First stable version 0.4 released. Find it on TES Nexus.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34199

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Let's face it, we all like Oblivion to be immersive. Some of us just like a bit more realism, others like to add tons of mods which change how the game works in order to make it as immersive as possible. One thing that's a real let down in vanilla Oblivion are interiors. They look great, but day or night, rain or shine, they always had the same level of light inside them. This, to me, was extremely un-immersive.

All Natural's spectacular Natural Interiors came along, which allowed you to see through the windows of interiors, and the light levels and weather depended on the weather and time of day outside. This added a lot of realism. But you still had a simple problem. Every time you looked out of the window, you saw a void. Nothing. This mod looks to change that.

With a similar concept to the now abandoned "Windows to the World", this mod aims to add statics from around the area into the interior cells. This makes it so that when you look through the windows, you see the town you're in. Sounds great, but what about performance? In order to make it as performance friendly as possible, only statics from around the actual windows are added. So if there's no window facing east, there will be no statics to the east. Whilst this may sound strange, from within the interior it looks absolutely fine, as you simply can't see that area. Why add something which you won't see anyway? Along with this, any unnecessary flora and rocks have been removed, along with all NPCs and actual lights.

For an example of what I mean, take these two screenshots.

http://a.imageshack.us/img576/4774/37240279.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img820/8583/70462898.png

Can you see the difference? Such a simple concept makes the game so much more realistic. Nothing beats looking out of your house windows to see the outside world in its full glory.
http://a.imageshack.us/img842/9836/87206988.png

At the moment only a few Anvil building are done. However I'm looking at finishing Anvil within the next few weeks, and then moving on to the other cities.

More screenshots will be coming. If you have any questions regarding the mod, feel free to ask them

Additional screenshots from within the thread:

http://a.imageshack.us/img44/7513/52957120.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img822/2338/75065183.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img412/4310/40814278.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img843/4774/48491304.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img828/148/85991746.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img839/7745/49511814.png

It's an ambitious project, but if you're able to pull it off it will be an incredible mod. Best of luck .

Cool. I assume that when it rains outside it doesn't actually rain in the interior version, to avoid the problem with raindrops falling through the ceiling?

Looks really good :goodjob:

Looking forward to see more screenshots.

Keep up the great work, SomeWelshGuy :foodndrink:

Thank you It is indeed ambitious, but working city by city should stop it from being overwhelming


No, rain doesn't actually fall, that's a feature of All Natural. All Natural makes the windows transparent and makes the weather appear in the interior. So even though I'm not actually using any All Natural resources, it is still a requirement to use this mod.


Thanks a lot Your support is appreciated

I`m using Bananasplit Better Cities, will it be compatible ?

It'll be completely compatible, but you'll see the vanilla cities through the windows as opposed to the better cities variants. It's not game breaking but you might notice some differences between the insides and outsides if you look hard enough. However, I will be making a Better Cities patch which will make the interiors reflect the Better Cities variants if enough people need it

If anyone would like to put their name forward for beta testing in the next few weeks, then I'd appreciate it

Like the sound of that, and I think many players use Better Cities :shifty:

some house mods already do this - look up some of yevic's newer mods. they replicate the exterior and keep what is needed for the view.
some mods dealt with this by adding a curved image pane outside the window - no movement of trees, skies etc but it does save fps and add a view.

if you have a 360degree view via windows on all sides, FPS is a killer. u might wish to invest in some seriously heavily editted meshes and textures (half a barrel or disect out half the IC city district path mesh might be the way to do it).
all in all, not impossible but very difficult to get a good performance.

Thanks for your response. Performance is always a consideration, and because of this I'm only using the most noticeable meshes. For example, around a typical house I might have 4 or so house meshes, quite a few "landscape replicating" meshes, and maybe a tree or two. Most flora, containers and unnecessary statics are cut out, along with all NPCs and light sources. I've noticed no performance decrease at all on my mid-end machine, as the amount of meshes that are being used are completely minimal. Performance might decrease for some users, that's expected, but it can't decrease by a lot because there's still a LOT less stuff in the interiors than there is within the cities themselves. If you get decent FPS within the city walls, then you'll be absolutely fine with this mod.

