TES Skyrim SE 0.409

[Anubis]

Arindel
My obsession with caustics (and all other water effects) is related to how much water gives to every game's sense of reality. It is one of these things that, even if in small amounts, makes the most difference. There are great games that have their relistic impression totally ruined by nonrealistic water. (For example Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands - great atmospheric feeling, but the water is like a thin layer of membrane over the depth - not good)

I'm a designer and these things are usually the ones that get into the center of my attention first.
This doesn't mean that other things are not important, there are just very many different effects and options implemented to many other things, but very few to the water.

Boris
Making the interior water effects as a toggle, would benefit everyone - the ones who don't like the idea of some buggy interiors, can turn this off (maybe have this off by default) and the ones who don't mind a few bugs, can turn these effects on. There would be no downside - it would be a win-win situation.

[Mirx]

Personally, i don`t really care about interior caustics becuse it`s such a minor feature, taking in count that most of the time i spent with the game is on exteriors, it is like applying hd textures to certain things or creatures, for examples, hd textures for dwarwen machines are the last thing that i`ll add to the game, or don`t even bother about that, because those things only apears in a few locations instead of showing on the entire world, so i rather have more effects that affect the entire look of the game, not just a few things that are barely noticeable in some locations x( , like finding new ways to control directional ambient in real time not just in CK without that huge performance hit.

[Anubis]

Personally, i don`t really care about interior caustics becuse it`s such a minor feature, taking in count that most of the time i spent with the game is on exteriors, it is like applying hd textures to certain things or creatures, for examples, hd textures for dwarwen machines are the last thing that i`ll add to the game, or don`t even bother about that, because those things only apears in a few locations instead of showing on the entire world, so i rather have more effects that affect the entire look of the game, not just a few things that are barely noticeable in some locations x( , like finding new ways to control directional ambient in real time not just in CK without that huge performance hit.

It doesn't matter how "minor" some things seem to be - it's all about the details. And it's not about the size and amount of the details, more like the importance. And definitely about what someone thinks is important in the game. Your example with dwarwen machines is exactly one of the things that I consider very important. Some people just like to explore all the underground dwemer wonders. There are also many mods that use these textures - like Steampunk Skyrim (oldrim mod that works well in SE)
Everyone has some aspect of the game that is the most interesting to them. Someone liked fog, someone else likes sunrays, I like water and Dwemer tech (things you don't consider important), you like ambient light effects (that I think is flexible more than enough already) and so on.

My point - different people like different things. It is wrong to appeal to just a some people's tastes and rule out others, or what you consider "minor" (no offence)

[phoenixfabricio]

it has one very specific problem: AO makes grass dark (density doesn't matter) and makes grass look ugly, especially in the distance where original grass brightness needs to be maintained so that grass is blending with distant terrain LOD.
In Oldrim ENB it doesn't do that if I remember correctly. From what I remember, ENB for Oldrim has better looks and looks nicer on grass.

Thats something I said in the past, even without ENB, grasses in Skyrim SE have an ugly shadow pattern compared with Old Skyrim. ENB just intensify this issue. I found some workarounds to deal with it (reducing the problem, not a 100% fix ):

- Disable the game AO (using only ENB one)
- bShadowsOnGrass=0 in Skyrimprefs.ini
- I don't use ENB Detailed Shadows in my presets for SE (because unfortunately the grass shadows get worse with it )
- Increase the values of ENB [GRASS] settings (Really, this feature is a GREAT help in SE ENB)

I don't know if someday the SE grasses will have the visual quality of Old Skyrim + ENB, but after these adjustments I think they became far better than before.

[Arindel]

Anubis
Regardless of what we want, if Boris doesn't want to do it, you really shouldn't push it if he doesn't want to do what you want. This kind of behaviour takes the fun away of modding from any author. The author has to have fun when he's modding.

Edit:

phoenixfabricio
Yeah, even game's AO does that, but because it's limited in distance, it doesn't break the grass blending to distant terrain LOD.
I wonder if it's possible to make AO ignore grass...
The [Grass] parameters are very volatile, how big impact it does depends heavily on grass mod.

[Anubis]

Anubis
Regardless of what we want, if Boris doesn't want to do it, you really shouldn't push it if he doesn't want to do what you want. This kind of behaviour takes the fun away of modding from any author. The author has to have fun when he's modding.

Arindel
Not pushing - as I've said before. I just think that all opinions should be on the table - not just the favored ones. Because without the opinions - what's the point of the forum ? All is subjective anyways. Just don't overthink things - take it easy.



EDIT: In my line of work (designer) - it is normal that my crew is making all kinds of suggestions all the time. Without it my work would be very one-sided and only appeal to myself. Maybe that's why I make so many suggestions and I'm sorry if these suggestions seem like a push. This is not my intention. All I wish is to help improve things. (And I don't mind if someone makes me suggestions - I welcome it. That's why I don't get what's with the "push" talk)

[ENBSeries]

Arindel
I'm not sure about grass, because remove darkening means to degrade details of computation in the distance or fade out ao in the distance. For such weird objects like meshes and textures of grass the result of ao is expectable. The same thing people asked me about reducing shadowing from detailed shadows on grass. I can try some distance dependent factors, but they will come at cost of other objects degradation by ao and problem will not be solved if someone set grass drawing distance too big or too low, even some scaling factor per user can't work cause grass far distance change depending from where you stand on the field. Voxel based ao can solve noise problem on the grass, but i still not sure if it helps with described issue.

[Arindel]

Arindel
I'm not sure about grass, because remove darkening means to degrade details of computation in the distance or fade out ao in the distance. For such weird objects like meshes and textures of grass the result of ao is expectable. The same thing people asked me about reducing shadowing from detailed shadows on grass. I can try some distance dependent factors, but they will come at cost of other objects degradation by ao and problem will not be solved if someone set grass drawing distance too big or too low, even some scaling factor per user can't work cause grass far distance change depending from where you stand on the field. Voxel based ao can solve noise problem on the grass, but i still not sure if it helps with described issue.

This voxel based AO made me very curious, would it work? From what I've seen in this video, it seems to be a huge improvement in terms of visuals.

[ENBSeries]

I did in in old skyrim long time ago for experiment purposes and was not happy about low detail level, it only works for big objects, but ao is much more important for characters. I don't know, maybe there are already types of voxel ao which have lods to fix detail and memory usage issue, i didn't dig in to this.

[phoenixfabricio]

I wonder if it's possible to make AO ignore grass...

I don't think it would be a good solution. The nearby grasses lose details and does not look so good without ENB AO