NPC popping/LOD: Last, desperate request

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Perhaps it is not intentional. I, however, firmly believe that it was not there before 1.03. When a new game with awesome graphics comes out, I always rush through as much content as possible to see whether my rig can run it well, before delving into the content properly. I was already in novigrad by the time 1.03 came out, and I did not see a single pop-in.
 
Perhaps it is not intentional. I, however, firmly believe that it was not there before 1.03. When a new game with awesome graphics comes out, I always rush through as much content as possible to see whether my rig can run it well, before delving into the content properly. I was already in novigrad by the time 1.03 came out, and I did not see a single pop-in.
That is actually very good. If it was introduced with a patch then it will be easy to fix as they will only have to revert certain changes they made
 
We'll see. I'm glad the issue finally received some attention, hopefully the devs are aware of it as well. Still no reply though, but if it gets fixed, I'm a happy man.
 
I am having this problem. Look at the end of the road, the house has no windows, but when I approach the building they instantly appeared.:

[video=youtube;-rfL2aacCOk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rfL2aacCOk[/video]


I have a GTX 970 with the latest drivers. Everything on Ultra (no hairworks). The game version is 1.04.


Do you have the same issue? Is this a problem with my pc? Thanks a lot.
 
Hey! No, it is not a problem with your PC. What you are seeing is quite normal, although people claim that the LOD distance used to be higher before the patch. In reality, as far as I know, before the patch, the LOD was identical to what you are now seeing from a distance. The patch added a higher LOD which only gets culled at a short distance. This aggressive LOD culling is indeed annoying, and should be fixed, but is not identical to the NPC pop-in I am describing. You can see that if you slowly back away from the house on the video, the wndows will "disappear" again (in reality, it gets "fogged"). In contrast, the NPCs I am talking about remain in place once they have spawned, and if you slowly go away from them, they will be visible from a distance from which previously you could not see them. In sum, we are talking about two related but distinct issues: The aggressive LOD culling introduced to lesser system load (probably) which is a feature (although I hope they change it) and NPC pop-ins, which is a bug, probably of the streaming algorhitm.

TL;DR: No, your system is fine, and we are talking about another issue, which is related
 
Hey! No, it is not a problem with your PC. What you are seeing is quite normal, although people claim that the LOD distance used to be higher before the patch. In reality, as far as I know, before the patch, the LOD was identical to what you are now seeing from a distance. The patch added a higher LOD which only gets culled at a short distance. This aggressive LOD culling is indeed annoying, and should be fixed, but is not identical to the NPC pop-in I am describing. You can see that if you slowly back away from the house on the video, the wndows will "disappear" again (in reality, it gets "fogged"). In contrast, the NPCs I am talking about remain in place once they have spawned, and if you slowly go away from them, they will be visible from a distance from which previously you could not see them. In sum, we are talking about two related but distinct issues: The aggressive LOD culling introduced to lesser system load (probably) which is a feature (although I hope they change it) and NPC pop-ins, which is a bug, probably of the streaming algorhitm.

TL;DR: No, your system is fine, and we are talking about another issue, which is related

I understand. Thanks a lot for your detailed answer.
And to tell you the truth, i do not like to play a game with those problems (i mean, a window that appears when im aproaching a building or the grass loading when im close to it and NPC pop-ins).

Edit: In GTAV i see a similar behaviour with the textures loading slowly.
 
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I am playing at 1.02 (1.03 made more problems for me as it solved, and one of the problems were the popup NPCs. I also reported it to CDPR, in a bug report I sent in. So they should know about it. (After reading the Changelog and the forum here, I never considered installing 1.04).

The popping NPCs are in 1.02 too, but much more rare, you have to look for it to see it. Something they did to the graphics or other settings caused this with 1.03. But the graphics do not look better, and the performance is not better too with 1.03. Since I have only one bad side quest (a contract, nothing important) which is surely not fixed in 1.03 and 1.04 (no quests at all were fixed if one goes with the Changelogs) I can only recommend to use 1.02. This is the most stable version to date, at least for me. (GTX 980, i7 4820, 16 GB).

I do not hold my breath for patch 1.05 - they did not have the time to make things really better. People who have game stopping bugs (and there are a lot) should be helped first, and this 1.05 will do - hopefully. But since every patch to date introduced more bugs and 'uglyfications', I will stay with 1.02 for a while...

