I come across this picture on Reddit http://i.imgur.com/PQxTHpn.jpg and wanna know someone else thoughts besides me. Does someone things this look better even that the vanilla version?

Dealing with 3D for about 10 years now to me personally it looks like a bad render from some 3D apps without FG and GI, or with some basic random settings.

I don't know do people actually research little about lightning or any other type of thing before they go into modding, or do they just increase/decrease values random?

It's like when you do this type of mods in general you don't want to have a pure white and a pure black color. And on this picture you can clearly see that the clouds are burning, so as the yellow walls on the right side of the picture.

In the back the trees and building is being eaten by the black color, never gonna figure out why do people think if something new pop out that is automatically better.

well if it's a VERY sunny day and the ocean around vivec has dried out, it's just right.

else, it's overexposed and underfogged

http://eskipaper.com/images/lighting-wallpaper-4.jpg

You mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighting. Try not to confuse those two.

Besides that, everyone has his own preferences about how he wants his game to look. Some like it realistic, others prefer a more stylized look. There is nothing wrong with that. It's possible that these settings were only meant for screenshots and not for playing, or that it only looks like this in very special circumstances. We don't know what the rest of this modder's game looks like, and if he is happy with it, why bother?

It is better than the burned paper look for sure.

Back then controlling bloom shaders was hard. Like when you want more bloom on fire, the sky would also get affected. Things are more robust now. In the end, lack of HDR is the culprit. In an ideal situation we would have HDR textures for the skybox.

EDIT: Is this a stealth GI request?

Ah I blame my english.

IDK, to me that lighting on the picture is not very good, but I like some new stuff that I saw here, new shaders and dof.

Yea, screenshots are always very subjective. Monitor settings can have an impact on it, compression can have an impact on it, and the list rolls on all the way down to personal tastes. On the same note, you are of course entitled to whatever opinion you may have about it as well. Just important to keep in mind that it is all subjective though.

this kind of relativism works well on an intellectual level.

it can't be all there is to that though. if it was, we'd be utterly unable for _any_ judgement about _any_ art -

still though, like it or not, there still _are_ things like "good" and "bad" art, and even though there's lots of grey, and lots of tastes and subjectivity involved, there's something like common tendencies, as well as countless pieces you'd get about 100% agreement rates about if they're "good" or "bad" art.

(and pls note that this is _not_ about saying "what the majority thinks is good is good", it's about there's something like common, "built in" measurements of judgement that pretty much every individual shares)

and of course you can say all that, or "good" and "bad" themselves, are just more subjective categories, but that's just semantic escapism, on this level, there's no point in discussing _anything_, because _no_ term whatsover can ever withstand this (edit: except mathematical ones. that's why the robots will win.

(and if you think that's all just bs, just put your focus from visual art to, like, music or computer games to see it's not.)

...and for art like the specific pic that thread is about, which depicts some kind of physical reality, this applies just the more, since we all got a primal idea of what works (and esp. works together) in such a physical reality. where i think it doesn't for the example at hand. and this is definitely something that's debatable and not some intangible "subjective tastes" vapor that makes _any_ discussion about _any_ art pointless and impossible.

Not really what I said - I even went so far as to explicitly state that whatever sentiment someone wants to have is absolutely valid still. I also pointed out many other facets in relation to a screenshot that impact what you are seeing beyond personal sentiment that play a very major roll in things. The way the OP was phrased though, it comes across more combative in my opinion: "Does someone things this look better even that the vanilla version?" is used in a derogatory context, when clearly whoever took that screen shot and setup the game to look that way absolutely feels that it looks better than vanilla (thus why they did it). So, I was simply pointing out the subjective nature of the situation of looking at a screen shot. Maybe that washed out look being discussed was mainly caused by compression and looks much better in game. Texture modders make this statement all the time about the screens of their textures ("you need to see what they look like in game" is a very common phrase to see). And there is a reason for that.

That is also not to say that constructive discussion can stem from review of a screenshot either. Of course the work can be critiqued and assessed for what it is. The way you frame things is important, though, and again was all I was getting at (not some semantic or logistic debate).

yeah, the op left pretty little doubt about their opinion on the pic