LOD map
- In XCCM - Sky/Weather from Region keep
⠀- "DefaultInteriorRegion [REGN:001A65EF]" for the Commonwealth,
⠀- "FarHarborRegion [REGN:0302B254]" for The Island
⠀- "DLC04NukaBorder [REGN:0600A6DC]" for Nuka-World
All of this (except NorthMarker rotation) is valid for the Cell Header in the object class CELL.
Credits
- Bethesda
- Nexus Community
- FO4Edit Team, for their invaluable tool
- Technophase0 for mod name header feedback
Epilogue
Malden Drainage and Hardware Town are few interior cells which use an improvised LOD setup by BGS, a very interesting, low profile setup, it adds prefab houses, trees and else around the cell to mimic an exterior worldspace. This made room for the idea to use SCOL to exactly do this aswell.
Concord Speakeasy is the only interior cell which uses true fake windows, which when removed show a wall instead of space. I assume it was not clear how to proceed during development, if going for LOD for interiors would be worth the effort?! This is also true for some other interios which use wooden barricades to create a fake window setup.
Adding LOD will add an insignificant load. It is noticable when disabling any GPU and force the game to render all by the CPU itself, e.g. iGPU. Around to 1-10 FPS if at all.