TechAngel85

Usually if your graphics card overheats you'll start getting artifacts on the screen or a complete crash accompanied with a Windows message saying that your card has recovered from an error or just a complete system halt altogether. As long as your card isn't overclocked, is dust free, the fan is working properly, and the air has a good flow to escape your system then your card shouldn't be overheating. You can monitor the temps with third party tools that are easily found if Googled. If it's an nVidia card use nVidia Inspector. If you're you're using Dawnguard, then you should probably be using the Dawnguard Unofficial Patch as well. Skyrim Unofficial patch should also be used, tho I think that's a part of STEP. Make sure any additional mods you use are compatible with Dawnguard and Hearthfire as well. If they're not, then those mods could cause issues in certain areas of the game. Also, use BOSS if you're not and make sure your load order is correct. Like Farlo suggested, if you're not having any issues with just the completed STEP (no additional mods installed), then uninstall or deactivate anything that is not a part of STEP. Then test the additional mods one-by-one to find the specific mod that may be causing any issues. I think just about everyone here uses additional mods that aren't in STEP. Personally, I use around ten additional mods (most against STEP like Lockpick Pro...don't judge me! ) but none conflict and cause any issues because I've done the testing.

I understand that lighting is a very objective to the individual's personal tastes, quality of their monitor, etc. However, when reading around the forum I found that most mod testers, authors, modders, and even administration uses or prefers RCRN over other lighting mods. This left me dumbfounded as to why it's not a part of STEP. And yes, CT's RCRN Plus does fix the blinding snow effects. There are so many textures in STEP that I don't think it would be hard to find one that works well with RCRN for the weathers and still look good. It's just a matter of testing which I would do, but am currently wrapped up in ENB/lighting combination testing. (that should be wrapped up soon) Like I said above, RCRN - Classic version and RLwC - Vision version are always at the top of the those lists with best overall lighting. RCRN just provides a lot more than lighting and for that, it's the clear choice in my book. Obviously, incompatible mods (mainly those that change the weather, fog, and lighting) would have to be addressed as well as finding the right textures. Probably not something for the next minor release, but rather something for 2.3. I just feel that if so many are using RCRN that also use STEP then it should be an obvious choice to incorporate RCRN into STEP. Though this might make the work in put into the lighting guide obsolete...lol

I know there is a 3.5 thread, but it's all a rant about using search (probably should be deleted) and this is 3.6. Realistic Colors and Real Nights 3.6 (RCRN) https://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/1875 After writing the lighting guide for the wiki I felt like RCRN needed a voice and a place here in the mod suggestions. I did a lot of testing with RCRN as a standlone lighting overhaul and with ENBs. RCRN consistently was either at the top of the list or coming in second place. The only place this wasn't true was when combining it with Project ENB (that ENB is a beast all of it own and doesn't seem to play by the normal rules...haha! fyi...CoT works best with Project ENB out of the lighting mods because CoT doesn't really alter the ENB lighting) Back on topic... RCRN consistently provided the best "natural" lighting across the board with only a very few exceptions (Project ENB). The colors aren't overly and unnaturally vibrant; they're enhanced with just the right about of light, especially when used in combination with an ENB. The sun rays on other lighting mods (aka RLwC) are at times drastically over done to the point you have to look at the ground to see. RCRN controls the sun rays well; providing a good balance. The nights are also customizable to please just about everyone on their preferred lighting at nights. I found Classic to be a good balance and the most natural. This is most likely all due to the fact the developers use "real life" lighting sources as their models. Quick rundown of other nice features: Dynamic InteriorsVolumetric FogSunset and Dawn LightingDynamic WeatherEnhanced Weather Sounds (includes for interiors)Customizer to control featuresFXAA with no performance loss (TheCompiler's version, RCRN Plus, replaces this with improved SMAA over FXAA and can still be used with other ENBs)There are some incompatible mods in STEP right now. Climates of Tamriel (CoT) is the biggest one out of those mods; however, RCRN comes with dynamic weather improvements of it's own. CoT failed when used without an ENB when it came to lighting in my tests. The majority of the time I couldn't distinguish CoT from Vanilla lighting; thus, between CoT and RCRN, RCRN came out on top. As for the majority of the others, RCRN addresses those with it's own versions and if it's just a texture then those are easily replaced by better ones in the STEP process. Overall, I can't see why RCRN would not be a core or optional mod in STEP; possibly as a replacement for CoT. It does nothing to break immersion or lore and only enhances what is already in the the game, Volumetric Fog is optional for those that don't like it and it's install is STEP ready...just copy and paste or use the autoinstaller. Thread.....posted. Discussion.....initiated. Waiting for response..............

