“Madness In The Method”
Here it is, then: the tweak guide that isn’t. I’ve made the mistake of doing ‘proper’ tweak guides before which were old the second I posted them; there was no science behind the numbers, no logic behind the selection. Such things, I’ve decided, are best left to the inimitable Koroush Ghazi over at TweakGuides.com. What I can offer, though, in the spirit of joint venture that so defines these wondrous and demented games, is the story of a screenshot. How pretentious? Very. Now let’s get on with it. (By the way, the totally rubbish ‘read more’ link, which even appears in the full version, is because I’ve broken something and now the site’s being bombed by RPS traffic. I’ll fix it when things have calmed down.) Read more…
Anyone who’s tinkered with one of these Gamebryo-powered RPGs before will recognise the engine almost immediately in Skyrim. Why the Wikipedia entry still claims that the Creation Engine is “entirely new” is beyond me, ’cause it ain’t. There is, however, an entirely new layer of bells and whistles that sits on top (or thereabouts) of the old Oblivion and Fallout 3 tech. Shaders and shadows are the most obvious, and there’s no denying the difference they make. Without mods, Skyrim can look more like a painting – think German Romantics like Johan Christian Dahl, Carl Ferdinand von Kügelgen or Caspar David Friedrich – than a modded Oblivion ever will.
Getting it to that level, though, where your view of the horizon isn’t interrupted by a mid-range splurge of low-LOD buildings and bare terrain, is a very familiar process. So much so, in fact, that the pros and cons are pretty much identical. So too the myth that there’s some universal config file that makes everything gorgeous without cost. The moment you open Notepad++ and make that first change, there’s a dialogue between game and computer that never seems quite the same as anyone else’s. Hence the extraordinary number of unresolved issues left rotting on the games’ message boards.
First, a disclaimer: my Skyrim is busted. It’s how I’m choosing to play at the moment, enduring all the crashes and framerate slumps, and generally looking forward to the point where I’m done with screenshots and can play it again properly. I’m not sure there is such a thing as a stable Skyrim that looks like Skyrim obviously ‘should’, so proceed with caution. Actually, don’t proceed with caution, proceed screaming into the arms of death like Jurgen Prochnow in Das Boot – that way, you won’t be disappointed.
To get this screenshot’s quality, then, we’ll be working with two files in your Documents\MyGames\Skyrim folder: Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini. I haven’t got all day so I’m not going through all the different folder locations for different versions of Windows; you’ll just have to look it up.
uGridsToLoad
Without question, the most important single change you can make is to have Skyrim.ini start like this:
[General]
sLanguage=ENGLISH
uGridsToLoad=11
uExterior Cell Buffer=144
iPreloadSizeLimit=262144000
Ignore the first line about the language. The one you’re after is uGridsToLoad, which Oblivion and Fallout tweakers will instantly recognise as the Big Red Button. The Doomsday Option. The silver bullet that ricochets off the wall and hits you in the nuts. The default value is 5, which is the value at which the game’s been tested and optimised. Wherever you are in the world of Skyrim, you’re inhabiting a ‘cell’. These are arranged in a grid that stretches across the landscape, and each cell has its own actors, scenery and textures. uGridsToLoad determines how many of these cells are loaded around the player at any one time. So, a low value like 5 will only load your immediate vicinity, leaving everything beyond with just crude LOD models and land textures.
My screenshots are being taken at a uGridsToLoad value of 11, which is enough to fill just about every visible cell with all the detail Bethesda’s blessed it with. It means you’re seeing the world of Skyrim as it was designed, not the butchered version that actually runs properly. The wisdom regarding the other values is that ‘uExterior Cell Buffer’ should be calculated like so:
(uGrids + 1)^2 = Exterior cell buffer
“For example, default ugrids is 5… what is (5+1)^2? That’s right, 36… which is the default exterior cell buffer setting. 
