Mardread

I am using this one right now and it looks good. I have seen some pretty good animations so far with it. They also do not hang up and do nothing like Bethesda's does.

Hello Starac, I am assuming you have read the whole thread and for that I am grateful that you have approached this the way you did. It may seem like a bash, but it is not. Your work has been a big part of the STEP community since the beginning (which really wasnt that long ago). The idea basically is to create the best environment we can for skyrim while staying close to vanilla as possible. You get the idea as your textures are very close to vanilla. While I have used a good portion of your textures from your previous update, your latest update is humongous. There are a lot of mod authors around and some of them actually do have better looking textures than some of what you have presented to us. That is an opinion though. I am pretty sure that not everyone shares that point of view and this is a consensus of thoughts on what looks appropriate in game and what blends well. While your mod does offer great value to people who want to find a one stop shop for everything, that is enough for them. For the enthusiast though, which I believe most of everyone here is, we like to go through and pick bits and pieces from every authors work and then apply them to our own games. I cannot tell you how many times I have changed mountain textures in game because they just didnt look right. Or how many times I have changed road textures because blending was wrong. You cannot use stonewalls from one texture pack and the a stonewalltop from another because they do not blend properly. The process goes on and on. It just boils down to what the individual believes to look good and then voice their opinions. I have not gone through your entire pack yet. I am actually very pleased with my last installation and do not want to change it very much. I have a list of textures though that I look for, such as the road textures. As I have said in the past to many people on the Skyrim Nexus forums, this community is just a compilation of ideas and thoughts from many members and TC's work presents those thoughts to the Skyrim player that wishes to enhance their game. It is not the definitive answer to everything and people have different opinions about what looks good to them or what content they choose to add to their games. Not everything that is presented should be used and it is ok to disagree with the project. You can add and take away what you want. I personally use UNP with a CBBE skin texture applied. I think it looks much better than XCE's characters. But that is a matter of opinion and one I am sure I share with some other folks, but not everyone. The same can be said about your textures too. I am not a modder, though I have tried in the past. I dont have the technical know how to do the job right. So I appreciate all the work that has been done by authors who care (unlike those that just add vanilla textures to their packs to make them look bigger than they actually are). There are some bad authors out there and I am sure you know a few of them.

The Lore Friendly version does add Heroes and Villains to the game. I ran into a villain last night and he felt out of place. Other than that, I have played with the new WIS for around 10 hours and have roamed the wilderness for a while and haven't noticed much out of the ordinary. I do see the occasional battle once in awhile and had a giant crab attack me last night.

Riverwood falls under the Farmhouse directory in the installation.

This was originally in STEP but then was dropped after the HD content was released. The author changed the name of the project and added more weapons to the mod. Not a bad mod really and it does look better than the vanilla weapons.

The latest version seems to be very easy on the system and doesn't add that much to the game as did previous versions. The lore version keeps in line with the vanilla feel of the game. I really felt no difference in game play.

I looked at bits and pieces of the mod and I really do not think they are better than what has already been shown by texture authors who concentrated on specific areas, such as Chris' Whiterun. I am still going through it though. I do use some of the textures from his previous pack, but definitely not all of them.

@baeldwine, One of the issues that I ran into was with the new W.A.T.E.R. mod by opticshooter was my FPS dropping dramatically around water areas. This is most notable between Riverwood and Whiterun. I used to run the "High" version but have dumped it in favor of the "Medium" because it actually increased my FPS by a considerable amount. Another little gem that I recently 'rediscovered' is Improved New Skyrim Shadows for Medium Range PC. Don't let the name fool you though, he has a pretty updated guide on shadow settings from low end to high end systems. By reducing my shadows from Ultra to High and following his setting recommendations, I regained some of my framerate back, but also improved the look of my shadows in the game. I was pretty pleased with this. Lastly, I went through and restarted my Graphic settings with nVidia Inspector and have actually figured out a lot of things I did wrong with my previous settings, thus improving the look of the game while also increasing framerate. Most of these errors were within the .ini files themselves. I am just about finished with those settings and they have fixed many issues that I have seen, such as grainy reflective surfaces and the Ambient Occlusion anomalies (most notably in shadows and distant textures in dungeons) I was having with straight SMAA. I do believe the Sparse Grid was the best way to go for my system and I am very pleased with the new settings. The trick to using SGSSAA is to ensure your [Display] iBlurDeferredShadowMask=1 is set in SkyrimPrefs.ini. Then you can set your AA in game to either 4 or 2 (for lower systems). The AA is necessary to smooth out the edges. So for Graphic performance with good quality: choose SGSSAA over SMAA in nVidia InspectorSet AA in Skyrim Settings to either 4 or 2 (2 will result in a more jagged appearance, but will be slightly easier on lower systems)Use High Shadows over Ultra Shadows (biggest FPS improvement ever)set iBlurDeferredShadowMask=1 or 0 to reduce shadow blur (side effect of SGSSAA) in SkyrimPrefs.iniUse 'Medium' textures over 'High' textures (especially important for GPU with 1GB or less VRAM)Stay away from mods that add additional texture content, such as Lush Trees, Beautiful Grass, Beautiful Whiterun, Better Villages, Riverwood Reduc, etc.That is the best advice I can offer for trying to increase your FPS. Shadows are the key though. The biggest increase you will see is by decreasing your Shadow settings.

