TES Skyrim 0.241

[Jafin16]

Oyama
I've heard you talking about pushing the scales way over 1 for a long time and I've always thought "I guess I could toy with it sometime..."

I'm now going to do it... like... right now. HOLY MOTHER OF DONUTS THOSE SCREENS ARE BEAUTIFUL!!!!

Too bad AMD still doesn't allow downsampling via drivers... I'm surprised they haven't implemented it yet. I can downsample via ENB but having to downsample from 2160p is just a little harsh on the ole' framerate. I know there are other ways to do it but they all seem to be a big pain in the rear.

EDIT: Quick query... what is the highest allowed value for SizeScale and SourceTexturesScale? I set Source to 2.0 and the ingame GUI reads 1.0, but the enbseries.ini still reads 2.0 even though I altered a few other things and hit save configuration. Just curious, I can figure it out myself if needs be

[ENBSeries]

I did comparison of v236 vs 0.241 performance with all effects enabled (except depth of field and skylighting) in Riverwood location (it have a lot of dip calls). Resolution 1920*1440, GeForce 650 Ti 2 Gb (128 bit memory bandwidth) and crappy tripple core amd 2.9 athlon cpu (intel almost twice fast). Ssao sizescale=1, sourcetexturescale=1. Fps for both mods 12, when disable ssao and reflections - 30, when disable mod - 44, when disable shadows from clouds - in range of measuring mistakes. Screenshots:
v236:
http://i.imgur.com/R5bh1Zx.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9KqANa9.jpg
v241 with clouds on:
http://i.imgur.com/MUfNZLI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HXm9ywV.jpg
It's very clear that 30 to 20 fps change on jrista hardware can't happen normally. Who want SLI support, buy me another desktop, including pc case, psu, motherboard, cpu, ram, etc etc etc, except display, so i can just throw to scrapyard this noisy heavy garbage when will move to another place.

[Oyama]

Who want SLI support, buy me another desktop, including pc case, psu, motherboard, cpu, ram, etc etc etc, except display, so i can just throw to scrapyard this noisy heavy garbage when will move to another place.

Didn't ask for SLI support, since it would be useless considering the way TESV's profile scales with SLI, wich is already average and not optimized.
And I remember what you said about multi-GPUs setups.
I'm already very happy with my setup and ENB as it is
Skyrim was not developed by Bugthesda with SLI or XFire in mind, obviously. And, to tell the truth, a few games are, only have to notice how many updates by Nvidia just because modifications of SLI profiles for many games.

About the noise, Boris : a 10 meters HDMI cable, some wirless keyboard and mouse, and you're good to go My case is NOT in the room I'm working / playing I couldn't stand it.

Oyama
I've heard you talking about pushing the scales way over 1 for a long time and I've always thought "I guess I could toy with it sometime..."

Initial idea wasn't mine, Boris told me one day it would allow for over-the -top quality, and he was right !

[Darkstorne]

If you have your SSAO scaling to 0.35, that means SSAO scaling is actualy a mere 12%! I have mine set to 0.774596669241483, which is 60% scaling. I don't really like anything below that. I used to run at 0.894427190999915, or 80% scaling (and when I did, I usually got about 15-20fps , hence the reason I pulled back to 60%), and I prefer to run it at 1.224744871391589 (150% scaling) for screenarchery (which, ironically, also seems to run at about 15-20fps...)

Yep, my SSAO is really low quality, but that allows me to keep a consistent 40fps. It really depends what you enjoy the most

I highly recommend lowering all those effects, setting quality to 1 or 2 on everything, lowering source levels of SSAO etc, and getting your game to a high frame rate. From there, tweak the effects one by one, increasing their quality in order of whichever you like most. Eventually you'll find your limit, and balance ENB to best suit your tastes and needs I'd love to slap everything to 0 or -1 and play with water displacement too, but until I get a GTX 880 that's just not going to happen

[Jafin16]

Darkstorne has it right. That's really the only way you're gonna do it. With my card I've managed to get everything to 0 with only DetailedShadows with -1 BUT my framerate varies from 25-40 outdoors depending on how intense the scene is, usually sitting around 30-35. Indoors varies dramatically on the low end 35 up to and beyond 60 (I don't use vsync or frame limiter. They tend to produce stutters or very low performance on my system for some reason in Skyrim ENB). Now, I'm ABLE to do that, but that's only because my card performs roughly as well as a Titan (give or take some depending on the game, but with vanilla Skyrim I believe the 290 is about 5% faster, don't quote me on that). I was toying with increasing SSAO scales above 1 and that tanked my performance (performance sat around 20 outdoors) so I'll be saving that until I get into a screenarchery mood, or I manage to get another 290 (that's not happening for quite some time).

Boris
I remember hearing somewhere on these forums (or perhaps an ENB profile page on the Nexus) that video card overclocking doesn't help very much with ENB, and someone quoted you on that. Is this true or was that some false information? I want to hold off on overclocking this card until it starts to get old and I need a performance boost (probably a year or 2 down the road) but if it can potentially boost my performance enough to increase visuals by a considerable margin with ENB, I'll do it.

[Maeldun]

I've also been playing with SSAO scales and I was wondering what the obstacle is to making these editable in the ENB GUI.

[jrista]

There is NO common rule.

