Salvador

Lets say Skyrim engine has a 3GB limit in mem. If it reaches the limit it should ask windows to allocate page memory. Or is this limit intrinsic in the engine and therefore no page memory is allocated? I find all this rather strange, even very old 32bit programs can use a lot of mem, but simply load the overhead in page. Take an old firefox for example, and load as much as you can. Page file becomes useful I can promise. Same goes with 32bit photoshop or autocad etc. Now I know a game engine is different, but there must be something wrong within the engine itself if it fails to address more than 3GB of memory. I disable my page file on disk, this means page will be allocated in RAM instead! Since I have plenty of RAM I don't care, however, if you have limited RAM this is naturally not a good idea. I am curious now, if you disable your page file, does ram allocation change at all? will you still crash at 3GB? Does Skyrim actually get Page mem allocated? What happens with page mem usage? If it is a engine issue, it can only be fixed by Bethesda. I am curious as of what causes the serious hard cap at 3GB... Even 32 bit program ought to be able to reach ~3.5GB..

RLO shouldn't be dark, are you using specific post processors? Specific ENB maybe. They can amplify each others effects. Did you install both RLO and CoT? If so, you should not load any of the interior modules for CoT, only the main weather mod. But you probably know that. Perhaps your monitor is not properly calibrated, or the gamma setting in your ini file/menu? Pretty easy to make things less dark btw if you don't like it. RLO also works with the imaginator as well. And for RCRN, there are not so dark presets, I assume you tried those? For light placements, listen to Neovalen. You can always try URWL. Hope you find something nice.

That looks weird, very strange bug.... You are running vanilla right? if so have you tried 'verify integrity of game cache' in Steam? (under properties/files) Vanilla shouldn't do that weird stuff. This should be the easiest solution. If that doesn't help.... How old is your save? Have you removed any mods from your game that were running on this save. Did you change anything to the game recently, Mods ini tweaks etc. when this bug appeared for the first time? Have you installed new drivers for your graphics card? Have you changed your graphics settings? I don't think it is your ini, but nonetheless. You can backup your ini files (documents/my games/skyrim: skyrimprefs.ini and skyrim.ini), delete the original, and restart the game through the launcher, if that doesn't fix it either, you can simply replace the new ini files with your backup ini. Hope you can solve it.

Have you ever tried lighting a perfectly dark room with a candle? And or a wood fire? You will notice that RLO does a much better job at mimicking realism than ELFX. The RLO team have actually done real life experiments, to measure light refractions and spreading. Light never stops, it only disperses and bounces, becoming less pronounced, fading in the distance. This is something ELFX does not take into account, it has clear light boundaries. You should take a look at Sydney666 his comparison shots, especially the animated gifs. Although, even RLO is not perfect, as not every light casts shadows (sadly impossible in skyrim engine) and therefore some shadows on objects are a bit strange. Nevertheless, RLO is far more 'realistic' than ELFX although not necessarily more atmospheric in-game. That said, realistic or not, I do believe ELFX adds a lot of atmosphere in the way he uses light placements and effects (RLO adds these too, however, not everywhere as they can cause flickering, which is evident in some locations with EFLX as well.), I would use RLO in combination with ELFX if it wasn't for the day-night cycles. RLO really does the windows and ambient lighting very well. You really get the feeling you are connected to the outside world, in a way that ELFX does not. ELFX uses wrong colors, and the light from the windows seem to be torches shining in, being dimmed slightly during the night, but still appear bright during night. Windows aren't bright during the night. Also, RLO changes window light colors and brightness based on the weather outside (works with any weather mod). Real wood and candle fire are very yellow/orange colored as well. I feel ELFX actually fails to address the colors proper, especially of wood fires. Candles and wood burn relatively inefficient and at a relatively low temperature these (relatively) low temperature fires are very rich in red light spectrum. But perhaps on some PCs the colors are somehow off using RLO.... (Not using Claralux right?) Of course it is all a choice of preference in-game. Although RLO is certainly more 'realistic' than ELFX, it is not necessarily the better lighting option.

Are there still issues with it? Does it really cause CTDs. I removed it quite some time ago, when it would continuously cause CTDs for me in the same cave. Spoiler(the one with the red nirnroot) I would like to use it for Trolls, giants and Falmer. But Skyrim is not so big, even in the wild there is very little variation amongst most animals. Especially bellyaches rabbits I find unrealistic, how many different colored rabbits do you see in a wood where foxes live? And how many differnt types of wolves and foxes have you seen? Personally I like the creatures to remain rather similar to oneanother. A wolf pack usually contains all similar wolves (except in some zoo's). However, the more humanoid/elf like creatures would be more appropriate to have variation IMO. If it is stable, I would like to use some of those packs.

