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[Inkvoterad]

But it looks so good.

Oh my god those colours

I love JK's Towns though. I used enchanted whiterun for a while but it literally did nothing but added trees everywhere and rendered whiterun unplayable for me frameratewise, then i found JK.

Are you guys using Immersive settlements? Recently downloaded it and loved it. It basically adds a bunch of houses and some npcs and stuff to fill out settlements in the game. The outer part of whiterun now actually feels like a village and has a little market and everything. Love it.

 

[timetokill]

Does JK Towns run okay? It seems like it would cause some serious performance issues because it places shit everywhere. It looks damn good but I'm a little gunshy on it at the moment.

 

[aku:jiki]

Are you guys using Immersive settlements? Recently downloaded it and loved it. It basically adds a bunch of houses and some npcs and stuff to fill out settlements in the game. The outer part of whiterun now actually feels like a village and has a little market and everything. Love it.

IS is good but are you aware that IS is abandoned and has been integrated into Expanded Towns and Cities? Any compatability patches and such will be found there nowadays. I think you can expand the area you're talking about even more with JK's + ETaC + comp patch.

ETaC doesn't touch the inside of walled cities so you can roll with Dawn + JK's + ETaC for even more cityness. Those and Sky City, True City, Snow City and Impereal Falkreath for maximum cityness.

It seems like it would cause some serious performance issues because it places shit everywhere.

It most certainly does cost you frames. It's just an ESP with no scripting, though, so there's no reason not to just try it for yourself.

 

[Dance Inferno]

@ilnadmy
Your pics are looking pretty cool
Which enb are you using?

I'm currently using the RealVision ENB, which I found is pretty good as far as performance. I edited the settings to increase ambient lighting at night and in interiors because I normally couldn't see shit, so now I don't need to carry a lantern with me everywhere I go. I also disabled Depth of Field, which gave me a nice performance boost. I've toyed with disabling AA but it doesn't seem to give me more than a 1-2 FPS boost, so I've just left it on.

I'm also using it with ELFX, Climates of Tamriel, SFO, Verdant, Realistic Water Two, and Watercolor for ENB and Realistic Water Two, which I think is what contributes to the great outdoor graphics. I'm also using uGrids 7, which is awesome. I used to get lots of crashes until I installed Stable uGridsToLoad and SSME, and now I can play for hours without crashes.

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

I usually disable ENB AA and just inject SMAA.

 

[Eirulan]

@ilnadmy
Thx a lot for the detailled explanation, RealVision ENB was the first END I used but your color palette looks so different - in a better way! - than I remember RealVision's colors.
I also remember it to be very performance friendly.

 

[Mithos]

You're unfortunately just gonna have to get used to doing it or having broken quests littering your journal... I've had to force like 5 quests by now, the worst one being Lost to the Ages. I hate it too, but it has to be done.

Ended up having to force the final step, use tcl to fly out (because the exit didn't trigger), use console to give me the item it was supposed to give me and in the end I'm stuck with a quest item I can never drop. Oh, and I didn't get my achievement for it. That was 4 hours well spent!

Yeah it's not fun, however... I finally found a solution, involves console commands indeed, but I can now add all 3 followers to Delphine and complete the quest. =)

 

[scissorfight]

i'm getting ready to start modding and using some custom ENBs but i wanted to figure this out first.

1) obviously the game was not meant to work at 144hz (which is a shame; it is so smooth at 144hz/144fps). Was there every any workaround for this issue that would prevent the weird glitches?

2) if not, assuming i limit it to 60 FPS using the ENB or something else, should i change my monitor to 60hz or 120hz? will leaving it at 144hz result in less than ideal performance?

3) does G-Sync even work well with this game? or am i better of with vsync at 60hz/60fps?

 

[timetokill]

It most certainly does cost you frames. It's just an ESP with no scripting, though, so there's no reason not to just try it for yourself.

Good point. I'm going to give it a shot.

 

[Mithos]

Does JK Towns run okay? It seems like it would cause some serious performance issues because it places shit everywhere. It looks damn good but I'm a little gunshy on it at the moment.

