Automata-LodMod

2025 update: posted v0. 77. 5 which solves some outstanding issues with SkipBootingScreens & ManualCulling, fixing many of the model placement issues, many thanks to basti5555 for their work on these!

Future updates for LOD issues may be found on their Automata LodMod fix page (if you notice any other models showing where they shouldn't, it may be worth commenting on both this & the fix page)

v0. 77. 5 also adds some extra LOD fixes for the intro section when using LODMultiplier/ShadowForceAll, and now includes an option to disable the fakeHDR added in the 2021 update (making it easier to replace with something like Special K's HDR retrofit)

This has also updated LodMod to VS2022, if the game fails to load you may need to install a newer VCRedist:

https://aka.ms/vs/17/release/vc_redist.x64.exe

Automata-LodMod is a wrapper DLL that can patch several graphics improvements into NieR Automata, helping improve graphics quality & also reduce some annoying graphical bugs, along with support for H264 cutscenes.

This was started just to help with the annoying "AO appearing through walls" bug that the 2021 update introduced, but over time has grown to include much more.

By default LodMod will disable the games manual LOD culling, increase model LODs, and also increase shadow resolution.

If this causes performance issues you can disable these by changing the LodMod.ini as follows:

- LODMultiplier: change from 0 to 1

- ShadowResolution: change from 8192 to 0

- ShadowDistanceMinimum: change from 70 to 0

- DisableManualCulling: change from true to false

With that all graphical changes will be disabled, leaving only the H264 cutscenes active (note that this will bring back the AO-through-walls bug caused by 2021 update)

Many systems should be able to use LODMultiplier = 0 fine however (which fixes the AO issue), experiment!

# Features

[]LODMultiplier: helps to reduce model-swapping & AO issues (should help a lot with the AO-through-walls bug introduced in 2021)

[]ShadowModelHQ: allows using shadows based on real-time HQ models of objects (eg. shadows of trees can sway along with the tree)

[]ShadowModelForceAll: allows smaller models like rocks/grass & other objects to cast shadows (eg: https://slow.pics/c/GIa50v0A click image to compare)

[]DisableManualCulling: disables culling triggers used by the game to hide models/geometry, greatly reducing the number of pop-ins/pop-outs.

[*]DisableVignette: allows disabling the on-screen vignette effect (this only affects the in-game 3D view, 2D menus use a vignette texture instead, you can use ChaserJZX's Grid Vignette and Bunker Grain Removal mo