TOTO FAQ for QTP3

Everything You Need to Know About Qarl's Texture Pack III

Last Updated 10/10/2007 and 1/10/2026

Bugs, Omissions, and Patches

Compatibility Patch for UOP 2.1

QTP3 uses the mesh corrections from the Unofficial Oblivion Patch 1.61 wherever QTP3 needed to change parallax settings, but this compatibility between the two mods is lost if you install a more recent release of UOP after installing QTP3.

If you install UOP after installing QTP3, you'll need to either reinstall QTP3 or install the QTP3 UOP Compatibility Patch to resolve this problem.

All conflicting meshes from UOP 2.1 have been altered to support the parallax mode settings used in QTP3, and QTP3 normal maps have been restored wherever they were overwritten by UOP normal map corrections.

You should always install this patch last (i.e., after installing QTP3, the standard QTP3 patches (below), and whichever UOP version you're using.

Download QTP3 UOP Compatibility Patch from Nexus Mods

QTP3 Patch 1.3

The base install has a few minor problems that are now corrected by the QTP3 Patch 1.3.

Note: PlanetElderScrolls and ElricM links are defunct as of 2025. Check Nexus Mods for current downloads.

Here are the problems corrected so far:

Patch 1.3

Patch 1.2

Patch 1.1

Qarl has combined the earlier fixes together to make the QTP3 Patch 1.3, so it's the only patch you'll need.

Installation: Just extract the archive and copy or move the contents into: \Oblivion\Data\, overwriting any previous files.

Video Card Drivers

Nvidia's drivers have trouble when there's LOTS of GPU RAM loading going on and that's exactly what happens when using Qarl's texture packs. The GPU RAM fills up too much, which causes some nice texture madness. Nvidia fixed this in their more recent driver sets (97.92 and up) even though they are intended to be used on 8800 cards.

Here's a few links leading to the drivers with a modified .inf file so you can install them without problems using your current card.

Note: Original tweaksrus.com and guru3d.com driver links are from 2007. For modern systems, use the latest drivers from Nvidia's official website.

Common Questions

Q. Is QTP3 Compatible with The Unofficial Oblivion Patch 2.1, 2.0, or 1.7?

It is compatible with all of these, but you need to either install UOP 1.7, 2.0, or 2.1 before you install QTP3 or (if you already installed QTP3 and then later install one of the UOP versions) install the UOP 2.1 Compatibility Patch for QTP3 (described near the top of this page) after installing both QTP3 and UOP.

The UOP 1.61 mesh fixes are included in QTP3 wherever they needed to be altered for parallaxing, so if you install any UOP version afterward then it will overwrite some meshes and some textures in QTP3 -- resulting in the loss of parallaxing on those UOP-fixed meshes, as well as mismatched normal maps if you use UOP 2.1.

Q. Why do the screenshots look so blurry in the distance?

Qarl's QTP3 sample screenshots were taken with Qarl and Timeslip's Depth of Field (DoF) mod active, which is why everything in the distance looks so blurry.

Q. Will QTP3 work on a 256Mb card? Why am I getting bad stuttering on my 512Mb card?

The first thing to do is to get QTP3 - Reduced by Bob Markinson. It will make a dramatic difference with a very acceptable loss of quality. You can find more info on the World Textures page.

However, the original QTP3 will work on a 256Mb card, and it is even possible to tune your setup so it runs fairly smoothly (without stuttering) in most cases. However, you may have to sacrifice some things (such as LOD replacers and AEVWD), and it will probably be sluggish unless you have 2Gb of system RAM and your system is well-tuned (defragged SATA hard-drive, tweaked Oblivion.ini, etc.). Still, you're going to get some stuttering and potentially heavy slowdowns in some places unless you're running at very low resolution. I'm running it on a 256Mb 7800GS (AGP 8x with 256Mb aperture specified in BIOS settings) and it works fine in most places at 1152x864 resolution, although some exterior areas can get very slow at times, and places like Anvil still suffer from frequent stuttering.

Given this, it stands to reason that you should be able to get it working even better on a 512Mb card. However, this will depend on a lot of other factors, too, such as the specific type of card you're using (its memory bandwidth, etc.), other mods you're running, .ini tweaks, etc.