I reduced my AA in game from 4 to 2, that is probably why you are seeing a little bit of jagged lines. Not really noticeable when running around in game. The outline, I haven't figured out yet. I do not know what causes it as I have had it since the game came out. I am thinking it has something to do with shadows, so if anyone has any good shadow settings they want to share, that would be great. Fixed the AA back to 4. Damn you got a good eye, this of course reduced my FPS. Upload a shot in a second. Shot #7 I was correct about the blur, it is because I have iBlurDeferredShadowMask set to 4 to soften the shadows. Reducing to 0 removes it, but the shadows look horrible.

Gonna add some more screenshots of whiterun: Shot #1 Shot #2 Shot #3 Shot #4 Shot #5 Shot #6 My system specs again: i5-2500k CPU 16GB DDR3 1600mhz RAM GTX 560TI GPU 1920x1080 Resolution

I am currently using the latest approved drivers from nVidia. I use a performance based look on my system to ensure that I get good FPS with quality visuals. It is a minor trade off which actually looks pretty good. As far as the AF, yeah, I messed up there. Good catch. I must have missed it after I installed the new drivers... I will get some posts and run fraps to get a good reading of FPS. That will make a huge difference in my FPS. BTW, my resolution is 1920x1080. Ok, after fixing my settings: With in game AA Settings set to 4 and AF to 0: Whiterun: 25-30 FPS World: 35-45 FPS (Depending on where you go) With in game AA Settings set to 2 and AF to 0: Whiterun: 35-40 FPS World: 40-50 FPS (Depending on where you go) I do run Beautiful Whiterun and Better Villages so my performance hit is going to be pretty high. I suggest using the without Smoke and Dust version of Better Villages because it can put a drain on your system. I was down to 20 FPS in Riverwood, with the other version, I was around 25-30. Not great, but playable. With as many mods as I have, this is actually quite impressive. Next, I will try to run a full SMAA as the guide suggests to give comparative numbers on my system. Quick Edit Here. Want to give you all some screenshots from Whiterun: Shot #1 Shot #2

Ok, So my system specs have changed quite a bit. I now have the following: i5-2500k (new, up from i5-750) 16GB 1600MHZ DDR3 (new, up from 8GB 1333mhz) GTX 560TI (old card) Now the specs may seem minor in the way the computer works, in fact my WEI only went up 3 points to 7.5. The performance gains in Skyrim were tremendous. Not so much from the additional memory, but from the increase in power from the CPU. Yes the second generation is almost 2x faster than the 1st generation i5. The 560TI is now the bottleneck of the system. To do all this though, I had to change motherboards. Now I still have the same issues with SSAO that I have had before (using TC recommendations from the guide). Reflective surfaces are too grainy and pixelated. Reducing the LOD Bias does not fix the issue. So I switched to a different method of using Sparse Grid Supersampling. It is a lesser form of SSAO with a better performance. With these settings through nVidia Inspector, you have to set your Skyrim Settings to 4 or 2 for Anti-aliasing and 0 for Anistropic Filtering. For the LOD Bias, here are some general rules: LOD bias = -0.5 * log2(samples) 2x SGSSAA: -0.5 4x SGSSAA: -1.0 8x SGSSAA: -1.5 I have a couple of great references to help me figure out the proper way of doing this: - NeoGAF PC Gaming General Performance Tweaking Thread - Natural Opinions Sorry, I do not have anything for ATI Cards, though the principles should still be the same. I think. I average around 45-50 fps in game right now, except in Whiterun where it gets down to 25-30 (blame Beautiful Whiterun). I can attribute the better frame rate due to the better CPU.