[James Baldwin]

Okay, I didn't really do any in-depth testing so this is likely correct, for anyone thinking of using that mod. I might have just decided against using it for performance reasons. That, or there's some other Oblivion.ini value that can be changed that mimics the functionality of the ForeverView mod, but if there is I can't recall what it would be.



Unless I'm mistaken, lights added by Real Lights stay on 24/7.

Additional completely pointless comment: I was just reading that Skyrim has "dynamic snowfall." This vague description now has me wondering if that means snow accumulation like I was talking about previously, or something else. Damn vague comments, all I care about in Skyrim is if it has snow accumulation and they give me this tease! Time to nag Bethesda.

RL has some lights, like streetlights (and IIRC cave skylights), that are time-dependent.

Dynamic snowfall = snowfall moves. So that could mean anything from the snowfall following the player around, (ie. like Oblivion) to the snowfall moving independently of the player (a la real weather systems). Until more details are given, it's just another meaningless marketing phrase.

[NAtIVe GOddess]

RL has some lights, like streetlights (and IIRC cave skylights), that are time-dependent.

Dynamic snowfall = snowfall moves. So that could mean anything from the snowfall following the player around, (ie. like Oblivion) to the snowfall moving independently of the player (a la real weather systems). Until more details are given, it's just another meaningless marketing phrase.

It'd definitely be interesting if they can implement precipitation that isn't just an overlay. But yeah, the term "dynamic shadows" was also used, and as long as I've heard that it's been applied to shadows on the player and NPCs, etc., which Oblivion already has, so I imagine it's probably best to wait until the game is released before assessing its capabilities.

So those time-dependent lights (maybe they should be called "dynamic lights"! heh) might not be working for the previous poster then? Actually I'm about to play the game so I'll check out the IC streetlights myself, though I can remember seeing some streetlights on during the day somewhere which is why I replied so quickly to that. I don't mean to like barge in here and pretend I'm a member of the team answering questions, but I figure since I have this thread open indefinitely it might save you guys some trouble answering questions you may have answered a million times before.

[{Richies Mommy}]

RL has some lights, like streetlights (and IIRC cave skylights), that are time-dependent.

I don't know reason but now for me it isn't time-dependent.
Even in day I can see walls near streetlights are much brighter than other places.
I need to know what's wrong with it and make it works properly.

[Alexis Estrada]

Hello, I meet a problem with real lights. When activing it, street lights of Imperial city are always lighting from day to night. At least they are lighting when I enter IC in day time, and I havn't seen them extinguished in the morning.
Please help, Thanks!

I just checked out the script and the lights may be lit during the day if the weather is not clear or cloudy.

@ Arthmoor: Looking at ExteriorLightScript and zzDaylightScript, are the enable/disable calls the right way around in those? They're the other way around in streetlightscript.

However, would ForeverView screw up the functionality of All Natural if I load it after All Natural? ForeverView makes a difference for every weather type in four categories: Day Near, Day Far, Night Near, Night Far. Also it will be troublesome to make All Natural fog distances exactly look like the ones from ForeverView (the ability to type a value instead of a multiplier would be nice). So I think I will use ForeverView, if it does not screw up All Natural. What do you mean?

It wouldn't screw up the functionality of AN, but ForeverView wouldn't work very well since it would only apply to 5 (DefaultWeather is never selected) of ~120 weathers in All Natural, so all the others would still be as before. AN's Fog Distances also affects all four fog distances for each weather, but it multiplies them equally. Therefore, you might not be able to achieve the exact same effect as ForeverView, but fog distance mods usually just multiply fog distances by a common factor (or roughly about the same factor) anyway. The reason the AN Fog Distances settings are multipliers is because the average user knows what 1.5x their current distances would look like more than they'd know the exact distances they want in Oblivion units.

[vicki kitterman]

I have checked the awayls lighting streetlights using CS, found that they are all vanilla lights of Obvilion.
They are composed of "ICstreetlight0*fake", "AMBtorchmountedLP" and "Citystreetlight***" with a time-dependent script.
May be it's something wrong with "Citystreetlight***" which is the major light source of streetlights.
I also noticed that the streetlights in Better Cities mod are only composed of "ICstreetlight0*fake", which work properly but only shine dusky red light. I don't know whether there are scripts in BCresources.esm to control the light.

[Nuno Castro]

I just checked out the script and the lights may be lit during the day if the weather is not clear or cloudy.

