Jump to content

TechAngel85

Administrator
  • Posts

    14,153
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by TechAngel85

  1. 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.
  2. 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 stonealoneRCRN 3.6 standaloneThen the following ENBs on top of the lighting mods: Project ENBSeasons of SkyrimSkyRealism (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)
  3. 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.
  4. Cypress as is, the days are too bright for me again, tho the interior lighting is awesomely perfect (according to shots). Add in 0.123 and the days look much better as they're not as bright and more natural, 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.
  5. Here are my results from using this optimizer: Before Optimization: FPS: 34 VRAM Used: 926MB Data Size: 11.7GB / 12,626,129,661 bytes After Optimization: FPS: 34 VRAM Used: 880MB Data Size: 11.2GB / 12,046,874,897 bytes My results yielded no change in FPS and a slight reduction of VRAM usage, about a 6%. Same for the overall size of the files. I'm not sure if this will increase performance because I noticed as I continued to play the game the VRAM filled right back up. :confused:
  6. I you haven't noticed I'm very much about natural lighting. The glows from fires and candles, the light shining through windows, areas that should be dark need to be dark and the outdoor lighting from the sun should be natural too. This ENB, from what I can tell from the shots on Nexus, has it's lighting too bright. The outdoor scenes look too bright and bleached out. My one complaint about most cinematics that I have seen is that in the majority of shots it looks as thought they've opened up photoshop, apply the "more blur" filter, saved the shot and posted it. In other others most of the shots look like you're running about in a haze. The shots blow is an example of what I'm talking about. This may be due to DOF, idk; I haven't used a cinematic to find out. Other than that the interior lighting is quite good and natural feeling and the colors are good without being over saturated. I'm using Project ENB and am fairly happy with it. (Note that I'm using the old version because of the STEP guide saying 0.119 isn't performance optimized yet.) My only complaint is that the colors are a little too saturated/vibrant. It feels like a cinematic without that haze. I'm running just about all of STEP here: Â (yes, I'm running practically no AA due to performance; i average just about 32FPS) My Rig: Asus G7 Laptop Intel i7 @ 2GHz GeForce GTX 460M, 1GB vram 8GB system ram
  7. My textures are unoptimized so I'll use this tomorrow (later today when after I sleep...it's 3:43am) and give some specs on the outcome. FYI: this has been included in the wiki here: https://wiki.step-project.com/Guide:Skyrim_Installation#tab=Utilities
  8. I decided to take this and set up a scoring system because I wanted to know if I was using the best ENB (i'm using Project ENB) just based off of visuals. I used vanilla as my neutral and based my scoring of the screenshots as follows: 1 - Terrible/WTF are they thinking? 2 - Prefer Vanilla over this shot 3 - About the same as Vanilla or only slightly better 4 - Clearly better than Vanilla but not perfect 5 - Perfect! Perfect lighting, perfect colors, where can I get me some of that greatness!? Also, if I thought a shot was perfect but... (insert something I'd change here) ... Then it was automatic 4. I should note that this is clearly my personal tastes though I tried to be as objective as possible. I attempted to score each ENB in regards to the levels each one used individually; taking into account the lighting, glow effects, saturation, hues and the overall "natural vs fake" feel for immersion sake for each ENB. In my scoring the clear winning was: The Wilds, with an average score of 3.91. The overall lighting both indoors and outdoors was excellent with the glows being just slightly too bright. The woods looked very rich. However, some colors close to flames were a little over saturated. (edit: after looking at the shots on Nexus, it's not just a little over saturated...it's too saturated. This score would probably be lower with other shot options) If RCRN Classic was include it most likely would be the clear winner with at least a solid 4.00. The clear loser was: TKF Cinematic, with an average score of 1.08. (I think this person is a color nazi) This mod makes Skyrim look as though you're walking around in the vail and not in the real world. It has a gloomy, blue hue and the people look as though they are the walking dead. However, the lighting for the effect was good. Top 3: The Wilds, 3.91 Countervibe ENB, 3.65 Imvisio Cinematics, 3.65 Bottom 3: TV ENB, 1.58 Winterfell V3, 1.33 TKF Cinematics, 1.08 Here are my full results plus some other info about each ENB. Ties are listed alphabetically remember, scores are overall averages: Something interesting that I noticed when gathering the info from Nexus is that the higher endorsed and more downloaded ENBs are always CoT compatible and well documented with the exception of RCRN which is the highest endorsed by a VERY large margin! Thanks for reading and let me know what you think.