Thank you! Congrats to Mothergoose as well! I'm quite adept at Web design, XHTML, CSS, etc. I've had plenty of my own personal Web sites and built several for non-profits; however, I have very little wiki experience so I was using MediaWiki's formatting guide while I was editing. Then you mention it here, so I guess I picked a good source to learn from.

That's what you run into with wikis. It's hard to maintain a writing style across the whole wiki because everyone has their own vocabulary, point of view, style, etc etc. Just comes with the territory. I'll admit that if there are different styles I haven't noticed. I'm no grammar major either though. I actually hated English and Grammar classes. I tried to stay as third-person as possible.

I have completed the guide. If something else needs to be added just let me know.

Thanks! I'm still working on it. Still have to get the comparison images up as the main thing that's left.You can use use the HighSlide extension (created by our own stoppingby4now) for image galleries. Note that you can make use of images external to the site if you have a cloud account or other that allows public linking to your files. this saves server space and is preferred. Otherwise, you can upload the images as well. I have an account on Imgur that I can use. I was using the wiki upload so that the images would always be there in case my personal account were to ever close.

Sorry, just now seeing this thread. I'll go back and add that. Thanks.

I found that to be true with my first pass testing multiple ENBs as well. SkyRealism - Cinematic with RCRN (I used classic) provided the best overall color and lighting experience out of the box. I have several more combinations to go through right now, but I'm expecting this same combination to come out on top again. I also need to test out SMAA. Only down side is you can't run it with RCRN and an ENB. To use an ENB with RCRN you have to use up the one proxy you have in enbseries.ini. Not that it matters because RCRN Web site states that RCRN is not compatible with SMAA. I'm guessing that's because of this proxy limitation. How the two are implemented...there is no way to get them to work together in their current implementations.

Thanks! I'm still working on it. Still have to get the comparison images up as the main thing that's left.

I only played Oblivion for a bit, but didn't even know about the modding scene at the time, so no I didn't. But I have played plenty of other games that were mod-able, and managed to stay above. I never go with the expensive latest cards, but always managed to upgrade during the first major price drop of the next best thing after the new stuff comes out, so that has always helped. But I still guarantee that if I were modding and I was getting close to 20 FPS consistently (occasional drops can be OK such as transitioning to new areas), I would start reversing things to get it back up. Well, the difference is very VERY subtle then, as I can hardly notice any difference with SkyRealism Cinematic with/without SMAA, AA or AF. The smoothing of the ENB takes care of much of this all by itself (high monitor res also helps). Following are 1) SRO + Vurts without ENB and 2) with ENB, then 3) without ENB but with 4/16 AA/AF via Skyrim options (in that order). If you blow up the images, you will see just how effective ENB is at smoothing edges (presumably via bloom/SSAO). Not perfect, but you will hardly notice in game at high res (accept where you have a lot of light and straight edges, but ENB drastically reduces this): Note the FPS hit imposed by AA/AF and imagine the cumulative effect with ENB (and I am running CrossfireX on HD 6850s) ENB does not apply any kind of AA, and there are some "side affects" with ENB shadows seemingly smoothing, but it's just a trick. Further more, those screenshots are not going to provide you with any great examples as the majority of the scene would require TxAA. However, when you look at the rocks and even portions of the fallen tree on the right side, edges are clearly better with 4X AA. The difference will be even more noticeable when the scene is in motion. Check the outside of Whiterun where you have the walls, buildings, and bars in windows for a better compare. Obviously the video card(s) that folks have will affect whether or not they can use AA, but to claim that it does no good when using ENB is just plain false. I have to agree from experience with all my testing. ENB and bloom doesn't do anything for AA unless you're using FXAA. FXAA isn't as big as an impact as regular AA and it does clean things up a big. RCRN's FXAA is actually not bad and cleaned up a little of the AA on straight lines with no performance impact at all (it's not perfect but it's better than nothing). I've never used SMAA to compare. As for AF, I find it most noticeable around water and and shadows. Bloom...let me just say I dislike it. It hazes the graphics which might look pretty at times but it's unnatural to me. When I take a stroll outside, I never walk around in a haze...unless isn't allergy season. This is why I prefer to disable it.

I created the page but the tabs are not displaying for the header tags like they do for the ENB guide. Suggestions? https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Lighting EDIT: Nevermind...got it! Now to finish it up.