Thank you!
If weather influence lights I think most problems will have an explanation.
But I still remember sometimes I saw lights lighting in sunny midday, though it may caused by respawn.
I will check them again carefully.

[Charles Weber]

Well, I just found another funny thing indoor about RL when I was trying the effect of ini settings.
I found the merchant inn in IC market is much darker than before. After checking the cell with CS and comparing with what I saw in game, I think the three "commonlight" above tables and counter have disappeared.
I guess it is RL that removed the lights because there are no lamps near them, but this make the inn much darker. Especially when using dark night settings in ini file, the inn looks like a darker dungeon.

[Hairul Hafis]

I still get very rare imnstant weather changes, even with the AN Scripts.esp active. I have it loaded after both Tamriel and SI ESP's. Is that right?

[Peter P Canning]

I still get very rare imnstant weather changes, even with the AN Scripts.esp active. I have it loaded after both Tamriel and SI ESP's. Is that right?

So long as it loads after the All Natural Base.esm, it otherwise doesn't matter. Post details please.

[NAkeshIa BENNETT]

Thank you for the clarification Wrinklyninja.

[Taylah Haines]

I've ran into a few instant weather changes as of late, with the latest ANScripts fix, though not nearly as many as before. I was concerned it may still be related to Enhanced Seasons since it seemed that the instant change in weather was related to passing into another zone of Enhanced Seasons. So I removed ES and continued to play. At first I thought it was working properly, placebo effect, but when I was traveling from Bruma, south down the road to the IC, BAM! sudden weather change. It went from full on snow to sunny weather. This happened right at the area where the textures and foliage change from the snowy versions to the more colorful, autumn esque look. Luckily I had just saved in Bruma so I thought I'd try to reproduce this and see if it was just bad luck, or something more. So I exit to desktop, reload the save, take the same route down the road, and at the exact same area the weather instantly changed again. This time from snow to cloudy, no transition whatsoever.

I'm thinking this has something to do with the fact that snowy weather is not allowed in that area at all and it's throwing off the scripting? I'm just guessing here but it makes sense, to me anyway. I have the save if you're interested. Maybe it would provide some insight and perhaps lead to a fix, or workaround. I'd just like to note that I've had this exact same scenario happen before but when traveling north from Cheydinhal into the mountains it suddenly switched from sunny to snowy weather. I know I have that save also; buried somewhere in my hundreds, or thousands, of saves. Finding it would be the trick.

Shoot me a PM if you want the save and I'll up it somewhere like 4Shared. I have Wrinklyninja on my 4Shared friends list so maybe it'd be easiest to send it to you guys that way. Thanks for your time.

[Agnieszka Bak]

So long as it loads after the All Natural Base.esm, it otherwise doesn't matter. Post details please.

Okay, thanks. The rapid weather changes only happen with clear weather. Sometimes when it's clear is will instantly change to foggy weather. I've actually only had it happen twice.

[Kayleigh Mcneil]

Excuse me, if I only want to use Real Lights, which files are also needed in the BSA file besides those in the two "reallights" sub folders? For I really wish to save space cost of TES4 which have already cost 10G now.
Many Thanks!!!

[Darrell Fawcett]

Fog settings for DistantLOD range of 15 that I feel work pretty well:

set ANVars.ClearFogDist to	      0.75		set ANVars.CloudyFogDist to	      0.65	set ANVars.FogFogDist to	      0.3		set ANVars.OvercastFogDist to         0.6	set ANVars.RainFogDist to	      0.5	set ANVars.SnowFogDist to	      0.5	set ANVars.StormFogDist to	      0.4set ANVars.SpecialFogDist to 	      0.5

[Motionsharp]

Is the Natural Weather in AN really same as Max Tael's Natural Weather in Natural Environments 2.1.3?
At first I thought All natural merged the NW, but later I found they are not the same.
For example, in fog weather, when using NW from NE, you can see the White Tower gradually disappeared into fog from bottom to top, But when using NW in AN, a black shadow is still left in fog (that is better than EW which leaves white shadow of ground objects in fog and leaves sky with cloud clearly).
And another example, in clear sunny weather, the colour of sun and sunshine surronding it has a little difference, the range of sushine surronding sun are different which in NW from NE is lager and more brilliant, and the colour transition of sky form sun to horizon are so different that NW in AN really make me feel little trastion in main sky except thin border exactly near horizon.
I think this two deferences are not due to texture, but maybe caused by something like lightness and colour setting.

