TES Skyrim 0.229

[insomnia_jt]

Boris
Thank you very much for the shadow addition to an already fantastic water feature.
However, like stated above, I'm getting some striping and the shadows "flicker" a little bit like the SSAO on the trees when camera moves. No big deal though.
But is it possible to have some sort of quality parameter for shadows on water? Tried to set the [SHADOW] quality to -1 to see if it had any impact...
Even on my system I'm not losing a single FPS so good work! I gladly pay 2-3 FPS for increased shadow quality IF it's possible.

Sorry if this has been mentioned before!
Thanks!!

[Maeldun]

Maeldun
If i can't see this issue myself, then it can't be fixed, not more, not less.

Boris
Yes, I understand. I'd like to put in front of you the code that is causing this issue to appear in hopes you can help me find the offending code, but I'd like to avoid doing so publicly, particularly since the code is not mine - I'm trying to help identify the issue for Tansarville and don't want to present the code as my own. I sent you a PM on Nexus, as that's all I can do for now.

I took some comparison shots of shadows on water and it's even noticeable in darker areas (water surface near the leftmost pillar - more noticeable in-game than as a screenshot with a white background - right click and "view image" makes it more noticeable). I also noticed very little performance loss. This is a wonderful addition.

Shadows OFF


Shadows ON

[ENBSeries]

SurVivor2
Нажимайте кнопку Save, а потом Apply в редакторе, перезапускать не придется.

insomnia_jt
Shadows is almost same code as vanilla game shadows, i just read them (for performance reasons) from 512*512 downscaled shadow texture, so it look very noisy after some distance. Increasing resolution do not give much changes, keep it original - you know how vanilla shadow looks like. I tried blurred shadow, but it have the same blurring range for near and far shadow areas, have no idea yet how to separate blurring radius by split distance of "two" shadows like did in standart shadow long time ago (that one is very different).

Maeldun
I don't use pm on nexus, it's annoying 502 gateway resource. Just post messages until you be able to post pm here (how much messages, i don't remember). And repeat again, don't see issue - can't fix. Assuming where problem is also impossible, because it can't be, unlogical from my point of view.

[Oyama]

... it's annoying 502 gateway resource.

Oh hell yes !

insomnia_jt
Best bet to increase their quality, eventually, is to increase shadows quality in game inis, with their resolution, filter, etc...
And even, vanilla shadows are what they are... It won't impact that much.

Thus said, time for Boris to find other ways to compute the thing, these water shadows, as they are, are still what I call an improvement !

[Phinix]

I really like the idea of water shadows; thank you very much for working to add this new level of realism to the world of Skyrim. As you can see in this comparison, there are places where this effect will really add to the environment:

Bridge Without Water Shadows

Bridge With Water Shadows

The detail of the shadow under the bridge really improves the overall scene. Notice how the shadow effect subtly highlights the support of the bridge for a ways under the water? Very cool!

However, there are a couple things I feel may need a little work still. One thing that has been mentioned is the slight flickering, and I am sure that will be ironed out eventually. Another thing that would be nice is an intensity slider, which I am sure is also in the works. In some areas, the effect is just a little too strong:

Dark Area Without Water Shadows

Dark Area With Water Shadows

Overall I really like the effect. I wonder if it might be possible to dynamically tone down the intensity based on detection of whether a visible shadow is already being cast on normal terrain? One thing I notice is that normal shadows do get cast on the ground that is underwater, which often can be seen from the surface, and when the water shadow gets added on top of this, it can be a little too dark.

So, for areas where they overlap, some sort of blending might be helpful. Possibly as another slider, water shadow blend?

[ENBSeries]

Water shadows is just temporary solution, i tried to make lighting for water and volumetric shadows going in to deepness, but even smallest amount of lighting make water look very flat in shadow, so it require more complex math to make something like ambient occlusion inside shadows. At this moment shadows only remove specular from sun and decrease angle of reflection visibility (frennel factor), second one is absolutely wrong, but on practice prooved as good alternative to reflections from objects, by some means. So, i'll keep them until find better idea, no sense to add parameters.

[Phinix]

Understood. I will look forward to whatever you come up with, as always.

For now I feel the improvement outweighs any minor limitations, and I will personally play with the shadow effect on.

[Jafin16]

Hey Boris, sorry to bother you with this, but I headed over to the ENBoost thread on Nexus against my better judgment (the people there can be... special...) Anyways, there are couple of people reporting that Water and sometimes the sky is giving weird results even with UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true when using 0.229. Is it possible that perhaps water effects aren't getting fully disabled? One user, alt3ern1ty posted this:

Boris are the latest binaries meant to affect modded water like Realistic Water 2 ..

if - UsePatchSpeedhackWithoutGraphics=true

I cannot say which version of 0229 without a version number change I am currently in possession of, but it makes modded water look awful on our desktop machine.
Vanilla water textures are fine, but this is ENBoost, not full ENB use.

This isn't something that effects me personally so I don't really care. I told him to use 0.221 as that would solve all problems, but I thought you should be made aware, just in case it could produce a bug somewhere down the line.

Anyways, water shadows look amazing. There is a bit of shadow striping/flickering in shallow water as a few have mentioned but the overall benefits are so good I'm definitely playing with water shadows on. No noticeable FPS loss on my end either.

[Phinix]

v0.229 definitely works with water mods. I use Realistic Water Two myself. Check out this video, which is running PNENB and the latest v0.229 ENB, and compares different popular water mods with vanilla:

Realistic Water Two vs. Pure Waters vs. W.A.T.E.R

[SamEkinci]

Boris

Some of the animal texture mods that change fish cause it to be seen from great distance very clearly as if out of water, after 229, any idea what causes this so I can make fixes?