Lightning flashes from distant storms cause a ground dimming instead of a ground flash. SOLVED

[Bluegunk]

Anyone got a tip to cure this issue?  

Skyrim 1170, using True Storms, Storm Lightning, NAT III and Community Shaders (CS).  

This is said to be caused by eye adaptation settings in the base game. But the suggested fixes don't seem to correct it. CS is not the cause.

Shizov author of Storm Lightning has also offered ideas, none of which worked.

 

Object processing, lightning colour, and various other ideas have cropped up with zero success.

 

NOTE: Closer storms work fine. This is for distant storms.

Edited May 1 by Bluegunk

[traison]

The issue is in the weather records. The lightning strike light color is wrong if I remember correctly.

 

Edit: Also in case you're not aware, Storm Lightning does nothing to the vanilla lightning effects. I personally disabled vanilla lightning entirely.

 

Edit again: If by lightning colour you meant you already adjusted the weather records, then upload the weather plugin here I'll take a look at it.

Edited April 30 by traison

[Bluegunk]

Hi Traison.

 

I'm running late here. THanks, I'll upload on Friday.

 

 

[traison]

Back when I had to fix this same issue in the weather mod I use, I wrote an xEdit script to do it for me. You can apply it to your weather mod plugin if it looks like its doing something other than what you already did previously:

 

unit UserScript;

function Process(e: IInterface): integer;
begin
    if Signature(e) <> 'WTHR' then
        Exit;
    
    SetElementNativeValues(e, 'Data - Data\Lightning Color\Red', 219);
    SetElementNativeValues(e, 'Data - Data\Lightning Color\Green', 220);
    SetElementNativeValues(e, 'Data - Data\Lightning Color\Blue', 238);
end;

end.

 

If nothing else then I'll just leave this here for future Googlers.

[Bluegunk]

Sorry, but it was getting late for me yesterday.   OK briefly let me go over what we have:

 

Problem:  When lighting flashes from an indetermined longer distance, the reflecting flash on the ground/objects is a dimming. Video shows it.
When lighting is closer, the flash is normal.
I had this problem originally with closer lightning until Shizov kindly advised me on the correct settings for Storm Lightning.  Closer storms, where lightning is fully visible, reflect properly.

 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paFHAIzVRBE    0.9 and 0.18

 

 

My current load order:

• Storm Lightning
• NAT.ENB - ESP WEATHER PLUGIN
• NAT-ENB - BEYOND SKYRIM BRUMA patch
• Audio Overhaul NAT.ENB III - Patch
• NAT-ENB SUMMER PATCH
• Happier NAT III Weathers
• True Storms
• True Storms (1.0.2) and NAT III patch (0.4.2c)
• NAT.CS III

Taking a couple of Storm weathers from its weather IDs:
NAT.CS III has the winning lightning colour which is all 255s
Visual Effect Begin = 166
Visual Effect End = 103

 

This is what I've done:
1.    Worked on the assumption the game's vanilla eye adaptation was the cause, and set the two values pretty much to zero in Skyrim.ini. No difference
2.    Juggled load orders. No effect.
3.    Adjusted Storm Lightning values to try and lose the problem. No difference could be seen
4.    Banged my head on the desk.

 

PS I originally asked a similar question on Storm Lightning's page when nearby storms were causing the same problem, and Shizov gave me a guide to better values that stopped the problem.  This is why I wonder if distance is causing the problem now?

 

Edited May 1 by Bluegunk

[traison]

The audio in the video suggests to me the issue is not in Storm Lightning but rather the vanilla lightning strikes (i.e. the weather records). It is also visually identical to the problem I had. The reason why it seems nearby lightning works is because that's Storm Lightning strikes - there is no nearby lightning in the base game.

 

I'll put the rest of this in a spoiler since some things can't be unseen. Those who like their vanilla lightning storms should not read.

 

Spoiler

If you want to test if it's vanilla lightning or not, go to a city and look at the windows of the buildings, you'll see the windows do weird things when the vanilla lightning strikes.

 

You may want to consider disabling vanilla lightning strikes anyways:

1. The frequency is difficult to adjust. It's basically always guaranteed to do one strike on average every 6 seconds I believe it was. With sounds sometimes lasting several seconds, it means even in a light storm you have constant thunder sound.
2. It's always behind you, never visible.
3. Always recycling the same 3 or so sounds.
4. It messes with building windows, lanterns and other light sources and I'm not sure that can be fixed.

 

If I remember correctly, the way to keep all features of Storm Lightning while disabling vanilla lightning is to remove the thunder sounds from all weather records. I have no automated script for this, since there's more than just thunder sounds associated with weathers.

 

Edit: Clarification: removing the thunder sounds will also remove the flash.

 

Also for what it's worth at this point, me disabling vanilla lightning was not the fix to the dark flashes. This is what my notes say about my weather mod:

Changes:

*  Removed all edits to volumetric lighting.
*  Fixed lighting strike light, it now flashes properly.
*  Fixed wind direction.
*  Disabled thunder completely, since the base game keeps spamming it every 1-6 seconds, regardless of frequency settings.

 

Lightning flashes clearly *was* a separate issue.

 

And unfortunately for you, I know of nothing else in the game that would produce dark flashes other than the weather records. You already said you disabled your shader replacer so that's obviously not an option either. Apparently there's a mod called Kreate that can mess with weather records during runtime.

Edited May 1 by traison

[Bluegunk]

9 minutes ago, traison said:

The audio in the video suggests to me the issue is not in Storm Lightning but rather the vanilla lightning strikes (i.e. the weather records). It is also visually identical to the problem I had. The reason why it seems nearby lightning works is because that's Storm Lightning strikes - there is no nearby lightning in the base game.

Thank you!

 

That seems eminently sensible. 

 

I don't use Kreate - I believe it is no longer compatible with Community Shaders.

 

As a last resort I tried swapping Storm Lightning to Compatability Mode and I think that might have solved the issue. More testing needed!

[Bluegunk]

Oh dear. All that searching, and the answer is to switch Storm Lightning to Compatability Mode.

 

Many thanks for your time, Traison!  Perhaps you ought to avoid answering my questions....   

 

I'll mark this as solved.

[traison]

7 minutes ago, Bluegunk said:

...the answer is to switch Storm Lightning to Compatability Mode.

 

Hm, I don't quite see how that helps here. Compatibility mode is supposed to add lightning from Storm Lightning to weathers that have lightning disabled through the Frequency value.

 

Odd.

[Bluegunk]

Thanks. I don't pretend to understand any of how Storm Lightning works. But switching it to Compatibility definitely solved the problem in a nice flashy way.

Edited May 1 by Bluegunk