n0mad23

ARG! Figures I'd find out about this ONLY after returning home to my 1950's telephone wire pretending to support a DSL connection! After spending considerable time on the site I must admit I'm feeling a lot more attraction and optimism for the project than I initially did. It's got potential to the nth power.

I haven't tried Kerbal, and most of what I know of it is second hand via the Orbiter Space Flight Simulator fans. Orbiter does have time compression as well as a "slo-mo" feature accessible through an in-game pop up menu. It's been a couple years since my last trip to the Moon, but if memory serves with time set to 10000:1 the 4 day trip takes about 5 or 10 minutes. There are lots and lots of mods, too (you might even find 4 or 5 of mine still up somewhere) so there's nearly as much speculative/experimental mods as there are historic recreation ones. Good stuff. Definitely not a game but great fun if you enjoy a serious challenge. It's one thing successfully flaming your way through an atmospheric deceleration, but it's another thing entirely actually doing so an landing on the same continent you intended - at least if you're doing so manually. There are awesome navigation MFDs (multi-function displays) available for the truly hardcore to plot slingshot assists or even halo orbits to pretty much anywhere you want to go in the "local" neighborhood. Keep in mind that even with 10000:1 time compression, it's a long long way out to Saturn from here. Most people "skip" most of the trip and place themselves at a predicted intercept point at the right date and time/velocity. I spent some time this afternoon looking at the Chris Roberts site. I'd love to see this succeed, but must admit trepidation after seeing where things are at, and how they're being done. Seems like he's going for the best of both worlds in terms of a business model, and while I wish everyone involved the best of luck, it really doesn't promote a lot of confidence that it's going to succeed in me.

Orbital mechanics doesn't really translate well into a game environment. Believe me, as I spent a couple years going through countless pencils and notebooks wrapping my head around things. If you think changing trajectories in a super-tanker is slow and tedious, it's actually laser paced compared to orbit transfers. Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is a really cool freeware available to any who want to mess around with the simulation side of things. Personally, I loved Wing Commander even though while I played it I knew I was using video game physics and it was painfully obvious that the idea for the game was ahead of the tech available to support it accurately. I'm pretty jacked to have been alerted to Space Citizen's existence and will be tracking it now. Thanks!

I've got 3d NPCs downloaded now, and will be giving it a try in the next couple of days. It's so nice visiting with someone who's got serious download speeds for the internet! I suspect I would have lost connection at least 3 or 4 times trying to download that package on my DSL line riding the original 1950's phone lines still in the walls of 1916 rental home. BTW - I did reinstall Populated Skyrim Civil Wars by RS, but I've only put in the Patrols and had no problems with my saves. I'll do Forts and Places when I get home, too. Nice!

@Brokenpaine - MSI Dominator (non-pro) laptop here. GTX 970M mobile chipset with 6 gigs VRAM and 8 gigs of system RAM for the i7 quad core. I figure my problem with ReShadeMe is the same as the struggles I had getting EMBoost working - I'm on an Optimus laptop. Which suddenly makes me think that using ENBoost injector is probably why ReShadeME and SweetFX 2.0 didn't work. I think when I get home tonight or tomorrow (out of town visiting relatives) I'll have a look at that again. I hadn't thought about firing it up via SweetFX_preset.txt - SweetFX 1.5.1 initializes automatically when Skyrim fires up for me via MO/SKSE. Honestly, I never imagined having a laptop that's basically a desktop disguised as something portable (just shy of 11 lbs, you do know you're packing the thing if you have it on your shoulder for an hour!) BTW - I'm using OmniFXpreset-dull as my template and have tweaked the Tonemap and Use_Curves settings to taste. I really love the subtle enhancements this generates. Edit: - I did some searching and found that my ReShadeMe issue exists for some others, too. There's a work-around posted so I think I'll give that a try, as well as going with the newest drivers there. FYI - https://reshade.me/forum/troubleshooting/669-tes-skyrim-strange-shadows#5513

@brokenpaine - I recently tried ReShadeMe with SweetFX 2.0 but didn't have success. There were strange "ghost shadows" of broken geometries following me around, like overlays or something. Really odd. I uninstalled and reinstalled it but had the same result. I've been using SweetFX 1.5.1 ever since. Love it! Do you by chance have a link to where I might find out the cause of the 2.0 problem I was having? I'd really like to try that version again, but am finding the help files rather lacking. SweetFX presets for Skyrim are available here - https://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/61/

