Aiyen

Okay since I have been too harsh and fast in my first reply I will do it properly this time! I will also go over the first post again and update it with better wording! While sticking with my initial criticism. Just in case some more people read it down the road! (Yes I am moderating myself! That will teach me to write stuff quickly while cooking, and doing things properly the first time around) Anyways to go over your wording, and where I think it is either wrong or dislike to the point where I think it "Just sounds too good to be true". From the top. - Full support to ENB and HiAlgo via the AE Customizer tool As I have already stated then this cannot technically be true for all presets you might want to use. Hence you give the impression that your button of wonder will always work, when that is technically not even true! I shal not speak about HiAlgo Boost since I have never used it, and never will on my desktop anyways. - No more stuck or slow weather, pick your favorite weather ratio according to your timescale via the AE Customizer tool. Since timescale changes are bound to mess up many things in the game depending on what it is, weathers just being one among them, then I find it hard to believe that you have fixed a game engine issue of this magnitude. Again this gives the impression that it will no longer be an issue when you read it. I am not saying it says that it will fix all timescale related bugs with the engine, but just that weather bugs will sometimes happen because of a quest bug that forces a certain weather, like the helgen intro. - Photo Realistic atmospherical Lighting, and perfect color balance, based on REAL LIFE data directly collected by our team in Finland and Pennsylvania (US). The problem here is not that you have done it the proper way, it is that perfect lighting color balance can only be done if you also overhauled every single texture that it is applied on along with image spaces (which you did to some extend). Part of the reason it is so silly difficult and time consuming to make any lighting overhaul for skyrim is that you can make something that looks epic in location one, but will then look silly in location B. Add in the quirks of the ingame adaptation and your perfect color balance makes no sense to me anyways. Again this is not saying that what you have looks bad! It does not, but it is not perfect. - infinite different ambiental and sky Hues, thanks to our float values system. This one is just confusing... Since well there is nothing in your shaders that have the option to only affect the sky, you can apply a different tint to every pixel, but that is about it. Getting the game engine to randomly pick sky hues would properly be an option, but then again it would not be infinite... since well the color spectrum is not infinite, and there are certainly a great deal of it that you would never want to use due to saturation, blending issues etc. So again it sounds more like a loose use of the word infinite sales talk, without grounds in what makes sense. To me anyways. - Supercharged Dusks and Dawns, experience the best sunset/sunrise skies ever done in a videogame. We covered the dusk and dawn one already... and yeah they can be really epic, and super beautiful, but not the best in ANY video game. - Adaptive Bloom for exteriors, perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment. Yeah the word perfectly and every used in a manner that sounds good if you are trying to sell something, but from a technical standpoint makes no sense, for many reasons. Mainly you do not hook in and disable the games buggy bloom code, you use it, hence your own result will never be able to be perfect. And certainly not everywhere, part due to the buggy nature, part due to the reason mentioned with textures above. - Regional Weather system finelly tuned to perfectly match the Skyrim geography. Again the use of the word perfectly, just screams...! Yes you have fine tuned the regions, but again due to the way regions are implemented then there will always be quirks with it. This again relates to the above issue with weathers, and timescales. Even in a vanilla game with only your mod then there would still be silly quirks, making the use of the word perfectly hard to back up. Also there are bugs in the vanilla game boundaries of the various regions depending on region if you look close enough. Like you can get snow where there is no snow etc. and you did not go in and alter those. - Adaptive Bloom for interiors, perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment. Same as above. Guess this cooks down to .. you know you are dealing with a buggy implementation, yet you still call what you have done to alter it perfect... I just do not get it. - Reworked 1 by 1 the lighting of each interior location. Okay this one is not bad... I just do not get what you mean by it! I think it could be more descriptive of what you have done. Looking over the edits, then you have large done mainly image space edits. - Improved Spellcast lighting and optimized fire shaders. Granted you did improve the lighting, but you did not optimize the "fire shader"... what would that be? You mention dragon fire. The only thing the mod does with dragon fire is alter the ID 9EE7C MagiclightDragonFire. Here you increase a few values so it looks more RWAR... but you do not alter the actual shader. In fact the only thing under effect shader is MannyGT´s fog. - Hybrid Shaders: mixes the RCRN Dynamic Shaders perfectly with a reworked version of the original ingame Shaders. Now this is the one place where the use of perfectly makes some sense.... sadly the reworked version of the original ingame shaders kinda does not make sense. Since ya did not rework them, it would require a hook as a minimum, and/or source access. You only tweaked values they use. I know it is a bit thin semantic argument, but since all of this is, I wanted to take it along. In general your whole use of the word shader does not add technically up most of the time. Phew... that was a long one! All of this along with the visual presentation of it all, and the fancy built in donate buttons etc. Just makes the whole presentation scream oversell! This is the only thing I dislike, and from what I have hard and read, quite a few other people also dislike. If ya could get the presentation toned down a little with a bit more humility, and technical accurate info, I think it would remove any sort of this, and help make ya mod even more popular. That said then the actual content of what ya are done, is a good work. Not perfectly good but a good work (Sorry just had too!)! And there are a few ideas that I really do like and might implement in my own load order (No worries most of what I do I never release...) That said then I will proceed to rework my initial posts since I was just a jerk there. I will make it so it is both more respectful, and clear! For now I want to cook some food, and watch some fools get blown up!Â

