Birds won't go away!

eshenk

In popcycle, I changed the values for birds to zero, yet I still see MANY flying in the air. I did this for every region that has birds, so why am I still seeing them? Should I just remove the entries for birds altogether, or why does something tell me that will have no effect. Any suggestions?

TheLoneWolf293

You can try shooting at them, but I recommend a good gun. I have a problem crows so large, they can barely fly. They are like big chickens. And they just shake air gun pellets off...

HeySlickThatsMe

Replace bird models with whales lmao

eshenk

No serious replies?

HeySlickThatsMe

@eshenk Try looking at this mod https://www.gta5-mods.com/misc/birds-no-more

eshenk

@HeySlickThatsMe He's doing the same EXACT thing I tried with popcycle. How it worked for him, is beyond me. I know that I have increased ped densities well beyond the vanilla state, and believe birds are treated just as peds are. BUT......I changed their values to zero, and I am still seeing a good, many, soaring the skies. I think I have to accept that the only way now, is to find their textures and meshes and delete them altogether.

@eshenk Have you tried changing things like this in popgroups.ymt?

<Item>
	<Name>Birds_Ground_City</Name>
	<models>
		<Item>
			<Name>A_C_PIGEON</Name>
			<Variations type="NULL"/>
		</Item>
	</models>
	<flags>POPGROUP_AMBIENT POPGROUP_WILDLIFE</flags>
</Item>

There's this as well

<Item>
  <Name>birds_countryside</Name>
  <models>
    <Item>
      <Name>a_c_cormorant</Name>
      <Variations />
    </Item>
    <Item>
      <Name>a_c_chickenhawk</Name>
      <Variations />
    </Item>
    <Item>
      <Name>a_c_crow</Name>
      <Variations />
    </Item>
  </models>
  <flags>POPGROUP_AMBIENT POPGROUP_AERIAL</flags>
</Item>

eshenk

@LeeC2202 THANKS!!! I will delete them, and hopefully that will be the last of em'!

@eshenk Have a look through that file, there are a few more than what I have shown. You might have to leave the group intact but delete the individual items from within... not sure. I have never edited that file beyond adding some peds to the beach ped section.

Or maybe you can just change the Flags section.

eshenk

@LeeC2202 Thanks bud, really appreciate it.

@eshenk You're welcome. I know how much you love popcycles and popgroups.

eshenk

@LeeC2202 Lately my gaming experience has turned to shit. The pop-in was so totally out of control. I keep changing more and more replacement vehicles to their originals, just to see NO change at all. Then I started paring down on ped densities. Just as the pop-in got more manageable, I started experiencing CTDs after 20-25 minutes of gameplay. I have vRam consumption at about 4.3 Gb on a card that has 8 Gb vRam. The only thing left is to do away with those birds.

@eshenk I think my VRam is only at about 3.3GB but I only use addons, so nothing pushes it. The only time I get a crash is when I use something I've made... There might be a connection there.

eshenk

@LeeC2202 STABLE!! Played an hour and a half without incident! I removed all bird entries from both popcycle and popgroups. I also made a couple edits to gameconfig to get traffic densities in the city to increase, and it worked! I also turned off MSAA altogether to free up even more vRam as I am already down sampling by 2.5.

I need to do more thorough testing, as I was only preoccupied with trying to crash the game, rather than standing on street corners observing traffic patterns. Country traffic is no longer bumper-to-bumper as it had been in the past. I discovered that vehicle-spacing values in gameconfig were way too small, so I increased the values, which put more space between the vehicles.

I don't think I will ever achieve what I am really after though, and am starting to wonder if a script can achieve true rush-hour conditions the way we have discussed in the past.

eshenk

@eshenk NEVERMIND, those stupid, effing, birds are back. But from where? Anything to reference birds was deleted, no what? Anyone know where the bird's textures can be located??

@eshenk Where are they back, in a certain area or all areas?

eshenk

@LeeC2202 Funny you mention that. It was from Michael's House, in the back yard, overlooking traffic. Again, all bird entries removed from both popcycle and popgroups. Could they have been residuals from the previous save? I waited for a good five minutes, believing if that were the case, they would eventually cease to be drawn in-game.

@eshenk It is possible they are being spawned by a scripted method, instead of an ambient spawn process.

As far as I can see, there are 5 locations in popgroups.ymt that add them:

<Name>Birds_City</Name>
<Name>Birds_Ground_City</Name>
<Name>Birds_Countryside</Name>
<Name>Birds_Ocean</Name>
<Name>Birds_Ground_Ocean</Name>

So if those are clear, that could mean that certain locations generate them in a slightly different way. You know, a bit like there are ambient peds and scripted peds... not sure really.