I began modding after moving my level 50 Redguard character from my wife's dedicated Intel graphics chip laptop to my MSI gaming laptop. While it's certainly not recommended, it seems to be doable. By the time that character had hit level 80, I had over 150 mods installed. My biggest stability issues were resolved when I got ENBoost up and running. I really had a tough time getting ENBoost working, and probably had 1/2 dozen failures over a couple months (I'd walk away as it seemed to work fine without it) of trying to find a version that worked for me. When I started experiencing fairly regular CTD's I really focused on getting ENBoost working and have enjoyed a really stable platform ever since. My mod install approach has been to put in a single mod, and then go in to the game and do a full adventure/quest as my test. I usually choose a smaller dungeon or cave so I can play for 1/2 hour to 1.5 hours straight for the test. If all goes well, I'll go into an untouched building's interior (vanilla) and save. Then I'll exit and install another mod. What I really need to do now is start merging mods. So far I've only merged textures as it's pretty easy to consolidate mods that only have meshes and texture files. However, my plugin list is getting rather long.

Sakr3d - I can confirm that Populated Skyrim Civil Wars is a bit too processor demanding. I gave it a try last night and don't have it in my load order any more - lol. I stumbled into one of the battles (purely by coincidence) east of Whitewacht Tower which apparently is one of the large battles in this mod. The majority of the battle was done with bows on both sides, and only after there were less than 10 survivors did anyone use a blade. I've got Wet and Cold in my load order. Because all 80 soldiers were exerting themselves, every single one had breath vapors. The wind was blowing (not sure if that was the game's engine or CoT) so all of those breath puffs were blowing across the landscape to the south, and there were up to 80 arrows in the air at any given moment. That was really, really impressive to see. Oh yes, there was also a fight broke out behind the Imperials between 5 or 6 Vigilants and Dragon Cultists seconds before the two armies began their fight. Since I'm also using Enhanced Blood Textures, I'm sure you can imagine what the landscape and road looked like otherwise. It was a carnage exhibition. Surprisingly, not once did I get any stuttering nor any visible fps hits. However, before half of the combatants were dead, the fans of my laptop were pumping out hot air pretty intensely. I dashed to Morthal and indoors for save point and exited. My GPU temps were at 61C and my CPU was at 57C. Not bad really. The real impact in terms of game play was in the aftermath. With that many dead NPCs on the field, there was a couple second delay between choosing to loot a body and the menu popping up that showed the corpse's inventory. Too over the top for me at this stage. Luckily RS's Populated Skyrim Civil Wars has a fomod installer and 3 choices for using this mod. You can choose Patrols only (12 Imperial Patrols - 38 soldiers and 8 Stormcloak Patrols - 24 soldiers), or Battles only (4 Armies on each side with 325 soldiers in total), or Full Install. I think I might try it again with just the patrols installed. I'll have to give the Populated Forts Towers Places a try next I think. @brokenpaine - Thanks for the info on Interesting NPC's. I'm finding people either really love that one or hate it - and it seems that the people that really hate it were hating a much earlier version as I haven't really seen any heavy handed criticism dated later than 2013. I'll be visiting my brother over the weekend and he's got internet via cable so I'll be downloading it then. I really can't imagine doing it on my DSL connection here. Thanks! Good advice gang. Thank you. My rig - MSI Dominator Nvidia GTX 970M 6 gigs VRAM i7 quad core - 8 gigs RAM Win 8.1

A quick google search shows there's currently a copy available on Google Drive. Versions 1.1, Dawnguard, and 1.6 update 2048k textures in three separate files. I had to do a face palm after reading Kesta's comment. I think I'll be setting up the newest STEP SRO replacements over this weekend. Sweet. I'm really liking the idea of doing my own compare and contrast. Still, it's somehow it's comforting to know that it's still popping up for convenient downloads just in case....

Hi gang, I'm sure many of us have felt that Skyrim is a bit too underpopulated to achieve that "living/breathing" environment that was operating before, and will continue to evolve long after the PC Dragonborn has disappeared. The lack of citizens is a huge "immersion" breaker for many of us. Unfortunately there just aren't that many viable choices to rectify this. The two biggest/most successful of these mods seem to be Inconsequential NPCs and Interesting NPCs. The mod ETaC also adds a few of both generic NPCs and a handful of named ones that add additional quests to the game. I haven't tried Interesting NPCs for a couple of reasons. The first is I'm on a pretty crappy DSL connection so I tend to hesitate on downloading anything that's pushing the gig limit. The second is I find myself pretty nervous about the quality of voice acting in that mod. I've read pro's and con's and don't have the personal experience to comment except that I remain hesitant to give it a try specifically because of my download speeds. In searching this topic, the only STEP search result was one from back in 2013 - https://forum.step-project.com/topic/3435-npc-addition-recommendation/?hl=populated+cities+towns+villages&do=findComment&comment=57620 - in this thread Populated Cities and Towns by RS who seems to have been banned from Nexus since this thread. Further digging has found RS has a site called Erkeil Team Skyrim Mods located here: https://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/welcome/ RS has got a total of 6 mods in his "Populated Series" now, but I can't find out when they were last updated. Some of the user comments there are quite recent. My question to those reading this here is this: does anyone have any experience with any of these mods since that last post here back in 2013? I've been using Populated Lands Roads Paths for a little over a week now and really like the addition of traffic while out on the roads, but hadn't been aware of any of these other "Populated" mods outside of the Cities and Towns. In particular, the Populated Skyrim Civil War looks particularly intriguing as it actually adds NPC battles in several locations (up to 80 soldiers fighting at once). Has anyone here testing these? Are they more trouble than they're worth - do they add more processor stress than what they actually achieve?l Cheers.

