Glanzer

Recently I've noticed a slight "halo" or "glow" around the silhouette of people and animals when viewing them at moderate distances against dark backgrounds. It's not enough to ruin the game but it is noticeable enough to distract from the immersion. I would describe it as a soft thin fuzzy white line around animals or peoples, sort of like they've been badly pasted into the game. But when I approach them it goes away and things are fine. Is this normal and maybe I've never noticed it before? Unfortunately it would be hard to tie it to a specific mod because I've spent the last week reloading all my mods for another playthrough. I'm using the following texture/lighting/environment mods which may affect this problem: A full install of the Texture Pack Combiner using the performance/lowres textures. I use SkyTPC and I let SkyTPC do a default DDSOpt on the TPC after it built it.NPC ClothingHunterborn & Hunting in SkyrimCoTRealistic Lighting OverhaulProject ENB - Realistic for CoTIn addition I'm wondering if it could be some ini tweak I've done. But I really don't do much ini tweaking, just the bare essentials as set forth in STEP and in Neovalen's SR guide. *edit* hmmmm I wonder if bloom might be causing this. I haven't tweaked any of the ENB bloom settings. I'll try turning off bloom tonight in my ENB to see if that solves it. *edit #2* I finally found the following post that may give me some leads, I'll report back after I do some testing: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/498228-annoying-auraglow-around-characters-and-objects/

OK, I just skipped that section then.

I've read several places that suggest not installing all your mods at once but rather do them incrementally and test them as you go. But now that I'm reinstalling everything from scratch and using the SR:LE guide to help me I'm not sure what the "incremental" approach really means. Does it mean: Install a few mods, then create a new game and test them, then exit WITHOUT saving the game. Then install a few more mods, create a new game, test a bit, then exit again WITHOUT saving the game.Or does it mean this: Install a few mods, then create a new game and test them, then SAVE the game. Then load a few more mods, open your previously saved game and test the new mods, then SAVE the game again. Etc...Inquiring minds want to know!

I think the SR:LE guide might be improved with these things: I think the SR:LE guide should direct the user to create a new game early on in the installation in order to test things at that point. A good place to do that would be after installing the mods and tools that have DLLs (e.g. SKSE, Safety Load) and after installing the UI mods (e.g. SkyUI). I tried creating a new game at that point and found that I had made a mistake that prevented the game from starting. It's much easier to debug a problem at that point than having 100 mods installed! I also think several other "checkpoints" should be introduced to make sure things are ok at key points. After all, the whole install may take 10 hours or more.The order of installation seems a bit arbitrary even though the mods are put into different sections. For example, there is a "World of Skyrim" section that has tons of texture mods, then later there is a "People of Skyrim" section that has still more texture mods. I think the mods should be broken down by what they install, e.g. textures and meshes, vs. gameplay changes. That way people can more easily use DDSOpt or Optimizer Textures on the group rather than doing it piecemeal. Also, I am using the TPC which includes some but not all the SR:LE textures, and it includes lots more mods outside of SR:LE, so it would be easier for us TPC users to substitute our textures for yours.Make the guide more useful for people who want to use just pieces of it rather than the whole thing. This could be done by suggesting alternatives. The reason I say this is that I REALLY LIKE all the cleaning info you've provided in the previous guide (SR) but a lot of those suggestions didn't get into the new guide because the new guide dropped some mods. Examples include Blessings, Radiant and Unique Potions and Poisons HD, WATER, and Realistic Lighting Overhaul. I had to use the old guide to clean those. Of course I realize that could make the guide become too complicated to manage, and people might mix and match things that are incompatible and blame you when things don't work. :-)*edit*: Add a couple of helpful URLs to the top of the doc: #1: The URL to this help forum (how else can users get help or provide feedback?), and #2: The URL to the old guide.

VERY COOL. I was using both the old SR and new SR:LE guides to clean mods, and just today I loaded Book Covers Skyrim and went to clean only to find out it didn't need it! I even made this notation: "not needed for the new version" Then I saw your post. :-)

That's exactly what I use and I really like them! I also use Supreme Storms, Lightning During Thunderstorms, Climates Of Tamriel - Weather Patch - Fog Rain Overcast, and Morning Fogs. Sometimes I just save the game, then do a "set timescale to 2000" and watch the world and weather and days/nights change around me. :-)

For comparison, here is my PC (very similar to yours): Processor Intel i7-2600k (@4.2GHz) RAM 16GB G.Skill DDR3 1833MHz Graphics Card 3GB NVIDIA Ge-Force GTX 780 Hard Drive 240GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD - Skyrim is here 120GB Crucial C300 SSD - my OS (7) is on here I have followed much of the SR:LE guide, but I use the Texture Pack Combiner (update to date using SkyrimTPC), along with many different mods than SR:LE, for example I use these: CoT RLO (instead of ELFX) Project ENB (instead of Realvision) I'm still in the process of loading and testing all my mods for another playthrough. I've got all the texture/lighting/sound mods installed, and I average about 50 FPS (fluctuates 40-60 depending on where I am). I don't have most of my questing/survival/realism mods like frostfall, RnD, etc. installed yet though. *EDIT*: Forgot to mention that I use the medium/light versions of all the TPC mods, and I let SkyrimTPC DDSOpt them. I also manually DDSOpt mods myself (using the STEP guidelines) that are outside of the TPC.

I've been cleaning mods per the instructions in the SR and SR:LE guides (with SR:LE taking precedence) and I have a question about cleaning the "Alternate Start - Live Another Life" mod. The cleaning directions in the SR guide (https://wiki.step-project.com/User:Neovalen/Skyrim_Revisited) were perfect except for the first section below about forwarding the changes from the various DLCs: Are the directions above still valid? What I saw on the screen didn't seem to line up exactly with those directions, so I skipped this part of the cleaning. The rest of the cleaning for Alternate Start went smoothly. I'm wondering if things changed in the past few months.

OK, thanks for the answers. Actually I planned to use Project ENB for CoT 3.1 anyway (not Unreal ENB). And I'm deviating a lot from the SR:LE mods anyway. For example, I'm using a nearly full install of TCP (texture pack combiner) instead of individually installing dozens of textures mods. I'm also using AFT not EFF. Many other changes. Basically I'm sort of using his guide as a sanity check and learning experience to do my complete scrub and reinstall. I plan to use the mods I've already tested and liked. His guide is especially helpful on all the cleaning, MO configuration, special handling, and lots of other stuff. As far as sounds, I don't use CoT sounds but I do add a lot of sound stuff, though some of them simply override the original sound file which is safe. SoS: everything Improved Combat Sounds Ultra Realistic Bow/Crossbow Shoot Sounds Better Horse Pain Sounds Improved Horse Step Sounds Less Bitchy Lydia :-) Khajiit Speak - Complete Dialogue Overhaul Fantasy Music Overhaul

Wow, I just realized that the old SR guide used CoT and RLO, but the new guide does NOT include CoT and uses ELFX instead. SAY IT ISN'T SO. I don't think I can play without CoT.

I see that every nonessential file is excluded in the SR:LE guide. For example, for Skyrim Realistic Overhaul it says: Special Installation: Do not install the following file(s) and/or folder(s): ◾Optimized_readme.txt ◾SRO 1.1 Readme.txt ◾SRO 1.6 Update.txt I assume by "Do not install" it means I do a Manual install and uncheck those files? Is there any harm in including the readmes? Personally I like having those included in case I want to read them. Or can I do that through the MO interface even when they're not installed?

@mothergoose729 In your directions you say "navigate to you skyrim data folder", but in the screenshot you've actually chosen the "Data\textures" folder.