Did patch 1.1 mess with the LOD Distance?

+
LOD can be tricky. Lots of things to balance and manage, lots of different ways to get different effects, and lots of ways to break things unexpectedly. Plus, different drivers can react differently to the calls being made by a game to the GPU. Can create weirdness that only appears on certain cards running certain driver versions.

Hence, be sure to report what you're seeing to CDPR Tech Support:


Please, be certain that you select the correct platform. Read the appropriate FAQ section to the end, ensuring all suggestions have been followed. If the problems persist, you can use the "Contact Us" link to send in a ticket.

Be sure to include your system (including specs if on PC), a brief description of the issue, and the steps taken to reproduce it (if applicable).

_______________


Also -- edited the title to remain current with the 1.3 patch.
 
LOD can be tricky. Lots of things to balance and manage, lots of different ways to get different effects, and lots of ways to break things unexpectedly. Plus, different drivers can react differently to the calls being made by a game to the GPU. Can create weirdness that only appears on certain cards running certain driver versions.

Hence, be sure to report what you're seeing to CDPR Tech Support:


Please, be certain that you select the correct platform. Read the appropriate FAQ section to the end, ensuring all suggestions have been followed. If the problems persist, you can use the "Contact Us" link to send in a ticket.

Be sure to include your system (including specs if on PC), a brief description of the issue, and the steps taken to reproduce it (if applicable).
I've already reported LOD issues since those a pretty apparent. However, it is more difficult to ascertain whether or not Cyberpunk has been downgraded on PC with subsequent patches.

I hope CDPR is able to fix those issues and I also hope that the next iteration of the RED Engine will make use of a similar feature like Unreal's Nanite.
 
Looking back at the other CDPR games, especially Witcher 3, I can see this reoccurring issue regarding the draw distance/LOD in their games. Even on this forum, there were multiple discussing on W3 dating back 2015-2017 exactly about this, as I started digging around.

So the same complaints were for W3 at launch and some time after ( until mods fixed it). Sure, LOD it's tricky, but taking into account that their 2 latest games have this issues, we can theoretically assume RED Engine has some sort of problems with streaming assets and rendering.

We can also look at other AAA games with amazing graphics, like RDR2, and there the draw distance is just insane on a capable PC, and texture transition so smooth. So it can be done properly, if the game engine is build properly from the start.
 
Last edited:
I have a giant quantity of problems with the patch 1.3 on PC, but also with Xbox One S. Some buildings disappear, drops of FPS, and more. With the patch 1.23, Cyberpunk was better.
Sorry, the quality of the video is very low.

Looks familiar, although in my case it was with 1.23:
 
Last edited:
1.1, nine more patches like this and we're playing cyberpunk 2.0 ;)

No but seriously, after having had a break from this game I was looking forward to some stability/QoL from this patch and play over the weekend but reading the forums it seems like this patch needs it own hotfix and since steam appears to force me to update I guess the break's extended.
nine more patches and we have quake 2 graphics...
 
I've already reported LOD issues since those a pretty apparent. However, it is more difficult to ascertain whether or not Cyberpunk has been downgraded on PC with subsequent patches.

I hope CDPR is able to fix those issues and I also hope that the next iteration of the RED Engine will make use of a similar feature like Unreal's Nanite.
There is no "downgrade".

When I create an engine, it will almost always be capable of far more in every area individually than when I am running all parts of the engine simultaneously. An engine is responsible for more than just the graphics. It also needs to run the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that are handling random events, loot tables, scripted world scenes, quest timings, dynamic weather systems, AI schedules, etc., etc., etc. Every part of the game.

Of course, when I am dealing with just the rendering, I can go nuts -- crazy amounts of detail. As soon as I start introducing the other parts of the game, I wind up in situations where I might not be able to pull off quite that much visual fidelity and still have the system resources to make everything else work consistently and stably. Different parts of games like this do not connect like people think they do in their minds. Computer programs do not operate on human logic -- they operate on mathematical logic. These connections are not always going to make human sense. Hence, the number of distant buildings drawing in at a higher levels of detail...might be what's causing a bug that prevents a quest from triggering a flag in its script. The quest may break because the engine is too busy prioritizing LOD. The script gets postponed by the engine so much, that another flag fires first and creates a dead end, or an endless loop. In some other spot, the reason a nearby object receives a corrupted texture is because there are too many dynamic lights and shadows on-screen, and the engine can't make the call it needs to get that texture decompressed in time.