If a texture file or mesh does not show up when you search your folders for them, then it is because they are not installed at all. As I recall then windows search will even provide similar hits when mistyping a bit, as long as part of the word is correct. If it is not in the original data, then it must be because it is something a mod adds to the game that is entirely new. Those two in particular would most likely be from a mod that deals with flora, grass, and/or trees!

As long as you have created the folder first it does. That is the only limitation. Other then that, then great stuff from both you and aLaaa! Always nice to know more about how the wonky MO magic works!

Okay this is going to be a long one! So gonna take it in increments... hopefully to clear up what I mean! First I want to stress that I do NOT hate the mod, or suggest that people do not use it! In fact I stated that I found the visuals etc. quite good for the performance impact! What I strongly dislike is that it oversells with statements that are absolute in a context that is subjective... on a technical base that is just wrong. We can take this as it has a bit of all. The first part with supercharged... yes I agree... the second about part it being the best EVER done in ANY videogame... is just plain wrong. Even the older versions of the Cryengine would put the Gamebryo engine to shame in terms of exterior output. Heck even a well setup Unreal engine 3 would blow anything it can do out of the water. The list goes on. This again does not say what you have made is bad they do look nice.... I just dislike you trying to sell it like its the best ever... when it can technically not be true.  (We can debate the colors etc, but what I am talking about here is ONLY engine limitations.) This assumes that the ENB in question have APPLYGAMECOLORCORRECTION and use of external shaders enabled.Look at any ENB preset thread and people will get manage to get confused about this. Also more ENB presets deviate from the base template that Boris have made. For example the custom enbeffect.fx file I have made only includes the bare minimum of the original shaders, since I want to be able to control stuff from the ENB GUI, not from the CK, as much as possible. This sort of thing would prevent any simple... one button click wonder doing, unless you have copies of all recent enbeffect.fx files etc. and that would just be a silly thing to maintain. Again this is not strictly something that is wrong with your mod, it is just something that is wrong with people... I could also say that your mod is compatible with my ENB.... IF you do this and that, but it would never be simple for the non code monkey user to do. Yes the last part is true... the first is not! The vast majority of mods do not use an installer like yours... they use a FOMOD installer where the files are still simple to get as loose files. This is the only thing I as an experienced modder dislike about that approach. It is just annoying to have to install, and get something thrown into the windows registry when all I need to do is move a few folders around... I could install the mod faster manually then by using your installer. I can relate to the first part! However as I just mentioned it is still overly complex for people who know what they are doing, and who are not going to come pester you with trivial install stuff. Having a manual install version up.... you got the files, cant hurt. Heck you could even hide it in the bottom of optionals, and most people would never notice anyways. Best of both worlds in my opinion anyways. Yeah here my point was... that there is no way that your checker will go and make compatibility patches for every mod that conflict with ... cell edits for example. Unless you somehow managed to do what the Tes5edit team cannot do, and make an "Auto compatibility patch generator". (If you have then my hat is off, and I will join the chorus to praise that tool to high heaven and back down again!)I will admit that I did install it like I said.. since I do not want my mod list that I spent months on messed up by any sort of untested automated tool..... call me a chicken that way! :) I used his mod for a long time! Sadly it does not agree with the SSAO of ENB... which in general have a problem with fog. But again engine limitation. I respect all of his work, and it is nice to see it spread out more! This is what that whole part was about. And I do like what you have done with it... it looks nice. Ah yeah... I guess I was a bit harsh there. What I meant was, since we have had this debate before around here! People think that ANYTHING that alters how the visual thing looks is the same thing... ENB = SweetFX = ANY post processing. When in fact the difference between ENB and just altering the post processing is like night and day! And in fact I looked at ALL your .h files.. since I love doing stuff like that! My comment about bloom was in relation to you saying that you have a perfectly tweaked bloom