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[Mighty Midget]

Doubler: I tried with both with and without sm3 water shader. The only difference was the quality of the water. The problem remained.

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Doubler

Borodin: Texture replacements abound in that vid.

Thought I recognized several! Including ones I use currently.

When you replace most of the graphical engine I can guess you're going to run into some compatibility trouble - still worth at least trying, though.

Only if you have a month or two to devote to tweaking.

Without such problems distant land shouldn't have much influence on the framerate. Distant statics is another matter entirely, though.

Yes, the "missing central section of a distant tower" look. To be honest, I wish MGE worked perfectly. But I can't see that happening unless somebody like Bethsoft invests their large resources in developing an all-encompassing new extender that works for everybody. Ain't gonna happen.

Putting the Oblivion theme in the middle must be a cruel joke, by the way

Heh. I think of it as, "A finger to you and your Oblivion, Bethsoft! We can do better with your older game, which plays a lot better, too! Wu-wa-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

[Doubler]

Only if you have a month or two to devote to tweaking.

I set it up in a few hours I didn't have issues at all. Problems aren't guaranteed.

I tried with both with and without sm3 water shader. The only difference was the quality of the water. The problem remained.

Hmm, I thought you were talking about something else.
I have seen the issue before though, probably while going over the older MGE threads.

Try posting here: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/in...opic=790910&hl

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Doubler

I set it up in a few hours I didn't have issues at all. Problems aren't guaranteed.

For 99% of users, they are. Anybody can read this thread if not its 14 complaint-filled predecessor threads, and see this for themselves. Makes for fascinating reading, though. Some people will spend weeks tweaking and tweaking, and still not succeed. Which stands to reason, since the game is being played on a huge range of video cards, CPUs, etc. But putting in all that time...? Quite an El Dorado. Still, I know more than a few that have given up after several years of following it along.

Glad it did work perfectly for you. Perfectly, right?

[Doubler]

With the number of people using this program, 14 pages, even with the 15 or so previous threads with equally many, about all different versions, isn't all that much

There's plenty of people without problems. You just don't see them posting (or rarely).

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Doubler

With the number of people using this program, 14 pages, even with the 15 or so previous threads with equally many, about all different versions, isn't all that much

Oh, right: 15 threads filled with complaints is the same as no complaints, at all. I agree! And anybody can see this for themselves, by checking the link I provided. Filled with complaints, which are not complaints at all.

There's plenty of people without problems. You just don't see them posting (or rarely).

Come on, now! You're too smart to fall for that bad bit of logic. Literally anything can be said to be true and justified by saying "You just don't see it happening, but I know it does."

So--back to my question. Did you find MGE runs perfectly? Are you making any compromises for its use? Do you ignore missing statics, or slowdowns when crossing area borders? What kind of system have you got, and how did you tweak it?

[Doubler]

Borodin, I said "not all that much", I never said that it equalled "no complaints at all".
When you've got thousands of people using such a program, then 3000 posts total (200 per thread by forum regulations, 15 threads), which you can easily half since most are reactions to problems, idle chatter, suggestions, etc. then it's not that impressive

Moreover, what you see in that topic are the complaints. But most people simply won't post to say: 'I downloaded the program, works perfectly. Bye.' I know I didn't
As such, it's very questionable you'd get an adequate picture in the first place.

I'm not denying that people have problems with it. MM isn't an exeption. And I'm all for improving the program to cut down on such issues. I'm just saying that it's not really like the program is guaranteed to give you a headache, or even that it's all that likely to give you a headache as you make it to be.
For that matter, the real evil issues are quite obvious emmediatly after you start using MGE with IVD, so it's easy enough to find out whether you're in the group of people with problems, or in the group without. And it's not like you can break anything. At that point it's certainly worth a try - your chances aren't all that bad, it doesn't take that much time, you won't do permanent damage and the effects may very well be worth it.

Of course I won't stop anyone from peering through the most recent threads to see if there's any known issues with their hardware configurations, but you don't really have to expect to find something.

Now to the performance: No statics missing, exepts on distant statics, which isn't really a bug in the 'faulty software or incompatibility sense'. I could probably solve it by lowering my size values, but that would also bring in some junk.
I'm having no regular slowdowns and a minimal impact on framerates.
I used standard settings for most of MGE. I increased the cell distances some, and tweaked the size settings a bit to my liking. The rest of the options I experimented with a bit and chose those which I thought gave good results.

Pentium 4, 3.20GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 6800LE

Edit: One thing to note, though, is that I use only a very small number of mods which are all quite minor. No texture replacements either. So there's not much drain on my recources.

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Doubler

Borodin, I said "not all that much", I never said that it equalled "no complaints at all". When you've got thousands of people using such a program, then 3000 posts total (200 per thread), which you can easily half since most are reactions to problems, idle chatter, suggestions, etc. then it's not that impressive Moreover, what you see in that topic are the complaints. But most people simply won't post to say: 'I downloaded the program, works perfectly. Bye.' As such, you won't get an adequate picture in the first place.