Currently I'm writing a lighting mod page for the wiki. Who do I need to submit it to for review? It's in txt format and needs to be converted to wiki code but I'm setting it up like the ENB Guide. I'll do that part when the writing is finished and review has been approved. Also, if you've been keeping up with this thread, you know I'm been evaluating ENBs for realism and natural lighting. Currently the ENBs on this list are: Project ENBSeasons of SkyrimSkyRealismTrue VisionI've found a few more on nexus and wanted to know what everyone thoughts are on them and if they deserve to be include in my evaluation: Rezerect Skyrim ENBPineappleVision ENBPhinix Natural ENB

This has been a long time but this performance testing has been a part of my testing the last week. If you want the best ENB with CoT compatibility use SkyRealism - Cinematic or True Vision Cinematic ENBs. CoT is compatible is they provide the best performance in my tests with CoT. However, this WILL depend on your individual hardware how good of a performance you get.

NOTE: RLwC and CoT will be compatible with the release of RLwC version 4, but for now only use one:

Absolutely agree here. Do not mix RLwC, CoT, and RCRN. They are not compatible. RCRN states this very clearly on their Web site: CoT also clearly states that you may have issues if you use one of the other two with CoT. RLwC; however, does not list any incompatible mods on nexus! (I've posted on the nexus comments about it). Use only one: CoT, RCRN or RLwC. Each are great options and should be evaluated to find your best fit. I'll be doing a comparison guide on the wiki as soon as I can. I'm still testing and putting together my results.

If that's the case, i suggest checking hialgoboost again, it improved a lot with version 2.From what I'm reading on the Nexus forum, it's not compatible with SLi or CrossFireX, there's a stuttering bug with some systems, and there's an annoying watermark that has to be removed. Testing would be a must.

DOF is a big killer. I found the most performance gain when I disabled Bloom, SOAA and DOF during my testing which resulted in an average frame rate of 37. With those three enabled my average FPS was 28 or lower. I've also lowered (instead of increasing it like STEP encourages) the shadow resolutions in my SkyrimPref.ini file. This provided more of a bump and shadow quality with the ENB isn't bad. I'm not paying that much attention to shadows on the ground when I'm gaming anyway. As for AA, I'm not using it. I've never used SMAA either. I noticed, though, when using RCRN, their included FXAA did a decent job with no performance loss over RLwC. For AF, I'm forcing AF x16 via nVidia Inspector and it provided no performance loss. My INI... you can see what I'v set my MapResolutions to and everything else referring to shadows.

I didn't write that and I think it's a little excessive. I didn't to this during my testing of several ENBs and I never had issues with the INIs. I'm going to review that section later as well. SMAA is a type of post-processing AA that is lighter on your system; meaning you'll have better performance using SMAA over AA. However, they can be used together without any issues if you have a good system. Keep in mind for good playability your frame rates should stay around 32 or higher. As long as you got your video card and launcher settings set to where you wanted them before you installed your ENB and still have good performance after ENB installation then there is no need to mess with the INIs or video card or launcher settings after ENB installation. Also, just a quick note, frame rates should be between 40 and 60 (the game caps out at 60) before ENB installation. Depending on your system hardware and what INI settings you're using, an ENB will drop your frame rates anywhere between 10-50%. For instance, I seen on average a 23% frame rate reduction after I install any ENB.

Amazing difference. +1 vote to be added in STEP. In fact...I'm downloading this right now!

So I see it's been a while since this section of the forum has seen any action. For those of you that don't know, I've been doing a lot of ENB testing. Particularly, with RLwC or RCRN underneath. From this testing I'm learned a lot and will be putting that knowledge to use in the ENB guide on the wiki. Currently, I've updated the broken link on the SMAA tab and updated the instructions. If anyone knows of a newer version or better download place please update the link and instructions for the download and install. On the Configuration tab, I added a short explanation of bloom and how to disable it. This page could use a ton more information about configuring the INI file and I'll be adding that later if no one beats me to it. Finally, on the Troubleshooting tab I updated the link to Auslogics (great program) to their download page so users would always be getting the most up-to-date version. I deleted the link to Countervibe ENB (sorry if the author sees this) because it was broken and I've never been able to find it on Nexus and reworded that area for GPUs a bit. For the game booster, I added Razer's Game Booster. It's a solid product from a solid gaming company and it's free to boot.

Awesome! I'm already made some small updates to the existing ENB Guide. It's missing some basic as well as some more detailed information. I'll put my testing experience as well as my IT background to work in that section over the next week. Right now, I've completed testing the the RLcW - Vision verse and need to reevaluate all the ENBs. It's 20 different combinations with double elimination so I'll take me at least a day probably.