code both inside and out.... When in fact your bloom code (Your HDR code is essentially a bloom code) is really just altering the built in bloom.... which is highly selective on what it works on, and hence is not perfectly adjustable. From a technical standpoint then an ENB bloom using Kyo´s shaders for it, or a mix of that and vanilla Bloom is always going to be able to produce far superior results compared to just the vanilla... since it has its odd quirks n stuff. Most people are never going to notice these things, since they do not know what to look for. And I do love what you have done with the vanilla bloom! We can always have a fancy tech debate about "HDR" or not.... since what you have is not technically HDR. It is a mimic of it. Just like what SweetFX does... As for the rest then that sounds interesting! I know I use SweetFX for quite a few other games with great sucess, would not mind more stuff to come out in that direction.... as long as ya do not go about claiming it can do for Skyrim what ENB can. (Unless of course you have a .dll hook that can actually do that sort of stuff... but then it would most likely not be able to be used for many games equally well.) And about my conclusion that it is for workshop users.... In terms of technical then it is... since it is just plug and play... and do not worry about anything else (in theory anyways). You even have a compatibility checker that will make people say "But it said everything was fine".... (Again if it can do full auto patch making on a random mod list I will use it and sing for it etc.! ). There is hand holding all along the way! This is what I mean by it. Is it a bad thing.... perhaps to some! I mean it as it is good to use for inexperienced users, and the average workshop user is just that... just going from the built in mod manager to NMM is a quantum leap. This is compared to experienced modders, who does find this sort of installer just annoying, since it is slow, and try to perform automated tasks that you cannot ask it NOT to do. At least I would assume that is the case! If it turns out it is not, then come back and bash me for it, and I will take it back! Oh yeah and finally this. (Sorry for going back I just forgot I had something to say about that! ) ANY visual, lighting mod is always going to be subjective... it is never going to be PERFECT! At least not for everyone! Even other people from Finland! I could go on about the tonemapping, but this monster is long enough already! So to sum up! I do NOT!!! hate your mod. I think it performs a visually NICE and very atmospheric Skyrim experience! I would recommend people try it out if they do not like the performance impact of ENB! However I will not say that it is PERFECT, and present the best visual experience since Crysis.... since that is just not technically possible. I would also never recommend that people try to just plug in on top of a massive mod list, and hope everything works out with your compatibility checker! Finally to respond to PioneerRaptor. I have not said anything about not liking how it looks... I infact stressed that I would not say anything bad about that! Even said then and now that I think it looks really nice! Since I can see it sounded way to harsh, I have cleared up some of the language in the other post, and hope it is better now! And hope that the clarifications brought here have better shown my criticisms. I am guessing the personal reasoning was not aimed at me, and I am not going to touch that now!... post is long enough.Â

It means that Boris develops for Nvidia first and foremost, and cba to deal with various AMD issues half the time, and the other half he does it reluctantly. Essentially it has been like this since I started back in january with ENB´s... That AMD works (most of the time) is just a side benefit. As for getting more FPS etc. nobody have really done any indepth analysis of it... since it depends so heavily on other settings, mods etc.Â

Doubleyou: Compared to just installing it on the desktop in a new folder, and make an archive out of the files that are relevant (IE just the data folder...) That just seems overly complicated! I doubt many people are going to get that right! :) Also doing the injectors, and shaders like this might cause some issues down the road, since they need to be copied directly into the skyrim folder in order to work. There properly is some wonky MO magic that solves this.. but I still prefer to do it manually! :) Guess I should add that to my previous post as well.

I forgot which card series, but the later ENB series are not compatible with older cards, since they now use shader functions that the earlier cards do not support. This would cause issues around the block.

Depends on the scene.. your can try it in skyrim... go to riften and enable ENB´s transparency AA... go to say... dawnstars coast, and then enable it... very different FPS hits. The amount of foliage matters. The more transparent textures the harder the hit.