I decided against using JK's Town Overhauls because it interferes with vanilla NPC movement and such in some Towns.

One quick example is the horse outside the inn in Riverwood, JK have placed a wagon on the location it wants to stand, so it spins around on the road trying to get into place, blocking NPC's from walking there, and the fences JK have placed blocks some NPC's from moving freely, like when the shop woman is supposed to help you in the beginning in the game, sometimes she gets stuck half ways in the fence or plainly stops moving after she eventually have gotten loose from the fence.

 

[DeaviL]

i'm getting ready to start modding and using some custom ENBs but i wanted to figure this out first.

1) obviously the game was not meant to work at 144hz (which is a shame; it is so smooth at 144hz/144fps). Was there every any workaround for this issue that would prevent the weird glitches?

2) if not, assuming i limit it to 60 FPS using the ENB or something else, should i change my monitor to 60hz or 120hz? will leaving it at 144hz result in less than ideal performance?

3) does G-Sync even work well with this game? or am i better of with vsync at 60hz/60fps?

this is what i just came here for, answers appreciated.

 

[McBryBry]

Guys, I'm having a sound related issue. Whenever I get close to somebody, their voice simply goes out. It's like a quiet echo off in the distance. If I turn away from them or back away, it gets to a normal volume like I'd expect. What's going on?

Here's what I've got going right now:

Whether Climates of Tamriel is on or not, it still does it. Even if I start a new game!

EDIT: Nevermind, turns out it was a speaker issue. All is well!

 

[aku:jiki]

Oh, yeah! I took Eirulan's mention of DDSOpt into account and decided to give it another shot... I had previously done it following a guide on STEP and with advice from some forum posts I googled up, and that meant lowering the resolution of all the textures but using lossless compression. That attempt yielded no discernable performance gain and only shaved like 300MB off my texture total (which is over 15GB).

I decided to try again, this time doing the exact opposite and keeping 4K as my resolution ceiling but using DXT compression on everything. Boom, 10fps gain, less stutters in cities and I scaled my texture collection down by over 3GB! All with no real loss in overall quality. I mean, this still looks pretty OK!

I decided against using JK's Town Overhauls because it interferes with vanilla NPC movement and such in some Towns.

One quick example is the horse outside the inn in Riverwood, JK have placed a wagon on the location it wants to stand, so it spins around on the road trying to get into place, blocking NPC's from walking there, and the fences JK have placed blocks some NPC's from moving freely, like when the shop woman is supposed to help you in the beginning in the game, sometimes she gets stuck half ways in the fence or plainly stops moving after she eventually have gotten loose from the fence.

Huh, that's weird. I don't use JK's for settlements, but his walled city overhauls don't have issues like that. They don't place anything in the middle of navmeshed paths, they just add new paths (that I don't think are navmeshed so you never see NPCs walking around on them) and clutter around the old paths.

 

[thunder_snail]

Guys, I'm having a sound related issue. Whenever I get close to somebody, their voice simply goes out. It's like a quiet echo off in the distance. If I turn away from them or back away, it gets to a normal volume like I'd expect. What's going on?

Here's what I've got going right now:



Whether Climates of Tamriel is on or not, it still does it. Even if I start a new game!

EDIT: Nevermind, turns out it was a speaker issue. All is well!

Lol. I had a similar problem once. The sound from the right was really low, tried to find the cause of it for an hour until I realized my headphones weren't plugged all the way in.

 

[lazygecko]

Skyrim has a metric ton of weird sound issues. A lot of it likely stems from driver incompatibilities. To say that the sound is unoptimized on PC would be a gross understatement. I noticed a lot of weird inconsistencies by just switching between different sound cards and their respective drivers. On my general purpose integrated motherboard sound which I usually have for gaming, I have that problem where the volume for Skyrim is 3x lower than normal.

 

[Dick Justice]

Speaking of sound issues, whenever I exit New Vegas while using my sound card (which I enable when using headphones), I get this constant high-pitched noise that doesn't go away unless I reboot the PC, forcing me to use task manager to end the process instead. Annoying as fuck.