I knew about LAA, but in recent patches they improved memory handling quite a lot. It is in nearly every patch (memory handling improved or something along those lines). Can you link me to those fora? I wonder why the engine has issues above 3.2GB, even if it is a 32 bit program.... Perhaps we should ask Jason2112 he has very good understanding of these things. Also, he had a nice tweak to enable the game to use even more than 4GB in his ATTK thread, if the engine cannot handle more than 3.2GB than there is no real benefit for this tweak...

Hmm, I find it hard to believe the engine goes into trouble above 3 GB. Winodws manages memory resources, not the engine, the engine only allocates blocks, and asks windows to handle it. But for smart memory allocation and handling use ATTK. Even if it is reaching it's max limit, it should go and start paging. Now with a hard drive, this will easily cause stutter/CTD, but if you disable paging, it will page in RAM instead (only do this if you have enough RAM 8+), because logically, paging in RAM simply negates the actual purpose for the pagefile. However, when you deal with 32bit programs, and do not overload your RAM, it can have benefits. If you use a lot of RAM intensive programmes such as photoshop however, dont forget to switch paging back on! There are already reports on internet that claim that their stutter disappeared after disabling paging, just google it... Just give it a try if you have enough RAM, you can always switch it back on if it doesn't help.

If bfullscreen=0 helps, have your tried ATTK loader? Sounds like a memory issue to me, either system RAM or VRAM. Clearly your VRAM is not fully loaded yet, Although, I would advise to use GPU-Z instead of MSI afterburner to test that.

I had these type of issues before, Fo me they were hardware related. Modded skyrim demands a lot more from your hardware than most games do. What PSU do you have? How much is your GTX275 OC'd? Try reduce the OC on that. What I fear is that your hardware with modded skyrim pulls more power than your PSU can deliver. Hence allways outside and random. If you have a beast of a PSU, than I don't know. These random events allways had to do with two things in my case, and allways with bethesda games (modded) RAM stability and PSU. Good luck EDIT: Oh, wait. You get CTD not complete computer crash right? Than it most probably is script error or something. In case of PSU or memory you get random computer crashes.

You could do the testing for non-ENB users but it's pointless for ENB users because there is no hardware AA after v.119. So for ENB users, you either use the ENB AA or none at all. :(SMAA still works I believe. True. FXAA and SMAA injectors still work...forgot about that. EDIT: We've hijacked the poor guys thread but he hasn't reported back if any of our suggestions have worked or not....so I'm assuming they did. Haha, yes. Perhaps the title should be changed? or else the thread merged with the ENB one?. I don't like the fact that there is either ENB AA or no AA (Apart from the injectors). ENB seems to blur the foliage, a bit counter effective really, as foliage is one of those things that can be most improved by AA. I'll do a comparison at some point... But first need to finish my PhD report. I have never liked ENB, huge performance impact and often way to colorful. Although I do appreciate some of the fixes on shadowing and the SSAO. SkyRealism vanilla was a good option for that, perhaps I should use that one with ENB 0.119. Thus far I have always used Immersive Environment, although old and FXAA based it still is the best, and I have tried many things, luckily my wife feels the same way. We can not play without it. I will try RCRN in the future, as that seems to have a similar effect. Other than that, Immersive environment works with nearly everything, including RLwC and CoT and of course, any ENB.

Thanks for comparisons! Clearly for AF doesn't matter what you use, although, ENB seems to cost slightly more FPS. And both ENB + Nvidia do slightly better job in the far distance (negligible) AA though, would love to see a comparison there as well, between launcher, driver (MSAA, SSAA), SMAA, FXAA and ENB, and possible combinations thereof. I don't like the ENB AA in the images you provided. Th AA works, but blurs the image, especially on foliage, makes it look painted..... I understand it is going to be a lot of testing, might do that myself some time. S

Anisotropic filtering is something different than AA. You should use either ENB or Nvidia driver to force 16x AF. The performance cost is minimal for both.