Edited post: Since I was being rude initially I have to apologize to both aLaaa and the readers of this forum. I have moderated this post so it is more respectful, and better illustrate what I like and do not like about the mod! Note that this is just my personal opinions, not those of the STEP team! Okay picked it up, and then apart! And here is the verdict.... The Installer: Since I am the kind of modder who can do a manual install faster then then installers, then I am not a fan. In general for mods I dislike installers, since I find I always have to install to a 3rd location, and manually move the files anyways to get the output I want. I find it sad that there is not an option for manual install when it would be simple enough for the authors to do, and I do not see how they would loose anything by doing it! While for new and inexperienced mod users, or just workshop users, this might be a godsend, then I just think it is a bad idea to force it on everyone in a modding community. The installer does include a Compatibility check feature, which is a nice little addition. It does have the option to fix minor issues, but it will not be able to sort out massive mod lists full of issues. Since the mod does alter quite a few "popular" forms, then there is going to be compatibility issues down the road. Nothing patches cant fix, but one should not rely on this doing it all. When used in conjunction with MO then the installer also requires a few extra steps which are added on page two in detail! (Some benefit from editing a post after a while! :) ) The esp´s: There are two .esp´s, one which include stuff required for MannyGT´s fog stuff, and one that includes the majority of their edits to cells, image spaces, regions, weathers etc. Like I just mentioned then these edits are going to provide a challenge for larger mod lists, since so many mods edit them. About the fog, then it will work best without ENB, since ENB´s SSAO have some issues with the way MannyGT have implemented fog. This is sadly an engine limitation. The visuals: Since this is entirely subjective, I am not going to say anything bad about it, since well.. I have made plenty of stuff that looked worse with ENB! They have tried to put in many different settings, to try to cater to a broad spectrum of people which is a good thing. They manage to use the default Skyrim shaders to their finest, and the outcome is really nice I think. But it will still not compare to a well tuned ENB preset in terms of effects, and quality, since they are ultimately limited by the default skyrim shaders, and what they can do. On the bright side there is not really any huge performance impacts, so this will be a really good thing for people with medium to low end PCs and laptops. Shaders: This is mainly for people who like to mess with HLSL and stuff like that! If comparing to shaders available for ENB presets. Then the ones implemented here are not gold mines of new epic stuff! RCRN uses mainly the vanilla shaders, and then apply a few post processing shaders on top sort of like SweetFX. Except they still do not have the detail that it has in terms of functions and options. Guess one can think of it as a SweetFX lite in the current form. While their stuff can be combined with ENB, then one have to make sure that only an ENB that actually allow the default shaders to work is used. For most current presets this require the APPLYGAMECOLORCORRECTION to be set to true, and the default bloom shader needs to be activated. Otherwise most of their work is never going to show! Overall and conclusion: For any semi experienced modder their installer is a pain in the behind. Their weird custom menus etc. with tweaking is a nice touch. But I really miss a manual version and their shaders are so simple that putting in the values manually is not a big deal compared to much more complicated shaders out there. For new users, and people inexperienced with modding, or coming directly from the workshop then it is a nicely done however. Performance wise then this will not hit hard, so it will be a nice alternative for people on medium and low end laptops who just want a better visual experience, and where ENB is not an option for whatever reason! It is also entirely possible to just enjoy higher framerates with a visual overhaul. The whole thing is nicely done, and overhauls most of the ingame visuals to blend nicer together! In general the only reason one might want to bash their work, is because they oversell it so badly.  They do manage to get more out of the game engine for relative little cost... but the overselling 90´s commercial stuff...... ARRGGHHHHh :)

Most of what it adds is unique stuff or at least have new forms so its unique, so no major conflicts with STEP. Problems with larger lists due to extra spawns added.

Transparency AA is AA done on textures with transparency enabled.... like fences. At least I do not know of any game that would render a fence like a mesh... just a waste of polygons. It is different from the others, in that the AA is done on the actual texture instead of the model. But this also means it cost quite a bit more if you have more transparent textured in a scene.

The method it uses to try to fix stuff is legit enough... but I have no need for it. Like other types of fixes then its on a "if you have problems try it" basis. No official recommendations is going to come for it, since it depends too much on mod lists, and hardware etc.