The game is awesome, and I enjoy to play it. But there are a boatload of things which should be fixed. I hope they do it sometime, but not before 1-2 months, I think
 
Bump. Let's not let the thread die :) Any other opinions? Or more like, a dev confirmation that it will/will not be fixed in 1.05?
 
Perhaps it is not intentional. I, however, firmly believe that it was not there before 1.03. When a new game with awesome graphics comes out, I always rush through as much content as possible to see whether my rig can run it well, before delving into the content properly. I was already in novigrad by the time 1.03 came out, and I did not see a single pop-in.

I ran around in the game the first time too, on day one before 1.02 I already experience pop-in in Novigrad, especially around the speechers. It got worse with every patch I feel like, popping in at random now, even in less dense zones outside of Novigrad I constantly see people pop-in. And I'm not sure about the LOD but it does feel like it became more noticable. And pop-in isn't the only issue I'm having since the last patches, I constantly get NPC's running around in the preview-model animation (where they don't animate but just skate around with arms spread) and missing heads... I feel like this has something to do with the LOD too.
I can deal with playing below 60FPS (on my GTX980 for f*ck sake), but having these random bugs completely ruin my experience of this game.

 
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I'm browsing the forums after another nite of searching for crash fixes, so I figure I'll chime in. I'm having the same issues, to the same degree as the oft-cited youtube video in this thread. I had almost no pop-in in Novigrad though. Skellige is where it's at, or more aptly, where the npcs aren't for me. I walked into an empty small town and watched as tiny little "Snow Hares" [just the name] blipped in and out as they crossed my FOV. It's kinda sad, Geralt is always arriving to hiding townfolk and the village is bustling after he leaves.
As an aside...
Maybe the devs should just go full nethack on us and change wolfs to "d" and wraiths to "w". Of course, @ would become ~@~ with hairworks on. :D
 
If these changes really are necessary for weaker systems (which i hope ain't true), give us with more powerful setups options to tweak them. There are a lot of options in the .ini and user.setting files that appear to be hard coded or simply not working.
 
signing up too ! pop-in is terrible

here's my specs:

i7-4790k
ASUS Z97-Pro Gamer
2x 8GB HyperX Fury @1866
2x Geforce 970 (MSI Gaming 4G)
Crucial MX100 (512GB)
SeaSonic X-750

Running the game on ALL Ultra + Hairworks in 1080p. Normally smooth 60fps gameplay, some ditches below 60 indoors and on cutscenes, but not worth the trouble ^^ BUT ... as already has been said: been getting pop-ins since 1.04 ...
 
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Im not having the xp bug myself and so, as another poster has stated earlier in this thread; i think its fair that the most game-breaking bugs be addressed first.

Unfortunately though, im going to have to shelf this game for the moment. The idea that i can at some point in the future play this WITHOUT NPC pop-in occurring either through dev patches or community mods, really leaves me no choice.

AVMC said:
Geralt is always arriving to hiding townfolk and the village is bustling after he leaves.

I have to say, this pretty much sums up the lack of immersion i experience with the NPC pop-in.

EDIT:

Specs:
Asus ROG Hero VII MB
i7 4790K @ 4.5GHz Stable
Asus GTX 980 Strix @ Stock
32GB RAM
Kingston Hyper X SSD

Settings:
Patch 1.04. Ultra, ini tweaks: foliage draw distance, foliage shadow drop draw distance, Hairworks on. Locked @ 30fps / 1080p.
 
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Also having this problem, happened after 1.04, happening but not with all NPCs, e.g. Novigrad sentries patrolling(example: Midscope - Near Grahams hut ), can't see them until few feet away.

CPU: Phenom X4 9550
GPU: SAPPHIRE HD 7950 VAPOR-X
RAM: 8GB
 
Ya the NPC pop-in is annoying as hell, i know my computer is a fecking potato, but pre 1.0.3 (i think) every NPC/Building etc would instantly load with no issues what so ever, after 1.0.4 it can take 5 - 10 - 15 sec before NPC's/Music/Buildings are up and running, it seems they did something with the way files are streamed into the game, as i said this was not a problem on day 1 patch

+1
 
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