  9. This is a great mod and would be a great addition to STEP. It's even better when used with Get Snowy as @Neovalen suggested in the Get Snowy thread. As for it not being compatible with Killable Children mod... I skipped that mod altogether during the STEP guide. Though it may add realism to the game, it just seems wrong in my personal opinion. My moral ethics getting the best of me I suppose.
  10. Personal feelings aside and remaining objective, unless there are issues with the mod, Better Sorting could be a less serious option to SkyUI.
  11. I personally use this mod on top of STEP and would like to see it considered as a STEP feature. It adds immersion and realism to the game without breaking vanilla. I currently have no issues running Get Snowy. I realize it's not compatible with Frostfall but that isn't a reason for it to not be included in STEP as Frostfall isn't included in STEP either. Frostfall, though adding a great deal of realism to the game, also distracts from vanilla and game-play by requiring players to stop gaming and make camp or die in many situations. This for many gamers, including myself, would be an annoyance. I'm not playing The Sims. I'm playing Skyrim here. Though I will admit, once the majority of the game is complete Frostfall could be an attractive option to pass the time. The current version of Get Snowy has Brawl Bug Plugin support and Labyrinthian patch making those non-issues as well. BOSS is reporting no issues as well. I don't see a reason Get Snowy wouldn't be a good option for STEP.
  12. Makes since to me. I'm picturing playing getting bored so they raid houses/stores; running in breaking every bottle in sight and fleeing the seen of the crime.Â
  13. I would still like Better Sorting looked at as an alternative sorting mod from SkyUI. I actually skipped over SkyUI in STEP after reviewing it. I, and I'm sure there are others, actually like the vanilla UI. I consider SkyUI is be a UI overhaul as it completely diverts from the vanilla UI; thus, Better Sorting would be a good alt for those just wanting to clean up the vanilla UI a bit. I'll be checking it out on my next installation of STEP.
  14. Thanks a bunch! I'll definitely look into that! Also, thank you for the comment and you'd be correct. I may be new to modding but I'm a fast learner and have a background in IT. The manual install is child's play (not to sound cocky); basically boiled down it's just copying, pasting, activating and ordering. The first couple times it took me several hours to complete STEP. The last time it took all of 20-30mins with manual installing. I'm sure that Wrye Bash would cut this down to minutes once I get it set up; however, I'm curious if WB cleans your saves? I know from reading that saving with mods installed and then removing those mods can cause issues without cleaning your saves. Even then it could be end-game for those saves without those mods in place. Does Wrye Bash help in this area?
  15. Please forgive the noob misposting mistakes. I'll tune into those sections and read up.Although being a newbie modder, I would much rather install everything manually. This takes a great deal more time but it's a sure fire way to make sure everything installed correctly. I tried NMM and it was having issues installing some mods. Bash would be perfect if they added mod tracking for updates. Thanks again for reading though!
