Oh. I wasn't seriously suggesting the player be blinded upon a serious light change; I was just saying that it's what would normally happen as an illustration for the "having your eyes adjust to differing light levels" thing. It could happen a lot, and it could svck if you're sneaking around and someone tosses a light spell on you, but it's an extra level of challenge for those who like it. I wouldn't mind seeing it as an extra esp sometime.

I discovered the auto night-eye effect by accident. It triggered for my Ohmes-Raht (RBP). I couldn't figure out that it was the light quality that produced the change until I read the forum here, probably because of the 5-second delay in checking the light quality.

Here's a suggestion: have an option where the auto night-eye effect only works when in sneak mode, then check immediately when entering sneak mode to see if it needs to be turned on, then use the 5-second delay for variations in light as you sneak around, then check immediately when leaving sneak mode to see if it needs to be turned off.

I don't think I'm going to use the feature the way it is now because it feels more controlled (and strategic) to manually toggle the night-eye as needed.

Thank you anyway for your abundant features

Question: Does/will the nighteye effect extend to other khajiit races, like the Suthay-raht, etc., since they're included in mods like RBP?

@maura amalia: +1 for making it an option. But I believe the original thinking was that where it is a "natural ability", it's automatic. You can't control how your eyes dialate or shrink in reaction to changing light levels, so why should a Khajiit be able to, any more than water breathing? Does make the decision of whether or not to select a race with that ability more of a challenge to play. But as I'm in favor of letting players enjoy the game however they wish, I agree it should be an option.

Edit: In "SDR Core.ini", if you set "set sdrIniQ.vVisionTypeKhajiit to 0" you would turn them into "day" vision types. Then your normal method of manually toggling Night Eye on/off should work.

@WalkerInShadows: From earlier in the thread, I believe he is using the skeleton model path to determine the race, so if it has "khajiit" in the path it should work.

-Dubious-

I have to hard code each race name. Currently it is Khajiit, Ohmes, Ohmes-raht, Dark Elf (they have twilight vision, but that's ini settable I believe, I'll have to check.)

I can put a sneak mode option in.

I made it auto because in reality, one doesn't "toggle" on night-vision, it just kicks in for those that have it genetically.

EDIT:
Creatures I get by the ModelPath of the skeleton.nif asset. Races I get by the "GetRace", although it pulls the text, not the editorID, so that might break compatibility with certain mods, and anything that may have been translated to different languages or more "lore friendly". I'd rather go off of editor ID.

EDIT 2: There is a problem with setting the night vision type to 0, as that will affect all Khajiit and force them to not get their night vision bonus. Simplest thing is just to turn off the auto-toggle setting.

I just tried it out in Swampy Cave. I love it - it's a lot more natural than having to toggle my nighteye via the casting key. Is there a way to make it more gradual, though? It's a little jarring when I go straight from "ooh, it's dark" to "ah, I can see!"

If we want to adjust the threshold, how would we do it? I mean, I want to be able to walk around small fires/torches without having my nighteye going on and off; which way should I adjust the number, up or down?

I'd love to have it more gradual too, but that would take some extra work. And by that I mean someone who has time on their hands and wants to volunteer. In order to pull that off, there would have to be a whole series of shaders that go from standard view to full night eye, and whenever the feature kicks in, it would have to go through swapping out the shaders on sequence. So say something like 10 shaders over a 5 second interval. And you'd have to go through them either direction whenever the scenario changes. It's not impossible, just work. Personally I'd love to have it, especially because of the "twilight" vision types which would only stop at the fifth shader. Spell casting would be instantaneous of course. It's definitly work. And will require another OBSE plug-in

pssst Kurtee, whatcha up to these days?

I didn't think of the auto night-eye as being a constant racial perk. That's actually a neat idea for immersion and realism. I was thinking of it as a sneaking tool because it is part of the SDR package. The night-eye filter makes me feel like I'm colorblind so I like to only use it when I need to because I like the colorful graphics of Oblivion. A gradual filter would be way cool to try out and see what that's like.

