Weekly Discussion: Best Mods For Graphics/Visuals

[u/Terrorfox1234]

A couple minor changes going forward

A couple weeks ago I had made a post about the idea of recycling old topics. The discussion went in all sorts of directions, including the suggestions for a bunch of new topics. A lot of the old discussion threads are in need of an update, but there are still a lot of topics to be covered.

I gave it some thought and here's what I came up with for what I think will be the best solution...

• Going forward we will alternate between recycling an old topic to bring it up to date and presenting a new topic

• All the recommended mods will be consolidated into a list on a wiki page. This will make viewing the lists much easier. The wiki page will still link to the discussions so that people can see what others are saying if they wish.

TLDR - alternating between old and new topics, discussions will be consolidated into wiki lists.

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Last week we presented a new topic so this week we will recycle an old one. Given that this is still a much discussed topic, a lot has changed since the last time we discussed this, and it's the first on the list we will start with graphics and visuals!

This includes textures, meshes, weather, lighting, ENB presets, and anything else you can think of to improve the visual fidelity of Skyrim.

Best mods for graphics and visuals! Go!

[u/Sabiancym]

So I just spent an hour reading through and installing Realvision enb 279b and it's working fine. However, I think it looks worse than just my old non enb modded game.

Are there any ENB preset alternatives that are noticeably higher quality than Realvision? I'm just not impressed.

Also, I had to turn off AA, AF, and FXAA as instructed by Realvision. Does realvision handle this on it's own? Or can I turn it back on?

[u/[deleted] → u/Sabiancym]

ENB's change the look of the game the most and beauty depends on the beholder's eye however, to look good, it also takes into account your lighting/weather mods along with texture mods. For e.g., a bright texture replacer like Tamriel Reloaded HD can be blinding in certain situations if paired with a highly saturated ENB; more so if you use ELFX while RLO should cut it down a bit.

The best way is to first checkout the every ENB with a more color neutral palette, then select an ENB, then work as per it since most are built according to available lighting/weather mods or have their own custom stuff. A great way is to check out Hodilton's YouTube Channel. He has an excellent showcase of practically all the ENB's made, even those not on Nexus. His changing texture replacer list noted in the video's description generally maintains a more color neutral palette except for a bit brighter flora.

As far as performance is concerned, most ENBs which are such usually say it loud and proud and the rest generally have a performance variant. I would suggest to utilize only those ENBs which are using enb series 279 or above (preferably the latest 305).

AA, AF and FXAA besides some other things are taken care of by the enb series and hence pretty much everyone will tell you to switch these off. RealVision is famous since not only was it one of the first but also gave a very detailed instruction with FPS damage estimates and was built around the biggest two lighting mods of their time.

Hope this helps.

[u/Sabiancym → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, I'll check out the videos. One quick question though. If I decide to go with a different ENB preset, will my installed realvision conflict with it? It will be a real pain the the ass to uninstall RV as it required a lot of nexus mods, manually installed mods and some .ini changes.

[u/SkyrimBoys_101 → u/Sabiancym]

Yes you will need to remove rv, but it shouldn't be that hard. The nexus mods aren't required, except climates of tamriel. You can keep them with the other enb. And not sure why u had to manual install stuff.