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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. In my own testing, I am seeing that RCRN provides the best quality/performance ratio ... the only problem is that the night-sky lighting is totally unrealistic during the full moon (as it is with vanilla). Even our puny little Moon here on Earth can light up an otherwise pitch-black night quite substantially when full. Therefore, ENB is pretty much required if using RCRN (using star-moom adjustments specifically and disabling almost everything else). First image below is vanilla, second is RCRN (Legacy) and the third is RCRN (Legacy) with minimal (sky-lighting/color effects only) SkyRealism ENB on top (there is a fire off to the right, so that is the reason for the glowing aspen leaves):

Just create a page at [ wiki/Guide:Lighting ] and past in what you have. No need to have anything reviewed beforehand, as that is what the wiki is for ;) We will create a link from elsewhere when it is ready enough for "release" Thanks for contributing

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)

All of those mentioned already, but consider IndigoNeko's many realism mods (SkyRealism). These are pretty new, and this guy is a meticulous coder. I have yet to test most of these mods with Tes5Edit or even in game, but I have downloaded and am planning on using them with fingers crossed: SkyRealism - GrassSkyRealism - ENB EvolvedSkyRealism - Feast and FamineSkyRealism - Portable Crafting KitsSkyRealism - Mass and MaterialsSkyRealism - Simple Save SystemSkyRealism - Time Scale and Travel SpeedSkyRealism - Stealth and Sneak Detection DurationsSkyRealism - Skills and StatisticsSkyRealism - Capacity and Carry WeightSkyRealism - Encumbrance

brown and saddle brown need to be stricken as well (see above)

If that's the case, i suggest checking hialgoboost again, it improved a lot with version 2.Yep, I was going to mention that. I will be testing, but from what I have seen, that will be a core STEP mod in the next major release if not sooner.

For the record, any final frame rate consistently above 20 FPS (in all situations) is acceptable. Few people using Baseline STEP with any ENB will consistently get over 32 FPS. AA and AF are definitely redundant if using most ENB, and this saves a good amount of FPS. I don't even find that SMAA has a noticeable effect on top of ENB (but it doesn't hurt to use it anyway). I would like to test loswering texture and shadows in Skyrim Options as well to see if any gain can be reclaimed. I suspect that ENB can significantly reduce the need for these performance killers.

How does one go about making CoT and RLwC (or RCRN) compatible? Some ENB config authors generally create their mods to account for lighting and weather changes introduced by CoT and RLwC (e.g., IndigoNeko) and others do not. Many state that these are not compatible (I can only suppose that they mean aesthetically and practically rather than that something is completely broken). SkyRealism seeks to deviate very little from vanilla lighting and shader programming is quite a bit different in this particular mod than any in its class (as I understand it). Thus, the lighting and weather mods are allowed to dominate those aspects of the game, and SkyRealism ENB expounds upon that (rather than doing any double duty or cancelling out of those effects).After messing around with this a bit more, it seems that, yes, once can use RLwC and CoT together; however, the result is probably redundant in many ways or there are likely both resource and data conflicts.... SO, as Besidilo insinuates in his post above, RLwC, CoT, and RCRN should not be mixed unless the user is attempting to play around with a lot of unknowns. Extrapolate to techangel's posts as well (he was not using CoT with RLwC due to some unexpected results likely caused by said conflicts.). I am certain that many of you already know this and that I am behind the curve on Skyrim lighting solutions Nevertheless, this is for others stumbling across my posts of misinformation :P

Thanks for correcting that. The images had been displaying up and down instead of across from some reason until yesterday or today. I am using the default/hardcore for the shots. Thank you for pointing out the other version though. I had completely forgotten about them until now and need to include them in my testing. The testing was done until you pointed that out and my results showed SkyRealism - Cinematic on top of RCRN provided the best overall results. I used a double elimination bracket to be sure. RLwC has (hardcore anyway) proven to have WAY too much in the area of sun rays out of the box. Here's what I'm talking about: The first is RLwC standalone with no ENB, the second is with SkyRealism - Cinematic, third is True Vision - Cinematic, and fourth is SkyRealism - Cinematic using RCRN which is 100x more natural. I was having issues with RLwC and CoT in any weather straight out of the box. I didn't take any shots of the issue or I'd post a few. That is way I took CoT completely out of all shots. Any shots are strictly RCRN or RLwC with an ENB on top. I would love to write a wiki. The reason I hadn't wrote up my report is because I wasn't sure where to post the results. Sure I could post them here, but it would only benefit a small few who take the time to view the thread. I was considering getting it up on Nexus but again, wasn't sure of the format to use. A wiki; however, sounds like a good place to start. I'll get right on testing with the other versions of RLwC though I don't see the need to test the Vanilla version as the author states it's "EXACTLY like the original Skyrim game". For this testing that would serve no purpose as it would be like just using the ENB with no lighting mod underneath. Or am I wrong? Skyrealism cinematic has a pretty big sunrays multiplier (bottom of INI), so toning that down should work nicely. I'll check out RCRN again as well. You may now begin editing pages on the wiki. For this kind of article, I think that it would be great to augment the ENB Guide with details on your test scenarios and maybe tabulate your results. stoppingby4now has created a couple of table classes (propertytable and formtable I think) that go nicely with our skin. PM him for details. We also have HeaderTabs functionality, so any H1 headings will present as a tab. This might be good for the ENB Guide (i.e., a performance/testing tab to see ENB in action). Feel free to make edits to the ENB guide as well. That is the whole point of the wiki (making corrections/edits), however, if it is not a no-brainer edit or alteration, it is best to detail your proposed changes on the discussion page of the article.

