How to force the game to disable texture streaming

[cbdeakin]

I've found a command that forces the game to load all textures whenever the game loads (disables streaming completely). I think it loads all textures for the level, but I'm not sure.

Here's how I got it to load:

1. navigate to the engine folder, open engine.pak
2. config > cvargroups. Open sys_spec_Texture.cfg
3. Add the following command to the bottom of each preset. Or, just use the one that applies to your current texture graphics setting:

r_TexturesStreaming = 0



It should look like this if your texture setting is set to ultra in game:

[7]
r_TexMaxAnisotropy=16
r_TexMinAnisotropy=16
e_TerrainDetailMaterialsViewDistZ=100
r_TexturesStreaming = 0

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the setting, the game uses up more RAM (I have 16gb) and virtual memory than my PC has available, because all textures are loaded in advance into memory. If you have a ton of memory available, I'd be interested to know how this works for you. Or, you could just increase your page file to a massive amount.

[SubsidedLemon]

This wont really make a big difference for me I guess, as I run the game from SSD. Or am I mistaken?

[cbdeakin]

It depends if you notice any textures being streamed in or not in game. SSD might be fast enough already, but some people have still reported problems (texture streaming doesn't seem to be well optimised on PCs). It might allow more stable FPS and possibly faster loading times as well as RAM is still much quicker than an SSD.

[Kamamura]

This is quite a silly endeavor. Texture streaming is not some "evil" you have to switch off, it's an optimization feature that allows the game to load assets on demand. KoCD has too many to fit in your video RAM or RAM, and if you are using virtual memory, you are basically loading the textures only to store them on your disks again (since virtual memory uses disk).

What you can (and should do), however, is set up the following variable to half the amount of your VRAM:

r_TexturesStreamPoolSize = 4096

This is my setting, because I have 8GB of VRAM. The default is 512, which is way too low for most setups.

As to the frequency of texture streaming, the game does it almost constantly on default settings.

[cbdeakin]

I moved the game over to an SSD (and increased pagefile to 30gb) and disabled texture streaming and it loaded fine. And the game stuttered less and had higher FPS. The only problem was the world map wouldn't load (black screen) for some reason.

[Dog]

so is moving tthe game to a SSD the only way to really stop the horrible texture pop in?
currently keep all my games on a dedicated 500gb hdd but have a 250gb ssd which i keep my OS and things on

[SubsidedLemon]

Originally posted by Two-Gun Dog:

so is moving tthe game to a SSD the only way to really stop the horrible texture pop in?
currently keep all my games on a dedicated 500gb hdd but have a 250gb ssd which i keep my OS and things on

I move games that need SSD when I play them to SSD (remember to verify integrity after). When I'm done playing for a while I move it back to HDD.

[Dog]

Originally posted by SubsidedLemon:

Originally posted by Two-Gun Dog:

so is moving tthe game to a SSD the only way to really stop the horrible texture pop in?
currently keep all my games on a dedicated 500gb hdd but have a 250gb ssd which i keep my OS and things on

I move games that need SSD when I play them to SSD (remember to verify integrity after). When I'm done playing for a while I move it back to HDD.

huh, i didnt even think of that! this is the only game installed that seems to really require the ssd. thanks!

(and i could use it as a excuse for more pc upgrades =D)

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

Hey I would just like to update this thread. Excuse the necro. Been looking for a way to disable streaming because even on my NVMe drive(950 Pro 512GB) the game has been performing very poorly due to all the streaming constantly happening. I monitor it with Afterburner so know that my drive is constantly very active(from the game, not background software). I have disabled streaming now with the above info but have crashed right before the main menu(with HD textures on) and actually managed to load my save with HD textures off and texture quality set to Ultra. For the record this does not seem to affect RAM usage at all(I have 32GB total and did not see it climb) and only affects VRAM. I have 24GB VRAM and the game had allocated over 19GB for Ultra(non-HD) textures. However what I saw was that some textures were missing and the game crashed after only a couple minutes playing with an 8GB page file(no more crash after changing page file to 64GB, even though that is very likely overkill). I did however notice a HUGE improvement in frametime stability and thus performance. Tested in Rattay. Difference was really very noticeable. I had also tested the other texture settings(without restarting game for those though) and encountered missing textures there as well. Does anyone know another way to achieve the same but without the crash/broken textures?

EDIT: Some stats about total usage from HWiNFO running in the background - game had just over 28GB(yes, twenty-eight) virtual memory committed by itself, just over 6GB RAM total(same as usual with streaming on) and around 20GB total dedicated VRAM allocated(note not all my settings are maxed out, including HD textures being off at the time of measurement. Also noticed page file usage(64GB total) only peaked at 1.4% with a minimum of 0.6%.

[cbdeakin]

Interesting, thanks.

I seem to remember the game was more stable in general with texture streaming disabled, but I ran into a ton of other problems like the map not loading etc.

I hope they use a better / improved game engine for the sequel (or add the option to disable/reduce texture streaming on PC). I heard a while ago that the devs. are using the same engine for the sequel, don't know if that's true though.

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

Originally posted by cbdeakin:

Interesting, thanks.

I seem to remember the game was more stable in general with texture streaming disabled, but I ran into a ton of other problems like the map not loading etc.

I hope they use a better / improved game engine for the sequel (or add the option to disable/reduce texture streaming on PC). I heard a while ago that the devs. are using the same engine for the sequel, don't know if that's true though.

Yeah the game was a LOT more stable without the streaming(less stutters/spikes). Too bad it seems to be broken. Perhaps there's a way to fix it. Not sure.

They are still a fairly small studio I think and they already have experience with this engine(CryEngine, IIRC) so makes sense to go for the same one again. However it could be a newer version they are using for the sequel... who knows.

I just hope they fix the streaming issue once and for all(PREFERABLY in KCD1!). I find it hard to believe though that it has existed since launch, since what I am getting with a strong all-round PC is at times borderline unplayable. Constant massive disk reading all over the place resulting in non-stop framespikes(without mods/settings modifications and whatnot - what I have done concerning the above is the first modification of the game I've done).

[Four Little Diamonds]

Originally posted by cbdeakin:

Interesting, thanks.

I seem to remember the game was more stable in general with texture streaming disabled, but I ran into a ton of other problems like the map not loading etc.

I hope they use a better / improved game engine for the sequel (or add the option to disable/reduce texture streaming on PC). I heard a while ago that the devs. are using the same engine for the sequel, don't know if that's true though.

Yea I remember messing with the texture streaming console commands and it causing all sorts of graphical issues, mainly with textures just not loading properly or fully. It boosted performance and fps quite a bit but had plenty of drawbacks.