ENB vs Reshade vs vanilla engine

[khumak]

I've tried several different ENBs and some of them look really nice most of the time but at least for my game, all of them have 3 glaring flaws.

 

1.  Fog is blindingly bright.  So much so that I just turn off my ENB completely any time there's fog.  (Even with the Dimmer Fog mod)

2.  Night Eye doesn't work.

3.  Lighting mods that change image spaces to adjust interior lighting don't work very well

 

I've tried Reshade as well but it seems like either MO2 has some glitch when using Reshade or there's a trick to it that I haven't found yet.  If I use Reshade, MO2 ignores ALL of my mods.  The reshade works but not much point without my mods.  Reshade does work with my mods if I'm using both ENB AND Reshade however.  Unfortunately Reshade doesn't fix my fog issues.

 

So far I've settled on using the vanilla engine because of the issues above.  The downside is that the colors feel a little washed out compared to ENB.

 

I'm using ELFX + ELE + Vivid Weather + Darker Nights (in that order) with Godrays disabled (that seemed to clear up the persistent haze that was otherwise always there).  With that setup I get realistic lighting, dark nights, dark dungeons, brightly lit friendly interiors, night eye works, fog looks like it should.

 

As a bonus, the interior lighting from ELE with the vanilla engine is bright enough to actually see sex scenes without a torch/lantern/candle light spell.

 

Curious if anyone has found a better setup for lighting that includes night eye working and fog not being blindingly bright.

[khumak]

Found a new ENB just today that may have everything I want. 

 

Photorealistic Tamriel beta 0-3-0 - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/4743/?

 

So far the lighting looks great even on skin and he has it set up with a bunch of different "film" presets that you can try out in game from the ENB menu that give a large number of different effects.  I'm still trying them and I haven't yet had a chance to see what he's done with fog but so far it really looks amazing.

 

There are a couple of potential downsides:

 

1.  If you leave the all of the films enabled (by default, all of them are enabled) loading the ENB intially takes a lot longer than usual (in my case longer than 60 seconds).

2.  I think the current version requires NAT (his weather mod).  I actually don't consider this a downside since this means his weathers are specifically tuned to his ENB settings, but if you're set on Vivid/COT/etc then that could be a problem.

 

[Mertz]

Just out of curiosity (I'm putting together my own Reshade+ENB hybrid), does MO2 flip out if you just manually copy the files into your "Skyrim Special Edition" folder or is there another step involved?

 

The reason I ask is I would like to head off any problems for MO2 users beforehand if I decide to share it.

[Kaz Aanh]

Photorealistic?

 

Its literally washed out, lesser contrast.

[khumak]

Just out of curiosity (I'm putting together my own Reshade+ENB hybrid), does MO2 flip out if you just manually copy the files into your "Skyrim Special Edition" folder or is there another step involved?

 

The reason I ask is I would like to head off any problems for MO2 users beforehand if I decide to share it.

 

MO2 does not handle anything that goes outside of the data folder so you have to manually copy the ENB files.  MO has no problem using them once you do that though.

[Mertz]

 

Just out of curiosity (I'm putting together my own Reshade+ENB hybrid), does MO2 flip out if you just manually copy the files into your "Skyrim Special Edition" folder or is there another step involved?

 

The reason I ask is I would like to head off any problems for MO2 users beforehand if I decide to share it.

 

MO2 does not handle anything that goes outside of the data folder so you have to manually copy the ENB files.  MO has no problem using them once you do that though.

 

 

Thanks for the reply. That's as I expected.  I'm curious about what is causing MO2 to glitch on ReShade. It should be just like ENB in that everything just goes into the base game directory and not the Data folder.

[khumak]

 

Thanks for the reply. That's as I expected.  I'm curious about what is causing MO2 to glitch on ReShade. It should be just like ENB in that everything just goes into the base game directory and not the Data folder.

 

 

Not sure.  It works fine even with Reshade if I'm also using an ENB but not if I only use Reshade.

[khumak]

I'm back to using Skyrim ReEngaged ENB again after finding a way to fix my fog issue. 

 

I have to disable Godrays in the Skyrim SE Launcher and that makes fog look normal.  Having Godrays enabled seems to blanket all of Skyrim with a permanent haze.  In the vanilla engine that just makes all of Skyrim have a washed out look.  With ENB it makes fog blindingly bright unless it's pitch dark outside.

 

ReEngaged has a sharper, more colorful fantasy look that I like compared to the other ENBs I've tried and also compared to vanilla.  Somehow it makes Skyrim feel cold and wet which is fitting for someone who likes to play with Wet and Cold, Frostfall, etc. 

 

As far as lighting goes, I use ELFX (main module only) + ELE + Vivid Weather + Darker Nights (3rd darkest) + Claralux and I tweak the interior lighting in the ENB to 0.5 so that it's a little brighter.  For Claralux I double the glow and bump the light intensity up by 1.  That's pretty close to perfect lighting for me.  Friendly interiors are almost as bright as vanilla but still have realistic lighting and shadows.  Dungeons are pitch dark.  Nights are very dark, but not as dark as dungeons and Claralux provides some cool lighting effects at night outside.

 

I do still have 2 issues I haven't found any workaround for.

 

1.  Night Eye still doesn't work unless I turn AGCC on, which ReEngaged is not tuned for.

2.  Spider webs are blindingly bright if they're near any kind of light source (like the ones that Arvel is stuck in at Bleak Falls Barrow).  Don't really run into spider webs that often though so not a huge deal.