There is a terrific optional night-eye shader mod by kurtee that keeps the colors and shadows, and just adds "high-lights". I think there is a link to it on the SDR website, but I'm thinking about approaching him and the guy who created the shader switcher to see if I can bundle it all in, assuming I can do layered shaders as it progresses in and out of night eye mode.

EDIT: I found this game setting:
FMagicNightEyeAmbient
And I wonder if I might be able to use this instead of swapping out various shaders. It adjusts the brightness of the night eye shader, which I am hoping equates to to transparency. If that is indeed the case, I can just keep changing the setting over time, scaling it up/down so that the night-eye shader fades in and out as appropriate. I'll give it a whirl the next chance I get.

EDIT #2:
Here's the link to Kuertee's alternate night eye shader: http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=36407
I highly recommend it.

The fMagicNightEyeAmbient option is pretty cool. The default setting is .75, which is fine for caves and indoor places, but I prefer 1 to 1.2 for outdoors at night. I can't use it for the dynamically changing shader effect that I wanted, but I've been chatting with Kuertee, and Kuertee has given me some pointers on how to work with his (her?) shaders. So I'll be playing with that in my not-so-spare time. I've already added the Sneak option, and also some dynamic ranges, I just need to create the shaders to go with everything as well as some other bits here and there. This feature will require an additional OBSE plug-in, but if this works, it'll be worth it. Casting the night eye spell, or wearing a magic item with the effect will imbue the player as if they have the natural ability, so even if there are multiple night-eye effects on the character, the experience should be the same. So for those with the Race Balancing Project who take the Thief birth sign and use the Scout toggleable power, you could leave it on all the time, and the game would play as if you were a khajiit. That's the goal anyway.

The only other thing I'd like to possibly do is have two sets of shader groups, one for those with "twilight" vision, and one for those with "night vision". It would reflect the differences in the bonuses, and provide a contrast between the two default vanilla spells in the system. Eyes of Eventide would be the Twilight version and Eyes of Midnight would be the Night vision version.

Wow, some really great changes done over the past few days! Thanks for all the hard work you put into this Saebel, and especially for putting that companion fix in as well!!

You are very welcome.

In other news, I briefly looked into Kuertee's mod and the night-eye shader switching plug-in, and I think what I want to do is totally doable on the scripting side. Kuertee's has already done all the groundwork with the scripting, I just have to raid the code and tweak/adapt it. That's the easy part.

The trickier part is actually coming up with a set of shaders that produce the night-eye transition effects that I want. I did some research as to what a cat's vision would actually be like, and apparently a lion's vision is similar, but not quite as good. So while a cat's night vision is six times brighter than a human, a lion's may only be something like x3. So the first decision is what's the maximum brightness going to be per vision type, what additional differences would there be from interior/exterior/under water, and what "color rules" to apply. Cat's are somewhat color blind (they have trouble identifying red, but not green or blue), so I'm going to fold that in to the effect to some extent and see how that goes. I'm also going to hit the net to see if there is some side-by-side examples of what cats (or lions) would actually be seeing compared to humans. Lion-like vision (as described) is the most ideal, as it matches Khajiit / Ohmes behavior and "look" the most.

I will hopefully be done with all my tax prep this weekend, so I can start playing around with the shaders next week.

P.S. A general thanks to Kuertee for his "open use" policy on the Night-eye / Detect Life shader mod and giving me some pointers. There will definitely be credit for this for you.

P.P.S. Unlike other mods where there is only one night-eye shader to pick, in this design plan there will be a whole "set" of shaders, all of which get used at some point depending on the type of vision you have (standard night-eye or twilight) and the lighting conditions. Once everything is in place and working, if folks want to create alternative night-eye shader "packages", I'll provide instructions on how to do so, and will be more than happy to upload any packages sent my way into the optional files section of the SDR download pages - with credit of course. (that way they aren't scattered all over the net.)