 

[Dance Inferno]

Huh, weird. Whenever I try to access the Nexus website it gives me a message telling me my IP is blacklisted. I use a VPN when surfing the web so my guess is someone using the same VPN got himself blacklisted and now anyone using that server is blacklisted. Sucks.

Edit: Turned my VPN off and on and now I can access the site again. Good stuff.

 

[Blue Ninja]

Skyrim has a metric ton of weird sound issues. A lot of it likely stems from driver incompatibilities. To say that the sound is unoptimized on PC would be a gross understatement. I noticed a lot of weird inconsistencies by just switching between different sound cards and their respective drivers. On my general purpose integrated motherboard sound which I usually have for gaming, I have that problem where the volume for Skyrim is 3x lower than normal.

I may have a similar issue, Skyrim is really quiet compared to other games for me.

 

[McBryBry]

I've got another question. What is Wyrebash used for? If I understand, its so that items from two different mods can be found out and about. Does this apply to say, Cloaks of Skyrim and Winter is Coming?

Also, how do some ENB's look so good? I have Project ENB installed with Climates of Tamriel. It look good, but I've seen setups with it look much better.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Subbing this thread.

Installed Skyrim yesterday together with the high resolution texture pack. Can't believe I'm actually playing a TES with 60 fps (played only on consoles so far). It's beautiful.

 

[Xdrive05]

So I just installed ENB with the recommended mods, and now I'm getting a "this save requires content that is no longer available" warnings when loading a game. And then I notice that in Whiterun, a lot of the fire torches have their fire model/animation offset by what I guess would be about 10 feet in the game. So far I've only noticed this in Whiterun.

Is there anything I can do about the "content no longer available" issue? I use Mod Organizer with LOOT ordering, and I've already used TESVEdit to fix known warnings, and I still get the notice when trying to load my saves. I'd rather not have to start a new game from scratch at this point.

 

[Bornstellar]

Subbing this thread.

Installed Skyrim yesterday together with the high resolution texture pack. Can't believe I'm actually playing a TES with 60 fps (played only on consoles so far). It's beautiful.

Now install an enb.

 

[aku:jiki]

I've got another question. What is Wyrebash used for? If I understand, its so that items from two different mods can be found out and about. Does this apply to say, Cloaks of Skyrim and Winter is Coming?

It's a mod organizer like all the others but it has a functionality called "bashed patch" which can combine simpler mods or, what you've heard, the "leveled lists" included in said mods. I don't understand exactly how that all works yet, as some mods definitely show up without merging their leveled lists, but it's a reasonable thing to do if you have a bunch of equipment mods and want to make sure said equipment shows up in the hands of enemies, in chests and available for sale from merchants.

It's easy to do. Just install and open Wrye Bash and create a patch, opt to skip merging mods unless you're sure that's what you want to do and hit the "leveled lists" section. It should automatically fetch mods that have "bash tags", but not every mod has them. For example, I have Lost Library and it does not have them and needs to be added manually. Manually add all mods that you think have leveled lists (if they don't, nothing bad will happen as far as I know, Wrye Bash will simply add nothing from those mods to the patch) and hit "build patch". There are several youtube videos on this. (Though, strangely, Gopher seems to refuse to make one...)

So I just installed ENB with the recommended mods, and now I'm getting a "this save requires content that is no longer available" warnings when loading a game. And then I notice that in Whiterun, a lot of the fire torches have their fire model/animation offset by what I guess would be about 10 feet in the game. So far I've only noticed this in Whiterun.

Is there anything I can do about the "content no longer available" issue? I use Mod Organizer with LOOT ordering, and I've already used TESVEdit to fix known warnings, and I still get the notice when trying to load my saves. I'd rather not have to start a new game from scratch at this point.

That warning means that you've uninstalled a mod that you were using previously, as Skyrim includes content from mods in your savegame.

T5E is not a savegame cleaner, but this tool is. When you open a save with script remnants from disabled mods, it will say "X orphaned scripts found" or something to that effect. Hit the "FixScriptInstances" button to clear those. Then enter a # into the Scripts search box in the top left to filter only scripts marked with a # (which also means remnant left by uninstalled mod), then expand the tree below the search box to make sure the scripts being removed are from mods you want to remove. They will most often have logical names like everything belonging to for example Wearable Lanterns will start with a "WL_" prefix. After making sure, hit "Delete all #".