The intro says "Natural Weather (NW, part of Natural Envirionments [NE])", and I have just check "AN BASE.esm" and AN.bsa, variance name with MT and subfolder name with naturalevironment make me trust they are from NW in NE.

So a further question, I wonder whether NW in AN uses all the same texture as NW in NE?
If the same, How can I adjust current NW in AN to make it same to NW in NE? By modifying parameter in "All Natural.ini"? And if so, are there any suggestion about original NW parameter? Thanks!

There is a last question, that how many differents are there between NW in NE and NW in AN about the weather varying system (or scripts)?
For I like the NW weather system which is steady and smoothy. I have spent several in-game days to experience it and to see how the BUGs is, by standing, walking, talking to npc, entering and getting out of rooms, waiting and fast travelling. I found every weather has their own duration no matter what you do, and shifting process between two weather is a gradual and smooth course taking nearly a half hour in-gamr time, so it will keep consistent before and after entering a cell for a short while.
The "instant change" BUG is not seriously harmful as somebody descripts, for I ONLY meet them sometimes when I enter new worldspace, which equals to entering city gate in general, so in IC it will happen more often than other place. And the change is really instant, such as it suddenly rained in a just cloudiless day, and several in-game minutes later it was clear again. If using open city or better city with toggleing open, I never meet the "instant change".
I wish (NW in) AN has the same or similar weather varying system to NW in NE, though I havn't spent enough time to experience the system of AN. Just simple, smoothy and steady is OK, each new weather mod is better than vanilla, and I do not wish much more varied.

[Kelvin Diaz]

Weather - All Natural is a great compendium of some of the best environmental mods for weather in Oblivion. I have also opted to use some of the recommended mods from AN's readme.

However, there is a bit of concern I'm having between AN and one of its recommended mods, Storms and Sound v3. The issue I'm experiencing is during a stormy weather. The issue is that while it has been raining, and after a while the rain begins to subside until the rain effects (graphic and audio) stop, leaving only dark clouds above, as soon as I enter an interior, I could hear the rain falling again (thanks to Storms and Sound enabling one to hear weather inside). When I exit the interior, the rain indeed has started again when only a second ago it already subsided.

I'm not sure if this is a standard behavior in AN (rain subsiding then starting again), but it seems that Storms and Sound doesn't sync well with the weather, even when using the OBSE version that is supposed to be compatible with "...all past and future weather mods."

I am using OBSE v0019b, and using TES4Edit v2.5.3, I have cleaned the as per the CS Cleaning mods guide, although I noticed that Storms and Sound overrides some of the changes in AN's esps even after having been cleaned, to give one as an example:

[05] OBSE-Storms & Sound SI.esp \ Cell \ Block 0 \ Sub-Block 0 \ 0002C178                           [00] Oblivion.esm     [02] All Natural.esp                       [05] OBSE-Storms & Sound SI.espDATA - Flags              Is Interior Cell      Is Interior Cell, Behave like exterior     Is Interior Cell Behave like exterior                           Behave like exteriorXCLL - Lighting Fog Near                 0.000000              0.000100                                   0.000000XCCM - Climate                                  NIWGeneric [CLMT:01001BA9]

I am using BOSS to sort out mods, and as a result, the overrides the changes from . There are many other conflicts identified within TES4Edit and perhaps this may give a hint on the aforementioned issue.

I haven't tried removing Storms and Sound and leaving only All Natural active, though I will post an update if such an issue were still to occur.

[BEl J]

So I was fiddling around TES4Edit, comparing All Natural esps against the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, Supplemental and SI esps and found two conflicts:

[05] All Natural.esp \ Cell \ Block 0 \ Sub-Block 2 \ 0003D61C Fog Near: 0.000000 ~ 0.000100[05] All Natural.esp \ Cell \ Block 5 \ Sub-Block 6 \ 00027D5D XOWN - Owner: Gunder "Gunder" [NPC_:00028F98] ~ UOPColovianTraders "UOP-added Colovian Traders faction (Gundar & Eyja)" [FACT:02000CF4]

The first value indicates the one from All Natural, and the second value after the ~ indicates the one from UOPS. On the first conflict, it seems that the value 0.000100 for Fog Near is used almost everywhere by AN, and seeing that UOPS is setting the same, I opted to change the value in AN so that AN doesn't override the value set by UOPS, as AN loads after UOPS. I think this may just be a very small oversight, but I might be wrong. After all, I'm just offering my thoughts on the matter. :wink_smile:

On the second conflict, this has the effect of AN disabling the fix by UOP as follows:

Fixed Eyja (Skingrad, Colovian Traders) never sleeping if not hired at Rosethorn Manor as the cell and bed were owned by Gunder; added faction for them and set ownership to that (she actually indicates if she's hired that she shared Gunder's bed)

The value cannot be changed to reflect the one from UOP without adding a record corresponding to the new faction data, or importing this data as an override into AN's esp and listing UOP as one of its masters (which isn't an elegant solution).

