Ive installed Detailed Normals, Nevada Skies, a terrain texture mod, Electro-City and a shader mod but still the game doesnt look as good as Oblivion or Fallout 3, im not sure what it is but everything just seems...off. Im not sure if its just the way the game is built, im using the wrong mods, or that its the color scheme of the Mojave Wasteland combined with less than stellar models but every item, person, and place ive come across looks less that spectacular. Any recommendations for mods or ways to fix this or should i just accept that the game isnt going to look great?

I dont mean this to be a knock against these great mods, as they are great and the things they effect do look better than normal. In fact the contrast between things like the roads and cars edited by Detailed Normals and the terrain pack contrasted against the character and item models is substantial, the lighting by Electrocity looks great at times and when im lucky i catch a great sky effect. Also i am running on Ultra High settings.

Might try Fellout. There's an orange tint to everything (like F3's green tint) that could be what's making you dislike what you see.

Yeah i think thats my best bet, i just altered some settings, seems that Steam kept setting my graphics to somewhere between High and Ultra. Although im getting a fair amount of stuttering and lag at either graphics setting, is there a mod to reduce some of that stuttering especially in some of the distant vistas. I also can see that my biggest issue is from this weird contrast between the blue sky and the orange environment as well as in the lighting of some of the interiors. Also the high resolution of the things added by mods really make some of the things in the game that are unaltered look rather ugly. I do have to say that the tutorial house at the beginning looks great so its not all bad, ill try out Fellout and hope i can get my game to look how i want it too, is there a patch i need so that it works with my any of my current graphic mods?

I would recommend trying the URWLified version of Nevada Skies for better world lighting. Make sure to also download the URWL cloud pack and install after the data module.

For interiors you should try http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35794. It makes indoor settings look more natural but tends to be darker.

http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=41101 and http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39755 both have a bunch of great textures to improve the overall look of the game. From my experimentation Textures Over Time's Rocks and Canyons do not look good with Detailed Normals but the awesome rocks more than make up for the loss.

I use New Vegas Stutter Remover which reduces wasteland stutters for me. The default settings cap you to 30 FPS. This is however easily changed through configuring the ini file although not necessarily wise as the FPS cap gives extra power to ease out the stutters.

The two things you need the most are http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39619 and http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39947.

Pretty much makes any combination of weather / lighting mods into your own unique style.

For me the textures aren't that big a deal - I'm happy enough with the few mildly enhanced textures that came with Nevada SkiesURWLfied. The issue I have is there are so many different color/lighting filters that pass by during a "day" in the game that not all of them look good to me. And then some mods are too saturated. Some mods are too brown. Some are too blue. Some are too red. Some are too contrasty. hehehe So I think (for me) that it's more about the color & contrast/lighting in the game. Certain times of the "game day" it'll all gel and look fantastic to me, then the color filter changes and it looks like crud.

....Imaginator is the only reason I can stand Nevada Skies, actually. The over-saturation of NS drove me insane, but I wanted the rain.