Did patch 1.1 mess with the LOD Distance?

[SigilFey]

Some sure. But i'm fairly certain most are not, because I experience them consistently every time between saves, updates, reinstalls, driver and windows updates. In addition they show up on completely different hardware (GeForce vs Radeon, Intel vs AMD, PS5 vs PC) if you start looking for fix on youtube or elsewhere.

Just be more specific - I suspect anyone on any machine could visit rancho coronado ferris wheel and see it dissapear when you try to climb it, see the brown door under the highway near chapel fast-travel point in pacifica or see enormous Arasaka pop-in when walking up from californie&cartweight to Konpeki plaza.

I wonder if one could build a model parser based on MOD tools that can identify and fix such objects?

I'm cerainly not saying that there are no bugs with the rendering. Of course there are. And as work continues, new ones will likely be introduced as other things are fixed.

I'm addressing the distinction between occassional graphical borkiness...and really, over-the-top, in-your-face pop-in...or the strange artifacting effects around shadows and what I think is supposed to be SSR, etc. I can confirm I'm not seeing any extreme stuff on my end. I use only rasterized graphics, as I don't have RT, so maybe some of the stuff is RT related. Probably the worst of it is the garbage heaps. I think we could use a couple of additional levels of of detail there (at least a mid-field model.)

Your top video -- yup -- that's almost certainly a rendering issue, and it is certainly a minor detail. There's no real reason to be up there. If players do go way out of bounds, that's fine, but I'd expect to see glitching. This isn't Assassin's Creed, or GTA, or Just Cause, where running amok is part of the fun and focus of the game. Clearly, this is a much more structured RPG. Poke your head back stage, and you very well may ruin the illusory magic of theatre for yourself! Granted, it can probably be fixed, but now comes the $XXX question: is the time and money to fix such obscure issues truly a priority, given that running up the broken ferris wheel has absolutely no purpose (that I know of) in the narratively driven RPG? Maybe yes; my guess would be probably not. There are much more important things for the teams to be working on.

The the door with the disappearing windows from the second video is what I'm talking about. These are the things that I'm seeing rarely on my end. But, I'm not sure this is the result of the rendering engine itself loading the wrong model...or the GPU's drivers not correctly reading the Z-buffer if the window textures are separate. I'd imagine, in this example, it's the former -- an engine/game bug. Certainly looks as if either the near-field door or the mid-field door is calling for the wrong LoD asset. Those are the types of bugs that can probably be tweaked and fixed as they're found. This might be as simple as changing a single parameter in the engine, associating the correct door model at all LoD ranges whenever the game draws instances of that particular asset series.

(As opposed to completely rebuilding the entire ferris wheel model from scratch and re-importing it into the game, simply to fix the vertices so that the axle section doesn't cull when viewed from head height from that particular angle...for the few players that decide run up it...for no real reason. See the difference between these two considerations from the perspective of a buisiness that needs to budget work for 1000+ employees and numerous ongoing projects? This will be a consideration for any studio that takes on a project of this scale.)

 

[Guest 4578928]

Hello Everyone, this thread is about the low LOD settings on pc. If anyone knows a fix especially for the low light render distance, please write it down here. I played Vice city a while ago and even in vanilla it has a greater light distance than CP. I know it's impossible for that engine to stream like RDR2 or Gta5 but if a street gets lit up while I am driving through it it's a little underwhelming if I am honest. Please add a psycho lod setting for pc so we can crank up these Neons.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

An "old" and active thread about that :

Did patch 1.1 mess with the LOD Distance?

Various details pop up and disappear at very short distances. Outside I notice it on object mesh/texture quality, inside I see lights and fog disappear:

forums.cdprojektred.com

 

[Guest 4578928]

If I remember correct the lod distance of lights wasn't perfect in Version 1.04 either, but it's reduced by half by now. I always measured it with how much streetlamps were lit up in a row because I already thought it's low at 1.04 for a 2020 game which has a neon and bright lights styled theme. At 1.04 you could count up to six street lights in a row and now with 1.3 it's three at its best. You can perfectly see this if you are driving on the freeway. I loved the lightning in Gta5 at night and Night City is predestined to be all lit up at night. Until 1.1 it was at least enjoyable but now it gets too obvious. I would accept less objects in distance in exchange for a more fluid light source rendering, but what do I know about that engine. Or at least please an option to downgrade to 1.04 or even 1.06 would be okay.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I don't know if it's true or not, but I read somewhere that the new Nvidia drivers help a little bit
Released few day ago.

