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Here's my experience with Skyrim and memory usage: Bought a new graphics card with lots of VRAM (3GB). Already had a rig with LOTS of RAM (24GB). Figured i'd install all these hi-res textures that i couldn't use before. By the way, a symptom of running out of VRAM is, IMO, this: FPS is OK while you don't move, but it immediately drops when you turn around (i.e. the card can't keep the textures the stuff in front of you and behind you in memory simultaneously). Anyway, i've installed all available hi-res textures for everything in STEP. The game ran fine - but kept terminating itself while i was strolling around the world (note that "terminating itself" is the correct term to use here; "CTD" ("Crash To Desktop") has "crash" in it, which is the situation when the program throws an exception it is incapable of handling, and the OS steps in and kills it (you get a crash dialog from Windows); in this case the exception (if it was an exception; could be anything) WAS handled by Skyrim - handled by immediate process termination (another reason why i think that TES5 developers are not very competent)). Watching TESV in ProcessHacker revealed that it always ran up to 3.2GB of Private Memory at the time of the crash. That hinted at memory problems. I ran Ordinator to optimize and scale down 4k textures into 2k, and that improved things a bit. Later on i ran it again, and scaled down to 1k that time. This reduced memory usage to 2.3-2.6GB instead of near-constant 3.2GB, and practically removed all self-termination issues. The moral of this story: don't install hi-res textures over 1k (there are some packs that contain a mix of 1k and 2k, where 2k is only used for _some_ textures that really need the resolution - these are probably ok). Obviously, there are other things than textures in memory, but textures, i guess, do take up lots of space. Case in point: a float takes 4 bytes, a vertex consists of 3 floats (4*3=12 bytes). A model consists of, say, 1000 triangular polygons. I'm too lazy to make a correct estimation of the number of vertices that would be needed for 1000 polygons (it depends on the shape of the model, obviously; less than the number of polygons - that is the only thing you can be certain of). Let's say 900 vertices. One polygon consists of 3 integers (vertex indices), an integer takes up 4 bytes, one polygon takes up 3*4=12 bytes. 900 vertices * 12 bytes-per-vertex = 10800 bytes; 1000 polygons * 12 bytes-per-polygon = 12000. 12000+10800=22800 bytes. That is, slightly more than 22 kilobytes. Compare to textures, which never go lower than 100 kilobytes (small ones, with good compression; uncompressed textures are measured in megabytes - 512*512*4-bytes-per-pixel (uncompressed 512x512 rgba) = 1 megabyte). An open question is why TES5 keeps a copy of each texture in RAM (at least that is the impression i'm getting), when they should go into VRAM of the graphics card. Hopefully, TES6 will have a 64-bit version that doesn't run out of 32-bit address space...

This mod bugs out on a giant campsite to the west of Whiterun. It looks like the campfire there is re-ignited 100 times per second, turning the thing into a glowing ball of fire that belches smoke as if being a geyser and reduces FPS by 70%.

I've checked the mod (the one available from TES Alliance) in TES5Edit, and it looks very crude - i think it contains wild edits. It deletes some objects (furniture, wine bottles, etc), moves other objects (also does add chimneys, obviously). Also changes some location names to something Cyrillic.

This mod can be easily installed using the manual method. The difficulty is in correlating the look you want with the look textures have when you look at them outside of the game. This mod installs only three textures total: glacierslab.dds - ice texture glacierslab_n.dds - ice normal map glacierparallax.dds - ice parallax map Each of these files is provided in different versions (different content), and some of them have different resolutions too. The parallax effect (where ice surface looks transparent, with dense, opaque mass deep inside) requires 2 things: 1) Transparent ice texture. Some glacierslab.dds files are very opaque (bright alpha channel) and they completely kill the parallax. These are the files used in "dull" and all "non-parallax" presets ("parallax" preset is just a combo of a nearly-completely-transparent glacierslab.dds and an ice parallax map of some kind). Vanilla texture is parallax-compatible (highly transparent) 2) Smooth ice normal map. The map must have (if you look at it in an image viewer) less green (that includes white - and any color with a green channel) and more red/blue/magenta. Brightness defines how shiny it will look. Transparency is just another dimension in which brightness can vary (i.e. from darkest to brightest (roughly): transparent, transparent dim magenta, opaque dim magenta, opaque bright magenta). And it must be smooth. I.e. it should have less contrast changes (or they should go smoother). Some textures are like this: * the one Terrain Bump installs - more uniformly-colored areas, but sharp edges - in the game ice looks like it has straps of transparency (where uniform areas are) * vanilla (lowres and transparent, but otherwise mostly smooth) * half-ice half-dull normal map has patches of constant color (in the game these look like 'holes' through which you can see deep into the ice) If you want that kind of effect, but your normal map is highly-detailed (such as the one from Skyrim Realistic Overhaul), you'll have to scale it down (lowres textures are naturally blurred) or apply some kind of effect (blur or maybe "oilify" filter in GIMP) that creates more constant-color areas or reduces sharpness of color changes. Otherwise contrast changes of the normal map will create bumps, which will reflect light, and these specular effects will obscure the parallax effect underneath What about glacierparallax.dds? Well, it controls the texture you see deep inside in transparent (ice texture) smooth (constant/smooth normal map color) parts of the ice. Generally, brighter parallax texture makes the whole iceberg look brighter, when viewed from a distance (the only way to see any details of the parallax texture is to come closer, since it's highly distorted). Even vanilla ice parallax map will do the job (although i like the one from Real Ice much more). So: If you get a HQ, noisy normal map, your ice will be all sparks and no depth. If you get an opaque ice texture, you will have no parallax effect at all (just the specular from normal map, if you have it). Hope it helps. P.S. AFAIU, in real life the ice in icebergs is mostly made from the snow, so they are "dull white" and the neat transparent effect is never seen. Transparent ice happens when layers of running fresh, clear water are frozen or somesuch. P.P.S. I probably shouldn't call it "parallax map", since it is not.

HD Enhanced Terrain PRO is mutually exclusive (100% overlap) with Enhanced Distant Terrain 1.65 Previous version of HDET (Hd Enhanced Terrain and Map snow) at least had a highres snow texture... noise.dds in both HEDT versions is more or less the same - PRO version has higher contrast EDT noise.dds looks more or less like uniform noise of high amplitude, with different filters applied. HDET noise.dds looks like plain, level background with numerous "patches" or "features". I can't really tell which version would look better. Again, i think this requires some consideration, and one of the mods should be dropped, or appropriate note should be added.

Vanilla features a low-quality 512x512 skystars.dds Enhanced Night Skyrim Stars Low features a high-quality 1024x1024 skystars.dds, and that is the only file it installs Skyrim HD 1.5 features a high-quality 2048x2048 (lite) or 4092x4092 (full) skystars.dds Question: why is ENS even considered for installation? Because STEP baseline is 1024? You could at least add a note stating that ENS is for low-VM builds only. P.S. I can't adequately judge the texture content just by looking at it outside of the game, but SHD texture looks ok here.