If you have no idea what mods you've removed and don't know if it's safe to clean your scripts... Well, you've just learned your lesson not to haphazardly install and remove mods. Messing around like this without paying attention will break your save sooner or later.

 

[Bornstellar]

I swear this game w/ a proper ENB still looks better than a ton of stuff coming out this year.

(Trying out T.A.Z. Visual Overhaul)

 

[Blue Ninja]

I wish I could play with an ENB, but I don't want to say goodbye to my 60fps. It's too precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.

I've got another question. What is Wyrebash used for? If I understand, its so that items from two different mods can be found out and about. Does this apply to say, Cloaks of Skyrim and Winter is Coming?

Also, how do some ENB's look so good? I have Project ENB installed with Climates of Tamriel. It look good, but I've seen setups with it look much better.

Bash is pretty much an advanced tool, imo. I've never used it myself. From my understanding, it can be used to combine mods together in the case of incompatibilities when no available patches exist. Some also use it to combine .esps and reduce the strain on their load order. Or at least, that's what I heard.

Lots of mods have patches to ensure compatibility with others, though. The example you noted, Cloaks and WiC, has a patch available on nexus, just check the downloads page of either of the mods.

As for your second question: an ungodly amount of tweaking and looking for good presets.

The Enhanced Towns and Cities/Immersive Settlements mod is causing a conflict somewhere. More specifically, the patches for it. Gonna go with the complete version and see if that allays the problem.

 

[MedIC86]

Hey all, i've tried playing skyrim with mods some time ago, didnt work out very properly. Maybe its a stupid question but is there a sort of pack/installer that gets some good mods without the hassle of going trough skyrim nexus/load order stuff etc etc...?

 

[Dance Inferno]

I started messing around with modded New Vegas yesterday and holy hell does it make the game so much more playable. Fixes a ton of bugs, improves the shooting mechanics, and an ENB improves that game a lot more than it improves Skyrim, all for minimal-to-no framerate hit (still playing at a silky smooth 60 FPS). Good stuff!

 

[Xdrive05]

It's a mod organizer like all the others but it has a functionality called "bashed patch" which can combine simpler mods or, what you've heard, the "leveled lists" included in said mods. I don't understand exactly how that all works yet, as some mods definitely show up without merging their leveled lists, but it's a reasonable thing to do if you have a bunch of equipment mods and want to make sure said equipment shows up in the hands of enemies, in chests and available for sale from merchants.

It's easy to do. Just install and open Wrye Bash and create a patch, opt to skip merging mods unless you're sure that's what you want to do and hit the "leveled lists" section. It should automatically fetch mods that have "bash tags", but not every mod has them. For example, I have Lost Library and it does not have them and needs to be added manually. Manually add all mods that you think have leveled lists (if they don't, nothing bad will happen as far as I know, Wrye Bash will simply add nothing from those mods to the patch) and hit "build patch". There are several youtube videos on this. (Though, strangely, Gopher seems to refuse to make one...)

That warning means that you've uninstalled a mod that you were using previously, as Skyrim includes content from mods in your savegame.

T5E is not a savegame cleaner, but this tool is. When you open a save with script remnants from disabled mods, it will say "X orphaned scripts found" or something to that effect. Hit the "FixScriptInstances" button to clear those. Then enter a # into the Scripts search box in the top left to filter only scripts marked with a # (which also means remnant left by uninstalled mod), then expand the tree below the search box to make sure the scripts being removed are from mods you want to remove. They will most often have logical names like everything belonging to for example Wearable Lanterns will start with a "WL_" prefix. After making sure, hit "Delete all #".

If you have no idea what mods you've removed and don't know if it's safe to clean your scripts... Well, you've just learned your lesson not to haphazardly install and remove mods. Messing around like this without paying attention will break your save sooner or later.