Just in case you haven't seen it, Accurain has a mod with multiple NE shaders, and a tutorial on tweaking them, at [http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2927]. It includes versions for various Shader Models, because not all video cards support all SMs. And Timeslip's original 16 NE shader replacements mod is at [http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=7327].

Edit: But there is a very recent note on kuertee's thread [http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1153042-night-eye-and-detect-life-shaders/page__pid__20415171__st__30#entry20415171] that Timeslip's shaders can cause a CTD with some spell effects. No telling yet if that is actually due to the spell effect mechanism utilized and it's presumptions about the shaders.

-Dubious-

Well I couldn't get his shader editor to work, so I'm skipping Timeslip's stuff altogether. I ha come across that link, but hadn't waded in on it yet. I'm also checking up in the hlsl language. There are a lot of ways to mess with the image, and it's going to take me some time to figure it out to the extent that there will be a smooth transition.

I am already using this nighteye shader mod and have the issue that the shader often resets to the vanilla one outdoors. I think it happens always when the next cell loads. Do others have that, too?

Did you try installing it as an OMOD? That's the only way it'll work.

I've been using it for years without problems. No problems with it in combination with SDR, either.

His shader editor is an .exe file from his source forge page. Totally different than his omod of shaders. I keep getting errors.

Oh, shader editor. Sorry, I misread the post.

Finally had some time to work on the night-eye shader effect, and I have to say, I'm fairly pleased with the result. Basically, if you have the night-eye ability naturally, it's always on. The base shader lightens up the shadows, increases the blue by 25% and decreases the red by 25%. The darker it is, the brighter your vision gets, but if you are close to a light-source, it ruins it back to the base shader. It's a subtle change, but not so subtle that it's completely unnoticeable. The color scheme seems to work well (to my eye at least), but I'm not exactly testing it on the best laptop for color.

What's really great about the shader plug-in is that you can layer shaders on top of each other. So, I could provide several optional base shaders, as well as some base "add-on" shaders, and the lighting change shaders could be left alone. Add on shaders could be something like slightly tunneled vision, because those with night-eye tend to sacrifice detail in exchange for brighter vision.

It is by far, a gazillion times better than the default night-eye.

I've also added the "toggle" option if folks don't want it auto on if it's a natural ability (although personally, with the shader pack and all that, I can't imagine why anyone would ever use it). I also threw in the toggle while sneaking option.

So here are some questions for you all:
1. Should there be two different base shaders? One for vision type 2 (standard night eye) and one for vision type 1 (twilight vision). And if so, what would the differences be?
2. Also, if someone casts an "Eyes of Eventide" or an "Eyes of midnight" spell, would you want those to be the type 1 or type 2, or both ( 1 for eventide, and 2 for midnight).
3. What kinds of extra "add-on" shader effects do you think would be good?
- Should it get blurrier the at the far end of the spectrum, so in the darkest areas, even though it is bright, the detail may not be so good?
- Tunneled vision?
- Perhaps a bell-curve system where it gets brighter for awhile but then it gets so dark that it starts degrading back to standard?

Thoughts and comments are welcome.

(P.s. I'm really excited about the way this is going.)

Such an intriguing set of possibilities! What ever you do, please provide/document the hooks so we can add it to HUD Status Bars. Sometimes I need to tell if NE and/or LD is on or not.
Yes, but make them optional. And preferably selectable. I would expect type 2 to be "washed out" in daylight, getting clearer as the light dims. Type 1 should be clearest at twilight, worst in daylight, and better at night but not as good as type 2.
Both (1 for Eventide, and 2 for Midnight). Different spells should have different effects or why bother with the distinction? And now that you are introducing twilight as "natural affect" for certain races, they will need spells to let them compensate for their new "natural deficiencies". "Eyes of Dimness", anyone?
Rather than "blurrier", wouldn't the effect be loss of distinction between certain colors? Or perhaps it would be better to lose color for crisper B&W? That's more of what I had in mind with my "washed out" comment earlier.