” – the man they call BoobPhysics101 on NeoGAF.
iPreloadSizeLimit, finally, is another value that scales with uGridsToLoad. The aforementioned Mr Ghazi has the lowdown on it here, and nothing much seems to have changed since Oblivion. It’s worth adding at this point that seems is very much the operative word here, and that we’re all stumbling about in the dark with a lot of this. Bet you’re glad I didn’t do a tweak guide now, huh?
Congratulations. You now have a Skyrim that looks very much like the one in the screenshot and crashes about every fifteen minutes. It might not even load at all. The fact is that anything above the default uGrids value of 5 is a recipe for some kind of disaster. The game could work fine and then suddenly croak in specific locations, or develop a strange hexadecimal pox that sees you dumped increasingly often to the desktop.
A step you can take to mitigate this is to make the game’s executable Large Address Aware. Without going into specifics, if you have a 64bit operating system and 3gb of RAM or over, this will uncap the game to use more than 2gb of it. It made the difference between my modded New Vegas running 100 per cent stable and barely running at all, so it’s not to be scoffed at. It’s a very simple process that I’m told won’t get you in trouble with Steam, and this page tells you how.
Another thing with uGrids – this is getting a bit long, isn’t it – is that your savegame gets ‘bound’ to which value you set. So if you set a value of 7 and save the game, that save won’t work if you set the value back down to 5. There is a way of recovering it, though:
1) Load game with uGridsToLoad at the ‘safe’ setting – the one it was at when you saved.
2) Load the save, which should load correctly.
3) Open the console and type the following:
setini “ugridstoload:general” 5
saveini
refreshini
This has restored the uGridsToLoad setting to its default while your save is already open.
4) Save the game. The save you create now will work at any uGrids setting from the default up.
Grass
If you just do the above, you’ll notice right away that there’s something still missing: the grass, which is still at the default draw distance. It’s easily fixed and relatively easy on hardware compared to all the uGrids stuff. Just switch to the SkyrimPrefs.ini document and find the section that begins [Grass]. Then bump up the value to something heroic like:
fGrassStartFadeDistance=20000.0000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=20000.0000
fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=10000.0000
Miscellaneous
There are few other variables I’ve changed that have quickly become the standard for Skyrim tweaking. They’re all in SkyrimPrefs.ini and I’ve definitely run out of time now, so I’m going to list them all and you can suck ‘em and see.
dTreesReceiveShadows=1
dDrawLandShadows=1
fShadowDistance=50000.0000 (this one actually reduces shadow quality but draws shadows much farther across the terrain)
bDoDepthOfField=0
iRadialBlurLevel=0 (these last two are Imagespace effects that kick in during fatality animations and such, and drag down performance)
Console Commands
It goes without saying that there’s more to these screenshots than just technical mumbo-jumbo. Generally speaking, each one involves finding the right shot despite some of the grotesquely low-res textures the game shipped with. Some were so bad, in fact, that I modded the game to swap certain types of grass for less offensive types found elsewhere. As ever, I’ve retreated to a distance where as many of the textures as possible aren’t being upscaled, but that doesn’t mean the textures themselves aren’t shit. Artistically gorgeous, mind, but complete and utter toilet when it comes to resolution. So that’s another thing. Once I’ve got the shot, I might decide to position a character in it, and that’s a whole other world of disabled AI, freezing the game’s global time modifier and trying to catch an animation at just the right frame. Then I’ll dial up the game’s day/night timescale to ludicrous speed and fish for just the right point when the shadows add volume to the scene, or the light and colour hits the magic hour. What I’m saying is that there is no magic contrast tweak that makes doing this any easier. Nothing is guaranteed.
Conclusion
I hope you have a nice desktop wallpaper because you’re now going to see it a whole lot more. You’ve seen my hardware specs on the FAQ page, and this system is inadequate for stable performance with the settings for these screenshots. Smooth performance I can do, but it only lasts until I get on a horse and ride across too many landscape cells. Mods will be along in time that try and commandeer the game’s streaming system to accommodate crazy detail levels, but the fact is that uGridsToLoad, as well as being the most powerful and transformative tweak you can make, is also the most volatile. Installing the game to SSD and having buckets of RAM will help – they might even be essential – but just as important is the VRAM of your graphics card. Maybe things would work better with a 3gb monster, or maybe the palpitating heart of Gamebryo just can’t take it anyway. You asked how these screenshots were done, and sorry if that’s not the answer you hoped for.
