Best of ENB_Visual Comparison

[TechAngel85]

I went ahead and did the ENB Comparison II and here are my results:

 

SkyRealism, 3.7

The Wilds, 3.7

Seasons of Skyrim Enhanced, 3.5

Project MASTSO - Kyo Natural, 3.4

Project ENB, 3.3

Unbleak, 3.0

WIP Envok - Fantasy, 3.0

WIP Envok, 2.8

prOPAs for CoT, 2.6

Bleak, 2.2

 

The top five were very close but SkyRealism and The Wilds took win in my book. My judgements were the same as before comparing them side-by-side to vanilla and taking into account what I see as natural lighting from all sources.

[JudgmentJay]

Add in 0.123 and the days look much better as they're not as bright and more natural' date=' the interiors aren't as good but they're still better than a lot of other ENBs and then there are the nights. The nights are too bright for my tastes. Even if it was a full moon, the lighting is too bright for a natural night.[/quote']

 

Agree that interiors and nights are a bit too bright in the preview shots. That's easy enough to tweak though!

[Deathwing514]

Wait, so just to clear this up. Are you saying that I can use the latest enb version with Sky Realism instead of its recommended 1.19 and it will still work?

[z929669]

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):

[thalastwon]

RCRN and RCReN (TC's modified Skyrealism) Takes care of the nights and indoors pretty well even with .123. Black reach is a bit bright for my tastes, but I think its the SweetFX I need to mess with.

[Besidilo]

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' date=' 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 <-- EDIT: Mixing CoT and RLwC was a mistake on my part. See this post for the explanation):

 

How does one go about making CoT and RLwC (or RCRN) compatible?

[z929669]

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' date=' depending on the settings and accompaniments chosen. This is where I have my config at the moment, but still not finished (custom SkyRealism, CoT, RLwCthis post for the explanation):

 

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

[TechAngel85]

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' date=' 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):

 

This is interesting because I'm in the process of putting together my own comparison using RLwC as one base and RCRN 3.6 as the other base; adding ENBs on top to compare performance impact and default, out-of-the-box lighting (without having to tweak). During my testing with RLwC, I discovered what I thought to be an incompatibility between RLwC and CoT. Having CoT enabled during the tests completely botched the lighting during the day. There was no sunlight. Everything was an even gray tone even with SkyRealism. I suppose if they are compatible some tweaking would be involved which goes beyond the scope of the project I'm currently doing. This comparison is for newbie modders or those that don't want to mess with tweaking; thus, having the two mods (lighting and ENB) work out of the box together.

 

I'll post here with the project is closer to being done (couple days). Right now I'm comparing:

• RLwC stonealone
• RCRN 3.6 standalone

Then the following ENBs on top of the lighting mods:

• Project ENB
• Seasons of Skyrim
• SkyRealism (cinematic and vanilla)
• True Vision (cinematic and natural)

If there are any other suggestions for ENBs to add to the list, I'd be happy to add them to the comparison. Keep in mind that the only ENBs that I am comparing are those that provide natural or realistic lighting. ENBs that deviate from that, such as Break or Gothic tones, will not be considered. I am considering adding Cypress ENB to the list. The Wilds was planned for the list as well, but testing proved it to be incompatible with RLwC without tweaks, as it gave the same result as mixing CoT and RLwC as I described above.

 

I'm done with the RLwC testing, unless anyone suggests other ENBs, and I can say thus far my favorite is True Vision (natural) with RLwC as the lighting mod. I'll be doing the RCRN testing today.

 

EDIT: During further inspection, Cypress will not be included due to it needing tweaking to work with CoT and RLwC. And, yes, I know that to get RCRN to work with ENBs it requires a tweak, but the tweaking I'm talking about is playing around the the lighting.

 

Here's some shots from the RLwC testing (lets see if you can figure out which is which):

(for testing normalization and performance reasons Bloom, DOF and SSAO have been disabled)

 

 

 

 

[TechAngel85]

Just a quick update on my progress...

 

Some quick finds are that Seasons of Skyrim isn't compatible right out of the box with RCRN (again, grayed out skys and lighting) so if that's your choice go with RLwC. Performance was pretty much even across the board as you'd might expect with the exception of one ENB; SkyRealism...more on that later. Last but not least, RCRN won hands down having the most overall natural looking lighting, though RLwC did have more realistic lighting indoors in some cases. In most of my shots, RLwC's lighting was too saturated to be natural and realistic; however, I will say that if one chose to tweak the saturation of RLwC's lighting with something like Imaginator then it would probably be the clear choice over RCRN.