Thanks for the download link to fix save games. Totally worked! But the fire/sconce thing in Whiterun ended up being an ELFX issue that I couldn't resolve, so I ended up going with RLO instead, and now it's all good. Thanks again for the advice and tool info for save game fixes!

 

[lazygecko]

I may have a similar issue, Skyrim is really quiet compared to other games for me.

One thing you can try to do is purchase a cheap USB sound card from Creative or something, and try playing with the drivers for that. No garuantees that it will change of course given how badly unoptimized the game is.

Oh, and apparently it's highly recommended for Skyrim that you go to the properties for your sound device in the control panel and switch from 44.1khz 24-bit to 16-bit. Lowering the bit depth of the playback will make Skyrim less crash-prone as it takes less memory.

 

[aku:jiki]

Thanks for the download link to fix save games. Totally worked! But the fire/sconce thing in Whiterun ended up being an ELFX issue that I couldn't resolve, so I ended up going with RLO instead, and now it's all good. Thanks again for the advice and tool info for save game fixes!

No problem, I'm happy to share all this otherwise useless knowledge I've gained in learning how to mod Skyrim. Re-reading it I sound kinda harsh in that post but that's just because I was trying to stress how serious that can be so that you don't end up with a corrupted save.

Oh, and apparently it's highly recommended for Skyrim that you go to the properties for your sound device in the control panel and switch from 44.1khz 24-bit to 16-bit. Lowering the bit depth of the playback will make Skyrim less crash-prone as it takes less memory.

IIRC, that issue was solved either officially or in one of the unofficial patches.

 

[Eirulan]

Some random shots of this new ENB a lot of people are talking about atm: Elder Blood ENB (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61968/?)
I didn't spend much time with it, but tweaked some sections and the palette a bit to my tastes.

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

What texture pack do you use?

 

[Eirulan]

What texture pack do you use?

Me?
Oh I use a lot of textures, I posted a list here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=150779003&highlight=#post150779003

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

Me?
Oh I use a lot of textures, I posted a list here:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=150779003&highlight=#post150779003

Ok we use similar landscape texture packs... must be the ENB making them look different.

 

[SaganIsGOAT]

Might be a silly question but are there like mod packs for this game? Something that includes texture mods, quest mods, graphics enhancements etc that only require one install? I spent hours modding this back at the end of last year and just had to reinstall my PC and can't see myself spending all that time doing it over

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

Might be a silly question but are there like mod packs for this game? Something that includes texture mods, quest mods, graphics enhancements etc that only require one install? I spent hours modding this back at the end of last year and just had to reinstall my PC and can't see myself spending all that time doing it over

Not really since you would need to get permission from all the authors to pack them.

 

[rashbeep]

The best ENB is still Natural Lighting and Atmospherics imo.

 

[Pocky4Th3Win]

Total agree. I use NLA and a patch created by another user to fix some issues confidence man hasn't gotten to yet.

 

[Bizzquik]

I really like the way T.A.Z Visual Overhaul looks.

But I really want to see how Dahaka ENB looks when its finished. Here is a YouTube vid which demonstrates the rain effect that intrigues me.

 

[JimmyRustler]

So I just installed ENB earlier and it did have some serious effects on my performance as I couldn't hit solid 60 fps on 1080p any more. Is this normal? I mean, it looks good but I've seen better on my 970 GTX. Did I mess up some options?

This is the first time I'm modding a TES so it's kinda overwhelming.

PS: JK's city overhaul also seems kinda hardware hungry. Shit dropped my framerate a solid 20 frames down to 40 fps. WTF?

 

[NormalFish]

So I just installed ENB earlier and it did have some serious effects on my performance as I couldn't hit solid 60 fps on 1080p any more. Is this normal? I mean, it looks good but I've seen better on my 970 GTX. Did I mess up some options?

This is the first time I'm modding a TES so it's kinda overwhelming.

PS: JK's city overhaul also seems kinda hardware hungry. Shit dropped my framerate a solid 20 frames down to 40 fps. WTF?

A lot of these mods aren't optimized all that well, and value visual spectacle ("wow" factor) more than performance.