There are a million possible combinations, and a million possible ways for things to break, and a million possible ways to work around them. But it's a balancing act. It doesn't matter if a player has a super-high-end GPU capable of running the game at 4K, 200+FPS. If the engine is not able balance all of the games critical functions, then in order to fix the issue, I need to take from one area and give to another. Regardless of hardware, engines are still bound by their own code. (This is why engines for all games go through multiple iterations and versions, and new engines are created all the time -- to do what prior engines could not do.) Graphics processing is only one cog in a huge machine of moving parts. All of it needs to be taken into account. It's never as simple as saying, "Just do it this way."

So, there's no downgrade. It's optimization to ensure all functions of the game are able to execute properly. This may mean that LOD needs to be dragged in a hundred meters or so. Later on, it may be possible to push it back out again. All depends.

Or, another metaphor for this is: "Just because my Ferrari is capable of doing 210 mph, if I try to take that turn at 210, we'll go off the road an flip. Need to take that at 120 tops." Maximum is not the same thing as optimal.
 
Last edited:
Yea but "reduce" seems to be an understatement, no? I mean things are disappearing right infront of me, as seen in the two videos. Or here this container:
Agreed!

I literally see things forming or disappearing just like 20 meters from me when moving, sometimes even closer than that. It ruins the immersion completely.

My guess is that they are overdoing it probably because of last gen consoles, but with that approach they're making the experience worse for everybody else.
 
Last edited:
Agreed!

I literally see things forming or disappearing just like 20 meters from me when moving, sometimes even closer than that. It ruins the immersion completely.

My guess is that they are overdoing it probably because of last gen consoles, but with that approach they're making the experience worse for everybody else.
This is likely driver related. If on PC, please list your complete PC specs, including GPU driver version, and a dxdiag using the 64-bit option. A quick 30 second vid highlighting the issue would also be helpful.

Again, send this into Official CDPR Tech Support -- but feel free to post it here, too! (This is almost exactly the same stuff as happened in TW3. It's just part and parcel of dealing with engine changes.)
 
There is no "downgrade".

When I create an engine, it will almost always be capable of far more in every area individually than when I am running all parts of the engine simultaneously. An engine is responsible for more than just the graphics. It also needs to run the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that are handling random events, loot tables, scripted world scenes, quest timings, dynamic weather systems, AI schedules, etc., etc., etc. Every part of the game.

Of course, when I am dealing with just the rendering, I can go nuts -- crazy amounts of detail. As soon as I start introducing the other parts of the game, I wind up in situations where I might not be able to pull off quite that much visual fidelity and still have the system resources to make everything else work consistently and stably. Different parts of games like this do not connect like people think they do in their minds. Computer programs do not operate on human logic -- they operate on mathematical logic. These connections are not always going to make human sense. Hence, the number of distant buildings drawing in at a higher levels of detail...might be what's causing a bug that prevents a quest from triggering a flag in its script. The quest may break because the engine is too busy prioritizing LOD. The script gets postponed by the engine so much, that another flag fires first and creates a dead end, or an endless loop. In some other spot, the reason a nearby object receives a corrupted texture is because there are too many dynamic lights and shadows on-screen, and the engine can't make the call it needs to get that texture decompressed in time.

There are a million possible combinations, and a million possible ways for things to break, and a million possible ways to work around them. But it's a balancing act. It doesn't matter if a player has a super-high-end GPU capable of running the game at 4K, 200+FPS. If the engine is not able balance all of the games critical functions, then in order to fix the issue, I need to take from one area and give to another. Regardless of hardware, engines are still bound by their own code. (This is why engines for all games go through multiple iterations and versions, and new engines are created all the time -- to do what prior engines could not do.) Graphics processing is only one cog in a huge machine of moving parts. All of it needs to be taken into account. It's never as simple as saying, "Just do it this way."

So, there's no downgrade. It's optimization to ensure all functions of the game are able to execute properly. This may mean that LOD needs to be dragged in a hundred meters or so. Later on, it may be possible to push it back out again. All depends.

Or, another metaphor for this is: "Just because my Ferrari is capable of doing 210 mph, if I try to take that turn at 210, we'll go off the road an flip. Need to take that at 120 tops." Maximum is not the same thing as optimal.