This is just a very small tradeoff in my opinion for having All Natural. But of course this tradeoff varies from being small to being something significant across different mods, especially if one considers having Unofficial Patches a must for every installation. This also highlights the issues surrounding some dirty mods that need cleaning and having correct load order to achieve the desired effect of all mods in use.

I commend the great effort put behind All Natural by its team. Sure, everyone can learn and start creating mods. But what sets them apart is having the passion for quality, for knowing the intricacies of modding in and out, not just knowing what works and what doesn't.

[joeK]

As I'm currently integrating changes from All Natural+SI into the OBSE-SI esp of Storms and Sound, particularly changes in the DATA - Flags field, I'm quite pleased to find out that All Natural has incorporated most of the fixes from the unofficial patches, save for one or two very minor oversights on Fog Near values. This really makes things easier for me, unlike with Storms and Sound that I had to incorporate many fixes that it overrides from UOP, ranging from fog values to names to cell owners and music. Climate values from All Natural don't need to be integrated in Storms and Sound lest one desires to add All Natural as one of the Storm's masters. Thus, the need to generate a bashed patch importing climates from All Natural esps is important, if only some people learn how to read the manual. :thumbsup:

Theses all mean All Natural was developed by the team using unofficial patches applied to the vanilla installation, so that the fixes are reflected from the final product. Very nice. :celebration:

[Steve Bates]

I stumbled upon another minor oversight in All Natural:

[02] All Natural.esp \ Cell \ Block 5 \ Sub-Block 3 \ 00051B8F FULL - Name: Mages Guild 3rd Floor

It should have been:

FULL - Name: Bravil Mages Guild 3rd Floor

That should take care of it.

[Chris Duncan]

c0demeist3r

Unless WB isn't intended what to correct these conflicts?

EDIT: Wrye Bash solves all these conflicts, has checked up now.

[Raymond J. Ramirez]

Somebody could correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK wrye bash can't resolve all conflicts, especially without a proper bash tag and correct load order to achieve the desired effect. And even if it can solve a particular conflict, then the next determining factor for resolution is where the mod is in the load order. Importing data in wrye bash respects the currently active mods and checks each mod to be imported in order. So it is not always a guarantee that conflicts would be resolved by simply bash patching, unless you intimately know all mods in conflict and what fields they override each other, and a good grasp of how mods should be loaded. Or at least have setup proper bash tags for conflicting mods, have a desired load order, and have correct bashed patch import setup for rebuilding the patch.

Until then, it is better to have mods reflect fixes from unofficial patches, and change other fields as needed.

[Kim Kay]

I have to admit that when I said about AN disabling a fix by UOP because of cell ownership overrides, I was in the mindset of an average user who would just follow what he's told from the manual, without taking extra steps to further his understanding. Of course because I am using BOSS and making further use of bash tags it adds to mods when rebuilding my patch, then the conflict regarding cell ownership is resolved in my case, thanks to Wrye Bash.

[lolli]

But all those conflicts about which you wrote, it corrects. Conflicts in cells which wouldn't solve WB I didn't see.

[Assumptah George]

Excuse me, if I only want to use Real Lights, which files are also needed in the BSA file besides those in the two "reallights" sub folders? For I really wish to save space cost of TES4 which have already cost 10G now.
Many Thanks!!!

I think that's right, though you could PM Arthmoor to be sure. Although I have to point out that 10GB is a very small size for a modded Oblivion install, since the vanilla installation is at least 7GB IIRC. Many people have 30-50GB installs. Hard drive space isn't exactly expensive (you can get 2 TB of storage for ~￡70), so in this day and age it's not really very sensible to limit what you have on your PC based on how much space you have on your hard drive...