 

[SaganIsGOAT]

Not really since you would need to get permission from all the authors to pack them.

ahh bummer :/ I just remember having issues with certain mods and I wonder if it was because of Windows 8.1? Has anyone heard of that happening? I am on Win 7 Pro 64bit now so maybe things will go smoother.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Good lord those shots are gorgeous.

I have to settle for sweetfx because the frame-rate hits are just too much.
Also I have a paltry 1 gig of vram, so gotta stick to 1k textures or deal with numerous CTDs.

 

[lazygecko]

A lot of these mods aren't optimized all that well, and value visual spectacle ("wow" factor) more than performance.

Especially texture mods tend to go completely overkill on detail and not put the extra work into bringing the file size down while mitgating the quality loss as much as possible. Not every texture is really going to need a 2048px normal map with minimal compression. Not every tiny little object in the world needs a fully fleshed out HD texture either.

This is an extreme example of how inefficient some modelers and texture artists can be when they don't have any checks and balances for good performance in place. If you have a game with a lot of modded visual content, you can expect a nice chunk of that to lean closer towards that example than the original Bethesda assets. And they're all going to add up to consume tons of resources.

And that's not even getting into the audio side of thing. I took a look at some of the sounds included in that Pets of Skyrim mod, and the looping idle sound for the cats was a 5 minute long wave file with about 30 seconds of silence inbetween each meow. Other than that it's typical to find sounds that are monaural but saved in stereo, doubling the file size for no real reason.

 

[Mithos]

So I just installed ENB earlier and it did have some serious effects on my performance as I couldn't hit solid 60 fps on 1080p any more. Is this normal? I mean, it looks good but I've seen better on my 970 GTX. Did I mess up some options?

When I add ENB my fps drops from 60fps to 30-35fps, no questions asked. So I use performance versions of ENB instead (sadly loosing many effects that make stuff look good) but where I can keep the fps somewhat.

With Realvision ENB (performance):
60fps-50fps, 60fps-45fps, 60fps-30fps fluctuations momentarily when "stuff loads in", then it settles down at ~55-60fps.

 

[NormalFish]

Especially texture mods tend to go completely overkill on detail and not put the extra work into bringing the file size down while mitgating the quality loss as much as possible. Not every texture is really going to need a 2048px normal map with minimal compression. Not every tiny little object in the world needs a fully fleshed out HD texture either.

This is an extreme example of how inefficient some modelers and texture artists can be when they don't have any checks and balances for good performance in place. If you have a game with a lot of modded visual content, you can expect a nice chunk of that to lean closer towards that example than the original Bethesda assets. And they're all going to add up to consume tons of resources.

And that's not even getting into the audio side of thing. I took a look at some of the sounds included in that Pets of Skyrim mod, and the looping idle sound for the cats was a 5 minute long wave file with about 30 seconds of silence inbetween each meow. Other than that it's typical to find sounds that are monaural but saved in stereo, doubling the file size for no real reason.

Yup. Texture mods and area "overhauls" that add a million objects are the worst offenders.
**That example is fucking hilarious LOL

 

[Blue Ninja]

The best ENB is still Natural Lighting and Atmospherics imo.

That looks ridonkulous. I want to try it, but I know I'll be lucky to hit 30 fps.

If I can make my game look like that, though, I'll gladly play at 30. Is that standard NLA or has it been altered somehow?

 

[Dance Inferno]

Wow, I've never heard of NLA but that looks incredible. May have to give it a shot.

Question - what is the best way to "uninstall" an ENB? Do I just delete all the files/folders that the ENB asked me to copy into the game's folder? I'm wary of deleting all those files and unknowingly destroying the entire game in the process.

 

[Eyothrie]

Does anyone have a nice "natural" sweetfx preset they'd be willing to share? I can't make mine look the way I want

 

[Confidence Man]

If I can make my game look like that, though, I'll gladly play at 30. Is that standard NLA or has it been altered somehow?

Those pictures I think are several revisions after what I released on the Nexus. It's probably quite a bit different from what's available, and I'ts been changed even more since then. Here is that last scene as it is right now: