The same thing isn't happening with the picture on the forums and it also isn't happening with screen shots other people has posted. Regardless, I calibrated my monitor and it was pretty spot on. Gamma was off by a hair, but everything else was spot on. I guess I should turn off that stuff that is only for OpenGL then?


Which mod(s) would you suggest?
I liked using "Realistic Lighting Without Post-Processing" but now it is far too dark indoors and also it just doesn't look pretty inside like it did before. Outside it looks nice, though.


My current problem is how dark things are:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/darkkkk.png

Open \Users\Gaming\Documents\My Games\Skyrim/SkyrimPrefs.ini

What are the following values:


fBrightLightColorB=
fBrightLightColorG=
fBrightLightColorR=
fGamma=

Mine was located here : C:\Users\Rachael\Documents\My Games\Skyrim


fBrightLightColorB=1.0000
fBrightLightColorG=1.0000
fBrightLightColorR=1.0000
fGamma= 0.8800

Yah that was the first one I ever tried but yah it seems to react too much to the current light you're standing in to govern the whole room, wierd things like that. The ENBs are definitely better at those tasks. I've been trying a bunch of them but what I think I'm settling on is this one here:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4463
I liked that it had specific attempts to better the shadows which are otherwise hamstrung by the shadow engine's limits.

Other then make sure skyboost is in play, that's a monsterous CPU benefit and then just stroll around through the mods available and pick what appeals to you. Personally I really liked what the Tytanis Megamod offered as well, its a nice mix of a bunch of different once but what really appealed to me was the integration of extended crafting and righting alternative mounts. Oh sorry right and the two lush mobs, lush grass and lush trees just add so much depth to the outdoors without even really impacting performance since they're mostly just amping the meshes not the textures themselves. The end results though are great:
http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/5329/shaevynbearhearth04.jpg
I mean that's no logner just little tufts of grass here and there, that's full and lush blankets of the stuff. A real game changer and quite the experience the first time say a sabretooth gets the jump on you because of it.

Hmm, well your gamma is darker then mine so the only thing I can think of is that it's a bug. I don't think many modern games even support 16bit any more because there is just not need to support it.

I don't know what skyboost is. Also I searched for Tytanis Megamod and nothing came up-- but I'm not looking for a mod that changes game play.

That screen cap of things being too dark was with the lighting mod turned off, by the way.

I've tried two different ENB mods and neither are working. I've never had a problem with mods before. I'm installing these through the Nexus mod manager and I've been taking screen caps and there is no change. My other mods are working

Oh these guys work a little differently, download them manually and you'll notice they're a few dlls and config files, they have to go right into the root skyrim folder where tesv.exe is and they'll just be hooked into the loading from there. Keep track of what files belong to the current ENB mod you're using (they vary greatly) and if you want to try a different make sure you delete all the current one's files from that folder first.

Oh and here's the link to the skyboost mod, the download link is at the bottom of the first post.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1329960-skyboost-topic-4/
Its like the ENBs where you just download the file and extract the two files inside into your root skyrim folder and they'll automatically be part of things. It is a sheer performance enhancer and the going gains tend to be between 25-50% more FPS due to how much it helps the game use the CPU more efficiently.

wooooahhh skyboost took me from 30fps (on the top step in whiterun looking at the tree) to 45... Sheesh wasn't expecting that.. Thanks

Yah its pretty rediculous eh? To think two guys just reverse engineered the skyrim executable to figure out how to make those optmizations count too, makes Beth's dev team look pretty bad any ways So I'd say you're good to go now, with those core mods in place you've got the essential base build to play Skyrim as it was meant to be on the PC,
Cheers.

Banding could be due 8 bit HDR calculations, if the game is using that. We have the same effect in Arma2/OA when running 8 bit HDR (low) but goes away when switching to 16 bit (medium) or 32 bit (high) HDR. The penalty in that game are some significant performance hits on some systems, plus some pure graphical bugs associated with it.

Thanks for the help..

The brightness thing is a huge problem. I installed the ENB mod you recommended and I really like it, except I really can't see anything most of the time! It isn't the mod because it was pretty much like this before.

I've tried turning the brightness up and it just makes the environment brighter, but does not change my character. Also, I messed around with my monitors contrast (even though I know it is correctly calibrated) and that doesn't help either.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/1TESV2012-01-0816-33-09-76.png

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/1TESV2012-01-0816-34-00-20.png

Hrm, those mods due tend to focus more on decreasing the over all ambient light in favour of specific sources like the sun/moon or other local light sources so darkened when looking at the side not facing the sun does kind of run par for the course but yah that's pretty darn dark in those screen shots. Btw you can toggle the ENB mod on and off in-game using shift-F12, if you find with the mod off that you can see your char better you could look at editing the enbseries.ini and finding things like 'ambient light' and raising those numbers (effectively everything is just a little brighter and less dependent on the sun/moon)

It's good to know I can disable it with that.. but it takes a screen shot every time I press F12! How do I change that?

Also, changing ambient light worked! Although somehow I have the problem with the smoke screen again... But it isn't the AL because when I lower that back down the smoke is still messed up ... grrrrrrr

Hrm is that Skyrim/steam or something like fraps taking those screen shots, if its fraps you can open up its control panel and under the FPS tab change its control key, that's how I do it and I'm not 100% sure how to adjust the Skyrim/steam method. That's the intro smoke that's bugging you eh? I never really liked it either and I've actually installed this mod http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4624 here which replaces the smoke with snow flakes to side step it.

Well I'm using the intro smoke as an example because when it's like that I can see color banding in game

Hrm, give this mod a try then:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=836

I'm still getting my brain around the colour bending concept, its those visible lines within the intro fog that kind of form rings contoured to its outter edges right? (not much of a visuals technical person so just wanna make sure I'm looking at the right stuff)

Might be wise to figure out your graphical problems before installing mods. Try downloading someone elses .ini file and see if that makes a difference.

I did have some texture problems which were sorted out by disabling AA and AF, and then forcing 16x AF through Catalyst control centre and using the in-game FXAA, however I'm using an ATI card so changing those may not make a difference.

this is color banding http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9582/screenshot12244.png

It's those lines in the sky where you can see it step down between shades

It's some kind of brightness/gamma issue, there is no need to try all these random mods you keep throwing at the Op. The logo is bright as well, so it's either a driver bug or a game bug.

Ahhhhh okay now I know what you're talking about. Kay I just confirmed I don't see any evidence of those in my own game so lessie here, sec I'll update again.

I disabled all mods for now

Kay I found a nice clear patch of sky and I can see the same sort of banding in my own sky, looking into what influences it. I guess its just something I've never noticed before.
ED: You know, I kind thing they've just always been there, like even with the fallout games.

I think it's worse for some people. Right now my biggest issue is how dark I am. Turning up the ambient lighting helped, but it still needs tweaking.

Could just try out a different ENB based mod, I picked that particular one because it was aiming to minimize the amount of ambient 'light from nothing' and would create very dark and very bright contrasted lighting depending on where you were, This one for instance has been picking up popularity pretty fast too http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5253

If you want to try it just remember to extract all the current ENB mod's files else this other one may untentionally try to use some of them. I'll warn though I found it also over-saturated all the colours, things like torches were too deep of a red and many of the flowers just started looking very out of place.