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Thanks for these tips! Now to see if my system does any better…
Thank you very much for the effort that you put into this post!
I’m going to make a book project about passive (or environmental) storytelling and plan to use background pictures for this and so far had no luck in producing printable screenshots with skyrim. That will help a lot! One question remains though, how do you “play” the game with 2160p? I know I can manually change the width and height and set fullscreen=0 but then I won’t see the whole window and can’t compose the shots because I only see half of it. How do you do that? Can you give me a hint?
That would be great! And btw. great site you have here. Instantly added to my feed reader
Greetings from Germany,
-shrippen
This is great. This is by far the best guide I have read on the maximization skyrim, and I have read them all.
Hey, first off I just want to say I came across your site a couple days ago and I love it. Love what you’re doing for video game art, it seems that this stuff goes overlooked far too often. Now I have a question about the GridsToLoad as that option does not show up in my Skyrim.ini so I am assuming I just add the missing lines in? Also would it be a good idea to create an alt character to load in with and exit with to change the Grids for screenshot purposes so you don’t effect your main character’s save file?
Thanks.
Thanks for the INI tweaks! I’ve been following your posts (and Flickr) since you started the Skyrim screenshots. They’re breathtaking, as I’m sure you know. I never really got far enough into Oblivion to start modding it but I’ll gladly play around with Skyrim. Going to start a new game and see if it boots with these settings.
Hi boss, just discovered your blog via Reddit. Amazing screenshots, I like the way you capture the atmosphere (composition, lights, etc.). It looks like a photographer book, in some way.
Let me ask you something: is there a way to fix the shadow-draw-distance that sometimes plagues the game? It shows a sort of “dark line” in the middle of the screen. See this example (video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HskyBnOSIVI. That’s with Ultra settings and no other .ini modifications.
Last thing before I dismiss: your contact page is currently displaying a PHP error, see bottom of the page.
Just another question. You did not tweak SSAO, did you? Because it really adds a LOT of depth to the image, when used.
SSAO ON/OFF
http://www.markstockton.com/forum/TESVAO2.gif
http://www.markstockton.com/forum/TESVAO1.gif
If you have a nVidia card… I’d sugest to try it. Check this post for more info (2nd paragraph):
SSAO FOR NVIDIA CARDS
http://forums.gametrailers.com/thread/skyrim-graphics-tweaks/1261457?page=1
I don’t actually use SSAO because I don’t like how it looks when forced through the drivers. It doesn’t interact properly with fog, for one thing, and applies unrealistic amounts of black crush to the foliage. I use it for a lot of other games but there are times when it does more harm than good, this being one of them.
Yes, it’s a bit too dark indeed. But it adds a bit more realism because stuff stops “floating” (kinda). Keep up the good work!
Great write up man. Love the shots you’ve gotten. I’ve enjoyed messing with gamebryo since morrowind but oblivion and fallout’s instability with the ugrid really made me hate it. Skyrim has proven to be strangely stable for me though using a ugrid value of 9 along with the >2 gig memory fix. Frame rates are hit or miss though using a pair of 470′s and an i7 920 @ 4ghz.
I’ve also got some custom textures I’m using that I can load to remove the clouds.
I’d LOVE to see you visit Blackreach and take screenshots there. It is by FAR the weirdest area of the game, but it’s like a completely different world. It deserves proper screenshots. You just have to progress through the story a little to get there.
my system specs are:
i7 2600k @ 5.0Ghz
8GB RAM @ 2100Mhz
ATI HD6950 2GB
Win 7 x64
i’m not having any stability issues after using your tweaks, however i am running at 22 frames per second, where before i was at 60+ on “max”.
certainly a lot prettier though!