Type 1 (twilight) should be a bell curve effect as base anyway. It is a compromise between daylight and nighttime optimum anyway.

As far as "tunnel vision" goes, that might be OK if it included a zoom effect at the same time? Loss of peripheral detail in exchange for enhanced detail in the center of focus seems a reasonable evolutionary development Otherwise, why would anyone want to use it?

I'm also excited to see this. How difficult would it be to allow people to add other shader effects to this mod if they come up with them?

Also, something I miss from my earlier stealth/sneak setup: the ability to hot-key display my current stealth status and penalties so I could fine tune my gear, movement rate, and "reading the environment" experience to my current level.
Some might like to have that on the HUD, but that's an immersion choice.

-Dubious-

Well, I'm not fully up on the hud status bars stuff yet, but actorRef.GetAV nighteye will return 1 if the night eye is functioning. I imagine HUD Status bars probably has something for it. And the way mine is set up, those who have it naturally will always have it on (unless they go with a keyboard toggle option).

Actually, from what I've been reading up on night vision is that it doesn't really work like that for most of the animals that we think of as having night vision. They do not get "blinded" or washed out during the day because their pupils get smaller, and so filter out a lot of the light. When things get darker, the pupils expand. Then depending on how many rods and cones they have, and which types, that determines what colors they see, and to what detail. Humans do not have good night vision because the extra light is lost and gets absorbed. Animals that have night vision have special membrane that bounces the light back like a reflect board of sorts, and so the light that humans lose, animals with that membrane can use. However, it's not as detailed. The whole trend towards "super bright - mono-color" is more imitative of night-vision or light-intensifier goggles, which do not mimic how vision works for animals.

As I mentioned before, their really shouldn't be any deficiencies. The only creatures that might have something like that would be creatures that were either entirely nocturnal or lived their entire lives in a cave. In fact, the Khajiit have the ability to turn on/off night-eye at will in the vanilla game, which to me indicates the correct spectrum, however, either because they didn't think of it, or it just wasn't a priority, Bethesda decided to go for a simple "obvious" night eye look.

From what I have read so far, it could go either way, and the two are separate issues. It depends on the animal and the lighting conditions. Dogs have trouble seeing any color other than black and white. Cats have trouble distinguishing red from green, but can separate out blue just fine. The detail comes from the number of receptors, angle, depth of field, etc. Their eyes are good and picking up and reflecting more light, but are only really good at distinguishing detail of what's right in front of them at a fairly short distance.

I was thinking along those lines. Not sure if it's realistic per say, but at a certain point, if it is really dark, you can't see/absorb light that isn't there. However, there always seems to be a little light in all the caves, mines and ruins. Whether it's from torches, lichen, magic glowy thingys, it doesn't really matter. There is just never such a thing as completely pitch black room or area.

Actually, you are getting the chance to see in the dark in exchange for loss of peripheral detail. It's a pretty significant advantage, especially in caves. It doesn't make sense that you just "zoom" in because you are able to capture more light. It's not like your eyes have optical lenses that suddenly kick in.

Well, I'm setting it up using the Switch Night Eye shader plug-in, and one of its options is to have layered shaders. Basically you tell it which shaders you want to have in the night-eye list, and when the night eye kicks in, those shaders kick in. So if you wanted to create your own mod that added shaders, you could do that. The other option is that I could be nice and set up some programming that would allow you to add your own. However, those custom ones would be "fixed" and always be active when night eye is active. The ones that change how the light impacts the view, the ones that go up and down, unless you want to replace them with your own, those should stay untouched. The night eye shader switcher plugin comes with examples and documentation.