Version: 471.96
Release Date: 2021.8.31
Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit, Windows 11
Language: English (US)
File Size: 720.56 MB

https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx

 

[kitanii]

I booted up the game again for the first time after finishing it back during it's first quarter on the market. Don't remember which version I had back then, but striking to me now is the ridiculously low rendering distance of a lot of geometry detail and especially lighting. Light sources only show up when I'm around 10m away from them in the game world. This makes driving a really poor experience because every time you're in an underpass, driving in a tunnel etc. everything is completely dark with vehicles showing up just in front of you all the time. Headlights on vehicles also only render at really low distances (if at all; Sometimes you see the light on the ground cast by them, but not the bulbs lighting up themselves) further contributing to the issue. This is with LOD set to 'high'. So yeah - draw distance for lighting especially needs an update and improvement.

 

[Batak]

Yeah, let's just hope CDPR staff reads this forum, and maybe someone good hearted will see our struggles and they'll improve LOD and draw distance with next hotfix/ patch.

 

[SigilFey]

If I remember correct the lod distance of lights wasn't perfect in Version 1.04 either, but it's reduced by half by now. I always measured it with how much streetlamps were lit up in a row because I already thought it's low at 1.04 for a 2020 game which has a neon and bright lights styled theme. At 1.04 you could count up to six street lights in a row and now with 1.3 it's three at its best. You can perfectly see this if you are driving on the freeway. I loved the lightning in Gta5 at night and Night City is predestined to be all lit up at night. Until 1.1 it was at least enjoyable but now it gets too obvious. I would accept less objects in distance in exchange for a more fluid light source rendering, but what do I know about that engine. Or at least please an option to downgrade to 1.04 or even 1.06 would be okay.

A likely change. Few things about rendering a scene are more taxing on any system than real-time lighting and real-time shadows. If I needed more overhead for the overall rendering (to avoid performance dips, pop-in, slow texture decompression, etc.), that would be one of the first things I'd start reigning in.

 

[Guest 4578928]

Hey thanks for the hint with the driver, it indeed helps a little and I also noted a little more smooth rendering since I disabled slow hdd mode. I think SigilFey is right its always give and take with optimization and with that engine it seems like it's even a little more like that. And seeing that the Witcher 3 still has the same problems up to now gets me to the point that I will just accept it how it is, after 30 minutes playing you get used to it anyway. Maybe we are lucky and the next Gen update solves this. At least they are working especially on the red engine at the moment. Thanks for the answers anyway and a nice day to you all.

 

[Kirmm]

Let's be brutally honest here. Game didn't have such a terrible object pop when it launched. Obviously due to the console optimizations this changed. Now it's just unbearable to move around in the NC with a vehicle. The world just can't keep up.

All we're asking is that you let us increase the distance rendering so we can at least enjoy this beautiful city.

 

[Azulath]

Or, more to the point, based on what you're saying, it's not possible to do it as a business. The types of changes you're talking about are not tasks that will take a team a few weeks to implement. That level of change would take years to complete. You'd be rebuilding not only the functionality of that part of the engine, but you would then need to rebuild every part of the game itself that relied on the old functionality. The game's code is not just going to magically understand the new instructions. Once I begin that process, the whole aspect of game development comes in. Because I've changed the root functionality in the engine, the changes that are then needed in the various parts of the game's code will wind up creating other issues in other parts of the game that they connect to. Changing those areas will create still more issues in other parts...and on, and on, and on.

No, not necessarily. As long as the (internal) API stays the same the underlying functions can change without the caller noticing. This also doesn't need to take years but can be achieved faster depending on the algorithm and the programmer of course. There is no give or take with this kind of optimisation, just a win. (As mentioned earlier readability and maintainability could suffer though).

Not most. Just many of the more robust and popular games. Take your pick of the millions of games available on Steam, GOG, Desura, Epic, etc. and they're largely going to use one or two cores. (And I'm talking about games releasing now, not games that released years ago.)

Ok, then I will chose Cyberpunk, Battlefield, Call of Duty, Total War, Assassin's Creed and Read Dead Redemption2.

I really wish CP2077 is a next Gen title only.

Me as well, too late now though...

There was no false advertising at any point.

True! That's what many don't seem to understand though.

If I remember correct the lod distance of lights wasn't perfect in Version 1.04 either, but it's reduced by half by now. I always measured it with how much streetlamps were lit up in a row because I already thought it's low at 1.04 for a 2020 game which has a neon and bright lights styled theme. At 1.04 you could count up to six street lights in a row and now with 1.3 it's three at its best. You can perfectly see this if you are driving on the freeway. I loved the lightning in Gta5 at night and Night City is predestined to be all lit up at night. Until 1.1 it was at least enjoyable but now it gets too obvious. I would accept less objects in distance in exchange for a more fluid light source rendering, but what do I know about that engine. Or at least please an option to downgrade to 1.04 or even 1.06 would be okay.

I you know for sure, please open a ticket.