It took me so long to actually get a copy of SRO without using the torrent that I've been really hesitant to replace them with the current ones on STEP. I really love what SRO does to the ambiance of my environment. TechAngel85 - your endorsement here has just about convinced me to get over it and try the current ones instead.

For me, increasing ReservedMemorySizeMb to 640 got rid of the stuttering. It was pretty noticable at 512 but disappeared when pushed up to 640. I thought I might have to push it up to 768 because of the number of mods (graphic upgrades) I'm using, but 640 seemed to have done the trick.

I put in in via MO yesterday and am delighted with it. The biggest improvement for me has been the streams outside of Whiterun. They looked terrible in vanilla, and were somewhat improved by Realistic Water 2. Now they actually look OK at last - not great, but certainly a lot better than before. The stream next to the bridge leading into Riverwood looks vastly improved, too. This is a lovely fix, imo.

Far exceeds expectations for me. Wow. Snow does actually feel 3d with this, doesn't it? I'm really not experiencing any visible fps hits when taking in a full on vanilla snowstorm on the streets of Winterhold. Currently set my particles in skyrimprefs.ini to 10000. Does anyone know what particles can be set upwards to?

Looks like the buildings occupy the same spaces as some from ETaC. Interesting that no mention/conflict with ETaC is mentioned in the description nor comments there yet.

@TechAngel85 - the actual Nvidia guide, not your wonderful STEP work. I don't think the GTX 900 series was out when Nvidia posted its official tweak guide for Skyrim. You guys are awesome - no doubt. I only started modding Skyrim seven months ago, and I began by studying and following the Guide. Where the guide has left me with questions, I've readily either found the answer here in the forums, or I've posted my query and had resolution post haste. I've got 66 plugins and 146 mods currently running in MO and haven't had a crash in well over 30+ hours on a MSI laptop - I know this is only possible because of the testing done by the crew before being included, and in the solid technical writing exhibited continually in the Guide. Even where I've departed from the mandates, it's entirely educated by the STEP guide itself. Well done. While Rothbardian may not get the "ready made" STEP Extended "mix-down" he was hoping for, he most certainly is looking in the right place. If it looks this good on my GTX 970M with 6 gigs of Vram, I think he's in for eye candy treat time by the time he's installed STEP 2.G. I can't help but be a little jealous. My advice parrots those above - take the time to figure stuff out. STEP is solid and the time you invest in following it and learning the principles in the process will be rewarded. Kudos gang!

The STEP Guide has a link to the Nvidia guide (seriously dated by the way) which has both Inspector and Nvidia Control Panel settings. I personally don't use Inspector and have gone the control panel route without problems. Taking full advantage of that machine that you have, I suspect you'll want to possibly deviate from the STEP mandates and try Expanded Towns and Villages, or some other mods that change the landscape. DynDoLOD will be worth learning at that point so your LODs will correspond to your setup. In my own heretical deviations I've used Simply Bigger Trees (yes the needles are too big, but they look more like spruce than pines anyway) and DynDOLOD's use prevents my modified trees from suddenly growing as I approach them. Very nice. I've been testing ETaV over the last day and if I decide to keep it I'll certainly be running DnyDOLOD again immediately after making that decision. I'm only using ENBoost myself, but you'll definitely want to take advantage of ENBoost with Vividian. The key to stability.

Do I understand correctly that Immersive Citizens requires all DLCs to be present to work? I've never been compelled to get Dawnguard, but now am actually contemplating it just to test out this mod. It's really got a lot that I've been secretly hoping for since my first playthrough.

