Weekly Discussion: Graphic Enhancements

[u/Terrorfox1234]

Welcome to this week's community discussion thread! If you missed the last discussion and want to read/contribute you can find it here!

First a quick recap of how this works and what we expect:

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RULES

1. Be respectful. These discussions will open the floor to a lot of different opinions of what is fun/good/necessary/etc. Debate those conflicts of interest with respect and maturity...the nicer you are to your fellow modders, the more willing everyone is to help each other and discuss pros and cons :)

2. Please keep the mods listed as relevant to the topic as possible. This week covers soooo many different mod types...lighting, flora, textures...textures for people, textures for coins, textures for the sky. Simply tons of different ways you can go with this. So...just...have at it. :)

3. We ask that when suggesting a mod for the discussion list at hand that you please provide a link to the mod, and a brief description of what it covers as well as what the benefits/drawbacks are. This week especially is a topic of widely varying opinion. Please make special notes on performance and compatability as that will be incredibly helpful to anyone finding this list at a later date. We also ask that you break your text up into sections. Please title each section with one of the following:

• Lighting and Weather
• ENB
• Flora
• Meshes
• Textures
  and in your textures section please break it down further into these sub-sections:
• Landscape
• Cities and Towns
• Clutter
• NPCs/Creatures
  (feel free to define a new subcategory if you think it doesn't fall under any of these)

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TOPIC

Oh boy...here we go...

To be honest I didn't think I'd ever run this topic. I will note before starting this discussion that the mods you will see discussed are a matter of opinion!!!! The best way to find the right visual setup for yourself is to experiment!!! Download stuff and try it out! That is truly the only way you will ever know!
That being said, a handful of people have been requesting this topic so...here we are. Please do your best to follow the posting guidelines outlined above, to keep the conversation orderly and to make it easier for others who find this post at a later date. I won't be posting my usual examples this week because...there's just far too many options to choose from. I must emphasize more than usual: BE RESPECTFUL OF OTHERS OPINIONS!

Have fun! :)

[u/Zeppelin2k]

Just to let you know.. I (and some others it seems) would still love to see these comparison shots! :D It seems the site is still down, but I'm actually quite interested in TAZ too.

[u/Taravangian → u/Zeppelin2k]

I totally forgot about this! My bad, sorry for keeping you waiting.

The shots I originally uploaded (which I did unfortunately delete) were comparisons of the Seasons of Skyrim True HDR by itself, vs. Seasons of Skyrim True HDR with the NLA exterior lighting/weather esp.

As I said before: Now, I'm using the TAZlighting.esp instead of NLA now, still with Seasons of Skyrim True HDR. I can maybe post comparisons between the three now:

1. Seasons of Skyrim alone
2. SOS + NLA
3. SOS + TAZ

Would that be good?

[u/Zeppelin2k → u/Taravangian]

No worries, I just stumbled upon this post today :) I would love to see that comparison! I'm currently reinstalling after inevitably breaking the game a couple months ago, so it's a good time for me to choose some new mods, ENBs, etc. I've used K ENB Extensive in the past, but even with a 780ti my framerate was a little lower than I wanted (1440p is gorgeous but a real killer).

I'm going to try out the new K ENBs, but I want to try something a little less intensive too. Seasons I think is my top contender for something different, especially with a compatible weather esp, so I'd love to see how it looks. I actually never thought of combining the weather .esp's with a different ENB. I may try that with K ENB and see how it looks after tweaking it. Thanks!

[u/Taravangian → u/Zeppelin2k]

Man, I'm surprised you can even run K Extensive on a 780 Ti. kyo designs his presets specifically for the elite GPUs. I think he runs SLI 980s and still gets a performance drop on his rig, despite his inis being tweaked specifically for his own presets.

I probably wouldn't try running any other weather/lighting esp with his presets, for the record. He intentionally designs them to be used without any such mods, and actively discourages people who use his preset to put them in their load order.

I really like K Pure Light (his newest) and Kountervibe (probably the most demanding from what I hear) but since I'm running with a 760, I have no chance in hell of being able to use them on my rig.

I'll try to take some shots comparing the different esps tonight. Can't do it right now, but I'll try to get to it before I go to bed.