So I've been looking into the dreaded LOD situation now that SimplyGon expects us to bankrupt ourselves.
I've been doing so because my AC is essentially forcing LOD D onto older cars that don't have LODs at all, like the Oreca FLM09 from IER. Thus, when far enough away from the car (not far at all, unfortunately), the car will completely disappear. See this pic at the start line of Crescent Valley - they will stay in this "disappeared" state until you get right up to them.
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I've altered every CSP setting related to LODs in Graphics Adjustments possible, no change. I'd prefer in these cases to just not have LODs at all and just eat the performance cost at the beginning of a race of ~22 LODA cars on screen, but I can't seem to force that behavior.
So I bit the bullet and downloaded the stupid PolygonCruncher trial that Ilja now recommends, and while it works at a very rudimentary level, it doesn't seem to account for paint for any of the cars I've tried. So, when LODs change for these cars, the skin will essentially go away and show the "blank" version of the skin. I suppose that's better - except for LOD D doesn't seem to account for any shading at all, it's completely black. Copy/pasting LOD B and renaming it as LOD C/D doesn't work either.
I'm in over my head here, anyone who knows more about this stuff I'd appreciate it. I have this trial for a week (plus a few more with other accounts) and would love to get LODs for all the older cars that need them - as it seems this is now a universal CSP problem.
EDIT: Jerryrigged just one LOD to stretch almost out of sight with lods.ini in the data.acd, but this is obviously a patchwork solution.