Maverick827 Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 I can't help but feel like most texture, lighting, ENB, etc. mods never live up to the screenshots provided by the author. Textures are never as crisp, even though I'm positive I downloaded the highest resolution. Lighting and ENB mods are always too dark, too light, or generally just not quite as good as the screenshots. ENB mods can be a bit tricky to install sometimes, but I've nuked all of my mods and installed everything correctly from scratch for various ENBs (Sharpshooter's, Project ENB, RealVision, Project MATSO, RealLike, E ENB Final...), including whether or not the author recommends RLO/ELFX/CoT, required ini settings, etc. It just doesn't look as good. Don't get me wrong, my game still looks really nice. Just never as good as some of the more popular screenshotters(?), like some of the people who take official screenshots for aMidianBorn's textures. I have really no hardware limitations (GTX Titan, 1440p), I don't know why I wouldn't be able to achieve the same results. Sometimes I'll see a screenshot of someone's character and it will look amazing. I'll try to recreate something similar in game, just to see that I'm not going crazy and that my game will look as good as his. The author will usually provide a suspiciously small list of mods used to take his screenshots, but I'll install them all and try it out. It's close, but still never quite there. When I use the Apachii hair type they did, I'll get these faint-but-noticeable jagged shadows on my character's face cast from the style's bangs or whatever. Flowing strands of hair will look aliased, even though I'm quite sure there's no new super secret anti-aliasing technique that they have but I don't (I'll try Skyrim's, Nvidia's, SweetFX, ENB, etc.). I haven't tried it yet, but one of the recent Hot Files, Seranaholic caught my eye today (not to single out any specific mod/author). It looks amazing, but I'd be willing to bet that if I installed every mod listed on that description page, Serana would look nowhere near as good as in the mod's screenshots, and certainly not the main one on the front page. Am I seeing things that aren't there (or, rather, not seeing things that are)? Is there a bit of a bait-and-switch with visual mods (as there is with pretty much all advertising in the real world) that I'll just have to accept? Does anyone else feel this way? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billyro Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 (edited) Oh, hell yeah. I think it's just mix and match with tons of mods until you find the perfect balance. I'm certain a lot of those popular screen archers will have tried hundreds of mods to attain their level of picturesque. I'd personally like to know how to get rid of that foggy appearance in my games. A lot of the ENB screenshots are crisp and realistic, but my laptop renders it like its all hazy and stuff. Kinda strange. O.o EDIT: Mitigate HDR Eye Adaptation & Disable Bloom is a good mod to help with the haziness IMO. Edited July 16, 2013 by billyro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArtMurder Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 I personally dislike ENBs altogether. SweetFX looks really good, not 'over the top' like ENBs do, but it doesn't cause insane annoying glitches like ENB does. One thing a lot of people don't realize is, ENBs look different depending on your graphics card! Some graphics cards can use some ENBs better then others. Mine personally really doesn't like them, despite being more then powerful to run them, it just displays them weird and glitchy. I've actually started working on my own SweetFX mod! ^_^ Also, a lot of people use photoshop on pics after they take them to give them that extra "wow" factor. I doubt to many ENB uploaders would admit to this, but as someone who uses photoshop a LOT I can kinda tell when an image has had it's adjustments played with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
myztikrice Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 Screenshots are taken in places where the lighting is the best which doesn't necessarily match everywhere in the playing experience. Also since screenshots are static they can enable more features that are traditionally turned off in order to save FPS to make their images look better. A lot of pictures are straight up photoshopped afterwards to look better. Finally pictures are sometimes posted in a less than high resolution which makes them sharper and harder to find the ugliness in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maverick827 Posted July 17, 2013 Author Share Posted July 17, 2013 Well, I guess I'll just have to deal with it. It would be nice if everyone had a commitment to honestly representing their mods, but I can understand the "advertising arms race" situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prod80 Posted July 17, 2013 Share Posted July 17, 2013 Screenshots from someone who has1) got a good balance of mods and;2) edited textures to get a better balance when they need and;3) programmed an ENB using his/her specific mods Will always look a whole lot better than the same ENB on your system. And uploading photoshopped images is just bad for selling point. Just check "User images" on the mod page, if any, when in doubt. Making the game look really good will in all fairness, take you around half a year of tweaking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mindw0rk2 Posted July 17, 2013 Share Posted July 17, 2013 My Skyrim looks much better then any screenshots you can possibly find Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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