I don’t really intend to go bat-shit on my tweaks like this, I’ve already pushed the game to the point where I’m starting to get a crash every two hours or so (which is entirely tolerable for the graphical improvements), but my LOD textures are still ass and I’m consistently bothered by the waterfalls in the distance being static. Is there any way aside from the uGridsToLoad tweak to get the damn things animated at a distance?
Also, I’m just aching for some hi-res texture packs, this mud-up-close crap is a letdown in such a new game.
Are you sure GRASS values work as intended? I tried yours:
fGrassStartFadeDistance=20000.0000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=20000.0000
fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=10000.0000
and the draw distance does not change by a single inch…
You Sir, are a true hero!
I love the skyrim.shit! WOW!
so, i tried to change my ini too.
didnt happen to much. so i just forgot about it. and played the whole night.
as the game started crashing a lot. so i wanted to go back to my old ini files.
but i cant load any of the savegames with the modified ini.
any chance you could or anyone else could help with this?
would be awesome!
i would hang all of your picture is my room! YEAH!
@Loque
I noticed that dark circle the other night and it kind of pissed me off. However, I think it might be this variable in SkyrimPrefs.ini that is causing it: fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000
Set that to zero and see if that fixes it. If it’s doing what I think it is, that dark circle is 200 units out where the shadows start to do their LOD fading. Setting it to zero means it’ll start right on your character so you shouldn’t notice it anymore.
I’ve only done minor testing, however, but I think that solves it.
Hello-
Does using the commands in the console effect achievements? I read that using the console even once disables your ability to get achievements
@Ben
Only the cheat commands are supposed to prevent you from getting achievements, and I’m pretty sure it only disables them for that session (i.e. they’ll be reenabled once you exit and restart the game). I’ve been using “fov”, “tm”, “tfc”, and even “set timescale to #” without trouble. I’ve read accounts on reddit where achievements also aren’t disabled when using “tcl” to move through debris/walls when their character got stuck.
I wouldn’t worry about it.
@ Brando
Thank you! you have inspired me to find my own images.
THANKS!
I thought about doing some “photography” in Skyrim after exploring a lot of the game through normal gameplay. I appreciate the tweaks, they’ll help a lot to photograph some of the neater areas of the game!
How to you get the cam view so far from your character?
I have mixed feelings about the gfx in this game, it looks fantastic at a medium range, terrible close up and not much better at long distance. I tried putting ugrids up to 11 and it crashed all over the place, so I have left it on 9 and it still crashes (straight to desktop, no slowing down) but not enough to detract from the experience much. I have made all sorts of changes to the ini to improve draw distances and shadows but im still not entirely happy, mainly because its not looking as good as it could, not taxing my pc as much as it could, and is still crashing…. It was stable with all the ini changes, its just the ugrids that makes it fall over, but its definitely the game not the pc in my opinion.
I have a 2600k @ 4.6ghz, 16gb ram and a 3gb gtx580, its using a maximum of about 1.3gb vram, gpu runs at mainly 80% ish with the odd spike to 99% (BF3 runs at constant 100%), never goes over 57 degrees and still crashes…..
saved with default settings on a cliff and loaded with these settings.
from 60 fps stable to ~24-30 fps … O_O
i5 @3.8
8gb ram
580 @ 855shader and 2040memory
I have been trying to find the console command for freezing time (not for changing the day/night clock speed but the actual game time, like slow motion) but I can’t find it. “set timescale to 1″ just affects the day/night clock, whats the command for slow motion?
I tried this and now the game crash me to desktop every time I try to load game. I can’t fix it even putting standard values and reinstalling the game… any suggestions please?
I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried all.
my system specs are:
Quad Core Q9450
4GB RAM
Nvidia 470GTX OC
Win vista x64
So glad I found this site. Amazing work, thanks for sharing. I’m running a Geforce GTX 590 (Gigabyte’s model) and have been able to enable all the tweaks listed above with no CTD’s or substantial frame drops. I just finished a 6 hour session with no issues. Also running FXAA and a few mods for better faces.
