Morrowind in-game draw distance + MGE XE

[PainkilleR]

Hey guys!
I have decided to play Morrowind again but with some bells and whistles. So I installed MGE XE and it works great for the most part but I can drop down to 40 fps in some areas. The problem is MGE XE settings don't really increase/decrease my performance. It's in-game draw distance which does. When slider is set to 50%~ min fps is 70~. But when using MGE XE there are graphical bugs (holes in ground etc.) if in-game draw distance slider is not set to 100%. Is there anyway to set in-game dd slider to 50-70% and make mge xe do the rest and render graphics past that barrier set by game? Or is it designed to work with draw distances set to max?

[la_nague]

mge XE needs draw distance to max, it says so too.


However, consider that the world of morrowind was designed with the limited draw distance of the original game in mind. It makes the world feel a LOT larger because of clever design, similar to GTA San Andreas.
You should seriously consider not using any distant land and extended view distance mods, it will change the feel of the world a lot.

[PainkilleR]

Originally posted by la_nague:

mge XE needs draw distance to max, it says so too.


However, consider that the world of morrowind was designed with the limited draw distance of the original game in mind. It makes the world feel a LOT larger because of clever design, similar to GTA San Andreas.
You should seriously consider not using any distant land and extended view distance mods, it will change the feel of the world a lot.

I am not afraid of loosing this feel of large world because... Well, I played vanilla Morrowind for thousands of hours over last 10 years. )
Anyway thanks for confirmation. It clearly says it needs max draw distance to work properly, but I was wondering if there are some workarounds.

[Big Dumb Object]

This may not be very helpful, but I find that the sweetspot for draw distance/performance is between 6-10 cells. (Then again, I also play with AA and AF at 4x, SSAO and DOF off, and the per-pixel shader unticked).

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Morrowind is, and has always been a CPU hog.

Even if you have a mammoth GPU setup, even something like a modern I5 will crumble at this game if you don't run a crazy overclock with MGE, because MGE is just extending the existing graphics options and still has to operate on the same pipeline as the original game. This is especially true because, like all old games,Morrowind is single-core only. So even if you have a brand-new Ryzen 1800x (Fabulous CPU btw) all those juicy cores won't match an I5 6600k because of the IPC/Speed advantage.

[PainkilleR]

If somebody has the same problem finding optimal settings on i-7 @4.4Ghz CPU clock speed here is what causes this dramatic fps drop for me.
Fog mode under graphics tab must be set to Depth pixel (Fast). This setting boosts fps in Seyda Neen (when you first exit from ship and watch on town) from 40-42 fps to 60+. You can use exponential fog with this setting.
Only these settings affect performance:
Fog mode (Graphics tab) - Huge preformance difference between settings.
Exponential fog (Distant land tab) - Slight performance difference.
High quality colouring (Distant land tab) - Slight performance difference.
Draw distance (Distant land tab) - Doesn't affect performance until cells are set to 20 for me. I guess that this and all other settings rely on GPU, so all other settings must be set according to your GPU power.
Hope that helps!

[Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau]

Originally posted by PainkilleR:

If somebody has the same problem finding optimal settings on i-7 @4.4Ghz CPU clock speed here is what causes this dramatic fps drop for me.
Fog mode under graphics tab must be set to Depth pixel (Fast). This setting boosts fps in Seyda Neen (when you first exit from ship and watch on town) from 40-42 fps to 60+. You can use exponential fog with this setting.
Only these settings affect performance:
Fog mode (Graphics tab) - Huge preformance difference between settings.
Exponential fog (Distant land tab) - Slight performance difference.
High quality colouring (Distant land tab) - Slight performance difference.
Draw distance (Distant land tab) - Doesn't affect performance until cells are set to 20 for me. I guess that this and all other settings rely on GPU, so all other settings must be set according to your GPU power.
Hope that helps!

I am confirming in 2020 on a 2080 ti and 17 9700k that setting fog mode to depth pixel gives a massive performance boost. any area that struggled no longer struggles. Fantastic advice.