devnull.devakm - QTP2 World Textures

Last Updated 9/21/2007

QTP2 BETTER ARCHITECTURE, LANDSCAPE,
TILING & LOD

Most mod users are already familiar with the amazing high-resolution textures in Qarl's Texture Pack 2 (QTP2) -- if you're not already familiar with QTP2, skip down to the next section and take a look at the screenshots before reading the rest of this. Unfortunately, many users who have tried QTP2 found that it either slowed their system down considerably or suffered from problems with mid-range landscape tiling and mismatch with distant textures.

Fortunately, it is now possible to solve all of these problems. In other words, you can get a complete matching set of optimized, non-tiling Qarl textures with matching distant landscape textures (LOD). You can also get fully parallaxed Qarl architecture textures for most of the cities in Cyrodiil (except the Imperial City). Currently, the only way to do all this is to install several different packages, but the results are well worth the hassle.

This guide will provide comparison screenshots, installation instructions based on your video card specs, download mirror listings, and general discussion of the various texture packs.

QTP2 TEXTURE COMPARISON

Original (vanilla)	Qarl (+ Skingrad Roofs)	Qarl+Parallaxed Qarl

The difference between original Oblivion "vanilla" textures (left column) and Qarl's textures (middle column) is immediately obvious in most areas of the game (a few exceptions currently include caves and Ayleid ruins). Qarl's higher resolution images are especially dramatic when viewed up-close. The effect of adding Parallaxed Qarl textures (right column) will mainly be visible in cities and forts (wilderness and landscape areas are not altered by the Parallaxed Qarl add-on) and is more pronounced on recent ATI cards than on equivalent Nvidia cards. Even though some of the city shots above show very little obvious difference between the base Qarl textures and Parallaxed Qarl, this is deceptive. Due to the way parallax effects work, the difference is striking in-game (also, the screenshots were taken on an Nvidia card). However, it is worth noting that parallaxed textures tend to suffer some distortion when viewed very close up, especially on Nvidia cards.

QTP2 & VIDEO CARDS

Most users with a 512Mb video card can just install the base packages. Users with a 256Mb card may need to install additional packages to improve performance. The following list shows the suggested packages in the order they should be installed, grouped based on video card specs and your preference for parallaxed textures or non-parallaxed textures. If you create OMODs for these, then the list represents the order in which you must activate them (so that overwrites happen in the correct order).

NOTE: This install order is for QTP2. It will not work for QTP3. This page will be updated with details about optimal configurations for QTP3 in the near future. Until then, see the TOTO FAQ for QTP3 for details.

QTP2 Non-Parallax Installation/Activation Order for 512Mb Video Cards

QTP2 Non-Parallax Installation/Activation Order for 256Mb Video Cards

Qarl's Texture Pack 2
Skingrad Roof Textures
Better Tiling Textures 1.11
Qarl Normal Maps Reduced 2.0 (the BTSR package is included in 2.0 version)
Better Tiling LOD Textures (2048)
Better Night Sky

QTP2 Parallax Installation/Activation Order for 512Mb Video Cards

Qarl's Texture Pack 2
Better Tiling Textures 1.11
Parallaxed Qarl Textures 1.0 (includes Skingrad Roof Textures)
Parallaxed Qarl Textures 1.1 Update (includes normal map fix)
Better Tiling LOD Textures (4096)
Better Night Sky

QTP2 Parallax Installation/Activation for 256Mb Video Cards

Qarl's Texture Pack 2
Better Tiling Textures 1.11
Parallaxed Qarl Textures 1.0 (includes Skingrad Roof Textures)
Parallaxed Qarl Textures 1.1 Update (includes normal map fix)
Qarl Normal Maps Reduced 2.0 (changed from Parallax Qarl Reduced Normal Maps 1.1 [jjt] since that file no longer seems to be available -- QNMR2 has the same files, but some duplicates of what's already in Parallaxed Qarl, so it just means the download is a bit larger than it would be if the jjt package were still available)
Better Tiling LOD Textures (2048)
Better Night Sky

NOTE: If you're not using the Bethesda official 1.2 patch, then you may want to to also add Bluesteel's LandscapeLOD NormalMap Fix MipMap Fix v.1.1 (by Soor) to all of the above configurations.

