haelfix

I get pretty good gains from ddsopt on AV textures as well as reducing the normals. Â I'd say it's actually the best gains overall out of all packs and overall I see no visual degradation from the procedure (the textures aren't great to begin with) I only do the textures in the overwrite folder after patching and you have to make sure ddsopt recurses properly.

Hmm, I don't understand what this is actually doing at the nuts and bolts level. Â And why can't the same thing be used in other scenarios (precaching eg lods etc)

I personally prefer RLO for the interiors, but I keep coming back to RCRN for the exterior lighting and coloring (which is afaik unique and superior to almost every ENB that I have used). Â The combination COT + ENB produces results that are too up and down. Â One scene is beautiful, the next its terrible. The flipside is that I really do find the weather systems that COT produces more varied and interesting than RCRN's solution, and I hate that the latter is not modular.

Sounds great, looking forward to it. Â Out of curiosity, are you ever going to look into a weather and lighting solution for Sky revisited? Â I use RLO + COT, but i'm beginning to miss RCRN (b/c it makes the exteriors so beautiful).

What exactly are we upgrading from CQLA? Â Do we dl the following file? Closer Bolts - Explosive Bolts Visualized Semi-Original Dwarven Quiver - UNP ?

Armor is terrible. Face is ok, a side grade to vanilla. wraith is an upgrade. However, if these are really 4k by 4k, then I vote no.  For that price I want to be blown away by the quality, and I'm not. After playing with ddsopt and constraining normals for hours with skyrim revisited, I'm really sensitive now to quality/VRam price Edit. Wraith is 2k. I guess that's ok then, but definitely no on the priests

So I was thinking about starting a full playthrough. I have this compilation stable to the point where I can play for several hours in a row. The CTDs I get are no more or less than regular Skyrim, so thats good enough. The only thing that's stopping me is the possible inclusion of left hand rings and DSpSOB at a future time when they are made to be more compatible with the other mods. If I include them midway through a game, I suspect that might really cause some issues... Do you think it would be ok, or do they really require full restarts?

Yep, and its actually an interesting trade off. Â I just restored full Skyrim Revisited and did what you did and removed SRO, Serious HD and Skyrim HD. Â Same thing, VRAM is now about 2k. Â So while the full textures of those packs are absolutely better than Bethesda's Hires packs, its unclear if they're so much better that it justifies an additional 600 hundred megs. One of the things that I have noticed is that the art direction is far superior in the Vanilla game. Â Colors blend together much better, and it provides a more satisfying experience. Â So yes, textures aren't as good or as photorealistic, but then we clearly can't have everything. This is why texture pack combiner is such a great tool, as Cestral has gone through everything with a comb. Â I can't tell which I prefer. Â Keeping SRO, Serious HD and Skyrim HD with normals half sized as well as most of the armor mods, or going this route instead.

So I did a full DDSOPT of most of the major texture packs in the game and did some tests (about 25 in all, including most of the armor packs). (note AA is off, I am using ENB v119 Skyrealism + smaa, Nvidia 680 4gb). Â In all the above tests the bethesda packs are optimized as well as automatic variants (both 1/2 normals and regular ddsopt compression.. Â the reason I leave AV out is I see almost no visual difference, despite a major memory gain, so its a no brainer for me) So the test. Â I walk from the Riverrun inn to Bleak Falls barrow, and go up the mountain and through the load point to the temple. Â There is one cell load point that is very stressful on my system hence my choice of this spot. Anyway.. test1) Â No optimization other than described above. Â Average VRAM use is about 2600, average memory use is about 2800. Â VRAM spikes to 2750 during the load. Â Meanwhile regular Ram maxes out at about 2856. Â Noticeable stutter during the load. Test2) Standard DDSOPT compression on the 25 texture packs (normals are still the same). Â Average VRAM use is about 2600, average memory use is about 2800. Â The MAX VRAM during the cell load goes to 2720 and RAM use goes to 2860. Â Noticeable stutter during the cell load as before. Test3) Standard DDSOPT compression + 1/2 sized normals. Â Average VRAM: 2340 Â Average RAM use 2500. Â Spikes to 2480 during the cell load, and the average RAM goes up to 2695. Â Absolutely no noticeable stutter. Conclusion. Â Standard DDSOPT compression has very limited gains for the immense majority of texture packs other than Bethesda and AV. Â However half sizing normals shaves off nearly 300 megabytes in this particular test. Â In terms of visual fidelity, I notice the loss of resolution most acutely in landscape, rocks, mountains and faces/beards so I try to focus my attention on reducing the texture sizes of major armor packs, cloaks and the graphic quality of beasts and opponents. Â The reason I choose the latter is that typically they will be in motion relative to you, and its hard for the eye to pick out details. Â Likewise, you will often find them in dungeons and in poor lighting conditions. Â Whereas architecture, landscape and the like are often subject to pausing to look around and admire. So my conclusions of the test above is to definitely DDSOPT + constrain normal map textures to 1024*1024 on armors, weapons, cloaks and monster packs. Â This might not be quite enough, but at least it will get you close to where you want to be.

Obviously COT + RLO (or some other weather/lighting solution).  Probably doesn't need to be said, although it does require some extensive cleaning and patches. Lanterns for guards.  (This is an optional for the mod Wearable lanterns by Chesko, that has its own page) Immersive armors is great, but it actually has a bunch of armors that are imo lore breaking.  On the other hand, there are several (like Einharjar and Warchief) of its real HQ amors which are available as separate standalone packs that are great.  I also use Black Sacrament, even though its a little bit lore breaking. I use SKREE (less dragon attacks), the no boring sleep menu mod (its annoying but its good to have in a tight spot when scripts go awol) and I have a fondness for birds and flock (yes yes, I know there is some reported instability..  It works fine for me). The only other mod i'm considering adding is immersive patrols and I don't have any follower mod (they all seem unstable). Once DSpSOB nad left hand rings is up and running, I think I might just play the game as is and get a full playthrough.  I haven't played DragonBorn yet..

DDSOPTing all folders (xcept a few problem ones) is perfectly fine and recommended, and I haven't seen many problems either. The problem is most packs are optimized already and there isn't huge savings. The next step is to forcefully constrain certain textures, like normal maps to a lower resolution. Â This is much more violent and there is noticeable visual degredation, with a corresponding.large increase in performance and stability. Â Some textures seem unaffected visually (which is good) Â whereas others really don't make sense IMO. This is thus harder to deal with and requires more care.

I'm definitely struggling with some of these issues right now. Â Constraining normals to half size gives acceptable results in some circumstances, but in different lighting (especially with ENB and a lighting module) it really defeats the purpose of the higher resolution, and imo makes it harder for the texture author to find an acceptable trade off (and really the onus should be on him/her and not us). Weirdly enough, I find that armor/cloak look ok with this procedure, whereas things like rocks and ruin clutters really suffer (and it introduces a lot of aliasing, and my current AA solution (SMAA) isn't powerful enough to prevent crawling). Â One would think it would be the opposite. Anyway, this probably needs a better eye than mine. Â I do think that AV and some of the old not so optimized texture packs are probably much more amenable than just doing it on high quality packs like Bellyaches, Vurts or Cabals.

Incidentally, closer quivers longer arrows was updated today, and now has an all in one installer package.

Curious why are you picking Winter is coming cloaks as craftable only? Â You don't want them in the leveled loot? Also we don't install the patch for cloaks of skyrim?

Regarding DDSOPting normals. Â I just did this with about 15 of the major memory packs (foundation, armor, architecture, landscape etc). Â I am a little dissappointed with the results. Â Yes, the amount of stability gained is enormous. Â However i'm not sure its worth it, b/c the loss of graphical fidelity is also high. Â It looks like i've just dropped down half the resolution. Â Worse the packs I did keep that are still high texture look weird now, b/c they're not the same quality as the rest. Â Consequently you have some textures (like eg HD moss) that are 4k by 4k and look ridiculously awesome, and then you have some SRO normals that are 1/16th the effective resolution and don't look quite like they're part of the game world. In other words the quality differential is high.

Whats the word on Vurts new Flora. Â I know the guide says we should upgrade to the newest version, but if we had the punish your edition files and scots pine before they were taken down, should we stick with those? Â The new file is very much like the summer edition, which is a bit lore breaking.

Skyrim Flora Overhaul has also been updated to 179a

So I found my problem. Â I had been testing out DSpSoB and it definitely conflicts with the newest FNIS (instant CTD upon bringing up a female skel)

I have a new reproduciible CTD from looting female armor from a dead female..  It has to be a FNIS problem I think.  I reinstalled Blessed body and Dimonized UNP per the guide, and reupdated FNIS, but there is still a crash. Anyone else with something similar?

i'd hold off on optimizing ENBs until you get a lighting and weather solution in place first. Â As much as I like Skyrealism cinematic, it does make RLO shadows a little too dark and I find myself squinting at the monitor. Â They're both correcting the same mistake(s) essentially. I thus prefer skyrealism vanilla and tweaking things myself a bit. And yea Vurt has removed the add new scots pine file, so I will hold off on updating it until whatever he has in store comes next.

Regarding DSpSOB, it seems like it won't be updated for dragon born anytime soon, which is ashame since it seems like its just a question of adding the weapons and shields as explained in the tutorial. It would be nice if someone could make it play nice with cloaks, backpacks etc. Still it's IMO one of the best mods out there.

I simply took the 'foundation' and all the mods that were >30megs as well as all the 4k textures mods etc. Â maybe about 20 or 30 of them total. Â I then set it up so that ddsopt would do them all at once, and left it on all night. Â It took about 12 hrs. Â Dont do water, aof mountain, soul gems or beards either. That's just the Straightforward guide approach. Â The problem was while there were gains a lot of those mods are already optimized. Â So if memory is at a premium, you can do more advanced tricks like downgrading the normal maps. Â Big performance gain for smallish gfx hit in principle, although I haven't done it yet. Â End result probably shaved off a few hundred megs in the worst spot, which has kept me very stable ATM. Â I rarely go over 2.6gb at this point and never more than 2.8.. Â I think maybe once in 2 hrs of play I hit that

If i could make a few suggestions for additions. Â The Skree less dragons is a great tweak mod to reduce dragon attacks (which gets annoying late game). And the HD ivy mod also makes a difference and is exceptionally well made. The Manny caretaker mod is also worth a look.

I'm up to date.  Played for about 45 minutes.  Highly stable (much more stable than two days ago, I believe some of the recent updates have made a big difference in stability for some reason), no CTD at Bleak Falls Barrow (which is usually a problem area and very sensitive to mistakes). I did DDSOPT a few large packs, but nothing fancy (no normal mapping or 2 for 1 downgrading) and I didn't make huge gains on memory, nevertheless I never went over 2.7 gb VRAM and thats going through Riverrun and a few other heavy texture places. I am very satisfied with the state of the game right now.  I do think RLO and COT might be a bit dicey but thats a battle for another time.

For Troublemakers forsworn armor you have written: Version: 1.51 (UNPB BBP) Optionals: TroubleMakers ForswornArmor UNPB-BBP The problem is the optional file *is* the version 1.51 called troublemakers forsworn armor UNPB-BBP.  The main files are alpha versions.  Do we get those too ?  or do we only get the optional file.