The most frequent slowdowns with QTP3 happen after you've been wandering around for a while (since VRAM usage will grow over time) regardless of your video card size -- it will just happen sooner on a 256Mb card than on a 512Mb card. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you use a "purge cell buffer" mod. There are a bunch of these mods out already, but the most advanced one so far is Jaga Telesin's Streamline (it is far more effective and suffers a lot fewer side-effects than any other mods of this type, but it does require you to use OBSE). Alternately, you can use Quarn's Purge Cell Buffer (the Cell Change version is best if you don't use fast travel very often, but the Load Screen version works great as long as you fast travel or enter inns, shops, dungeons, etc. somewhat frequently) or Martigen's HTFpcb Extended New (original iinet.com.au link defunct) to keep the cell buffer purged (HTFpcb or HTFpcb Extended will also work). If you want to test this yourself without installing one of the pcb mods, you can open the console whenever you start getting bogged down and type "pcb" (purge cell buffer) yourself. For more details on these PCB mods, check out this ESF thread (original elderscrolls.com forum link no longer available).

For tuning tips, see Mastering the INI (original bethsoft.com forum link no longer available).

One fairly drastic option to boost performance with QTP3 is to get rid of your LOD replacers -- and this is a lot more feasible now with the improved appearance of distant landscape in the official 1.2 patch. If you do get rid of your LandscapeLOD texture replacers, you may want to consider using Qarl and Timeslip's Depth of Field (DoF) mod. This bears repeating: using DoF without any LOD packs may be a good option for people who are struggling to run QTP3. There's probably not much point in running both an LOD replacer and DoF at the same time anyway -- why sink so much of your performance into distant graphics if you're running DoF?

Most users will probably want to run Blade9722's BTQ Landscape LOD with Qarl's Compressed 4096 LOD Normal Maps (original elderscrolls.com forum link no longer available) and without the DoF mod. Some users will probably still prefer CaptnKillz or another popular package, though. You'll have to decide this for yourself. Check the TOTO World Textures page for updated LOD comparisons.

Q. Do I still need QTP1, QTP2 or any of the optional add-ons for them?

No. QTP3 is a complete replacement for QTP1, QTP2, and most of the add-ons like Better Tiling Qarl Landscape Textures, Parallaxed Qarl, etc. In fact, you need to make sure you remove any other parallax mods before installing QTP3. Qarl included many of mikal33 and blade9722's Better Tiling Landscape textures and used the same method from BTQ to create the new ones he added. You may still want an LOD replacer -- more on that below.

Q. Should I follow the TOTO install order?

No. Those instructions are intended for QTP2, not QTP3. It's going to take a while for the TOTO site to catch up with the release of QTP3. Since there are no add-ons for QTP3 yet, don't worry to much about the install order (other than the UOP issue noted above). The important thing is to make sure you remove all parallax mods before installing QTP3 -- especially the meshes -- you did make OMODs for all those other replacers already, right? If not, there's a whole section of this FAQ dedicated to removal options in case QTP3 crushes your puny video card.

The big exception to this no-other-replacers rule so far is mikal33's Improved Doors & Flora (IDF), which works great with QTP3 since it mostly replaces areas that QTP3 does not touch. Here's some details Qarl posted about this:

Thanks dev for mentioning mikal33's texture mod. I forgot to mention that. I use it too. In fact, I deliberately did not do the doors of Skingrad and the Priory because mikal33 had already done those and they're excellent. Here are the textures which both mods redo:

textures\clutter\upperclass\upperchest01.dds
textures\clutter\upperclass\upperchest01_n.dds
textures\clutter\upperclass\upperchest.dds
textures\clutter\upperclass\upperchest_n.dds

With those, mikal's are actually closer to the original. Mine are a little fancier with gold inlays. I took a little creative license there because those are the "good" chests which usually contain the high-end items. But it's a matter of taste which ones you'll prefer.

textures\dungeons\misc\dunhay.dds
textures\dungeons\misc\dunhay_n.dds

Those are so close it probably doesn't even matter which ones you use.

textures\dungeons\misc\root01.dds
textures\dungeons\misc\root01_n.dds
textures\dungeons\misc\root02.dds
textures\dungeons\misc\root02_n.dds

Those ones will probably be the toughest decision to make because mikal's are excellent. Mine are more "rooty" and his are more "viny". Since they're used in place as both roots AND vines, there's really no correct version. It'll just be a matter of taste which ones you prefer. I made some comparative screenshots earlier in this thread if you want to dig back through to find them.

