NaturalVision Remastered unloading models at night

NikX835

Whenever I play GTAV with the NVR mod installed, at around 20:30 all models disappear (vehicles, props, peds) and reappear at around 6. The mod is not pirated, I downloaded it from Razedmods.com.
This issue persists on a clean install.

NikX835

Oh and also weather like Smog and Snow bring the assets back for some reason?

a63nt-5m1th

@NikX835

Information Gathering:

If I was diagnosing this, I'd probably start by editing the:

# Emissive night values
emissive.night.start.time		20
emissive.night.end.time			6

&

// Vehicle Light Night/Day Settings
vehicle.lights.sunrise			6.5
vehicle.lights.sunset			20.0

in 'visualsettings.dat':

...\Grand Theft Auto V\mods\update\update.rpf\common\data\visualsettings.dat

& see if changing any of those values changes the time everything dissappears/reappears etc.

Obviously, the likely fix resides in the timecycle files, given that Smog & Snow etc work 100% (if that's correct?), but the above test is super quick & worth gathering info on at least.

Likely Solution:

Ultimately though, if indeed Smog & Snow etc work correctly (?), you'll end up in the timecycle files. You can do stuff like rename a timecycle & then replace another & see if the issue persists (Note: it's file name & the internal name within the timecycle file ('<cycle name="SMOG" regions="2">' etc) are both required to be renamed or you'll get crazy 'the matrix has crashed' stuff on screen when you switch to that weather).

Once you're done with information gathering & hopefully guaranteed that editing the broken timecycles is likely to fix your issue (& you've made any backups you need to), your best hope is to start by taking large parts/sections etc of data from within the working 'w_smog.xml' etc file & pasting it into & over the same values within a broken timecycle file & via that method, either going section by section, or ideally using the 50/50 method below, figure out by a process of elimination what value/s are causing it.

50/50 (Binary) Search Method:

Using what is called a 50/50 or binary method will yield the fastest results & usually allow you to identify a culprit's general or even exact location within 6 to 10 loads of the game (for 100 > 1000 starting total values anyway. 10,000 starting values total takes ~14 loads of the game, so the more values, the better/faster this method becomes compared to other search methods ):

50/50 Proof of Concept:
Starting with a sample size of 1000 values total (for example) this method can eliminate all other values & find the one causing an issue within ~10 loads of the game:

No. of Loads of Game        No. of Values     
         0                       1000
         1                       500
         2                       250
         3                       125
         4                       62.5 (let's call it 64)
         5                       32
         6                       16
         7                       8
         8                       4
         9                       2
         10                      1 (1 (or <1) means value is identified)

Additional Info:

The timecycle files contain two main sections:

<region name="GLOBAL"> = The Countryside Areas
<region name="URBAN"> = The Main City Area

If using the binary search method, your starting point would be test replacing half the values within either the City &/or Countryside sections (ie not half of the entire file, just half of each section etc).

For the actual diagnosing/testing values process, whether using the binary method or going section by section, a good way of doing it might be to replace an entire broken timecycle's Countryside area with the entire same section from Smog/Snow & then copy sections from the newly pasted Countryside section to the City section one at a time while loading the game after each change to see if it's fixed.
That will keep everything you need within the same file & means you don't need to hop to different tabs etc to copy & paste data (will streamline the process & save a little bit of time etc).