Fog settings for DistantLOD range of 15 that I feel work pretty well:

set ANVars.ClearFogDist to	      0.75		set ANVars.CloudyFogDist to	      0.65	set ANVars.FogFogDist to	      0.3		set ANVars.OvercastFogDist to         0.6	set ANVars.RainFogDist to	      0.5	set ANVars.SnowFogDist to	      0.5	set ANVars.StormFogDist to	      0.4set ANVars.SpecialFogDist to 	      0.5

Thanks for those.

Is the Natural Weather in AN really same as Max Tael's Natural Weather in Natural Environments 2.1.3?

I think this two deferences are not due to texture, but maybe caused by something like lightness and colour setting.

The intro says "Natural Weather (NW, part of Natural Envirionments [NE])", and I have just check "AN BASE.esm" and AN.bsa, variance name with MT and subfolder name with naturalevironment make me trust they are from NW in NE.

So a further question, I wonder whether NW in AN uses all the same texture as NW in NE?
If the same, How can I adjust current NW in AN to make it same to NW in NE? By modifying parameter in "All Natural.ini"? And if so, are there any suggestion about original NW parameter? Thanks!

There is a last question, that how many differents are there between NW in NE and NW in AN about the weather varying system (or scripts)?

I wish (NW in) AN has the same or similar weather varying system to NW in NE, though I havn't spent enough time to experience the system of AN. Just simple, smoothy and steady is OK, each new weather mod is better than vanilla, and I do not wish much more varied.

Edited your post quoted for clarity.

In reply: AN's NW weathers aren't the same as the originals. The edits are almost universally:
1. HDR tweaks. This is to prevent the nuclear white-out that plagues weathers without them.
2. Colour tinting changes. This is to bring the tinting of NW's weathers into line with the rest of the weathers in vanilla and the other weather mods - NW's original weathers had a very noticeable yellow tint to them.
3. Occasional aethstetic tweaks - a few NW weathers are pretty ugly compared to others, and have had colours and textures changed to make them look better.

So to answer your second question, the vast majority of NW (and other) weathers have their original textures. A few have had textures replaced with very high quality textures Lprman made for me.
You can get NW's yellow tint back by changing the ini values for Colour Tints, try raising the red and lowering the blur multipliers.

As for the weather script, AN's weather script is completely unique. I believe this is stated in the readme. To put it bluntly, NW's script is a pile of rubbish, and there's no competition. I realise I'm biased, but there's no excuse for releasing something that broken and never fixing it through 2.1.3 versions of the mod. Sure, AN does have bugs, but it's trying to do things that are a heck of a lot more complicated, and I work hard to fix them when reported.

Weather - All Natural is a great compendium of some of the best environmental mods for weather in Oblivion. I have also opted to use some of the recommended mods from AN's readme.

However, there is a bit of concern I'm having between AN and one of its recommended mods, Storms and Sound v3. The issue I'm experiencing is during a stormy weather. The issue is that while it has been raining, and after a while the rain begins to subside until the rain effects (graphic and audio) stop, leaving only dark clouds above, as soon as I enter an interior, I could hear the rain falling again (thanks to Storms and Sound enabling one to hear weather inside). When I exit the interior, the rain indeed has started again when only a second ago it already subsided.

I'm not sure if this is a standard behavior in AN (rain subsiding then starting again), but it seems that Storms and Sound doesn't sync well with the weather, even when using the OBSE version that is supposed to be compatible with "...all past and future weather mods."

I am using OBSE v0019b, and using TES4Edit v2.5.3, I have cleaned the as per the CS Cleaning mods guide, although I noticed that Storms and Sound overrides some of the changes in AN's esps even after having been cleaned, to give one as an example:

[05] OBSE-Storms & Sound SI.esp \ Cell \ Block 0 \ Sub-Block 0 \ 0002C178                           [00] Oblivion.esm     [02] All Natural.esp                       [05] OBSE-Storms & Sound SI.espDATA - Flags              Is Interior Cell      Is Interior Cell, Behave like exterior     Is Interior Cell Behave like exterior                           Behave like exteriorXCLL - Lighting Fog Near                 0.000000              0.000100                                   0.000000XCCM - Climate                                  NIWGeneric [CLMT:01001BA9]

I am using BOSS to sort out mods, and as a result, the overrides the changes from . There are many other conflicts identified within TES4Edit and perhaps this may give a hint on the aforementioned issue.

I haven't tried removing Storms and Sound and leaving only All Natural active, though I will post an update if such an issue were still to occur.