So, you can install QTP3 and IDF in whichever order you prefer.

If you have a very high-end rig, you can also install mikal33's Improved Trees & Flora before you install QTP3.

Also, Qarl didn't get around to replacing the roadsigns in QTP3, so that is an area for additional improvements. I'm not a huge fan of the LBM Weathered Direction Signs mod, but some folks like it.

As always, if you prefer any of the interior textures done by others (especially Koldorn), you can add them after installing QTP3, but you may end up with strange effects if other non-parallax textures get paired with Qarl's parallax meshes. We hope to have a complete guide on this subject in the future.

Q. I keep getting corrupt or incomplete downloads. Why can't I download this? Can you host it somewhere else?

Quick tips for a successful download:

  1. Check free drive space.
  2. Disable firewall.
  3. Use a Download Manager

This is a massive mod and Qarl doesn't want it mirrored on a bunch of different sites. He is planning to add an alternate download at ElricM in the future.

If you're having trouble downloading the file, you the first thing to do is make sure you have enough free disk space on your boot drive (where your temporary files are kept) and wherever you're saving the file. Also, be sure to disable your firewall before downloading (many firewalls can cause problems with large downloads).

Using a Download Manager is also critical for a mod this large. The following is adapted from Using a Download Manager, posted by Monica21: This is a big mod, so here's a note about using download managers. Among some useful features like the ability to resume downloads when connections are lost, download managers also claim to supposedly speed up downloads by opening up multiple connections. The idea is if one connection is good, then 5, 8, 10 or even 20 simultaneous connections must be terrific. Never mind that the limiting factor may be your connection speed anyway. Rather than argue the considerate allocation of web server child threads to a single user with a download manager, let me explain why some will work and some won't.

Most DMs will do the right thing by simply opening up extra connections to a web server when a download begins to be served. These DMs will request the file be served in "chunks" or ranges and each individual connection will be allocated to retrieve that particular range. Then, if the connection is dropped, the DM can reconnect with the stored download URL and resume each range where it left off, a pretty decent feature especially for a user with a slow connection. These DMs will allow the web site to serve the download normally. However, there are some DMs that will ascertain the file link from the download, switch to that link and attempt to download it directly. This is what Free Download Manager will do, for example. When this happens, the DM ends up looking to the host site just like another pesky web bot or some site that wants to direct-link their files. So they intercept the switch and instead redirect the connection to a web page that basically says "Sorry, but you can't do that". For example, some users report that Free Download Manager will consistently get a file not found error. Actually what is really happening is that Free Download Manager is in fact downloading the web page "filenotfoundorforbidden.html" rather than the download file. If you are using Free Download Manager, you can see this in the activity log. You'll see the connection to the url, then a redirect that it does to get the file followed by a redirect.

So, can you use a DM? Of course you can. Just get one that works equitably. Here's a few that work very well:

Some interesting stats about QTP3:

* total compressed size: 1.67GB
* uncompressed: 2.74GB
* textures + normal maps = 2,947 files
* meshes = 999 files

Uninstalling QTP3

QTP3 replaces roughly 4,000 files from the default Oblivion install, so unless it's the only replacer you have installed, there is no easy way to remove it by hand. By comparison, QTP2 had only 690 files, and even that was no cakewalk to remove by hand.

If you made an OMOD before installing QTP3, you can simply deactivate it. If you didn't make an OMOD before installing QTP3, you can still do so afterward and then right-click the OMOD in OBMM to bring up the context menu and select clean. This will remove all of the files installed from QTP3, assuming you put all the same files into the OMOD you just made.

