Comparison between weather effects (with pics)

[Majorman]

I was fooling around with some weather effects for the next update to the fallout guide and wanted to share some pics to see what you guys think.  As ENB does not provide official support to FNV, none of this effects is compatible with an ENB, but that's fine, as the guide does not suggest using one anyway.

The weather mod on all the screenshots is Altitude (baseline). So the starting point is below (the Lucky 38 Tower in the distance and the casino in Primm are some good landmarks for this comparison):

The same photos with some subtle dust effect:

The same locations with a more prominent dust effect:

And lastly, two pictures with a Heat-Haze like effect (no dust). They look identical to the baseline, since the haze effect is dependant on time of the day, globeal weather and so on, it might not be present on these photos at all (still investigating):

I quite like the more subtle dust effect, it enhances the desert feel.

[z929669]

Subtle and prominent dust effects look better and more realistic, IMO

[AiKiXeN]

I like the subtle version the best. The Heat-Haze isn't visible in the screenshots from what I can see.

[Greg]

I reordered the screenshots to make it easier to compare each of the effects.

No effects > subtle dust effect > prominent dust effect > heat-haze like effect

I also prefer the subtle dust effect. It is a somewhat subtle effect but it still allows easy visibility of objects in the distance.

[Majorman]

Decided to share some more photos. I think I'm all set with the Weather and Lighting and the effects are quite stunning:

The screen on the left is with vanilla weather and lighting. No post-processing is used on either; the right one includes (among other things) a mod that upscales bloom to the native resolution at which the game is played. For some reason the bloom in vanila is restricted to 1/4 of the native res.

And here's the difference during the day:

This time around I have also disabled LOD and the bigger texture replacements on the left screen.

[DoubleYou]

That is very obvious improvement.

[Greg]

I agree. The difference is amazing.

[Majorman]

Another comparison between different test that I've made. This time I added some ReShade (Vibrance ReShade Preset) to the weather and lighting mods to sharpen colors. I really like how the day screenshots look, I think this is the closest to natural skies I've seen, but I think I prefer the nights skies w/o Reshade better (ReShade on the right):

Night shots clearly demonstrate the benefits of FXAA on the letters "D" and "e" in "Freeside":

Since post-processing is optional in all Step Guides and ReShade is extremely easy to install (it comes with an installer) and does not need any compatibility patches for weather and lighting mods, I'll just add Vibrance to the guide as an optional post-processing and add the comparison shots so everyone an deside for themselves.