There have been a lot of complaints about MGE, and they are all documented in those 14 (thus far) 300+ message threads. This I think is very important to get across to people: that your experience ("I didn't have issues at all. Problems aren't guaranteed.") is atypical. Telling me that there are many people who agree with you but we don't hear from them doesn't prove their existence, nor does it remove all thhe complaints that do exist. My point is simply this: if I were considering whether to add MGE to my modlist, I'd much rather know that it has several thousand complaints available to view, even if one or two people spoke up and said it ran very well for them, very quickly. It's always better to have a realistic expectation of what's going to happen if you spend the time and effort putting an extremely complex mod in place before the fact. People deserve to know this.

Certainly, no one is denying that you've been among the fortunates. But by all accounts, those are the fortunate few. And if you have any facts showing otherwise, that tens of thousands are happy with it, not only will I agree with you, I will immediately proceed to download MGE and try it out once again, tweaking it for days if I must. I'd frankly be delighted if it could instantly work. It looks fantastic. But for most of us, it isn't a reality that's in the cards, unfortunately.

Now to the performance: No statics missing, exepts on distant statics, which isn't really a bug in the 'faulty software or incompatibility sense'. I could probably solve it by lowering my size values, but that would also bring in some junk.

Certainly an improvement on Morrowind where distant viewing is in any case removed, even with the nominal in-game control throttled up the way up.

I'm having no regular slowdowns and a minimal impact on framerates.
I used standard settings for most of MGE. I increased the cell distances some, and tweaked the size settings a bit to my liking. The rest of the options I experimented with a bit and chose those which I thought gave good results.

A 3.2 gHz should certainly deliver. I've got one as well, and I'm using controls to increase cell distances and absorb the impact with larger pauses at cell edges. This works fine except when using really heavyduty mods, like Balmora Enhanced, when my framerate drops visibly, but not sufficiently to force me to quit using it. How much RAM do you have?

Edit: One thing to note, though, is that I use only a very small number of mods which are all quite minor. No texture replacements either. So there's not much drain on my recources.

Yeah, there's a big difference. I've got 260+ mods. Even though I could do without, say, a quarter of them (and when I start back up, I will probably slim down to that), it's still quite a bit, and at least a few are pretty intensive.

[Doubler]

Borodin, let's get the number straight:
MGE was downloaded 40288 times from TESNexus alone. That's without PES (which is bigger) and other sites.
There's 15 threads MGE, max length 200 posts. That's 3000 posts total. Less then half of that is complaints (estimate: More then half would be odd in a question-response system). That's not even counting repeat complaints, idle chatter, multiple replies, etc.
How is my experience a-typical? Apparently a lot more people that downloaded did not feel the need to complain at all. You're the one absoluting a relatively low number of people, not me

You can't just go by a single number, you need the full picture before they're worth anything. I can tell you about almost any mod that a group of people has trouble running it. The more popular it is, the more complainers. But it's the ratio that counts.

RAM: 1024 Mb

[Borodin]

Originally Posted by Doubler

Borodin, let's get the number straight:
MGE was downloaded 40288 times from TESNexus alone. That's without PES (which is bigger) and other sites. There's 15 threads MGE, max length 200 posts. That's 3000 posts total. Less then half of that is complaints (estimate: More then half would be odd in a question-response system). That's not even counting repeat complaints, idle chatter, multiple replies, etc.
How is my experience a-typical? Apparently a lot more people that downloaded did not feel the need to complain at all. You're the one absoluting a relatively low number of people, not me

It was downloaded. It was not given a vote of approval with each download. Hell, I tried it twice, myself, so I was among the downloaders--two times! And it didn't work well for me, either time, despite heavy tweaking. People download Morrowind mods all the time they end up tossing away. Multiple times, for a product that is now in its 3.03 release. I have a friend who has 8 copies at various stages, and *still* isn't happy with it.

On the other hand, there have been 15 (it was 14, now 15th started) threads of 200 posts each mostly featuring people complaining about MGE continuously since it first appeared. This testifies to 2 facts:

1) MGE continues to fascinate the Morrowind community, or people wouldn't keep trying the thing.

2) It still isn't working properly for a very large number of people.

And that's all we can state about how people regard it. I wrote above, letting possible users know about all the problems and disatisfaction is a good service to provide, so they don't rush in, get disappointed, and feel like MGE somehow represents the typical mod experience. Which is certainly isn't, as I think we both can agree.

RAM: 1024 Mb

My RAM, too, but I add on many more mods, as discussed, above. I just may give it a third try, in the near future, but it isn't an experience I would suggest to anybody who hasn't the patience, or isn't willing to be disappointed.

Best of luck yourself, on future use of it. I sincerely hope you can find other, non-graphical mods of interest, and that they'll work with MGE.