Weather Mods - Couldn't be bothered

[Deleted21304489User]

I'm posting this to share "my opinion" on the various weather mods out there for Fallout 3.

 

I've tried them all... and after more than a year, I'm happy not to use any of them. Here are my reasons. (If you're a fanboy, please don't take any offense.)

 

1. Fellout - Great mod all around. Gets rid of the green haze. Adds saturation and different cloud patterns, compared to the vanilla weather system. A couple of problems though... first, as with some others, there's a noticeable bug when leaving Megaton after nightfall. The dark nights (this mod is known for) are glitched when exiting. It's quite obvious and only "waiting" an hour, or more will make that darkness return. Quite immersion breaking. This is mostly due in part to the unique nature of the Megaton cell. It may even affect a few other similar cells as well. Probably fixable, but who knows. Second, all though I love darker nights... especially when employing Gopher's awesome advance recon night vision mod... they are simply way too dark for my taste.

 

2. Project Reality - Awesome sauce !! The clouds are amazing and the weather transitions in a timely manner, changing the mood from one cool experience to another. However, unless you like walking around with a halogen light over your head at all times... don't bother. The lighting in this mod is simply annoying imo. It's so bad, that it glitches out other cool things like the great Street Light mod, combined with the Imaginator mod. Any "Horizon Clean" setting above medium will cause the street lights to flicker... much like a strobe light. Even without other mods, the interior lighting is just bad and makes everything, including your player character, look dull and washed out. Finally, the added haze that produces during snow weather, will make you feel like you have vaseline in your eyes. Lastly, any flora mod that you may be using, will be darkened due to the lighting employed to the mod. It simply erases all coloration on the ground, making vegitation look dark.

 

3. Dynamic Weather - Really a great mod, with lots of options. Plus it keeps the vanilla look going, along with darker nights. Problem is, it has way too many "world space" edits in it... making critical errors occur with other mods you may want to add to the waste land. Things like containers, interiors, etc. will clash badly with this mod... even Blackened in some cases. If it doesn't cause your game to ctd, it will surely cause your game to stutter in certain areas, with substantial fps drops during rain cycles... like someone is slamming on the breaks during your game play. This mod also tends to wash out the interiors of saturation, compared to vanilla. The dark nights combined with the harsh weather it produces, will cause a lot of bad splotchy cloud textures. Finally, after tinkering around with the weather systems... to no end, I find them not to be so dynamic. In fact, the weather transitions can become stuck and not cycle as I'm sure the author intended. You have to constantly go into the "weather machine" and force it to transition to something other that what it's stuck on currently. Overall, not very user friendly, imo. One final note... the water looks realistic, but once under the water, it's basically pitch dark. Annoying.

 

Enhanced Skies - Wow !! This is simply one of the best weather mods out there, imo. Takes away the green haze. Adds it's own cloud textures (which simply rock) and just overall looks great if you like color in the wastes. The bonus is, that it gets rid of the annoying sun glare (eye adapt) that most of us hate in the vanilla game. The mod comes in a few varieties too. I would still be using this mod if it wasn't for a couple of issues I had with it. First, the weather cycles on a percentage formula, which is fine... except, every time you load a saved game the weather changes. That being said... if you load your game up before you enter an interior, you will not have the proper interior lighting when you enter the cell. It has a nasty habit of deleting all exterior lighting that comes in through windows and cracks in the wall. You're basically walking into a building that is dark, with no ambient lighting. This is due to the weather transition that is occurring when you load up your game. Now, I don't know about you... but I always save before entering a building. If things don't turn out so well... that reload is more than likely going to wreck the interior lighting the next time you enter. Finally, if you're going to use any interior lighting mod, you will want to delete the lighting template in this mod. Otherwise it will render that mod useless. It doesn't matter if you load it below Enhanced Skies.

 

Enhance Weather Rain and Snow - Impressive !! I find it's the one weather mod that gets along with anything and everything in ones load order. This amazes me to no end. Kudos to the mod author. He even states on his mod page that the mod is compatible with everything. Again... impressive. I love this mod, except for a couple of things, that just drive me bonkers. The mod author warns that if you re-load your game during a rain storm, that the rain sound will not be present. I don't like that. However, if you're able to enter an interior cell during the "sound out", it will come back once returning out doors. This is fine, but for me it simply breaks immersion during game play. Also, every now and then... you will get stuck rain drops on your screen. Ugh... so annoying. The only way to get rid of them is to wait about 5 hours in game. If it wasn't for those two issues... I'd have this in my load order at all times. I know... at this point, many of you are thinking I'm too anal.

 

Anyway, there's a couple of other weather mods out there to mention, but let me tell you what I found best. I now use the vanilla weather system. There's nothing immersion breaking about it at all. Granted, the nights could be darker, but it's a toss up. Using the vanilla weather, I find my games runs with less issues and nothing that causes me to be annoyed. I also noticed that interior lighting is at it's best. However, I do use Darkened Interiors by, Xepha (fantastic interior lighting mod).

 

This is what I use along with the vanilla game weather system. The Imaginator - my settings are this: +1 to saturation - horizon clean set to low - soft focus set to low - +3 to the blue tintor (no more green haze)

I also use the sun glare textures from Enhanced Skies. It's not as bright, reducing annoying eye adapt. Finally, I use the lessviewdistance mod... the modified version. It pretty much eliminates those God aweful LOD's that Fallout is known for and makes the nights seem a tad darker. That's it !! My game is less glitchy, there's no immersion breaking mod stuff and the night sky looks the best as well. I also, use mojavi nights from FNV, Flora Overhaul, and Rustic Grass... along with the "no longer available" UHQ mod. I'll put all of this up against any other weather mod out there... hope this helps you make a good choice for weather in your game and gets you that bitchin' look. :smile:

 

One final note; If you're not using FO3 LODGen... then you are missing out. This mod does wonders for the view distance on your game. Just make sure you do a game defrag after the generation process... as it can produce up to 6000, or more defragmented files due to all the merged meshes that it will produce. (pro tip)

 

Here's another tip: if you're running a weather mod... it's best to load it below your merged patch, unless it relies on an esm file. Weather transitions will be purest doing so. Peace out !! ;)

Edited March 20, 2017 by ejroberts49

[Deleted1205226User]

Interesting informations, thank you for sharing!

[Deleted21304489User]

You're welcome. I got your pm and will reply later. I still endorse all of these mods and use them all from time to time. One thing I forgot to mention about Dynamic weather... that Xepha buried in his text file. He states that you should have your time scale set to a minimum of 10, in order to get the most out of his weather mod. I personally use timescale of 8, as I find it to be the most realistic and works best with his weather mod, imo.