9gag: Skyrim has made it to 2016, and it looks more faboulus than ever before.

[Zombo]

So, I told a friend of mine that I'm going to start a second play through a Skyrim. My first run was when the game came out and I installed about a dozen mods. A few gameplay enhancements to make the game feel better (SkyUI for example) and a few graphic mods like HD textures and some clutter textures. 

For this time I decided STEP would be a great opportunity to get the best out of this game for both graphic, gameplay and stability. I ordered a AMD Radeon R9 390 for this and started the guide. Because when I thought I could just install a few HD and gameplay mods like I did 2012 through NMM, I soon realised that the only thing I would get was one CTD after another.

So my expectations were like: After the whole STEP guide this game would feel like 2015, baby!

 

Yesterday my friend send me this pic. And I was like: "Ok, I install STEP right now. I have been on this for about 4 evenings and I'm still not close to the end. But I'm quite sure that my game won't look nearly like this. After Step this game will more be like 2013 than 2015 for me. (Which is still 100% better than my early 2012 experience with Skyrim, don't get me wrong!)"

 

My question is: Does STEP get me near this graphics quality? 

What would be my way to achieve this? I mean I can't install just any ULTRA HD mod without making the game CTD once per minute, can I?

 

(Just out of curiosity, no real intention here, but hey let's have some Small Talk with you guys!)

 

Source: https://9gag.com/gag/aE7xDnx

[Pretendeavor]

I don't think STEP will get you anywhere near that. That looks like 2k/4k landscape textures (some of 'Skyrim 2015 Terrain Parallax STP' I believe), a grass overhaul like Verdant or Unbelievable Grass Two, Dark Fantasy Overhaul/Enhanced Landscapes for the dead trees/mushrooms, custom 4k armor sets and an ENB with high quality settings (not sure which one).

[GrantSP]

There's a distinct gap between "making the game look fantastic" and "making the game playable and stable".

 

You'll find a lot of stuff that outlines amazing screenshots and possibly some small YouTube videos but the whole thing might grind to a halt when you actually play the thing. There's that adage about "not making a silk purse from pig's ear". Skyrim's engine is, and always will be, a pig's ear.

[TechAngel85]

What Grant said. You can make Skyrim look like that. You can not play Skyrim while it looks like that unless you have an insanely powerful rig. The sad thing is, there are modern game that look close to that which play just fine. That goes to show you how behind Bethesda is on the graphics field when they stuck with Gamebryo for too long (3 games) before deciding to build the Creation Engine. It got a few updates for Fallout 4 development over it's use for Fallout:NV and Skyrim, but it's still behind the curve when it comes to game engines.

[Zombo]

Thank you very much for your answers. It is like I expected it. So it seems more likely that the screens show whats possible. And not how it could be played. 

I will continue with my STEP installation tomorrow evening. I've read you hardware guide today and recognized that I have to check many mods again. I've often chosen the Performance version of a mod or the 1k textures. You stated, that with a 4GB vRAM Card (I have 8GB vRAM) I could take the 2k textures without being afraid of a performance impact. So I will swap these files.

[TechAngel85]

Correct. I use mainly 2K textures myself without issue.

[Mator]

Graphical mods, that is, ones that change textures, lighting, or meshes, generally do not cause CTDs or instability.  They will hit your framerate, however.

 

with an R9 390 with 8GB VRAM you should be able to effectively double your framerate compared to my setup, an R9 380 with 4GB of VRAM (because you have a 512-bit bus and all specs are close to 2x).  In reality, Skyrim doesn't scale quite that well, but let's just entertain the notion until we see otherwise.

 

STEP attempts to enhance multiple aspects of Skyrim, including Gameplay.  If all you want is a game that looks like real life, you should construct your own load order.  Some people replying here have already made some great suggestions.  I think you don't actually need much by way of mods to get what you're looking for (assuming your rig can handle it).

 

I'm just going to link you a bunch of different guides I've found about graphically overhauling Skyrim.  Please note that I only gave these a cursory overview, so I'm relying on you/other posters to evaluate their quality.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/55921

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50244

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/50214

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/39742

https://www.gamersnexus.net/gg/2025-skyrim-graphics-mod-overhaul-and-benchmarks-2015

https://www.geforce.com/whats-new/guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide

 

And there's plenty of YouTube videos about making Skyrim look good that post mod lists:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSY52G8ggYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpyKrDqJRt0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tktMryae6R0

https://www.youtube.com/user/hodilton

etc.

 

Note that RealVision is really popular, but it's performance/quality tradeoff is sucky.  There are a lot of much better ENBs you can use.

 

What I recommend for you is looking around and learning.  From your OP I can see you have a lot of misconceptions about CTDs.  Again, graphical mods generally don't cause CTDs, unless we're talking about stuff that alters uGrids.

 

I think you definitely can get the graphical fidelity you see in that 9gag post, and you can do so without running into CTDs, and without having everything spoon fed to you.  Do your research.  Search Nexus Mods, Google, and YouTube to find resources.  Take everything with a grain of salt.  Not all resources are correct or complete, so consider all of your knowledge to be a work in progress.  Tinker with the game, try different ENBs, learn to optimize textures.  Know that having > 2k textures doesn't deliver ANY additional visual quality unless we're talking about texturing objects that are really large, like trees or mountains.  Scale texture resolution to the size of what you're texturing.  A lot of the time the really high resolution textures deliver no additional quality unless you look at them from a foot away.  If this is the case, downgrade the resolution using a texture optimization tool.

 

Learn to use DynDOLOD, Mod Organizer, TES5Edit, texture optimizers, and to easily edit your INI files.  Become familiar with an ENB manager, and try out lots of different ENBs to find your favorite.

 

Regards,

-Mator

Edited February 8, 2016 by Mator

[soupdragon]

What Grant said. You can make Skyrim look like that. You can not play Skyrim while it looks like that unless you have an insanely powerful rig.

 

Even then its doubtful its possible due to the limitations of the game engine, DX9 simply doesn't have enough draw calls available.

[Spock]

While it is possible to make the game not run properly with some ENB settings, it is also quite possible to reach solid 30 fps with all ENB features and high res textures enabled. Just don't use 4k textures and use good ENB settings. My GPU is an r9 290, so basically the same as your just with slightly lower clock.

 

There is nothing I am aware of to turn up the game's visual fidelity except for higher resolution at this point. 4k textures are kind of pointless as you really won't see the difference 99% of the time, 2k really is enough. There may be a slight margin for higher SSAO fidelity but tbh, I cannot see the difference.

 

STEP doesn't include some high fidelity options for compatibility reasons and the need to stay true to vanilla. If I may advise on some basic changes, I'd try a newer SFO version, Verdant, Vivid Landscapes and Lumen or NLA for an ENB (NLA requires a no ELE STEP install, NLA is the more realistic one). You may want to follow Confidence Man's advice on skin textures. You might also want to try Tamriel Reloaded and Noble Skyrim and select your favorite textures manually.

Edited March 16, 2016 by Spock