I would run your compares against different scenes, as this could be a special case. Also, I am running in CrossfireX, so things may be different.

I think you mean that on left is RCRN and right is RLwC? Also, note that there are many versions of RLwC plugins .... are you using RLwC - Hardcore, Vanilla or Vision? Each of these again has four presets. Secondly, CoT alters weathers as well as the lighting of each. Thus, any compare with or without CoT does not make sense unless you are forcing a particular kind of weather at any given time via the console. Suggest forcing clear weather before taking screens. CoT does remove a lot of the "ray effect" that do seem pretty unrealistic in my view. Basically, I am thinking that you will need to simplify your testing or account for each of the possible presets of each mod (which presents a great many combinations). Also, if you want to be methodical and exhaustive in your analyses, then I recommend writing a wiki article and including image galleries there. Much better for reference. We will soon be opening up the wiki to the greater community.

I actually get a +4-5 FPS increase with ENB 0.122-3 versus 0.119

How does one go about making CoT and RLwC (or RCRN) compatible? Some ENB config authors generally create their mods to account for lighting and weather changes introduced by CoT and RLwC (e.g., IndigoNeko) and others do not. Many state that these are not compatible (I can only suppose that they mean aesthetically and practically rather than that something is completely broken). SkyRealism seeks to deviate very little from vanilla lighting and shader programming is quite a bit different in this particular mod than any in its class (as I understand it). Thus, the lighting and weather mods are allowed to dominate those aspects of the game, and SkyRealism ENB expounds upon that (rather than doing any double duty or cancelling out of those effects). this post for the explanation

The big plus with SkyRealism is that it is highly configurable and compatible with other weather/lighting solutions. You can pretty much get what you want out of it, depending on the settings and accompaniments chosen. This is where I have my config at the moment, but still not finished (custom SkyRealism, CoT, RLwC this post for the explanation):

I am finding SkyRealism - ENB Evolved to be the best I have experienced. It works nicely with RLwC as well. I am using custom INI and FX modules based on the Cinematic version. Good performance, too with ENBSeries 0.122.

OK, thanks!

OK thanks. Will check this out .... can you provide the texture names?

Thanks a bunch! I'll definitely look into that! Also, thank you for the comment and you'd be correct. I may be new to modding but I'm a fast learner and have a background in IT. The manual install is child's play (not to sound cocky); basically boiled down it's just copying, pasting, activating and ordering. The first couple times it took me several hours to complete STEP. The last time it took all of 20-30mins with manual installing. I'm sure that Wrye Bash would cut this down to minutes once I get it set up; however, I'm curious if WB cleans your saves? I know from reading that saving with mods installed and then removing those mods can cause issues without cleaning your saves. Even then it could be end-game for those saves without those mods in place. Does Wrye Bash help in this area? WB won't clean your saves at this point, but it is a potential feature enhancement. The single most important feature of Wrye Bash (IMO, contrary to popular belief) is not the Bash plugin-management & patching facility, but rather the BAIN installer facility. The former is definitely important and unique to Wrye Bash; however, WB's ability to expose conflicts based on package installation order before as well as after any mods are installed --and to update those conflicts dynamically, based on changes to the installation order-- are representative of the true power of WB at vastly simplifying the installation and uninstallation of mods at any granularity. Definitely stop using the manual installation method, as you stand to gain much more insight by interpreting the information that Wrye Bash exposes during the installation process.

I am using 0.122 now with SkyRealism, and it works great ...

OK, I'll see if I get any patterns as I continue testing. thanks

Sounds like I have something to test once I get the name of that setting ;)

i.e., set CCC to force vsync (and optionally triple buffering) if you are not already using CrossfireX (which should force this regardless).I think that's the opposite of what Besidilo said.Ahh, you are correct ... In that case, I have to disagree that there is any problem with forcing vsync through the drivers. I agree with Mothergoose on this one, as I have ATI and can verify that tearing is fixed by doing this. Is there a "standard vsync" provided by the game engine? If so, I am not aware of it ...

i.e., set CCC to force vsync (and optionally triple buffering) if you are not already using CrossfireX (which should force this regardless).