I have a new rig that just kicks oblivions butt and looks great on my 42 inch panasonic TV. I love it. But now that I can run it really well, I am trying to decide what to add to it to make it even more visually appealing.

Is QTP3 the standard? Or should I just go with the QTP3 redimized? I remember hearing at one point on here that the redimized one looked the same and performed better. Right now performance is imepccable, but if they are the same, I might as well go with redimized to keep it efficient.

What other high res texture packs do you guys recommend? Is Oblivion Graphic Extender something worth getting to give me a more graphically enjoyable experience? Now that I can handle all of these things, I want opinions on what else to add here. (im looking for graphical enhancements at the moment, but any other suggestions are welcomed as well :armscrossed: )




On an enjoyable side note, since I am used to playing oblivion on a modest computer, I enjoyably started a multiple person fight and ran outside into the wide open and didnt experience any lag or stuttering at 1080p with all the settings cranked. After having the game dip into like the 5 fps range on my old computer in these scenarios, I almost shed a tear of joy. 8)

what distance are you sitting from the screen? I also have a 42' panasonic plasma 1080p but play Oblivion at 720p because at that distance ( 3.5 meters approximately ) you don't even notice a difference, it would take a 50+ screen to notice

definitely go with Redimized, looks just as good with half the VRAM usage. even if you have 2 gigs as I do, there's no reason to stress the system more without a very good reason ( as you add mods you'll soon notice the real bottleneck is not your hardware, but the crappy, unoptimized, rushed, you name it, game engine. that's why both Fallout 3 and Skyrim run a lot better )

other great texture replacers to go alongside with QTP3:

get CorePC's vibrant textures, and install them BEFORE QTP3 so that they get overwritten by it. reason, they include some stuff that QTP3 doesn't ( trees, grass, sky, oblivion realms )

be sure to get this after qtp3, it makes a big difference : http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/26756 and this while you're at it http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/31595

( somebody posted a fix for the pixelated fort floor not long ago, but it's on mediafire and I can't find it ) if you want it you could PM me and I can email it, or maybe that somebody will post the link again if you're lucky

other good stuff:

diverse grasses is cool, I'd also get RPGblackdragon's trees ( they look awesome ) and his lowtripolygrass ( short-long version type 1, more variety AND improves fps in grassy areas, no reason not to use it imho )

Mythic textures series ( mythic creatures, mythic animals etc. )

Oblivion Hires textures

check TOTO ( oblivion texture overhaul ) http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/obliviontextureoverhaul.html for some more goodies

Improved Sky Texture by Xerus

Brumbek's Sky Pack

Mikal's textures!! improved doors and flora, improved trees and flora 1 and 2 ( love em )

enhanced vegetation, and xtudo's darker trunks fix

Xerus' distant land textures.

Unique Signs.

optimized distantland max 50% could save you a couple FPS with no visual difference. install after UOP and before UL.

I'll post others if they come to mind.



if you can be bothered to learn how to use it, MPGUI + TES4LL + TES4QLOD will allow you to generate awesome looking distant land meshes and textures.




about OBGE, it's definitely a must-have. Liquid Water looks glorious and it actually runs way better than vanilla water with their performance-killing reflections.

it also gives you way better anisotropic filtering and antialiasing than you can force through drivers, and if you've got a killer GPU ambient occlusion and indirect ligthing will make the game look photorealistic ( I wish I had that kind of horsepower O.O )

That's a pretty good post Gekko!

I'm batman
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1362201-relz-oscuros-oblivion-overhaul-135-public-beta/page__view__findpost__p__20839821

that's it, thanx. bookmarked

I could not get OBGE AA filters to work better than setting AA and AF in the ATI Control Panel. Particularly horizontal lines, like steps/stairs, were not smoothed with the OBGE filters. And you cannot use both, since OBGE prevents the ATI driver over-rides from working. How did you get OBGE AA to work better?

For textures, I recommend HGEC Female Body and Roberts Male body replacers. Go http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/searchresults/?cat=29&order=DESC&orderby=OLD_endorsemants&page=2 and wade through the mods to find ones you like.

I did not like QTP3. Be sure to follow the directions for creating an OMOD and installing it with OBMM, so you can easily uninstall it if you don't like it.

well if you're used to MSAA 4x for example then shader-based AA could look worse than that yes. of course shader-based AA unlike MSAA has very minimal performance hit so it's still worth it imho.

also MSAA doesn't work on transparencies, so it doesn't work on foliage and grass for example. adaptive AA would do that, but for me it caused grass to disappear when watched at certain angles. supersampling as usual looks awesome, but kills performance.

all in all, OBGE's SMAA has very good image quality and excellent performance, did you try that?

Out of curiousity, why not?

some people dislike the photorealistic textures as they look out of place, and prefer CorePC's vibrant set

Many QTP3 textures were too shiny for me. They reflected too much light. The dirt walls and floors of caves were too reflective. They should be like flat paint, not semi-gloss. Some were too dark for my tastes too. They looked unnatural.

wow this is all really good stuff. Thanks a ton Gekko64. I am definitely starting to get stuff build here and put together into a way I like it. I'll definitely be using many of those suggestions.

Now that I have some things rolling, whats your opinion of using Wrye Bash and Oblivion Mod Manager together? Yay or nay? I have a bunch of omods left over from my old laptop that I put on a flash drive to use later, (and my internet is slow, so any redownloading avoidance is nice lol) But I want to learn and employ Wrye bash as well.

So do those two work fairly well together? You seem to be someone with lots of mods and experience testing so I'd like to know the best configuration.

This question comes up periodically. You might find most of the answers to your concerns in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1368706-obmm-alternative-or-solution thread.

-Dubious-

what Dubiousness said in that thread about OBMM vs BAIN

some more goodies:

Better Rainbows

Phitt's Autumn Trees

Phitt's Falling Stars

Glowier Nirnroots

not a texture replacer, but Better Dungeons works miracles for the caves, and deserves all the recognition it can get. it's an ongoing project with overhaul compatibility in mind. mmm, tasty!

another personal favourite of mine: Talos Bridge Gatehouse. oh so pretty. and while you're at it, Better Daedric Shrines, Better Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary and Better Abandoned House.

I really shouldn't mention All Natural but I will anyway because it makes a huge difference. unique landscapes and better cities, also bloody obvious but still.

enjoy your pimped Oblivion and let us know if you need moar help