Grass: Skyrim's Unbeatable Problem

Post » Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:30 am

The grass in Skyrim is probably the one element that single-handedly hinders visual immersion, for two reasons:

? It doesn't reflect torch or spell light
? It isn't rendered on distant LOD terrain

As we've all seen, Skyrim looks crazy amounts of amazing with the proper grass mods installed, coupled with increasing the density. This obfuscates landscape texture patterns and makes the world look more real, both up close and from far away. Of course, if you're using realistic lighting mods, you're screwed at night, even when using a torch.

Additionally, if there were any way at all to render grass on the distant LOD terrains, I wouldn't even think to want to change the uGrids settings, which cause all sorts of mayhem when fiddled with. The worst part about looking into the distance in Skyrim is seeing those awful land textures, which, when coupled with that wonderful high grass density, look even worse at the loaded grid dividing line. (Not to mention that moment when a new grid gets loaded and you get an entire space's worth of grass pop-in, provided you've set the grass draw distance far enough away.)

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QuinDINGDONGcey
 
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Post » Sun Nov 02, 2014 11:58 pm

For grass to blend in the distance, it is best to find a distant terrain and noise texture, that blends well with the near grass. Also setting the grass distance lowee than the grid distance helps me with immerwion, since the grass crawls up slowly and no longer pops in in huge chunks. But that is peobably a discussion for the mod forum.

I have no solutions for the lighting issue though. Though i think there used to be an issue with an earlier patch version of skyrim and enb. Make sure both your inis and enb are up to date. Maybe this will reduce the issue a bit.

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Shaylee Shaw
 
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Post » Mon Nov 03, 2014 2:21 am

Even Boris hasn't been able to implement a way to get torches to light up grass, unfortunately.

I currently use a combination of noise-textured LOD landscapes and a heavy static ENB DOF blur to mask the lack of grass in the distance.

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Khamaji Taylor
 
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