Fact is Boris didn't optimize for multi-GPUs, so we have to figure out by ourselves.
I'm currently using scales I wouldn't even mention, since they fit my rig / inis / game and nothing would be adviceable in case of another configuration.
I can tell one thing : the SSAO-SSIL is pure diamonds once you dive into it. We've just been scratching the surface.
As an example, a lot of us were used to "pair" our Size and SourceTextures on same values as a common rule. I was as well.
But experimenting with MUCH higher SourceTextures than Size, while pushing Size *far* over 1.0 resulted in fantastic results on my side, especially coupled with downsampling.
BUT : you'll then have to tweak pre (if included in prepass) and post (if using) sharpening methods, as well as control the naturally generated noise. But even noise can be interesting in final rendering since it can "dry" the image, what +1.0 scales naturally tend to do.
I came to a point I prefer 1080p a/o 1440p rendering coupled with high scales FAR over 1620p or 1800p coupled with 0.707 a/o 0.5xxxx ones...
When it comes to screenarchery, no compromises : 2160p all the way *AND* crazy scales. I know why fans do exist

Just take a look at this shot, the clouds are from Dramatic Clouds, and the weather is Alduin's matter. No weather a/o lighting mods.
See the sharpening on the clouds and the lighting.
All that is SSAO / SSIL related. Crazy.
Full size here



And look at that pillar...



We could discuss about all this for hours indeed.

Thanks for the images! Fantastic! (Particularly the first one, Sun Haters...phenomenal!)

I have to give you all the credit. It is your work and past comments that have had me push SSAO scaling as high as I do. It really is the thing that makes the rendering become otherworldly. I'm totally with you, I prefer a bit of noise in my textures...I can't stand smooth textures, everything just ends up looking plastic.

At some point I'll be picking up a pair of 880's to run in SLI, probably with water cooling (as I think my clock problem has to do with my tip 760 overheating, I have to underclock to keep the temperature under 80°C). I just hope the nVidia 880's roll around soon...really chomping at the bit to push this game farther, see what it can do!! My 760's have become just a stopgap. They do ok, but man, I just can't get the kind of quality I see in so many shots on the gallery thread.

[Jafin16]

I've also been playing with SSAO scales and I was wondering what the obstacle is to making these editable in the ENB GUI.

As I understand it, it would be like changing the size of textures while the game is running which doesn't work too well. It's one of those things that just doesn't work. I could be wrong though...

[MOTOSXORPIO]

Before this very last update: glow maps severely dampened/darkened without high Window Lighting settings. Most noticeable while looking at the enchanting table, the blue glow is nearly invisible at normal/default window lighting values.

[jrista]

I did comparison of v236 vs 0.241 performance with all effects enabled (except depth of field and skylighting) in Riverwood location (it have a lot of dip calls). Resolution 1920*1440, GeForce 650 Ti 2 Gb (128 bit memory bandwidth) and crappy tripple core amd 2.9 athlon cpu (intel almost twice fast). Ssao sizescale=1, sourcetexturescale=1. Fps for both mods 12, when disable ssao and reflections - 30, when disable mod - 44, when disable shadows from clouds - in range of measuring mistakes. Screenshots:
v236:
http://i.imgur.com/R5bh1Zx.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9KqANa9.jpg
v241 with clouds on:
http://i.imgur.com/MUfNZLI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HXm9ywV.jpg
It's very clear that 30 to 20 fps change on jrista hardware can't happen normally. Who want SLI support, buy me another desktop, including pc case, psu, motherboard, cpu, ram, etc etc etc, except display, so i can just throw to scrapyard this noisy heavy garbage when will move to another place.

The actual change was 8fps (the 30 to 20 was because of v-sync...with v-sync disabled, frame rate dropped from around 29-30fps to 22-23fps, so really ~7.5fps average frame rate change.) I think I figured out the source, though...see below:

About the whole FPS thing, do note that the longer you play, the more scripts that are being run and the like. You're going to get worse framerates regardless of your settings.

It's the nature of Bethesda's bastard red-headed child that is their engine.

Well, that's disheartening...hope that doesn't actually happen (as I've eliminated all known scripted mods that I used to use).

I am pretty sure though, at this point, that a significant part of (although not the whole) cause was the area I was in (along with the weather). I was near the hotsprings, with cloudy overhead and fog (from a mod) moving through, and once I moved on from that area (after making the tweaked I mentioned to SSAO scaling/quality, shadow quality), my frame rates moved back up into the 35-40fps area. I am pretty sure the increase in particles is what did my system in. I've moved to a different region on the world map now, and frame rate stays above 30fps until the fog kicks in, then it tanks again. I'd seen the fog before (from a CoT weather addon), but frame rates must have been high enough that the impact didn't take me below 30fps. I can't remove the mod (every time I've removed any mods, scripted or otherwise, my save game dies within 10-15 saves), so I'll just have to live with it.

Even without the fog in play, if I restore my settings to what they were before, I am still experiencing enough of a frame rate drop that it takes me below 30fps on a consistent basis, and with v-sync on, I drop down to 20fps. It only seems to be a ~3fps hit in total (with all effects enabled and quality settings at -1 or 0, instead of 0 or 1), so much better... but because of the vertical stutter problem (which I know is NOT Boris' issue), I'm stuck keeping v-sync on, so 20fps is a much more common occurrence now than it used to be.

I wish there was a way to solve that stuttering problem. I'd never noticed it before with v-sync off, I am really not sure why it is plaguing me now. I remember the game used to be very smooth with ENB and without v-sync, and while FPS would fluctuate between 28fps to 45fps outdoors, it never really dropped low enough that it caused major problems. Is this issue caused by drivers? The only thing I can think of that has chanced, other than ENB, is my driver version. I must have updated a couple times over the last few months, to the latest WHQL drivers...I'd happily revert to an older version if I knew that would fix this damnable stuttering issue.