Edit: I have edited away untrue statements, and removed some of the comments that I can see now where rude and unwarranted! It can be used with ENB, but requires that the ENB preset allows the default Skyrim Shaders to work. Also from the amount of changes they make... it would be quite a feat to combine it with larger mod lists! Just from reading this, then I am skeptical about the quality compared to the description however. Stuff like - Supercharged Dusks and Dawns, experience the best sunset/sunrise skies ever done in a videogame. Since the Skyrim Engine is just silly compared to newer engines when it comes to this (The horizon color mismatch for example.... cant be fixed other then remaking part of the engine). In general I think they overabuse the word "Perfectly" for something that is entirely subjective. At least their new site now looks like a 90´s commercial instead of a 70´s one! :) Oh well have to wait for the nexus to sync up their file before I can pick it apart in detail!Â

Fences etc require transparency AA most likely.

Check the "Howto" in the stickies for finding missing textures. Edit: its in the general Support forum! Might have to change that... hmm.

You should always do it incrementally.... for the very simple reason that no matter how good the guide, you are going to mess something up! Staring at T5E and the guide for a few hours will make most people just brain fart, and go into auto edit mode and do something wrong! :) And catching silly mistakes mid process makes them a lot easier to find then when everything is installed. The better at installing and maintaining mod lists you get you can do bigger increments.

ENBoost needs to be setup for your system! The equation is just the theoretical correct value.... however every PC is different, so what works for one person do not have to work for you. Specially then the motherboard you have will play a HUGE role when it comes to moving the silly amounts of data around that ENBoost makes use of to allow you to use higher detail textures. If you just bought the cheapest Mobo when you made your machine then that is most likely why. Or if you bought one already made by any vendor, then you can be sure that they put in a cheap mobo to keep the price down. (Exceptions are there for those really expensive gamer rig ones, they normally use fairly good ones) However back to ENBoost... Setting the value equal to your VRAM is the first choice... if everything runs great... play game! If you get stuttering, try to increase or lower it. The rest of the values are pretty much on/off... and the effect of having the on or off is an increase or decrease in stuttering. I personally run with 8192Mb since that is what works for me. Guess I can get away with it since I have 16Gb of RAM on top of the 2Gb VRAM, and an expensive mobo. (ASUS Z77 Sabertooth)

Water additions are only there from v.234 onwards. Under the WATER category in the ingame GUI or enbseries.ini.

Make sure you do not have any transparency AA, Supersampling AA etc. enabled anywhere.. Riften area especially will cause immense slowdowns if those are on.

You activate the effect, and then go see how it looks. You can enable and disable it ingame. Also the other surface water effects look a bit different with it on, tweak away until you are happy! I doubt that many preset creators are going to set up the values for you since it depends on the water texture used.

Yeah if you want one mods effect to be what you see in a game rather then another. Like if you have a custom sound, or image space, or any other thing that is not part of the base game.

ENB handles shadows when on, but bugs in the vanilla engine are still going to be there. It fixes a few glaring issues like stripping etc. But the glow is an engine thing as I have understood it. The resolution of the shadows have nothing to do if your blur settings are low, so it is a compromise thing. There are a few other things that can be done, but it requires that you switch ENB, and even then it is still not going to be removed entirely. In general then the issue is only really apparent if you have an actor up against a really dark background, or looking at it from a specific angle etc. It is sort of like the fact that you have transparent hands when in 1st person when using SSAO and moving close to other objects. You can reduce the effect but it is always going to be there due to engine limitations.

It most likely adds additional post processing effects, which put extra strain on your GPU... Try to figure out what it is... do you also have a lot of files called ENB ? Or just something called sweetFX ? You could also just try to remove it and see if you like how your game looks now, and how it runs.

GDO does it because as I recall then there are certain dialogue which only happens if you have certain equipment on, and/or if your armor values is above a certain threshold etc. The foot mod is more straightforward. You have a mod that alters the mesh, and a lot of equipment so that it can show its effect. Of course it will then be redflagged since REQ does not have those edits, and the edits are non standard stuff that is required for the mod to work. This is one mod that you would have to create a patch for to get the effect to show properly. Also stuff that is further up the mod list will almost always be red, since it is overwritten by stuff further down. The only way to make sure this happens as little as possible is either make sure that all mods have the same records (As much as possible since masters need to be loaded before the mod you edit.) or just delete records that contain the same change from the mods above.

Try to disable any Vsync you might have running first. Failing that then try to reduce draw distances too see if its simply because you got too much stuff that requires rendering at any one point.