Are there any mods that can make the water look nice without needing MGE? I am not against MGE, I would love to do it, but I must be installing it wrong, because every time I get MGE my game CTD's and I must reinstall.

I don't think so. The default pixel shaded water looks pretty good already though.

It's possible to alter some ini settings, like the number of displayed rain ripples, but that doesn't change the actual quality of the water.

I don't think so either. The water does use a certain texture so I suppose it would be possible to retexture it (on the other hand if it would be possible I guess someone would made some so far but who knows), but in general, not much can be done.

jarrad made a few i use his light blue one makes everything cheesy and piratie

I also use Jarrod's http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2395. He also has http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=181. It looks okay on my system, but nothing like MGE.

Just keep in mind that those are for systems that don't support pixel shaders. They will look substantially worse than the stock water if your graphics card supports shaders.

You can do some decent amount of tweaking to the pixel shaded water within the INI. Several years ago I posted a thread about my efforts in tweaking the pixel shaded water. I cant exactly say how "realistic" my tweaks were anymore, however I know its not possible to come close to what MGE can do. Just poke around a bit in the INI.

Well then does anyone have tips on how to get MGE to work?

Have you tried following tutorial from official site of MGE? I did that when I couldn't configure it the 1st time and it worked. And make sure you meet the requirements (have the supportive C++, net 2, direct x needed etc) otherwise it will not work.

Thanks, Chaka. I followed the tutorial, installed a water shader and got distant land working. Morrowind looks amazing! Any MGE shaders you recommend while I'm at it?

How much do you hate your PC?

Phal's Sunshafts Shader (not too hard on performance, http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/57416-1273230944.jpg http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot69-1.jpg)

I think it's included in the download of all the latest revisions.

http://mgeshaderlibrary.wikispaces.com/Shaders (Relatively large performance hit, but the effect is very noticable:

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot72-2.jpg/http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot71-2.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot152.jpg/http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot151.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot22-1.jpg/http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot21-1.jpg


And while not a shader, with MGE you can use http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8378.

What version of MGE are you using?



If it is one of the newer revisions (161 and up), then you don't need to install an external water shader. In fact, doing so will probably just mess up your water -- instead, on the Distant Land Tab, select Shader Model 3.0 water and Phal's Improved Water Shader will be active.

If it is another older revision, make sure that the water shader you installed is meant to be used with that revision, otherwise you will probably end up with something else broken.



Besides water shaders, the only "must have" in my opinion is Phal's sunshaft rays v2. With newer MGE revisions, the underwater caustics shader is built in, so that's no longer necessary to add with the shader editor screen. SSAO can indeed look very nice, but I prefer to use it for indoors only (does anyone know if the shader flags problem still exists?). Depth of Field isn't really my style.

I find it hard to get a good compromise with HDR in Morrowind, but bloom can be fantastic when applied correctly. I still haven't found the "perfect bloom" yet but trueBloom is usually pretty nice. It has a sky mask, which is nice: prevents the sky from just turning white like in a lot of other bloom shaders. You'll have to dig around and see what, if any, suit your preferences. It is relatively easy to get a shader that looks good for screenshots, but really, you will want to find something that looks great all the time while playing.


Good luck!

I did get a sun shader, I don't know if it was Phal's, though. I also got animated grass. And now I will probably get SSAO. Thank povuholo. ^_^


I believe it's 3.8.0b

The beta versions are pretty stable in general and has some new features like dynamic water ripples, and also has performance improvements.

So I'd say it would be worth a shot to try http://sourceforge.net/projects/morrgraphext/files/Beta%20Releases/MGE%203.8%2B%20SVN%20builds/mge3.8.2-rev.0178.7z/download