Updated the main post. Version 1.6 is live (for a few days so far) and has a lot more choice in it.

yesssss!

Can't wait to try this when I get home tonight. You da man pluto

1.6 looks awesome!

I sort've forgot the download link.. It's there now.

Thanks for 1.6 Update

1.5 - Sometimes I love it, sometimes I do not, depending on enviroment etc..Sometimes it was too dark or too dull,

But thanks 1.6 light options Now I can play around with choice's..

Did 1.6 make things a little brighter in interiors, or was it just a repackage. Some interiors seem brighter to me.

1.5b did, yes.

I notice this too...in fact...
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/8089/reallybright2.jpg
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3746/reallybright.jpg

I find it funny that people were complaining about it being too dark. I think I may have the opposite problem in this case. NOTE: Everything else seems to be dark where appropriate (nights, areas with no lights).

Hoooly balls that is so bright it hurt my eyes to just look at those pictures @_@

There's a new version up which fixes that.

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/6646/notbright2.jpg...http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/6545/notbright.jpg?

Thanks Plutoman, what adverse effects will this have in other places or was this a localized fix?

It was a localized fix, luckily Whiterun and a couple other cities do have their own imagespaces/lighting templates.

And thank 747823, he's done the last couple updates.

Hey Pluto, something weird I've noticed with exteriors,

The player seems to generate a 'glow' in a radius of about 10ft. Things seem a lot more saturated in this radius around the player. Particularly obvious on the tundra (or other areas with the 'orange' shrubs) on a bright day.

Using "RL - Exterior brighter nights.esp" and "RL - Lights" both 1.6
(though disabling Lights still does it, seems to be the main plugin)

I've noticed something similar on the Tundra at night. Some shrubs/bushes glow on their own. Its as though they have a light underneath them, causing their branches to be bathed in light.

I was in Redbelly Mine last night and it seemed unusually bright. The mine is in the small village of Shor's Stone. You might want to pay it a visit and see if this mod is working properly there.

Does the decreased lighting have any impact on sneaking?

Should have been fixed.


Yep.


First I've heard of it. I know there's some rendering issues the game has normally, I think that's a problem in vanilla but it's shown more with the lighting changes (sort of like RWT and some of the odd water texture splits, and other things like that). I don't think it's easily fixable. Try the new version though, and see if it helps.

Would this dimmed torches mod function ok with your mod or does your mod already alter torchs? http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6319 I like this a lot

Just load that mod lower than this one.

Hey there, just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this mod when I tried it out. The changes are brilliant.
I do have two concerns with it though, and in the end I deactivated it again. I think they have already been adressed here, but I wanted to give my opinion nevertheless:

1) You seem to have removed ambient lighting from all interiors. In some places, this works okay, but in others it seems wrong. There are now areas in dungeons that are pitch black, even though they are near a light source. The lighting in many shops looks wrong, people wouldn't live and sell things in such dark places. The problem here is that the initial reasoning - "light must come from a source, if it doesn't it's unrealistic" - is wrong. Light basically comes from everywhere, every object that you can see is visible because it emits light. Ambient lighting is a very good and very close approximation of real-life physics. The reason why the shadow behind an object in a room with one light source isn't pitch black is exactly this - ambient lighting.
The problem is simply that it is overdone in Skyrim. It is often so bright that the scenery iss missing contrasts and the nice shadows that they put in the game aren't even visible - the throne in Dragonsreach comes to mind.
So what I'm looking for right now would be a solution that is exactly in the middle of vanilla Skyrim and your mod: If the ambient lighting was at 50% of its original strength, it would be perfect for me, I believe.

2) The fact that this mod adresses the way sneaking works... that's nice, but it inevitably makes sneaking much, much easier. I mean, there aren't any places as of yet where you add any lighting, you just remove it. So there are more places where it gets easier to sneak. The problem is that sneaking is already way too easy in Skyrim. I'm not actually complaining here, I like the fact that I can hide in shadows and enemies might stare right at me without seeing me. But if this effect is further enhanced, it just becomes ridiculous. The only solution for me here would be a mod that reduces the effect of the Sneak skill which counteracts the changes from this mod, and I have to say, "that's a bit excessive don't you think"?

Well, this is my opinion, basically I'd really like a version of this mod that does not affect Sneaking and doesn't completely remove ambient lighting. That'd be greatly appreciated.
By the way, concerning your plans to add light sources: Can this be optional as well? I really like the idea behind this mod that it doesn't affect performance one bit. And light sources are always a big performance hit, take "Real Lights" for Oblivion as an example, I simply couldn't play with that mod installed, until someone came along and removed lots of the additional light sources.

In any case, great work, and I hope you see this post simply as the constructive criticism that it's intended to be!

Actually light isn't emmited from everything; it is, however, reflected off of just about everything. It is this reflection of light off of objects that gives the semblance of ambient lighting.

(I think) Pluto has done a great job capturing a realistic lighting environment. Perhaps you should provide some photos of problem areas? It makes it a lot easier for tweaks and adjustments to be made.

An optional version of the mod with interior ambient lighting halfway between the ridiculous vanilla strength and the near zero strength used in this mod would be a great idea. That version would be useful in areas like that http://i.imgur.com/C0Wvs.jpg on the skyrim nexus forum thread, where the game design is missing light sources from the window and the candles and http://i39.tinypic.com/2vx5ekx.jpg, but the removal of which with this mod results in a pitch black environment next to some supposed light sources. This "mostly realistic lighting with some fakery to cover up design goofiness" version would be a good compromise to use until we have the ultimate "truly realistic lighting with corrected light sources, light propagation shader and real HDR rendering" version ready.

Dying for a mod that'll do this, if it ends up being anything like Real Lights mod for Oblivion it'll improve the game's atmosphere so much.

There's several points to make.

1) Make sure you are using the latest version. There are varied optionals, so you might give them a try. There's also the possibility of using only exterior changes, for example.
2) The problem inherently lies in Oblivion's lighting system. The only way to fix it is to have proper HDR; 747823 is writing that right now, he's been learning the shader language to write a specific shader to work with RLWPP. This has the advantage of a shader made to work with the game's lighting, instead of a shader made to work against and counteract the game's lighting.
3) With scripting, it'd be possible to write some scripts for options - to dynamically change the lighting for everyone's use. Or an ini file, for example, for users to set their own ambient values. The only way to create optionals right now is to crank through hundreds of lighting templates and imagespaces.
4) Sneaking - try out the Sneaking Only tweaks in my PISE mod. It's really intended for use with stuff like this. It edits the multipliers used in sneaking, to balance out the whole LOS thing. It's pretty bad in vanilla, too - you can sit in the light in front of someone and they won't notice sometimes... It really needs to be the true light levels edited, though, as otherwise the NPC's then get a direct advantage over the player (it's very immersion breaking to see perfect archer aim through pitch-black darkness). The sneaking itself needs to be balanced, not the light levels.

Plutoman, I'm using the latest version and I have noticed the optional plugins, but they don't adress this issue. I'm also not interested in an exterior-only mod, because I do think that the interiors should be improved (actually more so than the exteriors). My point was basically: by removing all ambient lighting, you've gone from one extreme to another, and both of them feel unrealistic to me. That's why I'd like something in between.
I was hoping you'd agree when I backed it up with physics. I'm not so much interested in optional versions, I was more hoping to generally change your point of view in regards to this. But well, yeah, scripting will certainly give people more customization options.

Sorry, but that's the same thing. The photons still get absorbed and then re-emitted by the surfaces.