I would like to disable the relationship between the Texture quality setting and the landscape resolution permanently.
How can I do that?
Note: We imported the heightmap from World Machine and we are using World Composition.
Epic Textures quality
Low Textures quality
This is a very important issue for me as well.
I tried changing TEXTUREGROUP_Terrain_Heightmap=MinLODSize to 2048 with no change in behavior. The only way to fix this seems to be changing the scalability settings for texture LOD bias, but that is not really an ideal solution as it is a global setting for all textures.
It isn’t a solution 
But I have a new question, how can I force the first LOD of the landscape to be at maximum quality even with low texture setting?
Hey Loxli -
The Texture Scalability Settings are actually adjusting 3 different variables to scale the quality settings (for more details, read the documentation here) In the case of Landscapes, you are affecting the level of detail in the mip detail computation with the variable r.Streaming.MipBias=2.5 (Default Value for Low Texture Setting). You can however open the Output log and type in r.Streaming.MipBias=0 manually and the engine will use lower texture settings for the other variables but will use the high Mip Computation value.
You can also set these values in the console variables ini file which cannot be overwritten by scalability settings. Warning if you are using that needs to use the scalability and cannot because of these changes you may run across errors.
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
Yes, we know what the settings are doing… the issue is why is the landscape heightmap mips tied directly to the overall texture quality settings? As it is now, it is impossible to keep the landscape topology the same at all times, while adjusting the texture quality for the rest of the game.
I’m not exactly sure in what game situation you would want a terrain to have a different topology for players with different texture quality settings. It creates a huge discontinuity between what players see and interact with the world. As it is now if you want the landscape to be the same for everyone, the texture quality setting becomes useless, except for the Anisotropy value I guess.
Unless I’m missing something here…
I Agree with , UE4 probably needs separate settings for these values.
We can’t change the overall mipBias because performance and look.
Hi -
Your Topology should not be changing when you use a lower Mip values , the wireframe (as in the images above) will change but this is an issue of tessellation and not overall shape. In other words, you will lose some small details but the overall topology however will remain the same.
That being said I have placed a request to our engineers for review about separating the Landscape Tessellation factor (which is a Mip value) from the Texture Mip settings.
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
I think Loxli’s issue may be slightly different than mine then. Here is a gif of my terrain going from Epic to Medium to Low. Epic and High are the same and there is a slight difference to Medium, but you can clearly see Low is very different. The odd part is the collision is still accurate and does not follow the changed topology.
Hey JohnJ -
That does not look correct. Do you happen to have a project (this one or a sample one) that also reproduces this behavior so we may test it directly? If you would like to you can private message me from the Forums.
Thank You
Eric Ketchum
Thanks Eric… sent you a repro case in private forum message.
As noted there, I narrowed it down to landscapes that were built from heightmaps exported from UE3 then imported to UE4 when we changed over to UE4. I’m sure it has something to do with that.
Did a bit more investigating and figured out if I copy the landscape actor into a blank map, then copy that back into my working map it fixes whatever is wrong. But the big issue here is I lose my foliage that is painted onto that landscape… which is a big deal for these maps.
Maybe that will provide some more insight as it seems like something in the landscape needs “reset”.
Hey JohnJ,
I managed to get a hold of the test project you sent to Eric and was able to confirm what you are reporting. I created a bug report in our system with the number UE-11872.
I made sure to mention the initial steps you took to get to this point (World Machine and World Composition) as these could be playing a role in the origination of the issue. With that in mind, we appreciate you taking the time to report this issue, and for your patience while we helped you troubleshoot.
If you have any other questions, or need additional help please let us know.
Cheers,
Thanks Andrew.
Is there any way for me to keep track of the bug report to know if its been fixed?
No problem,
I can keep this post marked as unresolved for tracking purposes, and keep you up-to-date as far as the condition of the bug and when a fix plans on being implemented.
Cheers,
Has there been a fix to this issue? Loading up old projects made in earlier versions (4.8 → 4.10) seems to default at the low res landscape which is quite different to the shape of the normal intended landscape shape. Is there a way to force max quality for the landscape at all times, even if texture quality is changing?
The fix was integrated into 4.8 and upgrading from 4.8 to 4.10 could be causing something else to cause this issue to occur. Can you reproduce this in a blank project?
I just tested this issue in 4.10.2 and did not see the landscapes geometry change when setting the overall texture quality down to ‘Low’.
There is a setting on the Landscape Actor itself within the LOD section called ‘Max LODLevel’ which will allow you to set the Max Level of Detail to use when available.
Cheers,
Hey Andrew, I just tested again (the project was originally made in 4.7, and the issue seems to be resolved nicely when opened in 4.10, no more flickering/changing geometry in the landscape! Awesome!
Thanks for the tip about the Max Level of Detail too, will check that out!
Can you reproduce this in a new blank project and provide me with the steps or assets to do so?
Thank you,