 

Stay tuned! Complete results to come...

 

Here are a couple examples why RCRN won out of the box over RLwC (shot are from True Vision - Natural):

On the top is RCRN and bottom is RLwC. Keep in mind we're looking for natural, realistic lighting in this project. RCRN more closely matches this. RLwC would be good for an overall cinematic feels, but the colors are over saturated and the lighting is too much. I'm a camper and been around a lot of fires...a fire that size isn't going to produce a light that bright. It would be closer to RCRN's lighting. Same goes for the shots below. Realistic Lighting with Customization straight from the box is more cinematic than realistic in my testing. With that said, RCRN fire itself needs a little more saturation.

 

[z929669]

Just a quick update on my progress...

 

Some quick finds are that Seasons of Skyrim isn't compatible right out of the box with RCRN (again, grayed out skys and lighting) so if that's your choice go with RLwC. Performance was pretty much even across the board as you'd might expect with the exception of one ENB; SkyRealism...more on that later. Last but not least, RCRN won hands down having the most overall natural looking lighting, though RLwC did have more realistic lighting indoors in some cases. In most of my shots, RLwC's lighting was too saturated to be natural and realistic; however, I will say that if one chose to tweak the saturation of RLwC's lighting with something like Imaginator then it would probably be the clear choice over RCRN.

 

Stay tuned! Complete results to come...

 

Here are a couple examples why RCRN won out of the box over RLwC (shot are from True Vision - Natural):

On the top is RCRN and bottom is RLwC. Keep in mind we're looking for natural, realistic lighting in this project. RCRN more closely matches this. RLwC would be good for an overall cinematic feels, but the colors are over saturated and the lighting is too much. I'm a camper and been around a lot of fires...a fire that size isn't going to produce a light that bright. It would be closer to RCRN's lighting. Same goes for the shots below. Realistic Lighting with Customization straight from the box is more cinematic than realistic in my testing. With that said, RCRN fire itself needs a little more saturation.

 

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.

[TechAngel85]

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.

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?

[z929669]

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.

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.

[z929669]

 

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):

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

[TechAngel85]

You may now begin editing pages on the wiki. For this kind of article' date=' 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.

 

Awesome! I'm already made some small updates to the existing ENB Guide. It's missing some basic as well as some more detailed information. I'll put my testing experience as well as my IT background to work in that section over the next week. Right now, I've completed testing the the RLcW - Vision verse and need to reevaluate all the ENBs. It's 20 different combinations with double elimination so I'll take me at least a day probably.

[TechAngel85]

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

Absolutely agree here. Do not mix RLwC, CoT, and RCRN. They are not compatible. RCRN states this very clearly on their Web site:

 

 

RCRN is NOT compatible with:

• Original FXAA Post Process Injector
• Realistic Lighting with Customization (RCRN is already a great lighting mod, so you can’t merge it with another one)
• Project Reality – Climates Of Tamriel (RCRN is already a great lighting mod, so you can’t merge it with another one)
• URWL – Ultra Realistic World Lighting (RCRN is already a great lighting mod, so you can’t merge it with another one)
• Revamped Exterior Fog and every mod that change the exterior Fog/DoF (RCRN already comes with a dynamic DOF)
• Revamped Interior Fog and every mod that change the interior Fog/DoF (RCRN already comes with a dynamic DOF)
• More Rain & More Snow and every mod that change Weathers/Precipitations (RCRN already comes with a Dynamic Weather System)
• Better Torches and every mod that is related to torch radius/intensity (RCRN already comes with a dynamic management for torches and light sources)
• Skyrim Sunglare and every mod that change the sunglare texture (RCRN already comes with an HDR optimized Sunglare effect)

 

 

CoT also clearly states that you may have issues if you use one of the other two with CoT. RLwC; however, does not list any incompatible mods on nexus! (I've posted on the nexus comments about it). Use only one: CoT, RCRN or RLwC. Each are great options and should be evaluated to find your best fit. I'll be doing a comparison guide on the wiki as soon as I can. I'm still testing and putting together my results.