Hmm. I do have the detection debug settings still in there. And they are even more comprehensive than before. The default that I have now requires you to click on a "target" in console mode, and then when you are out, you'll see all the data. If that's not what you meant, you will have to be more specific.

Obviously, you have been doing your homework on night vision in the animal kingdom! Much more than I ever have, so I will defer to your opinion on the matter.

Quite true, and agreeable. However, I was just in the watchtowers in Chorrol using the shader that brightens the natural colors (and now I can't find where that is set but it's number 7 IIRC), and the unlit first floor rooms were almost impossible to see anything other than basic shapes. When I toggled NE off, even those were nearly invisible. They make for a good test case of extreme dark, better than any cave I have been in so far (which is few).
From strictly the physical functioning of the eye, I agree. But that is ignoring that "vision" is a combination of eye and brain function. More properly I am referring to "visual acuity", most often seen when you read the characters on an eye chart (the one with the big letter E on the top row). If your eyes have ever gotten to the point where they had you use the "pinhole" filter you know what I am referring to. This artificial constriction of your vision (similar to pupil contraction, and most definitively losing peripheral vision) appears to sharpen the characters on the eye chart, making them more distinctive. It's quite dramatic; the difference between a blurry "big E" and easily reading 4 lines down on the chart.

While I can't cite any references at the moment, I believe with less to process, the mind can then more effectively process what it is focused upon. While technically this is not the magnification of a "zoom" effect, it appears very much like that, and I think it would be the only practical way to implement. A very small magnification, on the order of 1.2 times perhaps.
Hmm. I use that mod. Will it be a requirement or will the functionality be part of yours, so we can drop an ESP and free a slot? As for adding other shaders, I would wait on any extra programming effort until someone comes forward with a shader they want to propose. I know someone has done a "proper" thermal shader for the "detect life" effect I would like to see included, but unless you want to become "the premier visual shader mod", it goes beyond your project scope.
Haven't had a reason to fiddle with the debug settings, but now I will. After I do so I will get back to you on what I would like to see displayed "livestream" with a hot-key. I don't think everything provided for debugging would be appropriate, but we will see.

Really appreciate how responsive you have been to suggestions and how you continue to improve this terrific mod.

-Dubious-

Don't have answers on your other questions, but yes, if you go with my night-eye shader option, it would conflict with kurtee's. But since his most recent version splits the detect life and night-eye portions into two separate .esps, you would be able to drop the night-eye portion. I have no intention on doing anything at all with detect life shaders. Not my thing.

Edit: I did a wee bit more research, and I think I am liking having a tunneled effect that is inversely proportional to the night vision effect. The brighter it is, the more tunneled the vision gets, which is imitative of the pupils getting smaller. There would still be a touch of the effect at the other end of the spectrum. I'll have to mess around with the whole thing to get the exact right combo.

Edit 2: So I looked more into pupil constriction vs. eyesight zoom/enhancement. The reason why the pupils dialate or constrict is to control the amount of light that enters the eye. The reason why animals that have night vision have such small pupils/slits during the day is that they would get overwhelmed, if not blinded. Being able to see something clearly at a given distance has more to do with the curvature of the lense, rather than the size of the pupil. You could possibly argue that during the day although the vision is slightly tunneled, the image might be clearer (not zoomed) and at night more light is useable, so the scene is brighter, without the tunnel vision, but probably less detailed / slightly fuzzy. This would have to be on a sliding scale effect from the darkest conditions to the brightest.

Update: Working with shaders is very difficult.

So although I can fairly easily adjust the brightness and color/saturation, anything beyond that becomes difficult. For example, I found a really great "tunnel vision" effect. However, it's fixed, as in it's either on or off. I can't figure out how to increase/decrease the radius, or increase/decrease the transparency of the effect. It's all or nothing. Which is unfortunately really disturbing when the effect suddenly flips on. I've been running all kinds of experiments, tweaking the numbers, checking the internet, and it's just not happening for me right now. I'm going to walk away from it for a bit, and maybe something magical will appear.

