Skyrim: Outdoors in Daytime too Dark

[spadesage]

Yeah... I have no idea why this is happening. I have a problem very similar to this person: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1251 with the exception being that this issue is affecting the exterior during daytime. At first I thought it was because of the time-of-day settings, but after checking the lighting in various outdoor locales for a Skyrim-week (while monitoring the 0-1 values for day/ sunset/ sunrise/ night with the dropdown thingy in the Shift-Enter menu for ENB inside Skyrim), I realized that is not the case (ToD functions perfectly).

I have already tried messing with every single ENB setting I could see that has any relation to shadows and day-lighting: none of them produced any visual differences at all to alleviate my problem. Changing brightness does not help (as it only makes the dark shadows turn to gray, and washes out other colors in the process-- which makes everything even harder to see). I even deleted the preset I got off Nexus and replaced it with the default settings to no avail (yes, I made sure I got every single file taken off before installing the default). And then I discovered the source of the problem: the Effect checkbox. Yes, the Event checkbox under Global Variables: it did not matter if every single feature found underneath the Event section itself was disabled, simply by checking the box to allow Effects (despite there being no effects enabled) turned the screen from the vanilla daytime brightness to vanilla daytime darkness. The best part: this was tested during multiple time changes in the Skyrim day (I would post screenshots but for some reason --despite having everything set up correctly-- PrtScrn and F12 do not like me. Either that or Steam stores them somewhere different for me, or Alienware has some special key or something for screenshots... I don't even know what half the stuff on the keyboard does- I cannot play via keyboard to save my life) and it always darkened the screen (like having a 50% transparent layer of gray placed over the screen and set to multiply --if you're familiar with Photoshop/ similar programs you know what I mean).

I also noticed that for some reason after putting the .dll files for ENB into the Skyrim root folder and starting the launcher, that the game no longer recognized my graphics card: it went back to the integrated graphics (my Nvidia did not show up in the list of available graphics cards anymore). But I think it's still running with the Nvidia anyways (I set both the Skyrim .exe files, and the one for SKSE as well, to run with Nvidia manually using the Nvidia settings tool).

I have the most recent version of ENB, and I have the most recent version of the helper mod. I've tried using the injector version, and I've tried the wrapper version. My laptop is less than a year old and has an i7-4900 processor and 16 GB of RAM (and it is capable of using that much -I got Windows 8 just for that reason alone), and runs on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 765M. In short, there's no reason it should not be able to run this stuff correctly. I even recalibrated my screen to see if that was the problem (the weirdest part about that is that when the game started up it actually did help with the gamma being too dark, but within a minute the game recalibrated itself somehow... not my computer- the gamma for my desktop, etc. didn't revert to its previous values).

So... what can I do to brighten exterior daytimes without disabling ENB entirely? I already tried putting ridiculously high/ low values into the ambient light, direct light, various sun values, and any other parameter that looked like it might help-- nothing seemed to change visually. I can live with the darkness driving me insane, but I'd really rather not. And vanilla Skyrim lighting does not do my textures any justice.

[spadesage]

Edit: I did find a visual representation of what the problem is, which is even more confusing...

http://cdn.overclock.net/0/0b/0b8e8180_ ... 00016.jpeg --This is what it looks like with the Effects checkbox disabled under Global Settings.


http://cdn.overclock.net/b/b4/b438a6d5_ ... 00019.jpeg --This is what it looks like when the Effects checkbox is enabled under Global Settings (contrary to its description, in my case both of those processing types are not enabled in the ENB settings).

[ENBSeries]

May be you just run it via integrated intel videocard? It's common problem of laptops. Use injector version of the mod, then start launcher with it, allow game to redetect videocard, then exit launcher and edit skyrimprefs.ini as required by the mod (bfloatingpointrendertarget=1 at least), then run injector again and start the game.

[spadesage]

Sorry for the lateness in replying.... was trying out a few other things to see if it would work.

I can't run Skyrim with integrated graphics; even the lowest of settings will crash the game. D:
BUT (and I have no idea if this is relevant or not-- was certainly an eye-opener for me) I did learn that Skyrim is stupid in that it equates gamma to brightness. They're not the same thing, but the silly game thinks they are (heck, I only knew they were different because I tried calibrating my monitor earlier). Which would explain a few things in relation to the gamma and brightness settings in ENB: it explains why editing brightness in-game through the game's settings by 1 notch drastically alters the picture (it's essentially "resetting" itself to its own values). ...Or at least I think that's what it's doing.

I also noticed that unless Skyrim is obnoxiously green by default, that bloom effects (and possibly some other stuff) from my ENB preset's SweetFX file are still active when disabling the Effect checkbox on ENB's Global settings. Removing the SweetFX files does nothing to help with ENB exterior darkness, but it does have me wondering-- is it possible to input all of the ENB settings into the SweetFX file? That way if I leave "effects" unchecked under ENB global settings, it might still apply all the effects through that...

Just thought of something else to try as well; I forgot that ENB has an .exe file... I can make Nvidia run that....

And if all else fails, I'll probably be OCD enough to add light effects everywhere with the CK. Because the interior locations are just too -insert expletive here- pretty with ENB. xP

[ENBSeries]

Don't know how to "input all of the ENB settings into the SweetFX file", i'm not sofisticated with that mod. Regarding ingame brightness/gamma, i never pay attention to it, don't know how it computed and where. If after mine post processing, then it's culprit and you can't do anything in enbseries, because ldr data will be modified by the game to lower value. Users generally see such image when bFloatingPointRenderTarget=0 set and mod do not work properly.

[spadesage]

...Holy carp. You just found the root of my problem: the game fails to use (or just decides to ignore) the "bFloatPointRenderTarget=" section of the SkyrimPrefs.ini file. After I read your reply, I went to double-check that I still had "bFloatPointRenderTarget=1" in the SkyrimPrefs.ini (which I do), and just for the heck of it I set it to 0 and ran the game. It behaved the exact same way as when the setting was at 1.

Tried both the wrapper and injector (yes, I did remember to launch the injector .exe) versions, same result. Only difference is that the injector still recognizes Nvidia (huzzah!). I have not a clue how to fix this problem; for all I know my laptop's incompatible with ENB.

[ENBSeries]

Probably you have mod manager which dublicate skyrimprefs.ini to other place.

[spadesage]

-had no idea that random SkyrimPrefs.ini files were located and used by the game- ...But I did hunt down the 2 extras and delete them, which seemed to help some. After that, adding bFloatingPointRenderTarget to the SkyrimPrefs.ini file in addition to the original setting of bFloatPointRenderTartget seemed to do the trick. It was still dark, and many settings refused to work, but it was certainly an improvement.

Finally found a setup that works, although it only works using the wrapper version. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43765/? --The "special edition" for the .244 binary looks gorgeous with exteriors; I just need to iron out a few issues with interiors (which I believe are related to having some stray .dll/ other enb settings from another setup lying around somewhere). It's a bit frustrating that it only works with the wrapper (since the Injector version actually recognizes my Nvidia card, the wrapper defaults to integrated), but it works. And since it runs on the highest settings without crashing horribly, I'm hoping that means it's running the wrapper version with Nvidia despite what the launcher says. So I'm just gonna leave it be and not mess with it anymore (else I'll probably break it again).

Thanks for putting up with me; your assistance is very much appreciated.

[ENBSeries]

All presets work with injector too.