You probably don't want to hear this, but what about More Dynamic shadows with stryping fixed? I know it is not available on the nexus. PuuLoo recently updated the mod, and claims all probems with it are solved. Would like to know if this is true. He gets some nice responses on the work as well. Since he keeps true to the vanilla lighting style, might be worth giving it a try, Dawnguard compatible as well. It is not compatible with Heartfire though, and no exteriors. I like Enhanced Lights and FX best from the screens (and in game). Would love to be able to mix it with VELF, as VELF does exterior placement proper. For some reason, I don't like Relighting Skyrim, but havn't tried it ingame yet. Although it is not mentioned Claralux is too bright in my opinion and adds too many lights. I have no idea about OLSE, does it work well without ENB as well? I am not using ENB at the moment. Becasue the problem on some of the screens is the brightnes that RS has, The inns for example, seem to be night time in both vanilla and ELFX but daytime in RS? Would be good if the brightness goes down, as with OLSE.

@Neovalen Ok, I agree, once a year does not make it sound as if the candles are kept alight. Haven't done that quest in ages, so I wasn't sure anymore.

About Pelagius Wing. don't you need to get a key from a cleaner to get in?... She tells you she feels it is a creapy place?...

@rpsgc I agree, besides, light in a game like this is very important for atmosphere, even if unrealistic. It is also unrealistic that we can generate fire from thin air, and set things alight. It wouldn't be hard to imagine that there are magical fires that burn for eternity, as several magical lights do.

We went a bit off topic here, and I am continuing to do so for this post, then I'll quit. Hmmm, I should have a look at the presets. Thanks for pointing that out, I assumed it only adjusted the weathers and outside lighting.I still don't know what to do. CoT/RCRN/RLwC.... I excluded CoT because I didn't know it had interior changes as well, this changes things. I find RCRN better than RLwC but I am wayting for version 4.0... wish there was a clear winner amongst these 3. The rainy weathers aint as nice as the sunny ones for CoT, Vurt switched over to RCRN because CoT messes with his LODs during rainy weathers. I believe that is in the SFO thread somewhere. Thanks for that one justjr, that looks good! Enhanced lights and FX fixes quite a few caves and mines, and a fort or two.. But indeed none of the caves/dungeons Gopher went in, apart from swindlers den.

I like the light placements, but not the script. Like Nshell said, they shouldn't turn off in cold areas. IMO they shouldn't turn off at all. I find it unrealistic to have all lights suddenly turn on and off. Besides it is in medieval, not overpopulated, Skyrim. Those Nords really don't care if the fire burns during the day, saves them from having to light them all up again in the evening. Plenty of wood, and no environmentalists to stop them from wasting the resources. Plus, it adds to the atmosphere. Same as why all inns have fires, even in the warmer areas.

Yes you're right, I knew that...I was under that impression, he doesn't use ENB or other post processing, yet his dungeons have quite dark good lighting and he uses the RLwC torch. Are the dungeons better/darker because of the Enhanced Lights and FX? He uses his own Night vision mod, and he quite needs it. Might just be an issue with youtube though.

Sounds like a great little mod. I am going to give this a try. I always thought it looked stupid, kids from very rich or very poor, they all look the same.

I don't think Gopher use both Pure Waters AND WATER, no he doesn't. I was indeed talking about CoT and Pure waters. I believe he also uses RLwC but it is not in his mod list.I would love to merge WATER and PW but I'm not sure how to. To make use of all the extra features in WATER you need the main esp enabled, yet the PW auther advises to disable the esp in favor of his esp.... @ Techangel. I know about the problems he posts on the page, that is why I asked him about it.. It seems it can do with an update or at least an improvement. The thing is, it is not entirely wrong. He adds transparency to water, and the game engine cannot handle fog effects and transparency at the same time, so whenever foggy weather kicks in, the transparancy of the water is gone, making it look ugly again (still better than vanilla). If someone knows a solution to this problem, that would be much appreciated . I need to check in-game if the same thing happens with the WATER mod. Maybe someone with WATER installed can check this, although, I am not sure WATER adds extra transparency effects to the water.

I was wondering the exact same thing, which mod to use... I prefer the looks of Pure waters over WATER. Pure waters looks much better IMO, but WATER has some nice extra features that pure waters lacks, like water fall lods, changes in the flow direction of the water etc. About lighting mods, I asked about the incompatibility issues on the mod page, and according to the author, pure waters works fine with both CoT and RCRN. In fact, Gopher (I assume you know him) uses both CoT and Pure waters in hus current Lets Play and has no issues at all. The only thing is water transparency during foggy weather. The water looks like it is no longer transparent at the surface. This is actually a vanilla bug, but since in the vanilla game, the water doesn't look transparent at all, the transition isn't as obvious.