I *thought* I knew what a "clean save" was....

[Vashra1]

Being in the US, and in Texas, I'm wholly in favor of using money to buy guns, provided the purchase is legal and the plans for the weapon are relatively ethical ;)

I get what you're saying about CBBE though - just, I don't *currently* have much need to mod the people. I'm going more for play-ability than aesthetics.

I'll have to give ENB another shot sometime. I had tied it with Clear View enb presets and with PRT - but both were just too bloody dark for the interiors and I couldn't seem to undo that without messing up other things (I totally suck at mucking with visual settings lol). So I'd get it "brighter" but then other things would be too bright, etc. Just upping the gamma on my monitor makes *everything* brighter and doesn't really work because then other things are way too lit up.

[tomomi1922]

This is why single player games are great. We can mod and cheat all we want. But the game remains our private world in which we can literately play how we want. Well, within the features given by the game and the mods, don't think we can shoot people with guns in Skyrim if nobody made that mod.

I guess my goal (aligned with many people on forum) is to inform and open others' eyes. Like CBBE, I always like to steer people away from the misconception in hope that the mod is properly viewed by what it really is. But the decisions for you to use the mods or not is entirely up to you.

Regarding ENB, they are not 100% plug and play. If you install them, and they look nice right out of the box, great. But most of the time, they don't behave the way we want or expect. This is why there is a menu to bring up for us to adjust things. For instance, PRT is very good for beginners. It has many instructions built-in. It has a few selections for you to select: which weather mods you are using, Vanilla (no weather mod) or 4-5 other mods. You need to input that. It lets you adjust things like adding custom filters (like Instagram picture filters) to easily change the looks. And when you are ready to learn more, start messing with all the values (where the author tells you not to). It will not crash your game, just change the look. There is no undo button, so you should remember what values you are trying to edit. For example, Brightness for Night is at 0.60. I would remember that value, and try to change it to all kind of crazy numbers to find its range and to learn how it really affects the game. I can always change back to 0.60. Yep, what the heck is Brightness, Gamma, Exposure .... plug in different numbers and find out! Most ENB these days have separate controls for different times of the day: Dawn, Sunrise, Day, Sunset, Dusk, Interior. It's amazing. We can tweak them until we are happy. Night is too dark? Tweak the night section. Day too bright, tweak the day section. Interior too colorful? Reduce saturation. The advanced stuff are SSAO/SIL, Fog, Fire, Vegetation, Window light, Bloom, Adaptation, etc... I would tell you to leave adaptation alone. They are just way too hard to adjust right. Or turn it off altogether (yep, right at ENB menu).

[Vashra1]

Good to know. I'll look into CBBE and other major overhaul mods *after* I upgrade my graphics card. I'm squeezing SkyrimSE into functioning on an Nvidia GTX 740...theoretically SkyrimSE needs at least GT 470 to run......

Edited June 6, 2018 by Vashra1

[tomomi1922]

Good to know. I'll look into CBBE and other major overhaul mods *after* I upgrade my graphics card. I'm squeezing SkyrimSE into functioning on an Nvidia GTX 740...theoretically SkyrimSE needs at least GT 470 to run......

Can you believe I started with Skyrim on a very weak computer? It wasn't that I was so poor, but at the time (2011 maybe) my graphic card was decent, but nothing like GTX 740. I remember wanting ENB so bad, but the thing that made ENB looking so good (at least at the time) was Ambient Occlusion, and my computer could NOT handle it at all. And now, as of today, 3 computers later, about 4 graphic cards later, my computer is overkill for Skyrim SE. I can go with ultra settings, best ENB settings, and still run around 50fps.

 

You should just try ENB, try their performance setting with less taxing on your computer and graphic card, and go from there. You never know until you try. Rule of thumbs for modern games (like Skyrim SE with 64 bit engine) is to push them to the max settings. And when you see you are running at some 20fps, you know you overshot it. Start figuring out which features you can live without, or which is too power hungry, and make compromises. You will never know what you can get away with until you try.

