I have been looking into the z-fighting problem in Skyrim for quite a while now and have kept a record of all my different attempts to fix it. Head over here to read through it:
http://forum.step-pr....com/showthr...
Finally I'm pretty sure I found a really good fix. The thing is, not everybody gets the same z-fighting or the same results when applying my fix. You can post your own rig, drivers, skyrim version and the results of my fix for you personally. I'll have a look at it and try to make an educated guess as to what you could still improve.
Important for you will be, that this fix costs you some FPS. In wide-open locations like the plains of Whiterun you might experience a severe drop of FPS depending on what other modifications or ini-tweaks you use. If you cannot live with that you got 3 choices:
-take the fix and cut down on other mods or tweaks
-forget the fix and live with z-fighting
-go to your skyrim Launcher - Options - Advanced - View Distance - Distant Object Detail and set it to Medium or High and live with fugly mountains.
IMPORTANT: This fix is only approved for Skyrim Ultra-Settings from the original Skyrim Launcher. Whatever tweaks you made personally might cause problems. If you have a doubt copy your ini files to a separate folder. Then delete them from the Skyrim folder and open the Steam Skyrim Launcher. Pick Ultra-settings. Then start the game to create new .ini's. Now apply the fix(-es). After saving your ini-files make them "read-only" so your skyrim launcher cannot change any of the new values.
FIX Part 1:
Open your SkyrimPrefs.ini. Usually it should be found under Documents/My Games/Skyrim
Scroll down until you reach the [TerrainManager] section of the file.
Change all the values so they look like this:
fTreeLoadDistance=75000.0000
fBlockMaximumDistance=500000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=140000.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=75000.0000
fSplitDistanceMult=4.0000
bShowLODInEditor=0
IMPORTANT NOTE: I had a typo in my fix here before Gophers Video on
Z-fighting. The value fBlockLevel1Distance was set to 1400000.0000. This
actually should be 140000.0000 so divided by 10. Apparently it works
both ways, but if you consider it being too big of a FPS-hit with the
1,400,000.0000 try out using fBlockLevel1Distance=140000.0000 instead.
Sorry for that.
Now search for "fSkyCellRefFadeDistance" and change it's value to 500000.0000
Save and exit
Open your Skyrim.ini. You can find it in the same folder you found your SkyrimPrefs.ini
Under [Display] add the following line:
fNearDistance=25.0000
Save and Exit.
The normal setting is 15.0000 (even though it's not there, the game calculates with this value). 25.0000 is the maximum approved value. everything above can cause severe graphic glitches. So try out values between 15.0000 and 25.0000 to find your own sweet spot. (Thanks to hlvr for this information. check out his thread here:
http://forums.bethso.../topic/1336...)
FIX Part 2 (optional and only for very good rigs):
Please do look at this thread to weigh the benefits against the problems of doing this tweak:
http://forums.bethso...m/topic/1274...
Open your Skyrim.ini. You can find it in the same folder you found your SkyrimPrefs.ini
under [General] add the following line:
uGridsToLoad=7
change uExterior Cell Buffer=36 to uExterior Cell Buffer=64
Save and exit.
You may try setting uGrids to 9, too. It's just supposed to reduce the z-fighting whilst closing in on structures, e.g. running from Whiterun Watch tower (where your first dragon attacks) to Whiterun. The walls start flashing at some point. High uGrids help against that, but you should know what you're doing before you mess everything up.