  16. Recently going through STEP and being brand new to modding, I have a few suggestions that might make STEP easier to follow: My first recommendation is providing more than one version of STEP for different baselines. This could include a "Performance/low-end" version for those with less than great systems (i.e. stock PCs and laptops) that just meet or are slightly more than Skyrim minimum system requirements which would be geared toward providing the best performance. Next could be a "Default/Balanced/Baseline" version consisting of the current baseline and geared toward a balance of performance and quality. The last could be an "Extreme/high-end" version geared to those with high-end systems where performance is not an issue. Performance Version: Leave INIs as default or even suggest reducing tweaks that increase the shadow resolution. (reducing the default vaules to half in my testing resulted in 3-5FPS increase which could mean meeting the minimum 32FPS or not)Install only core mods with detailed descriptions for which version of mod to install to provide the best possible performance.Explain the ups and downs of using an ENB in terms of performance. ENBs can lead up to 40-50% reduction of FPS. ENB would not be recommended if testing resulted in reductions which lower FPS to under 32FPS. (this info could be added to the wiki page for ENBs )Balanced Version: Tweak INI settings to double default values to maintain performance. (i.e. 1024=2048, etc)Pretty much leaving STEP as is.Install performance versions of all mods where available.Install optional mods at own discretion as long as the minimum 32FPS is maintained.Installing ENB is optional but recommended. Install best to mid performance options.Extreme Version: Turn up INI tweaks to their maximum settings for best quality.Install all mods.Install the highest quality mods where available (2048 versions and up)Recommend installing ENB with highest quality options.Of course the Launcher and video card settings would reflect each version as well. I realize this would be more work but in my opinion it would also streamline STEP for each option available instead of piling everything into one big guide and letting the users sort through and figure out the things they need and don't need which can get confusing for new modders like myself. GUIDE EDITS In the "Impact" column it is note that the impact of many mods is "FPS" with no other information whether that is an increase or decrease in FPS.Golden God Shrines has multiple options that are not covered. Some break vanilla and possibly immersion.That's Ice mod has multiple options. It might be wise to include in the description the best options as to not break away from Vanilla or immersion.The "WATER" mod description is off. There is no "Get Wet" option. The only options are Reduced Splash, Extra Wet Rocks and Trough Water - Animated.Deadly Spells Impacts have several options that are not covered to maintain vanilla and immersion.Warmer Magic Lights have multiples options that are not covered.WIKI EDITS In the Mod Testing section of the wiki it might be wise to include a program that can measure FPS, such as FRAPS. FPS is one of the best indicators of overall general performance. If there is already one there please forgive me for overlooking it.In the ENB section of the wiki, it needs to be noted that if shadow striping occurs that increasing the iBlurDeferredShadowMask value in the INI from 2 (what the STEP INI Tweaks changes it to) to a higher value will correct the issue. (this happened when I used Project ENB). This could also be included in the Troubleshooting Guides.The link to the Standalone SMAA on the ENB page is broken. The mod page no longer exists. I'm interested in SMAA because Project ENB doesn't have it. So an alternative that is supported by STEP would be most helpful.MODS TO BE ADDED Get Snowy - this has not caused me any issues and adds a realism to the game where snow sticks to the players and NPCs during snow storms. Who can run around in a snow storm and not have an ounce of snow on them? Thanks for reading!
  17. They are a combination of both (plus everything else in the wiki guide) using the Texture Pack Combiner.
  18. I would like to try that to see if I can get better FPS, though I just got this put together and working and I really like CoT.
  19. I would suggest a good run through of STEP. There were a few places that I see that could use an update. For example, after my first install I discovered in my BOSS log a few things that needed correcting. One was a different version of a mod and the other was a mod conflict; however, thinking back that was a mod outside of STEP that I added. The instructions could use updating and more detail in some areas and with what do to with some mods too. I found myself confused at several different points and had to go in to do some research on proper install and which options to install as well.
  20. I got the issue fixed from the Nexxus site. I also tested this theory of v0.119 not being optimized: So far there's not an issue with the older builds. I just tested and there is an average 7 FPS drop using ENBseries v0.119 and Project ENB 1.4 over the older v0.113 and v1.1, respectively. These are with the STEP INI tweaks, a few custom INI tweaks to up FPS, custom launcher graphic settings and custom nVidia settings. My (mobile) Rig: ASUS G7 Intel i7 @ 2GHz GeForce GTX 460M, 1GB vram 8 GB RAM Right now my FPS is averaging 27-32. This is before the texture overhaul in STEP. Thanks, ZeroKing for your help!
  21. Okay, I installed STEP 100% and discovered there was lines EVERYWHERE! I was very disappointed because I had spent a day and a half setting this up. Wanting to track down the issue I uninstalled everything and started with a fresh installation of Skyrim. I continued to follow STEP and checked every install one-by-one until I found the what caused the issue. Turns out...it was my ENB. I am using the first choice on the STEP, Project ENB. After I installed and started my saves this is what I see: As you can see, this lines are any where the shadows are and on the wood textures. What is this? Striping? Because I haven't seen any images of striping that look like this. Also, any suggests on fixing it? Prior to Project ENB I was using RCRN without issue until I found out STEP doesn't support it when I decided to use STEP. BTW: I'm using ENBseries 0.113 with Project ENB 1.1 because STEP doesn't recommend ENBseries 0.119 yet.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use.