 

[Guest 4578928]

Hello again, just wanted to share my ini configuration with you all because with this it runs slightly better than before at least on my rig. Still, don't expect any miracles here but it definitely does something, I tested different configs over hours always in comparison with an unmodded savegame in between and now it seems to be just more rendered at the same time, at least the crosswalks don't pop up in front of my nose as well as the lightning on the streets(still no more lit up street light bulbs) So here it goes:

[Streaming]

EditorThrottledMaxNodesPerFrame = 1000

PrecacheDistance = 55.000000

DistanceBoost = 55.000000





Write it in that order, I noted the editor command works pretty jerky if it's not at first.

I can't guarantee that this will help you, I am playing in 1080p with an 50fps lock on 50hz with an 2080s (I know it's overkill, but I like how stable it is und I also save a lot of powerconsumption with this). So just try and backup your saves at a different location I hope this will help a little. Best regards.

 

[Malautomedontolo]

Some sure. But i'm fairly certain most are not, because I experience them consistently every time between saves, updates, reinstalls, driver and windows updates. In addition they show up on completely different hardware (GeForce vs Radeon, Intel vs AMD, PS5 vs PC) if you start looking for fix on youtube or elsewhere.

Just be more specific - I suspect anyone on any machine could visit rancho coronado ferris wheel and see it dissapear when you try to climb it, see the brown door under the highway near chapel fast-travel point in pacifica or see enormous Arasaka pop-in when walking up from californie&cartweight to Konpeki plaza.

I wonder if one could build a model parser based on MOD tools that can identify and fix such objects?

Had the same issue, which I also reported. The Wheel disappears at certain camera angles. This wasn't happening before.

 

[Azulath]

Hello again, just wanted to share my ini configuration with you all because with this it runs slightly better than before at least on my rig. Still, don't expect any miracles here but it definitely does something, I tested different configs over hours always in comparison with an unmodded savegame in between and now it seems to be just more rendered at the same time, at least the crosswalks don't pop up in front of my nose as well as the lightning on the streets(still no more lit up street light bulbs) So here it goes:

[Streaming]

EditorThrottledMaxNodesPerFrame = 1000

PrecacheDistance = 55.000000

DistanceBoost = 55.000000





Write it in that order, I noted the editor command works pretty jerky if it's not at first.

I can't guarantee that this will help you, I am playing in 1080p with an 50fps lock on 50hz with an 2080s (I know it's overkill, but I like how stable it is und I also save a lot of powerconsumption with this). So just try and backup your saves at a different location I hope this will help a little. Best regards.

Interesting, I have also done the odd *.ini tweak if you are intersted:

INI/Settings Tweak(s)

Over at PCGamingWiki I noticed somehone dumped many (all?) possible INI values on pastebin. I had a look over those values and made a mental note of those that were interesting. Currently, the first one I stumbled over was this one: [RayTracing/BottomLevelCache] Budget = 209715200...

forums.cdprojektred.com

That's the first time I see PrecacheDistance, might be worth giving it a look. Any idea what it does exactly, have you tested it? Also, I would be careful with DistanceBoost, because some folks hear have complained about corrupted saves and while I did not experience this issue, I noticed that there were indeed issues when this variable was set above 0.

 

[Guest 4578928]

Thanks for the hint I can't explain what precachedistance precisely does. But what I tested was a setting under the distanceboost value (I took 15) this resulted in popping in crosswalks and stuff. Next I tested a value above it. First 75 then 100 both times rendering of streets and buildings stopped at a certain point. It runs stable since I made the value the same as the distanceboost. I am really curious about what you guys think on that. Yesterday I played 90 minutes straight(always at night) and check today again, it's definitely not that aggressive anymore. One issue I noticed was that if I am driving at full speed with a caliburn there were a few moments in which the billboards flickered but that stopped. That said, I know you can get very different experiences with these ini settings so be careful, I never managed to the remove the mod, without breaking rendering, so I always keep a backup save without it outside the savegame folder.

Edit: OFC there is the possibility that I am just imagening stuff

Edit2: I forgot, I have turned off slow hdd mode and rtx is completely off and in combination with my own set limitation on res and framerate the ini doesn't eat that much performance on my system.

Post automatically merged: Sep 6, 2021

Okay update, I took some entries from the post above me, thanks again and this is the new ini (sorry for the format, I am writing on phone just look in the post above me how it's build up if you don't know

[Streaming]
EditorThrottledMaxNodesPerFrame = 3000
MaxNodesPerFrame = 1800
PreCacheDistance = 55.000000
MinStreamingDistance = 55.000000
DistanceBoost = 55.000000

And now it's in a state where I can't even say anymore if it was better before 1.1, (except the light bulbs) because it never was perfect but almost every other light source is rendering sooner. So my thought is, although I don't know s**t, that if maxnodes stuff is at first in the ini it enables the higher limit at first in game and then adds the details of the distance entries which makes it a smoother rendering. And maybe if it's the other way around the engine tries to render more details before the limitations are removed which results in flickering and an even more aggressive pop in. I never thought I would write that much in a forum, but that topic is highly interesting. Best regards to everyone

NPC car headlights still don't work though, sorry.

