I dont want something like Oblivion Graphics Extender. I just want something easier to install and not mess my game up as badly.
I have qarl texture pack and all natural mods like water, weather, habitat ,hdr and vegetation.
Also meat which improves the textures of weapons and items.
My (humble) opinions:
First off: Force Anisotropic filtering on your Graphics card, to perhaps 8X. This really makes a remarkable difference to the look of the game.
Weapons and Armor:http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1179485-relz-insanitys-retexture-releases
Linked to thread, as he has upload a lot (possibly all now) re-textures for weapons and armor, but not in a single set.
These are all textures improvements, rather than changing the textures themselves.
Clothing:http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7487
Natural Environments Mods: I recoomend dropping all of them except for Habitat.
Water:Liquid Water
Requires OBGE, but you don't have to do any tweaking with it. Just install OBGE Core and Liquid Water and that's it.
Alternatives include:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23064
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37794
(Enhanced Water was the commonly preferred one before Liquid water, but Realistic Water has been updated a few times since and become popular - I never used Realistic, so can't judge.)
Vegetation:I don't use any but apparently http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23783 is superior to Natural Vegetation.
Weather:The clear winner would be:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18305
Add to this:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19628
and:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34199 (still a work in progress, being actively worked on, and very very nice in the cities already done!)