How dark is the game supposed to be?

[zztraider]

Great tip on the HDR stuff. I've been trying that out for the last day or so, and it looks like it helps a lot. Currently, I still have my ENB changes in place, but turned Cathedral Weathers back to Normal for nights and interiors. Nights may actually still be a little too bright, so I think the next step is to try reverting my ENB changes and just change Cathedral Weathers interiors back to Brighter and see how that looks.

[RainingTacco]

Skyrim with its AI was never intended for real night time gameplay, so theres no such thing as "how dark it should be", tailor it to your own tastes and AI detection. For gameplay purposes dark nights make no sense, unless you will roleplay sleeping at nights. 

[aktillum]

The recent update to torches for Step Patch Post Processing helped a little ((I think, I didn't compare before/after)).

What we can boil this down to is a few things.

1) Desktop brightness / gamma is visually different than in-game. For best results, have a few in-game screenshots open and then tweak your display brightness (monitor settings, Nvidia panel, etc.)

What will happen is that your desktop will feel super bright, while in-game it feels "normal". This is because of Skyrim's color overlays giving everything a moody, grey ambience. Back in the day the "teofis" command was used to disable Skyrim's moody camera filter, now that command breaks stuff.

Edited March 27, 2023 by aktillum
trying to condense multiple comments

[aktillum]

I also think brightness adaptation is implemented a bit weird.

Here's comparison of looking straight forward vs. looking down at ground

https://imgur.com/a/0FUpJHR

[aktillum]

Additional notes:

• Some more screenshots showing (Heavy) ENB on / off at night time. Default ENB settings. For ENB off, I'm using 1.24 gamma in the Skyrim console (sg 1.24)
• https://imgur.com/a/F3DzbNb | https://imgur.com/a/4A6NeZf
• If you view those photos at default Nvidia panel brightness(50%). Its absolutely pitch black. You can't tell in the photo because you have your own monitor brightness configured. This means proper monitor calibration is highly important. The problem is that finding a comfortable brightness level for Skyrim does not mean a comfortable brightness for ordinary computer usage. Skyrim is natively darker than your desktop brightness.
• ENB overrides Skyrim's native gamma ((no changes are visually reflected using "sg xx" console command with ENB enabled))

afaict, the ENB preset seems to mostly be tied to weather system, which causes a lot of the issue for end-users.

For example ENB shadows are too solid dark. This seems to be controlled by [Skylighting]. But you need to enable "Ignore Weather" first for [Skylighting] tweaks to have any effect. Or else it gets overridden by the Weathers effects ((a separate GUI menu)). So tweaking ENB isn't a user-friendly experience at all.

Here we come to another issue. By increasing desktop brightness, we're revealing Skyrim's ugly black filter. The game's native color correction is very gloomy and washed out in a grey overtone. ENB doesn't actually do much to solve this.

You can increase brightness in my Nvidia control panel or monitor settings, which would solve ENB darkness issues, but this only reveals Skyrim's horrible washed out color filtering. This is what I believe ENB authors try to hide by making everything absurdly dark, which is just exchanging one problem for another.

The way to fix this would be creating a custom LUT file and Reshade. With LUT, you can basically take a screenshot in-game, then open something like Photoshop and perfectly adjust the colors / contrast / etc exactly to your preferences, and have that overriding everything.

• Out-of-the-box ENB preset on average monitor brightness is really too dark for many people. By "average monitor brightness" I mean what someone would comfortably set their brightness in a typical dimly-lit office room. Your monitor needs to be BRIGHT on the desktop so that Skyrim appears somewhat bright.
• By increasing brightness, you reveal Skyrim's horrible color filtering that ENB authors try to hide.
• The best remedy is a custom LUT file for final touches. In ENB it seems a bit complicated, ReShade had an easy method of editing LUT files with Photoshop and some game screenshots.

Edited March 27, 2023 by aktillum

[z929669]

7 hours ago, aktillum said:

Additional notes:

• Some more screenshots showing (Heavy) ENB on / off at night time. Default ENB settings. For ENB off, I'm using 1.24 gamma in the Skyrim console (sg 1.24)
• https://imgur.com/a/F3DzbNb | https://imgur.com/a/4A6NeZf
• If you view those photos at default Nvidia panel brightness(50%). Its absolutely pitch black. You can't tell in the photo because you have your own monitor brightness configured. This means proper monitor calibration is highly important. The problem is that finding a comfortable brightness level for Skyrim does not mean a comfortable brightness for ordinary computer usage. Skyrim is natively darker than your desktop brightness.
• ENB overrides Skyrim's native gamma ((no changes are visually reflected using "sg xx" console command with ENB enabled))

afaict, the ENB preset seems to mostly be tied to weather system, which causes a lot of the issue for end-users.