A few more screenshots for you guys. Remember if you want to be a beta tester for this mod then feel free to just tell me

http://a.imageshack.us/img44/7513/52957120.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img822/2338/75065183.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img412/4310/40814278.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img843/4774/48491304.png
http://a.imageshack.us/img828/148/85991746.png

Wow! Extremely nice! Will this mod work with Enhanced Weather alone? I'm pretty reluctant to install such a big mod like Weather: All Natural...

Thank you Unfortunately this mod relies on All Natural as that's the one that incorporates all the internal weather. If you install All Natural, but then only use the Enhanced Weather module as opposed to all of them, then you'll have exactly the same weathers as you have now, just with the bonus functionality of weather indoors

Looking good!
Even if it takes a toll on the FPS we have allot more of it indoors so I don't see a problem with that really. And since you are not adding all the clutter that is in the worldspace (as in spoons, apples etc.) you still have great freedom adding houses to look at from the inside before the frames will get as bad as being outside.

The only problem for me is the CPU toll oblivion takes on the computer. With collision optimized meshes it is all the other stuff rather than the eye-candy that slows down my FPS.

Cheers!

Thanks

In terms of CPU usage, it's quite low. There's no extra AI packages, no NPCs and no light sources added. These are the things that really take their toll on the CPU. As it's pretty much just statics and a few trees, then the FPS and CPU usage effects will be minimal.

Im willing to test this mod if you would like i been waiting for something like this for awhile now.

No problem at all. I'll add you to the beta tester list and will PM you a beta esp within a week or two

ok thanks.

Another screenshot. The view from your suite if you rent a room in the Count's Arms.

http://a.imageshack.us/img839/7745/49511814.png

Nice view , love the glass texture. :icecream:

This looks great man! I never thought this would be possible.
This will be one of those must have mods :hehe:

The glass texture is from the All Natural mod, but I'll agree it's a nice view


Thanks for your support

Time to learn how to make it work, then

Very interesting. There was a little talk of doing this in All Natural itself, but there's just a problem of scale - we haven't even got SI Natural Interiors done yet, and there's a huge amount of work involved in trying to do this to every interior with windows. You seem to know that though, so I'll spare the tirade and just give you kudos for trying.

You said that this is dependent on AN - I trust that you're 'just' adding stuff outside the windows, using our modified interior building meshes and climate settings, etc. as normal to prevent overlap between the mods, right?

If you can release a whole city done, and then continue on with the work expanding to other cities, I will be impressed, and barring any problems I have with it (after testing the release), I'd almost certainly put a recommendation in the AN readme, because what you've shown us so far looks very good.

If I can offer some advice, it would be to take things slowly (to avoid burn-out), and just focus on adding support to another city per release. Since there are 7 cities excluding Kvatch (which is difficult because of the MQ and rebuild mods) and the IC (which is just huge in comparison, but thankfully has relatively few, small windows), I'd probably start at a v0.4 release (containing Anvil), and then work your way to 1.0 (containing the 7 cities), then perhaps 1.5-1.7 for the IC and Kvatch. That way, users are happy because they get a big expansion every release, and you are happy because a big expansion means you can take longer before people lose interest, and you get a decent chunk of feedback on what you're doing with each release.

So just keep up the good work. :thumbsup: :foodndrink:

EDIT: Just saw the request for testers. I might be able to find the time to run around a bit, if you end up short on numbers.

Thanks a lot for your reply, it's appreciated

I spoke to Arthmoor yesterday about it, and he asked the same question. You are correct in that I'm not actually using any All Natural resources, or changing anything from within All Natural. It's just that the interior weather and AN meshes are required in order for you to be able to, well, see out of the windows in the first place. Like you said, I'm just adding the meshes to give a "city view" from within the interior cell, I'm not touching anything AN in any way. Indeed, the reason I'm developing it separately as opposed to approaching the AN team is because, like you said, the sheer scale and work involved within All Natural at the moment is huge.

You're also spot on about the plan I was going to follow, releasing one city at a time. It'll not only help sustain interest and keep me sane, but I'll be able to, like you said, take any feedback users have aboard.

Thanks wrinklyninja I'll send you a beta esp when I feel it's polished enough for some testing

Very good idea, I was just thinking about it the other day to so I'm glad to see something is being done about it. +1 for the BC version when you've finished the vanilla version (that is if you're willing to redo almost everything :whistling: )