@kranazoli I'm still learning the ropes on this as well, but I think your "ExapandSystemMemoryX64=true" should be set to ""false." It looks like you've got a lot more memory to play with as well, and probably should kick your VideoMemorySizeMB to 8192. These pages might help: https://wiki.step-project.com/ENBoost#Recommendations https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:ENBlocal_INI

I've been away from Skyrim and Mod Organizer for several months now, and in coming back I find that I've allowed my MO version to get really behind. The version I'm using currently is V.1.2.18 and V.1.3.18 is now available up on Nexus. If I tell MO to update, it says "no incremental package" is available and I need to download the complete package. My question is how to upgrade/replace my current version without losing the mods that I have currently installed. I'm really hoping that I don't need to start from scratch again as my current play-through now has my character at Level 15. No big deal, but I'm having a lot of fun! Thanks for any advice/information you can share.

Thank you kindly, TechAngle85. Now set to 8192 and running as smooth as silk. Nothing like a smooth running Skyrim to facilitate total game play immersion. Salute to the STEP Team for all the work you do. Cheers.

Thanks TechAngel85 - Here's what Windows 8.1 is saying: Total Available Graphics Memory: 14312 megs. Dedicated Video Memory: 6144 megs. System Video Memory: 0 megs Shared System Memory: 8168 negs So - 8168 is what I should set my total available video memory? Thanks in advance.

I'm finding the calculations for Total Available Graphics Memory to be seriously confusing. I'm on a MSI Dominator laptop - i7 quad core with the Nvidia GTX 970M graphic chip set. I've got 6 gigs of Vram and 8 gigs of system RAM so setting my Total should be fine with 8000, yes? I've honestly had a heck of a time getting ENBoost to work on my rig. I've tried various versions of ENB at least a dozen times since January and put the attempts to the side when they didn't work as my setup with Mod Organizer seemed to work fine. I recently fired up Skyrim again and was surprised to find that I was experiencing random CTDs while going cross country. Then I started getting some that really didn't seem very random at all - for example, every time I tried to cross Dragonbridge, I'd CTD. So I went after ENBoost Injector version once again. I finally got V 0.262 to work - the first attempt this time! I haven't had a single CTD since getting ENBoost working about 5 days ago, and I've had several game excursions that have lasted well over 2 hours, as well. Additionally, the game runs even smoother than it did when I first started modding it, and my big surprise there was that Skyrim had a better FPS for me modded than vanilla. I've got 59 plugins running and 135 mods currently. i'm a believer. ENBoost is for everyone, no doubt about it.

As a huge fan of both rainbows and shooting stars, I've been using Splash of Rain since I discovered it. I'll be keeping it in my LO. I too was bothered seeing rain splashes in the grass but have revised my opinion in many hours of subsequent play. The times I actually stand still are almost always in urban areas or on roads/paths when I pause to get my bearings. On my machine Splash of Rain only becomes visible when standing still, so this is the only time that I see the effect. Granted that this represents a tiny minority of my play time, however those moments certainly push the sense of immersion in a lovely way. Since most of the time that I'm out in "the big world" I'm in motion the "unrealistic" splash effects aren't visible at all. Not an issue for me anymore. My n00b 2cents worth anyway. I'd love to see all three mods combined into a single package. Thanks for your additions isoku!

I've been using ELFX for a while now and personally found it does for interior lighting exactly what I'd hoped for. Dungeons and mines are finally stressful environments and it's possible to sneak up on a bandit and nearly stumble into one before realizing they're actually there! Finding loot almost always requires a torch or candlelight spell. I'm not using an ENB (I'm using an MSI GT72 Dominator laptop) at this point, and being rather olde skool (I date back to when floppies were actually floppy) I'm not sure I actually need one to satisfy my own visual enhancements in the game. I love that ELFX gives me absolutely no performance hits regardless of where I'm at - though I'm positive this is due to my being ENB free. I'm wondering what people think about the Exteriors version. I've not used it yet due to comments suggesting that it causes conflicts with games-in-progress (fire outside of fire pots, etc.) and I've got a single profile with a level 50+ character that I don't want to mess up. I'm contemplating creating another profile in MO just to test it out, but would really like to hear impressions of it. I've tried a couple of Lighting mods for exteriors and find I always compare them to what ELFX has achieved with interiors and then promptly delete said lighting mods. They just don't succeed for me. If ELFX exteriors is even 3/4 as good as the interiors, I'm sold. On a side note, for those of you using ELFX interiors and are disappointed that Hearthfire created homes still use vanilla lighting, this mod by Scrabbulor is a decent "fix" though isn't quite as lovely as ELFX. I've been using it in my play through for about a week now and have had no issues at all. Improved Hearthfire Lighting - https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60637/?