A Comparison of Water Mods

[Domiel]

Anyone taken the new Realistic Water Two for a spin? Is it supposed to be a successor to pure waters or WATER?

[rootsrat]

I think Tech is preparing the comparison, but since he's extremely busy, it takes time.

[phazer11]

I'm likewise indisposed I'm working on a video for DDSOpt (texture optimization) otherwise I'd do it.

[Aiyen]

If you can use ENBoost and in general have a stable build then the new 4k textures are worth it! A bit silly, but they do look really nice.

 

Other then that then WATER would still be my personal choice. Mainly because pure waters is just too.... tranquil for my tastes.

[Neovalen]

Having a real hard time deciding between RWT and WATER... RWT has all the nice new stagnant vs non stagnant water and proper flows but WATER has better splash fx and such.

[Aiyen]

The splash effect you can technically just copy over if you wish.

Also you can get the water plants etc.

Most of the texture wise stuff you can just copy over without issue.

[TechAngel85]

The splash effect you can technically just copy over if you wish.

Also you can get the water plants etc.

Most of the texture wise stuff you can just copy over without issue.

+1

 

I'll be gathering my compares for a new video over the next week.

[TechAngel85]

It's been longer than I wanted it to be, but just giving an update. I've stated my collection of video captures for this comparison.

 

I'll be gathering shots from a purely vanilla installation with vanilla waters, WATER, Pure Waters and Realistic Waters 2. Thus far I have 26 locations saved to gather the compares from a variety of water situations. Not all will make it into the compare video. All installs are default with at least 1024x resolutions. This is going to take a while!

 

PS: WATER is using the new softer waves to better match the other two mods.

[Garfink]

I am in love with Realistic Waters 2, I think it melts the best of Pure Water and WATER, with calmer darker still water of pure with the nice water flow of WATER. The things that won me over is the lapping water of the lakes which are better then Pure Water & WATER and the new specific water sounds for different bodies of water. (I've copied over the splash.fx from WATER into Realistic Waters 2 and that made everything perfect.)

[TechAngel85]

Here's the link to download the video. The quality isn't as good as the original capture for some reason and YouTube completely messed it up. So, I've provided a download from my dropbox. It's a 538MB, MPEG2 file.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nim4iqrbbfhn5kq/Water%20Mod%20Comp%202.mpg

 

EDIT:

The clips are only 6 secs each so when we narrow it down to our top two contenders, I'll do a better comparison of just those two mods with longer and side-by-side compares.

 

EDIT2:

I'm attempting a couple different encodings, including uploading directly to YouTude from Adobe Premiere. Will post the YouTube link if any are successful as maintaining the quality.

[TechAngel85]

Okay, I was able to get a better quality upload to YouTube without their processing completely messing it up:

 

 

[video=youtube]

 

 

I recommend you watching in HD.

 

Lets pick the top two mods which I can guess which two they'll be. Once those two are picked I'll do another video with just those two mods; more in-depth and better compares.

[Eliian]

I would have to say WATER and Realistic Water Two are the best. Pure waters is way too clear in some places. It also does not have the correct water flow, nor the other perks of those two mods.

[Neovalen]

Agreed on those being the top two.

[TechAngel85]

Just letting everyone know that this is still in planning. I'm on a ten-day long stretch at work and will not have a completely free day until Friday of next week. So...it's coming and hopefully next weekend or (time permitting) sooner.

[z929669]

I think that Realistic waters 2 is definitely the best of all of these. This mod takes the best aspects of Pure Waters (calm water) and Water (flowing, choppy water) and combines them into a single mod, applying each where it belongs. Add the waves action on the ocean shore, and this mod is the clear winner for me, I even like the colors used best (cooler blue).

 

I prefer Pure waters over Water by just a small margin, mostly because Water uses the same choppy overlay for all water it seems like, and the water surface often seems to move in a different direction than the flow (this is a big vanilla mistake that Water only partially fixes, and RW2 does better ... but PW virtually eliminates).

 

Water does have better color than PW in a few cases, but I still prefer the latter and RW2 above all.

 

@tech

Very nice work on the compare