LeetMiniWheat

Discussion thread: Chimneys for Skyrim by Ithlia Wiki Link because it looks like bethesda forgot to add chimneys to all the houses with fireplaces? Lol... I'm not sure how the textures fit in with other texture mods though, but so far I didn't notice anything out of place. It will, however, make a floating chimney if any mod moves a house.

Immersive Armors is another good one that compliments Elaborate Textiles, but I'm not sure how it plays nice with others since it has both loose files and a .esp in it. (and esp's get loaded last, right? so it would overwrite everything prior)

BTW if you're running out of VRAM try this. right click TESV.exe in the Skyrim folder, select properties, then go to "Compatibility" tab and tick these boxes: Disable visual themes Disable desktop composition this will disable windows Aero whenever you launch the game (even from SKSE) and will free up about 100MB-200MB of VRAM usually This should probably even be in the S.T.E.P. guide itself, but only optimal for fullscreen users, whereas in window mode vsync isn't possible with aero disabled.

yeah also for RCRN I had to make my own archive for Mod Organizer with just the Data\* stuff, and then manually drop in the injFX_Shaders, d3d9.dll, injFX_Settings.h, and Shader.fx into the real skyrim\data folder.

I'd definitely recommend turning down the TrSSAA to 2x or none, and try turning off Ambient Occlusion. even my GTX 580 struggled with those two without any mods or hi-res texture DLC. I had to choose one or the other to prevent fps dropping too much and causing lag. also keep multisampling/antialiasing at 4x or use FXAA because any higher is a huge performance hit. and don't forget with vsync when your fps drops below your monitor refresh (60Hz in most cases), it will run at the next fraction of your resolution. like 45fps, 30fps, etc. so that is a major factor in perceived "lagginess"

heads up here for anyone else that uses Mod Organizer - I noticed rcrnCustomizer.exe run within mod-organizer always places the modfied rcrnshaders.esp in the REAL skyrim folder and not the pseudo-folders that mod-organizer uses. if you ever want to modify the RCRN settings, run it and then cut/paste the rcrnshaders.esp into Mod Organizer's mods\RCRN*\ folder, otherwise you will get this bug mentioned in the first post due to wrong load order of esp's

Hmm, interesting. If 1 pre-rendered frame means it's kind of tripple buffering WITHOUT vsync on, then that must mean it uses by default two pre-rendered frames. possibly the front buffer, back buffer, and then the 1 pre-rendered. but this still doesn't sound right. what then does D3DOverrider do? i know it hasn't been updated in ages but it's supposed to make DirectX triple buffered. or maybe it just overrides the flip-queue sort of. And regarding vsync, if I read that correctly, a 1-flip-queue buffer means the system has to skip an additional frame when the fps drops below refresh in order to sync back up again? I remember reading something posted by a nvidia developer about vsync something along the lines of this: "when your VSYNC'd fps drops below the monitor Hz, you experience a stutter as a frame is dropped (the fps momentarily drops to 1/2 or 1/4 your refresh), and then another stutter to sync up the back-queued frames." they were working on a fix for this so it would gradually sync up again instead of all at once. personally I can't tearing so I could never play with vsync off. tearing will always happen, it just is more noticeable to some people.

looks to me like DXT1 has some visible artifacts compared to DXT5 if you look at the comparison image on the Optimizer-Textures page here -> https://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/12801-2-1340134652.jpg but by default it only compresses images without a "mask" (?) to DXT1c, is that the same as the DXT1 in the image? if so, then there *is* a quality loss. but the question is whether it's actually noticeable in-game or not. or maybe images without a mask (whatever that is) aren't noticeable. the other options it has on medium and maximum is to create mipmaps, and resize patterns/resolution. but if it resizes an image that isn't quite a 16x16 square aspect ratio, wouldn't that warp the image? and how is this a "wrong size" image? none of this is really explained, but I guess is acquired knowledge for any mod developers. so, yeah i agree with Farlo it would be nice to have some kind of guide for those that don't want to use DDSopt

I'm trying to maximize quality on 2GB VRAM but I have a few questions. 1. Is there really a big difference between 4096 and 2048 res textures? 2. Optimizer-Textures and DDSopt (I assume) compresses DXT5 down to DXT1. Is this a noticeable quality change? I saw the comparison image on optimizer's nexus page and the DXT1 looked more blocky. I'm tempted to tell Optimizer to do DXT5 instead unless this isn't noticeable in-game. 3. What's the difference between Optimizer Textures and DDSopt? 4. Also, what about BSA's? Optimizer seemed to crash when the BSA checkbox was used. It seems to run ok without any optimization but I do max out the VRAM around 2030MB. I was getting some freezes/lockups fixed by tweaking INI settings with MadWizard25's tweaks. (though i had to edit by hand because wrye bash was screwing up the ini files)

maximum number of pre-rendered frames shouldn't be set to 1 in the first place. I think 1 was a tweak for FPS's but either way it DEFINITELY will increase stutter if your system is struggling to keep up. default is 3 i believe, which allows the video card to have a small buffer of frames to prevent stuttering. (or I may be confusing this with double/triple buffering on vsync, but I believe it works in the same way) also, I think RCRN is only related to this because the post processing may be pushing your GPU over the edge due to the performance hit of the injector/shader. (though it should be very minimal)

yeah thanks, I thought I had gotten everything but I had only missed the .esp one mistake in about 200 mods isn't bad for my first time I'd say :P Edit: well, not first time modding but first time with skyrim and first time with MO. I absolutely LOVE MO and how it keeps everything nice and tidy. dumping tons of files onto a game folder is a nightmare to troubleshoot any bugs or update individual mods.

nevermind, just found the issue. somehow I had rcnShaders.esp in my data folder AND in Mod Organizer, so it was screwing up the BOSS optimized load order. deleting it from the data folder fixed it, beautiful sunglare beams now!

damn, I think I narrowed it down to RCRN... this sucks because I REALLY REALLY like RCRN :(

Edit: Fixed, this only happens when rcrnshaders.esp is loaded in the wrong order. (i.e. if you use ModOrganizer and ran rcrnCustomizer.exe, it places the .esp in skyrim\data instead of Mod Organizermods\RCRN*\ When walking around certain paths with trees, i get some weird lighting where shadows are cast across the entire screen and shift rapidly when I move even an inch. I believe this is supposed to be the sun hitting the trees and casting onto the ground but they're going everywhere. anyone know what may be causing this? I just spent the better part of 2 days installing S.T.E.P. with Mod Manager so I could easily add/remove/update stuff, and everything is working GREAT on my GTX 690 @ 83fps vsync, except for this.

this step is completely unnecessary since none of the mods installed prior to this overwrite anything. (Mod Manager reported zero conflicts with anything but the prior realistic overhaul) maybe this should have been moved down more? what exactly is it supposed to be overwriting?