QTP2 Video Card Performance

If you install the above packages and get unacceptable performance, there are lots of things you can do before giving up and uninstalling the textures. The most important things to do are to follow the guidelines in the Oblivion Tweaks Guide and defrag your drive. Also, the excellent article Optimising Oblivion v2.0 provides some great tips not mentioned in the Tweaks Guide (although the list of mods suggested in the article is out of date by now).

Some users have also reported that it helps to delete your .ini file:

\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Oblivion.ini

and let Oblivion generate a new one, then tweak the new one.

Check the Texture Help page for some other suggestions.

If you have a 512Mb card and find the performance hit for the suggested packages is too much, you can simply add the extra packages listed above for the 256Mb card version (i.e., the reduced normal maps option) to improve performance. Some 512Mb cards suffer from a slow memory interface (like some versions of the ATI x1300 that have a 64-bit memory interface instead of the usual 256-bit memory interface) and as a result may need to use the suggested texture set for 256Mb cards.

Likewise, some 256Mb cards may also suffer from the same problem (like the Nvidia 7300GS, which has a 64-bit memory interface), making them poor candidates for these large textures.

One good way to get some performance boost while still retaining all these great textures is to add the LowPoly Grass mod (LowLowPoly Grass isn't worth it). You can also try the excellent Oblivion Polygone Overhaul (OPO), although the current version still suffers some oddities. Both of these mods attempt to reduce the staggering polygon count of many objects in Oblivion without sacrificing much (or any) visible quality.

If you like the parallax effect, but find that Parallaxed Qarl is just too much for your system to handle, you can install RulZ' original Parallax mapping giga pack (also known as Parallax Cities Gigapack), which adds the parallax effect to Bethesda's original textures. However, you'll need to remove QTP2 before you do this or install blade9722's Parallax Cities Normal Maps (so that Qarl's normal maps will get overwritten).

You can also boost performance by using Jarrod's Oblivion Textures instead of Qarl's. The rest of the install order can remain the same regardless of whether you picked parallax or not -- with the critical exceptions that you must not install Qarl's Normal Maps Reduced, Reduced Normal Maps for Parallax Qarl, or Parallaxed Qarl normal map fix (for add-on).

Most of the recommendations on this page won't work well for 128Mb video cards, so there's a separate page for low-end texture options.

MAJOR QTP2 TEXTURE PACKS

Here are brief descriptions of the major QTP2 texture packs released so far.

QARL'S TEXTURE PACK 2 (QTP2)

Qarl has recently begun work on Texture Pack 3, but until it is finished, QTP2 will most likely remain the preferred texture replacer for most users. QTP2 replaces all normal landscape and rock textures, most architecture textures (castles, houses, and forts), and a lot of clutter textures (boxes and barrels). QTP2 replaces QTP1 (which was mostly just landscape & rocks), so you don't need to install QTP1.

Here is a small sample of the dramatic visual improvement provided by QTP2.

original (vanilla)	QTP2

QTP2: BETTER TILING FOR QARL LANDSCAPE TEXTURES

Building on Qarl's original landscape textures, mikal33 and blade9722 have teamed up to release an amazing set of non-tiling landscape textures that preserve the up-close detail of Qarl's textures without any significant tiling in the mid-range distance (i.e., before the LOD textures kick in). This is a major advance because it allows the mid-range distance landscape textures to blend as smoothly as possible with the long-range distance (LOD) landscape textures. It is possible to gain a similar effect by using CaptnKill's non-tiling landscape textures in conjunction with Zacharot's CaptnKill LOD textures (which, confusingly, are not at all similar to CaptnKill's original LOD textures), but this mixture suffers greatly from the loss of close-up detail in the landscape. For this reason, the CaptnKill/Zacharot-CaptnKill mixture is only recommended on low-end systems.

See the section on Distant Landscape Textures (LOD) on the main World Textures page for more details and screenshots.

QTP2: PARALLAXED QARL TEXTURES

Building on Qarl's texture work and RulZ' parallax work, blade9722 has released an incredible set of parallax textures (and meshes) that vastly improve the appearance of architecture objects in most of the cities. This mod is still very new, so expect to see more info and screenshots here soon. In addition to the screenshots near the top of this page, you can also see more great screenshots here.