I definitely prefer that this type of "optimization" is chosen by me through the graphic options (what are they doing there?). I prefer (definitely) to be able to choose if I could max out everything in exchange of a SUPERB visual rendering, of course, even with the compromise of a lower frame rate (or the chance to be able to exploit those settings with a next generation hardware as it was for crysis in 2007, for example) rather than seeing, at same setting, the graphics rendering lowered from time to time time with any new update! Now the maxed out game is well below v1.06 (!) and this optimization, improvement etc, for me it's just a worsening of what I could have, see and ENJOY (!) before, and forced by devs a priori despite the hardware one has. Customer satisfaction counts, and typical PC gamer users are not happy to see the game visual "downgraded with each patch", so it would be MUCH more appreciate if they (devs) leave us the possibility and the freedom to set the parameters as we want to find OUR personal compromise (perhaps introducing some setting to restore the previous graphics quality now sadly gone :cry:) . This doesn't take away anything to other platforms/users, and basically doesn't cost CDP anything since it is certainly not a question of "redoing" the 3d engine but just the possibility to give us some other option with "higher value" based on what we already have before .... In that way "everyone" would be happy instead of seeing this forced "optimizations" that just pisses off.
 
Last edited:
There is no "downgrade".

When I create an engine, it will almost always be capable of far more in every area individually than when I am running all parts of the engine simultaneously. An engine is responsible for more than just the graphics. It also needs to run the hundreds of thousands of lines of code that are handling random events, loot tables, scripted world scenes, quest timings, dynamic weather systems, AI schedules, etc., etc., etc. Every part of the game.

Of course, when I am dealing with just the rendering, I can go nuts -- crazy amounts of detail. As soon as I start introducing the other parts of the game, I wind up in situations where I might not be able to pull off quite that much visual fidelity and still have the system resources to make everything else work consistently and stably. Different parts of games like this do not connect like people think they do in their minds. Computer programs do not operate on human logic -- they operate on mathematical logic. These connections are not always going to make human sense. Hence, the number of distant buildings drawing in at a higher levels of detail...might be what's causing a bug that prevents a quest from triggering a flag in its script. The quest may break because the engine is too busy prioritizing LOD. The script gets postponed by the engine so much, that another flag fires first and creates a dead end, or an endless loop. In some other spot, the reason a nearby object receives a corrupted texture is because there are too many dynamic lights and shadows on-screen, and the engine can't make the call it needs to get that texture decompressed in time.

There are a million possible combinations, and a million possible ways for things to break, and a million possible ways to work around them. But it's a balancing act. It doesn't matter if a player has a super-high-end GPU capable of running the game at 4K, 200+FPS. If the engine is not able balance all of the games critical functions, then in order to fix the issue, I need to take from one area and give to another. Regardless of hardware, engines are still bound by their own code. (This is why engines for all games go through multiple iterations and versions, and new engines are created all the time -- to do what prior engines could not do.) Graphics processing is only one cog in a huge machine of moving parts. All of it needs to be taken into account. It's never as simple as saying, "Just do it this way."

So, there's no downgrade. It's optimization to ensure all functions of the game are able to execute properly. This may mean that LOD needs to be dragged in a hundred meters or so. Later on, it may be possible to push it back out again. All depends.

Or, another metaphor for this is: "Just because my Ferrari is capable of doing 210 mph, if I try to take that turn at 210, we'll go off the road an flip. Need to take that at 120 tops." Maximum is not the same thing as optimal.
I have never stated that Cyperpunk 2077 has been downgraded, because as stated above this is difficult to ascertain and would need more testing with different versions of the game.

However, while I understand the points you want to make, it seems like from your definition a downgrade is only a downgrade if developers do that for no apparent reason. I see that different. I consider optimisations only optimisations if and only if there is no visual, nor any other perceivable difference for the player. For example, I consider the console version downgraded in comparison to the PC version. Granted, the borders between a downgrade and an optimisation can be fluid and is up for discussion.

The only thing I am sure about though is that Cyberpunk 2077 has (just like Witcher 3) apparent LOD issues and CDPR also seems to agree with me. The reason for this statement is that I created a bug a few months ago and they responded saying that they were aware of the issue.

Furthermore, while I do agree that game engines are complicated things and changing one value could lead to an unpredictable butterfly effect I argue that visual changes are often contained to impacting the performance. Otherwise, we would have to be weary about playing games in 8k in a few years, or about games being cranked up to eleven. Most of the time, it impacts the performance alone, but sometimes other things are affected. For example, it seems some old games have difficulties with running above 30fps, because fps seems to equal game time which leads to an extremely fast pacing.
 