Brief OMOD Creation Guide

Creating your own omods may seem intimidating at first, but it's really very simple after the first few times. In short, the process is: (1) download the mod to a temporary location and unpack it, (2) launch OBMM, (3) click Create, (4) select the directory where you've unpacked the mod (you can click the Data Files radio button to make sure the files got added), (5) type a name for the omod, and (6) click Create omod. Go get a cup of coffee while the 7-zip compression chugs away. Once you've created the omod, simply select it and click the Activate button. If you later need to remove the textures, then you can simply select the omod and click Deactivate.

Other Install/Uninstall Options

You can also use the Replacers feature in Wrye Bash to install/uninstall QTP3 very easily. It's very fast and effective, although it requires more drive space than an OMOD since it does not store everything in a 7-zip archive. This may actually be an advantage for a huge mod like QTP3, however, since it takes forever to create such a massive OMOD.

A faster option for removing QTP3 when you didn't make an OMOD or don't have Wrye Bash yet is to use the Oblivion Mod Remover. Fortunately, the latest version now has a nice GUI interface, so it's easy to use.

It works great, too, but there's a small bug forcing you to pick a valid backup directory even if you don't want to backup the files. Anyway, it works great once you specify a backup directory. I used it to remove the QTP3 beta and it worked like a charm! (yes, I was too impatient to make an OMOD for the beta because I knew I'd be replacing it with the full version).

If you really don't want to use any of these great tools, then you'll have to either reinstall oblivion from scratch or carefully remove QTP3 by hand. If you really want to try this, you'll need to extract the original archive file and browse through it, using it as a list of the files you need to delete in each folder. One shortcut here is rather than go through it file-by-file, you can save some time by first comparing file counts.

Here's an example from QTP2 (adapted from a post by Dalamar1991 with additional info from Ryu Hyabusa):
Inside the archive is a folder: textures\architecture\anvil\
This folder contains 34 files (and 1 folder).
Open the \Oblivion\data\textures\architecture\anvil\ folder on your hard drive. If there's only 34 files in there, then you can delete them all. It's a safe bet they're all the same files. If there's more than 34 files, though, then you'll have to match up the filenames before deleting them.

One technique that will also work for advanced Windows users is as follows (don't try this if you're a newbie!). Extract the archive to a safe location somewhere. Open two separate file windows, then drag files from each folder in the archive into the corresponding target data folder and let them overwrite again. After doing this and before you click on anything else, all the files you just copied will be highlighted in the target window. If you click on the outer rim of the target window, it will become the active window without deselecting the files you just copied. You can then hit delete in that window to remove them all. Other files in the target directory will not be affected. However, beware: This only works with files, not folders, so you can only do this safely within each subfolder. If you copy a higher-level of the folder structure, hitting delete will remove all the subfolders regardless of whether they contained any of Qarl's files.

One final point: don't forget to run Utilities->ArchiveInvalidation in OBMM to update your BSA edits after installing/removing the textures!

Common Issues

Pink Textures

If you're seeing any pink textures in-game, then there are only a few possible explanations:

  1. You didn't install it correctly, or
  2. You didn't use a BSA-alteration method of invalidation as detailed in the readme (original qarl.betteroblivion.com link defunct), or
  3. You've got a Windows file permissions problem (very rare), or
  4. You've somehow managed to corrupt your textures BSA and you need to restore a backup of it (this can happen if you try to use both OBMM and BSA Patcher).

Normal Maps Don't Match

If the textures are not pink but look really odd in some places, you may be suffering from mismatched normal maps. This can only happen if:

  1. You didn't follow the Post-Patch Fix instructions, which might leave Qarl's normal maps dated older than your textures BSA, meaning you'll see Qarl's base texture with the default Oblivion normal maps. This can be easily corrected by clicking Reset BSA Dates on OBMM's ArchiveInvalidation screen and several other methods detailed in the Post-Patch Fix instructions.
  2. You didn't follow the Readme Instructions (original qarl.betteroblivion.com link defunct) and you're running without any invalidation method, which will cause some of the base textures not to load (due to the Oblivion texture-loading bug). In this case you will see Qarl's normal map on the default Oblivion base texture in some places.
  3. You've got a Windows file permissions problem preventing the correct normal map from loading, but this is very rare.
  4. You installed UOP 2.1 after installing QTP3 and failed to also install the compatibility patch described near the top of this page.