 

For ENB, SSAO at low setting still look very good. Or you can turn SSAO off and rely just on Skyrim's SSAO. You decide which one looks better, but Skyrim's SSAO is not adjustable easily. I set SSAO at highest setting "because I can". But I can set it to Medium to Low with almost no loss in visual (unless I look hard enough). I always set shadow to medium because I can live with blurry shadows (sometimes it even look better that way). Shadow is very taxing on your graphic card. In FO4 I turn off Godray completely. It doesnt look that good, and also takes away 10fps. I ran FO4 flawlessly with my previous computer (substantially weaker than my current one). Therefore, don't hold yourself back.

 

However, always have an exit strategy. Always need to know how to uninstall things, what files to delete, back up old files like Skyrim.ini or other .esp if you plan to change them. Save into completely new games (instead of using the same saves). Worst case when things go wrong, you need to know how to trace your footsteps back to safety.

[Vashra1]

New video card is supposed to arrive today. On this old one, I'm averaging about 24 fps....in utterly unmodded "low settings" vanilla Skyrim (outdoors).

I agree about preferring slightly blurry shadows. I've never seen a shadow in real life that was the sort of crisp and clean that is possible in games -- and of course that's a huge drain on performance to make them so crisp.

Godrays are quite overrated in my not at all humble opinion. IF they were just pure beams of light coming down out of the sky, that'd be awesome. But they aren't. High, Medium, Low, Ultra -- they all have image space shaders that put additional coloration over...everything. That's not a *ray*, that's haze ;) The yellow tint to them has me leaving them off in Skyrim, just like Fallout4 (and Fallout3 and pretty much every game that's ever had that effect that I've ever played), but I'll give them another quick look when I get the new card.

Yeah...that footstep tracing is a huge part of .. everything.

[tomomi1922]

New video card is supposed to arrive today. On this old one, I'm averaging about 24 fps....in utterly unmodded "low settings" vanilla Skyrim (outdoors).

 

I agree about preferring slightly blurry shadows. I've never seen a shadow in real life that was the sort of crisp and clean that is possible in games -- and of course that's a huge drain on performance to make them so crisp.

 

Godrays are quite overrated in my not at all humble opinion. IF they were just pure beams of light coming down out of the sky, that'd be awesome. But they aren't. High, Medium, Low, Ultra -- they all have image space shaders that put additional coloration over...everything. That's not a *ray*, that's haze :wink: The yellow tint to them has me leaving them off in Skyrim, just like Fallout4 (and Fallout3 and pretty much every game that's ever had that effect that I've ever played), but I'll give them another quick look when I get the new card.

 

Yeah...that footstep tracing is a huge part of .. everything.

I don't believe it, Nvidia 700 series isn't that old. Yep, I had to look up Wiki. I forgot how old my first computer was, but the interface was not PCI-E but at least 1-2 generations before. I totally lost track of graphic card slot history. I used to know video cards inside out like street racers know their cars.

 

Why so bad? Unmodded vanilla, 24fps... I feel current Ipad Pro is even an overkill to run Oldrim Vanilla (not that anyone cared to make a port to iOS). Are you playing at 4k?

 

I do some photography, and sharp shadow is our enemy (along with direct light). We went through great length (and spent tons of money) to make shadow soft: beauty dish, softbox, reflector, etc... But as much as photos and movies try to avoid the real look, video games run toward it. I understand that. Witcher 3 videos look so good because of the realism. But this is another thing I want to bring up, sharp shadow is great if it is consistent. But in a lot of games, sharp shadow means it is easier to tell if shadow is jagged or wrongly casted (or even avoid something completely) due to bad mesh, shader, etc.... It immediately kills immersion. So this is why I stick to blurry shadow: harder to notice mistakes. Oh yeah, god ray, don't get me started. Same with sharp shadow, it is great when it is "immersive" but current implementation of this technology just makes too much room for us players to detect it is "fake", therefore immediate immersion breaking. Not to mention in FO4 godray is pixellated most of the time even at Ultra setting: this probably works for Minecraft only.

 

24fps is no way to play any game. I get 50fps with dense grass: Veydobrom grass mod, dense option, with extra grass density in .ini setting, and mod that makes windy grass. I guess that image from Gladiator never left my head: The vast lush field when he went to see his wife and son after he died. It is worth all the money I spent on my video card (some $400).

 

What card did you get? I can recommend a few "must have" visual mods that make Skyrim alive with low to no impact on stability (like CTD).