Is SE ENB REALLY inferior?

[michaelrz167]

Lately I've been digging around, just trying to see what all can really be done with SE ENB... and one thing I keep seeing, even into 2019, is a consensus that SE ENB still hasn't caught up to LE ENB, with many people even swearing off it, as though it's useless. I haven't played around much with either, and I'm sticking with SE, but I really had to wonder how much better it could be. I've got Rudy ENB with Vivid Weathers going along with the complex particle lights and all of the extras you need for added functionality and I have to say... it is kind of crazy, how many changes I can spot... it's changing so much in the pipeline I'm still trying to distinguish it all! I would almost believe it was current-gen if not for the polygons and animation.

 

So I'm trying really hard to wrap my head around why people might say this, not really knowing what I'm missing... as when I played LE, I didn't have the hardware or patience for the full ENB ride.

 

The two things I keep seeing are atmosphere (custom weathers?) and parallax. Parallax, parallax, parallax. Now, I've been digging up screenshots of LE parallax mods and I gotta say, I am not impressed. It's not a particularly great implementation imo. It looks... like DX9 parallax... so kind of cheesy and uncanny. Honestly, higher-res textures with just normal bump maps and dynamic lighting looks more convincing to me. I mean, I could be wrong - I've never played with it. What I'm seeing doesn't add much in terms of intrigue or plausibility - not the way I've seen it used. Being able to have meshes with more complex geometry and have matched custom textures is way more interesting to me - parallax is like a parlor trick next to proper photogrammetric textures on perfectly matched meshes. Parallax can be excellent for that, but the LE one looks awfully limited. Don't get me wrong, the ground textures come out kinda cool, but it's not this unbelievable difference.

 

As far as atmosphere goes... no... I don't buy that for a minute. There is still so much you can do with lighting alone, without even touching the post stuff. And didn't somebody figure out how to get ENB weathers with the help of SKSE64?

 

I dunno... this is just my take, after seeing Rudy's ENB and just how many things are fundamentally changed, I can't grasp how LE's ENB could be amazingly better. Maybe a little?

 

I'd be curious if anybody who has experience with both can break down the actual differences in clear terms.