WHO WANTS TO CHECK OUT THE NEW BETA!!!

Sorry, got excited.

Download here: http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=37385

This version fixes some bugs with distribution of tokens, but more importantly, it has the NEW auto-nighteye feature.

This new auto-night-eye has a fully dynamic effect, using 42 shaders in different combinations depending on the lighting on the character.
I decided on a hybrid of methods and ideas so that those characters that have night-eye as a natural ability would (hopefully) feel comfortable with the effect always being on, and those character that use magic to activate/deactivate the effect would see a noticeable difference in low light scenarios.

In order to accomplish this, there is a new package and some new .ini settings, so a clean save with the prior version of SDR uninstalled is recommended. If you had version 4.2.1 installed, and want to keep your old .ini settings for the SDR - Core.ini, you should back them up, and then if you like, cut and paste the new auto-night-eye .ini settings into the old .ini file. I *think* that should work.

There are two new sub-packages:
03 Auto-NightEye ShaderPackage
03a Auto-NightEye DevFolders

03 Auto-NightEye ShaderPackage Details:
In order for the auto-nighteye effect to work, you must install package 03. In includes all the required shaders, plus Scanti's night-eye shader switcher OBSE plug-in. There are three sets of shaders:

sdr_NE_base is currently not being used. I may use it as an "adjuster" for those that have night-eye type 1 (twilight vision), at the moment, both Twilight and Night vision types have the same effect. ( I want to get feedback first before taking the next step)

sdr_NE_LL_xx are the shaders that change the overall color and brightness. The brightness is on a bell curve, starting at .9 at either end of the light spectrum, and maxing out at 1.4 in the middle. The color is normal at the most bright conditions, but Red is reduced by 20% and Blue is increased by 20% in the darkest conditions. As the light goes from bright to dark, the color will change accordingly.

sdr_NE_TV_xx are the shaders that add the "tunnel vision" effect that blurs the peripheral vision. At light levels of 20 or lower, there is no tunnel vision. At the brightest end of the spectrum is when the tunnel vision is the most noticeable. You can still see the shadowy fringes, but for a clear look you have to turn your head. This mimics how cats and lions behave in bright light with their pupils constricted. The tunnel vision effect is optional, and can be turned off in the SDR Core.ini file (it's on by default).

03a Auto-NightEye DevFolders details
If at a later time you wish to customize the shader effects to taste, you should install the 03a package. Editing them is fairly easy, but complete details on what to do and how to do it are on Scanti's site: http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=19476

WARNING! Some folks have reported Oblivion crashing on start up with Scanti's files installed. I managed to get it working, but both dev folders have to be installed with files in them in order for the system not to crash. It is recommended that you have HDR turned on in your video settings.

If needed, I'll put together a tutorial on how to change the shaders.
_____________________

Warning 2: I have no idea how the new auto-night-eye feature will work on other computers. I have only tested the effect on two computers, both of which had high-end Nvidia graphics cards.

____________________

After thought:
If folks don't like the auto-night-eye behavior, I could at least provide the base shader as a fixed alternative to the default. So the option would be:
0 = turned off
1 = fixed effect
2 = dynamic effect
_________________

Looking forward to the feedback!

You changed something about the debug text, did you? I don't see anything in the console for npc to player detection. How does it work now?

The invisible corpses issue seems to be fixed. Nice.

I tested the new features only briefly yet. The nighteye shader behaviour is interesting. I found the shader a bit too bright. I liked number 10 of Kurtees mod, where you still have to pay close attention to detect the enemies, especially at longer distances. Maybe make it a bit like that?

The detect life spells for NPCs also work. Though I wonder if OOOs spectral warriors are supposed to have them. Their mysticism skill is not really great. I think they only had the novice spell, because they recast it like every 10 seconds. And it seemed like they only used it after they already detected me without it.