Can’t wait to see what you come up with next.
Best answer I have found so far for freezing animation in the game is to use the console command “tanim” which toggles animation off, and you should probably use “tai” and “tcai” as well to turn the ai off
Where exactly are we supposed to put the miscellaneous files?
I’m only having one really annoying issue with these settings, and that’s every character they show turning the loading screens is no red. Including the skyrim emblem. Can anyone help me out with that?
Where exactly are we supposed to put the miscellaneous files?
I’m only having one really annoying issue with these settings, and that’s every character they show turning the loading screens is no red. Including the skyrim emblem. Can anyone help me out with that?
About that SSAO tweak mentioned in the comments: if you set the ‘AO compatibility’ to Oblivion instead of Fallout 3, the effect’s less pronounced (not so ridiculously dark). It performs better, too.
I’m having a issue with the settings above. All my loading screens are now RED.
Also where exactly are you supposed to put the miscellaneous files?
Dylan, in the console type “TFC 1″. TFC is a toggle, passing 1 to it tells it to freeze time. If you run TFC again, with or without the 1, you’ll “snap” back into your body. If you want to see your body but be “outside” in free camera, then before using “TFC” or “TFC 1″ roll the mouse wheel back a little till you snap into 3rd person and then issue the cmd.
@Robert, if your loading screens are red, remove the following lines from your skyrim.ini file:
rUIMistMenu_AmbientZPosRGB=0,0,0
rUIMistMenu_AmbientZNegRGB=0,0,0
rUIMistMenu_AmbientYPosRGB=0,0,0
rUIMistMenu_AmbientYNegRGB=0,0,0
rUIMistMenu_AmbientXPosRGB=0,0,0
rUIMistMenu_AmbientXNegRGB=0,0,0
Could somebody tell me please, how to increase the distance view of 3rd Person? I mean in .INI file so i can move the view point far far away from my hero?
Thank you all.
P.S. Sorry for bad english, its not my first language.
Cheers
yeah very cool for screenshot purposes @1080p ultra settings 16x AF, 4x AA, FXAA and with all hd textures i could find mostly 4096×4096 i’ve got constant 60fps all around but with these settings it got to 35 at best, average 20-25, lowest possible 5 fps. after 10 mins or so game becomes unplayeble fps drops 1fps+missing textures. my rig 2600K@4.40 16gb ripjawsx@2133mhz dual 256gb kingston hyperx ssd, 2gb 6970 radeon. if i’ve got another 6970 on cf maybe could handle it lol.
Tic tac tic tac… KABOOM: artwork!
http://i.imgur.com/Wezl7.jpg
I was also having trouble with the logo turning red on the load screen, but I got that corrected. However, my map seems to be messed up, not rendered correctly, any ideas as to where update on this on the ini file to correct?
hey when i look at the map all the snow looks so so so low messed up any help ill post a pic if non of you know what im talking about
What the heck? What filter is that?
so these parameters don’t exist in my skyrim.ini files. there are two sets of ini files — one in the “My Games” directory” and the other in the actual install directory. but in either of them these don’t exist! and adding them seems to have no effect!
I just installed the update, maybe that changed things? seems unlikely though…
Sir, thank you for sharing your work.
One thing, though: you still haven’t explained how you are able to obtain the 2160p resolution, have you?
I would like to know!
The procedure for reverting the uGridsToLoad settings has CHANGED with Patch 1.3!
This user has figured it out on the Skyrim Nexus:
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/490666-patch-13-vs-ugridstoload/page__view__findpost__p__4013601
“Open a working save game – open the console
alt tab and open your skyrim.ini in your mygames/skyrim
change to these settings:
uExterior Cell Buffer=36
uGridsToLoad=5
save file
go back in to your game and in the console type: refini
close console
save game
quit
load”
If you try to use the old method, you will get a new .ini file in your Skyrim\Data folder, and the file will be named after a modification for some reason. That file must be deleted. The old method will NOT dump to the My Docs .ini file anymore!