This is likely driver related. If on PC, please list your complete PC specs, including GPU driver version, and a dxdiag using the 64-bit option. A quick 30 second vid highlighting the issue would also be helpful.

Again, send this into Official CDPR Tech Support -- but feel free to post it here, too! (This is almost exactly the same stuff as happened in TW3. It's just part and parcel of dealing with engine changes.)
Um, no. No need to list PC specs, driver versions etc, because we're all seeing this. Grinding through my hardware details won't change a thing.

EDIT Though on 1.3 I see it MUCH LESS, genuinely. But still, driving through Badlands for example I see small details (rocks, shrubs etc) gently appearing in front of the vehicle.
 
I have to be honest. Each patch made the game worse on my machine. Visually and performance wise. at launch the game looked great on my PC. I had a few bugs. Ok still played 180 hours. But now, the same settings play worse and look worse.
Post automatically merged:

watch the video. the video shows the LOD crap that exists since 1.1 ! im so salty !


thats just crappy. They downgraded the game with each patch.
 
Um, no. No need to list PC specs, driver versions etc, because we're all seeing this. Grinding through my hardware details won't change a thing.

EDIT Though on 1.3 I see it MUCH LESS, genuinely. But still, driving through Badlands for example I see small details (rocks, shrubs etc) gently appearing in front of the vehicle.
I'm inclined to agree that it's additional optimization related to last gen consoles, that has spilled over onto PC. Which means that updated mods will likely fix it in the next day or two.
 
Um, no. No need to list PC specs, driver versions etc, because we're all seeing this. Grinding through my hardware details won't change a thing.

EDIT Though on 1.3 I see it MUCH LESS, genuinely. But still, driving through Badlands for example I see small details (rocks, shrubs etc) gently appearing in front of the vehicle.
We're "all seeing changes in the LOD"? Most likely. When changes are made to the engine itself, the differences will be universal (at least on that platform).

What I'm talking about is if you think you're seeing a bug. For example, high-def LOD drawing in for the mid-field, but then culling for the near-field. No, in that case, we're not "all seeing the same thing". I've not seen that even once. Just because I happen to see an issue, it doesn't meant that others are all seeing the same thing. Just because I'm not seeing an issue, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist for others. And even 1,000 users all seeing a particular issue would be less than 10% of the total player base just on PC.

If playing on PC, listing hardware specifications is specifically necessary if you wish to send in a ticket -- for anything. If I am not willing to provide the info, I wouldn't expect any sort of consequential response. That's why it's specifically requested at the time of creating the ticket.

As stated, for this issue, I believe it's likely going to come down to driver versions on certain GPUs. On a 980 ti, running Nvidia Reference 460.79, I've not seen anything that looks incorrectly rendered or drawn. I am seeing high-def LOD drawing in noticeably closer to the camera. In general, some people simply don't like the fact that LOD scaling was pulled in. But that's preference; it's neither an issue nor a bug. How much it bothers one player over another is entirely subjective. Hopefully, as work continues, it can be pushed further out again. Obviously, we all want games to look better. It's simply not always possible, or not possible immediately.
 
I'm inclined to agree that it's additional optimization related to last gen consoles, that has spilled over onto PC. Which means that updated mods will likely fix it in the next day or two.
This isn't how it works. Building a game on Xbox is not the same as building it on Playstation. Those two are not the same as building for the Switch. And none of those are the same as building for PC. This is why many, many studios develop for only one platform, or will receive aid from a producer or separate studio to port the game to other platforms. Multi-platform is a ton of extra work.

Yes, there are certain elements like art assets and sound files that can sometimes be shared, 1:1, but one of the most diverse and particular things between different platforms will be its rendering. Therefore, changes made to graphical settings on a console often have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any changes that are made for the PC version. They often won't even use the same commands or configuration files. Totally separate.

The reason that graphics are being affected on PC is because that's what is necessary to try to fix the graphical issues (or other engine issues) that are affecting the PC. Just like for TW3...or Skyrim...or...any other of the thousands of video games released on PC...it is always possible to customize things for your, unique system, or tweak things for high-end machines -- but these things are not universally applicable. If you want proof, go to any modder's page that fiddles with LOD for whatever game and look at the number of players that can't use it, are encountering bugs, or have issues running it. The official releases from any studio will always try to get the game running as stably as possible across the board for that platform according to the system specs at the time of release.
 
Top Bottom