I'll start by saying I don't use S&S, and to my knowledge neither does Arthmoor or Brumbek. I've chosen not to because the only thing S&S adds extra when using AN is lightning strikes, and I don't think that is worth an extra mod or the potential problems (which you seem to be posting about) that may arise when using two complex mods interacting. When I say potential problems, I mean just that - I don't know of any bugs, but they're both complex systems and as such there is more scope for error.

To clarify, AN includes indoor weather sounds, but S&S also adds its own. Your issue could be purely a game limitation and have nothing to do with S&S though, as if you go through a load door during a transition, depending on the progress of the transition, either the previous weather or the next weather is set. This is because you can't start a transition again part the way through, it must start again from the beginning or skip straight to the end.

As to the 'conflicts' you've posted, they're not really conflicts at all if you've installed AN right (ie. using a Bashed Patch).

So I was fiddling around TES4Edit, comparing All Natural esps against the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, Supplemental and SI esps and found two conflicts:
snip

No, there's only one 'conflict', and that is the fog distance for ICArenaSpectators. The other cell has the UOP adding an owner that is defined by the UOP, and so AN doesn't have any way of adding it, and is therefore correct in having the vanilla owner. However, neither are any problem, since users should be importing C.Owners into their Bashed Patch from the UOP and applying the NVIDIA Fog Fix through it too. The UOP is packaged with the correct Bash Tags by default.

As I'm currently integrating changes from All Natural+SI into the OBSE-SI esp of Storms and Sound, particularly changes in the DATA - Flags field, I'm quite pleased to find out that All Natural has incorporated most of the fixes from the unofficial patches, save for one or two very minor oversights on Fog Near values.

Not sure what you're getting at here...

I stumbled upon another minor oversight in All Natural:

[02] All Natural.esp \ Cell \ Block 5 \ Sub-Block 3 \ 00051B8F FULL - Name: Mages Guild 3rd Floor

It should have been:

FULL - Name: Bravil Mages Guild 3rd Floor

That should take care of it.

I see no problem... It doesn't conflict with the UOP as it is, and if it's not covered by the UOP, it's not a bug.

Somebody could correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK wrye bash can't resolve all conflicts, especially without a proper bash tag and correct load order to achieve the desired effect. And even if it can solve a particular conflict, then the next determining factor for resolution is where the mod is in the load order. Importing data in wrye bash respects the currently active mods and checks each mod to be imported in order. So it is not always a guarantee that conflicts would be resolved by simply bash patching, unless you intimately know all mods in conflict and what fields they override each other, and a good grasp of how mods should be loaded. Or at least have setup proper bash tags for conflicting mods, have a desired load order, and have correct bashed patch import setup for rebuilding the patch.

Until then, it is better to have mods reflect fixes from unofficial patches, and change other fields as needed.

See my previous replies as to why you're wrong.

I have to admit that when I said about AN disabling a fix by UOP because of cell ownership overrides, I was in the mindset of an average user who would just follow what he's told from the manual, without taking extra steps to further his understanding. Of course because I am using BOSS and making further use of bash tags it adds to mods when rebuilding my patch, then the conflict regarding cell ownership is resolved in my case, thanks to Wrye Bash.

Again, see previous replies. The UOP comes pre-tagged. The average user should know how to properly use a Bashed Patch, and it isn't the place of All Natural's readme to teach them how to. Wrye Bash comes with its own readme. My stance is that I assume the user is competent, because I don't have time to waste hand-holding people when hours and hours have been spent writing readmes and guides that tell users exactly what to do already. If a user is incompetent, they should learn. Perhaps they may not want to: modded Oblivion isn't a walk in the park, but it's a lot easier today than it was a few years ago, so I see no reason for people to complain about difficulty. Sure, things can always be improved, but suggestions are not complaints.

[Sarah Kim]

My Oblivion install is somehow "only" 16GB. Of course I also have half a dozen backed-up Oblivion Data folders on a different partition should something go wrong.

For anyone who cares about my previous snow obsessions, I finally got an answer:

"Given its northern location and extreme elevations, Skyrim's climate is more prone to snowfall than Cyrodiil. To create realistic precipitation effects, Bethesda originally tried to use shaders and adjust their opacity and rim lighting, but once the artists built the models and populated the world the snow appeared to fall too evenly. To work around this problem, they built a new precipitation system that allows artists to define how much snow will hit particular objects. The program scans the geography, then calculates where the snow should fall to make sure it accumulates properly on the trees, rocks, and bushes. "

From http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/17/the-technology-behind-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim.aspx. Totally off-topic as usual, but it is weather, I guess.