For example ENB shadows are too solid dark. This seems to be controlled by [Skylighting]. But you need to enable "Ignore Weather" first for [Skylighting] tweaks to have any effect. Or else it gets overridden by the Weathers effects ((a separate GUI menu)). So tweaking ENB isn't a user-friendly experience at all.

Here we come to another issue. By increasing desktop brightness, we're revealing Skyrim's ugly black filter. The game's native color correction is very gloomy and washed out in a grey overtone. ENB doesn't actually do much to solve this.

You can increase brightness in my Nvidia control panel or monitor settings, which would solve ENB darkness issues, but this only reveals Skyrim's horrible washed out color filtering. This is what I believe ENB authors try to hide by making everything absurdly dark, which is just exchanging one problem for another.

The way to fix this would be creating a custom LUT file and Reshade. With LUT, you can basically take a screenshot in-game, then open something like Photoshop and perfectly adjust the colors / contrast / etc exactly to your preferences, and have that overriding everything.

• Out-of-the-box ENB preset on average monitor brightness is really too dark for many people. By "average monitor brightness" I mean what someone would comfortably set their brightness in a typical dimly-lit office room. Your monitor needs to be BRIGHT on the desktop so that Skyrim appears somewhat bright.
• By increasing brightness, you reveal Skyrim's horrible color filtering that ENB authors try to hide.
• The best remedy is a custom LUT file for final touches. In ENB it seems a bit complicated, ReShade had an easy method of editing LUT files with Photoshop and some game screenshots.

Your issues are are hardware/software specific to your setup and not generally applicable to others. As mentioned previously, you will need to make adjustments to your setup (probably in your driversoft, HDR, and monitor settings).

Any ENB preset should complement the weather/lighting mods being used and not alter it in terms of lighting/ambiance. The ENB should and will make things a bit darker, but your situation seems to be unique (or your preference).

[aktillum]

2 hours ago, z929669 said:

Your issues are are hardware/software specific to your setup and not generally applicable to others. As mentioned previously, you will need to make adjustments to your setup (probably in your driversoft, HDR, and monitor settings).

Any ENB preset should complement the weather/lighting mods being used and not alter it in terms of lighting/ambiance. The ENB should and will make things a bit darker, but your situation seems to be unique (or your preference).

Right, it's specific to how good your monitor is calibrated. But when it comes to Skyrim, a good "desktop calibration" isn't necessarily a good "Skyrim calibration".

This is why a lot of Reddit threads are "why is Skyrim ENB so dark?". And then all the replies will be like, "Did you try adjusting ((esoteric line in the ENB config))?" or "Oh yeah, ENBs are always super-dark, that's why I stopped using them". Because everyone has a different setup and expects ENB to just work out of the box. And tweaking ENB is a major pain in the butt.

This is where it becomes applicable to many others. With ENB enabled, the brightness slider in Skyrim stops working. Setgamma console command stops working. So to adjust the brightness, you have to do it through monitor or GPU settings. That's the fastest and most direct way.

The catch is, Skyrim is natively dark because of its color correction. Cathedral Weathers was made to go along with Skyrim's washed out, bleak look. Its not as vivid or bright as other weather mods. It enhances Skyrim's "greyish" filter - then you slap an ENB on top of it, you've got Batman trilogy darkness. And when you increase brightness in this setup, blacks become greys because Skyrim doesn't really have HDR.

So basically, people need to increase their brightness a little bit more for playing Skyrim than they would for ordinary desktop use, when it comes to Cathedral Weathers + ENB.

A Chrome page with white background / black font is perfectly readable at 50% monitor brightness, anything more hurts my eyes.

But 50% brightness in Skyrim with Cathedral Weathers + ENB is pitch-black at night. This means for the average user with an out-of-the-box monitor configuration, or a configuration that feels "comfortable" for web browsing, ENB is going to feel absurdly dark.

Edited March 27, 2023 by aktillum

[z929669]

1 hour ago, aktillum said:

he catch is, Skyrim is natively dark because of its color correction. Cathedral Weathers was made to go along with Skyrim's washed out, bleak look. Its not as vivid or bright as other weather mods. It enhances Skyrim's "greyish" filter - then you slap an ENB on top of it, you've got Batman trilogy darkness. And when you increase brightness in this setup, blacks become greys because Skyrim doesn't really have HDR.

So basically, people need to increase their brightness a little bit more for playing Skyrim than they would for ordinary desktop use, when it comes to Cathedral Weathers + ENB.