Performance wise I can't tell you much, I don't notice any difference but I guess it's not that easy to dip performance with an 50fps limit, only thing, the loading times are a bit longer. I would also recommend to end your session with an manual save and to load it up 2 times the next time. The first loading is always much shorter than a second load in game.

 

[kitanii]

Just a heads up for the distance related ini tweaks:
From my experience higher values for DistanceBoost can break certain geometry far away causing flickering. Setting that to 42 gives a nice little visible boost without any glitches from what I can tell. 42 is just a value used in a draw distance mod I found on Nexus in which the value was recommended. The person behind the mod has done more testing than I have so I trust it.

Another draw distance related setting I've found digging through the dumped ini settings is:
[Rendering]
DepthPrepassDistanceFactor = 12.000000

Which seems to affect less demanding and perhaps even static lighting of a more local nature.
Doubling this to 24 gives a noticeable boost without any visible glitches on my end. You might want to keep both of them a bit in check though because I think if one is much higher than the other that might cause flickering glitches. As if the lighting is trying to light up geometry that isn't really rendered yet etc. Try it out either way. Night time is probably the best time of day for DepthPrepassDistanceFactor to be appreciated.

 

[Guest 4578928]

Hey I didn't know this one, I followed your advice and doubled it up and it reduced the before mentioned flickering in my case and I am pretty happy with this state right now. I didn't change any of my other values though and until now it's stable. Thank you very much for this.

 

[Batak]

Another draw distance related setting I've found digging through the dumped ini settings is:
[Rendering]
DepthPrepassDistanceFactor = 12.000000

Nice find! Do you have the source of the dumped ini settings? I have a version of the ini. file but didn't find this one setting, must be not complete.
I would like to tweak and test more ini settings for this game.

 

[kitanii]

Nice find! Do you have the source of the dumped ini settings? I have a version of the ini. file but didn't find this one setting, must be not complete.
I would like to tweak and test more ini settings for this game.

Sure! https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/193?tab=files&file_id=938
If you don't have an account or don't wanna login there just Google the file name and it's available at other hosting sites.

If you wanna dive deeper you could try using Cyber Engine Tweaks which at runtime allows changing the ini settings. Some don't seem to take effect until after a reload (maybe a restart of the game even), but it could speed things up instead of having to close the game all the time.

Here's Cyber Engine Tweaks:

GitHub - maximegmd/CyberEngineTweaks: Cyberpunk 2077 tweaks, hacks and scripting framework

Cyberpunk 2077 tweaks, hacks and scripting framework - GitHub - maximegmd/CyberEngineTweaks: Cyberpunk 2077 tweaks, hacks and scripting framework

github.com

Available commands for the ini settings:

Allow Lua to access GameOptions / INI settings by emoose · Pull Request #192 · maximegmd/CyberEngineTweaks

Removed GamePropertyString, use REDString instead Renamed GameProperty to GameOption for uniformity & moved GameOption code to reverse\GameOptions.cpp/.h Add GameOptions struct to hold the list of ...

github.com

After installing CET you just open the LUA console with your own assigned button.

For example:
If you want to change DepthPrepassDistanceFactor you punch in the following:
GameOptions.Set(Rendering, DepthPrepassDistanceFactor, 24)
It should now print that the setting is set to 24. Unsure if you need to use quotes around the category and variable name when calling the function, but it is case sensitive for the function name itself.

EDIT: !!!!As a warning I highly recommend you backup your save files before using this!!!!

 

[Azulath]

I think we shouldn't derail this thread too much, if you guys want to discuss ini tweaks we should do it here:

INI/Settings Tweak(s)

Over at PCGamingWiki I noticed somehone dumped many (all?) possible INI values on pastebin. I had a look over those values and made a mental note of those that were interesting. Currently, the first one I stumbled over was this one: [RayTracing/BottomLevelCache] Budget = 209715200...

forums.cdprojektred.com

Post automatically merged: Sep 6, 2021

If you want to change DepthPrepassDistanceFactor you punch in the following:
GameOptions.Set(Rendering, DepthPrepassDistanceFactor, 24)
It should now print that the setting is set to 24. Unsure if you need to use quotes around the category and variable name when calling the function, but it is case sensitive for the function name itself

It's with quotes, so the command would actually be:

GameOptions.Set("Rendering", "DepthPrepassDistanceFactor", "24")