IMO, vanilla Skyrim is overly bright on my system. The OOtB brightness and image space is waaaay too bright, so I have quite the opposite XP. Cathedral alters this slightly on average to be maybe a bit darker, but it all depends on the weather and location.

I don't think 'people' need to increase their brightness but rather "certain people" may benefit. The same is true for the inverse correction to darken things.

Game brightness is very dependent on hardware, software, and game settings. Coupled with weathers and post-processing, it gets even more variable. Throw in user preference, and it's all over the place. We do as much as possible to recommend standards via game settings and our lighting/weather setup with/without ENB, but results will vary.

EDIT: as I also mentioned, Windows 11 HDR enabled/disabled and related settings may not be supported by the game, but it does have an impact on the game's display (not necessarily good/bad but depends on the system)

[aktillum]

44 minutes ago, z929669 said:

IMO, vanilla Skyrim is overly bright on my system. The OOtB brightness and image space is waaaay too bright, so I have quite the opposite XP. Cathedral alters this slightly on average to be maybe a bit darker, but it all depends on the weather and location.

I don't think 'people' need to increase their brightness but rather "certain people" may benefit. The same is true for the inverse correction to darken things.

I understand what you mean. I think in some cases, we're using "brightness" and "color tinting" interchangeably.

Vanilla Skyrim has 1) Overly brightness, but also 2) A native "grey" color overlay tint. When I say "Skyrim is natively dark", what I really mean to say is, "Skyrim is natively bright, but has low contrast and grey tinting". Its a bleak world with muddy, greyish textures. If you jack up the brightness, the world gets brighter, but also greyer. Everything gets washed out in a foggy grey haze, compared to a more "tropical" color vibrancy like Far Cry 3.

Cathedral Weathers seek to blend the natural bleak colors of Skyrim a bit better. It even comes with a "Sombre" toggle for even more bleakness. Other weather mods do the opposite and make everything more vibrant and colorful.

So what's happening in many cases is people are complaining ENB is too dark. But when they brighten the game, they then complain it's too washed out or grey-looking, which is Skyrim's natural look. Because that's why ENB darkens everything, to sort of hide Skyrim's bleak muddy textures in shadows etc.

This is where a lot of people would actually do better with a customized LUT, instead of trying to tweak everything in ENB GUI for personal preference.

When people say "ENB is too dark", what they tend to mean is "ENB darkens the already greyscale-as-fark Skyrim graphics, and I was expecting some vivid saturated colorful eyecandy".

Edited March 27, 2023 by aktillum

[aktillum]

Imaginator seems like a very useful tool for cleaning up any "color tint" that users don't like in vanilla Skyrim.

Here's a screenshot comparison https://imgur.com/a/WYyBTwx . The first is default STEP setup (Cathedral Weathers, Heavy ENB). The 2nd is with Imaginator enabled. Through the MCM menu I just increased "Sky" and color vividry by a couple points.

Cathedral Weathers can sort of do the same thing in its own MCM Menu, but in a more limited way.

 

Imaginator didn't touch the overall brightness of the game, it just added some more vibrant colors to the generally "greyscale" textures of Skyrim.

Its a lot more easily configurable than ENB, and doesn't conflict with it.

I'm mentioning this because I think it could mentioned in the STEP guide as an "optional" add-on for final post-processing touchups. Just something like "If the ENB preset is too dark for you or increasing brightness reveals Skyrim's ugly grey filters, try Imaginator"

Edited March 28, 2023 by aktillum

[Mercury71]

9 hours ago, aktillum said:

Imaginator seems like a very useful tool for cleaning up any "color tint" that users don't like in vanilla Skyrim.

Here's a screenshot comparison https://imgur.com/a/WYyBTwx . The first is default STEP setup (Cathedral Weathers, Heavy ENB). The 2nd is with Imaginator enabled. Through the MCM menu I just increased "Sky" and color vividry by a couple points.

Cathedral Weathers can sort of do the same thing in its own MCM Menu, but in a more limited way.

 

Imaginator didn't touch the overall brightness of the game, it just added some more vibrant colors to the generally "greyscale" textures of Skyrim.

Its a lot more easily configurable than ENB, and doesn't conflict with it.

I'm mentioning this because I think it could mentioned in the STEP guide as an "optional" add-on for final post-processing touchups. Just something like "If the ENB preset is too dark for you or increasing brightness reveals Skyrim's ugly grey filters, try Imaginator"

First picture (deafult STEP) looks much better in my opinion.

[David011]

I have got rid of the problem by disabling adaptive brightness.