Jump to content

SR:LE, Extended, and Beyond; An Attempt to Understand and Improve


Recommended Posts

(Wish I could change the name of this thread)

 

Anyway... I went and uploaded the Dead Man's Drink Fix to the Nexus because it seemed useful.

 

On an unrelated note, I haven't done any major modding since NwN2, and tinkering around in other people's mods made me wonder about hijacking the engine and building D&D 5 Forgotten Realms.

Link to comment

Thanks... I'm currently evaluating the textures in various large packs to find the best-looking (and matching) setup.

 

I'm evaluating:

Official High Resolution Texture Pack + Project Parallax Vanilla

Skyrim Realistic Overhaul + Project Parallax SRO

SkyrimHD + SkyrimHD Parallax Tribute

Vivid Landscapes All-in-One + Vivid Woods

aMidianBorn (All Environmental)

Skyrim 2015 WIP by Pfuscher

NobleSkyrimMod

Tamriel Reloaded

 

I've noticed that if I switch every single texture to a 4k/2k version, I do in fact get a reduced framerate in some areas (average of 55, dipping to 30 in certain places), but they also increase the stutter which I assume would be a consequence of either the load time from SSD or the process time from ENB.

 

If anyone has another large-sized texture pack they think I ought to take a gander at, please let me know.

Edited by Electrocutor
Link to comment

Thanks. Do you know if the NSM Full file is actually full or does it lack some of the below 'only' packages?

 

One thing I've noticed is that even with bunches of very large overlapping texture packs enabled; each one is still offering hundreds of textures that are not covered by other texture packs. The biggest issue is that Vivid Landscapes is the only one that I like nearly all of the textures for; the rest are hit and miss.

Edited by Electrocutor
Link to comment

Alas, it seems that this Project Parallax Revived suffers from the same parallax map corruption as Project Parallax and Project Parallax Remastered.

https://i.imgur.com/ZbL1lOB.jpg

 

Pfuscher also has one or two corrupt parallax maps. So far SkyrimHD Tribute and Vivid Landscape are the only two with 0 corrupt parallax maps that I've found.

Edited by Electrocutor
Link to comment

Alas, it seems that this Project Parallax Revived suffers from the same parallax map corruption as Project Parallax and Project Parallax Remastered.

https://i.imgur.com/ZbL1lOB.jpg

Isn't that just the result of having FixParallaxTerrain=true and incompatible landscape textures? Because if so, I don't believe PPR is at fault, you either need to set FixParallaxTerrain to false or get a set of compatible landscape textures like Skyrim HD - Terrain Parallax Tribute (I recommend 1k) and let them overwrite SRO/NSM-HD.

Edited by Pretendeavor
Link to comment

Quality Rating so Far (Best at Top / Parallax Compatibility Included in Evaluation):

  1. Vivid Landscapes All-in-One + Vivid Woods
  2. (Large Gap)
  3. SkyrimHD + SkyrimHD Parallax Tribute
  4. (Small Gap)
  5. NobleSkyrimMod + Project Parallax Revived *
  6. Skyrim Realistic Overhaul + Project Parallax SRO
  7. Official High Resolution Texture Pack + Project Parallax Vanilla
  8. (Large Gap)
  9. Skyrim 2015 WIP by Pfuscher **

Not Yet Accessed:

aMidianBorn (All Environmental)

Tamriel Reloaded ***

----

 

* Someone should ask Hein84 to give Noble Skyrim a Parallax Tribute and it would then be better than SkyrimHD in a general sense. Looking between the two, I think the best solution would be a combination of SkyHD Tribute and Noble Skyrim Tribute (if it should be made).

 

** Pfuscher's is completely a 'throw it in' texture pack, while many of the texture don't look bad, there is absolutely no consistency in color palette or congruence of patterns. Therefore it can only be used as a partial fill-in for specific textures that need a parallax variant. If I end up using any specific textures from this, I'll list out which files specifically.

 

*** The fomod for Tamriel Reloaded could really use built-in screenshot comparisons of the options...


^ Yes. This is terrain parallax incompatible texture...not a bad *_p.dds.

I guess saying corrupt 'parallax map' isn't quite right; but instead corrupt combination of parallax map and texture, no? A texture pack that include both a parallax map and a texture should not be incompatible with parallax for that texture.

Edited by Electrocutor
  • +1 1
Link to comment

It is... except that the incompatible landscape textures are coming specifically from parallax-enabled texture packs.

 

I guess saying corrupt 'parallax map' isn't quite right; but instead corrupt combination of parallax map and texture, no? A texture pack that include both a parallax map and a texture should not be incompatible with parallax for that texture.

Wait a minute here. Older packs like SRO were not created with the FixParallaxTerrain feature of ENB in mind, because this feature was added to ENB much later. If enabled, FixParallaxTerrain uses the alpha channels of diffuse textures as height maps. In some cases this leads to the kind of distorted textures like you posted. This is not because of Project Parallax or because of any other *_p.dds files that ship with texture packs.

 

Landscape textures that work properly with FixParallaxTerrain enabled include (but are not limited to): Vivid Landscapes, Skyrim HD - Parallax Terrain Tribute, Skyrim 2015 Parallax Terrain SPT (collection of textures by Pfuscher), tamu75's Terrain Parallax Textures.

Link to comment

Wait a minute here. Older packs like SRO were not created with the FixParallaxTerrain feature of ENB in mind, because this feature was added to ENB much later. If enabled, FixParallaxTerrain uses the alpha channels of diffuse textures as height maps. In some cases this leads to the kind of distorted textures like you posted. This is not because of Project Parallax or because of any other *_p.dds files that ship with texture packs.

 

Landscape textures that work properly with FixParallaxTerrain enabled include (but are not limited to): Vivid Landscapes, Skyrim HD - Parallax Terrain Tribute, Skyrim 2015 Parallax Terrain SPT (collection of textures by Pfuscher), tamu75's Terrain Parallax Textures.

... which is why I said it'd be nice for Hein84 to give Noble Skyrim a tribute treatment. In his SkyrimHD tribute treatment he corrected any non-parallax compatible textures (which makes perfect sense for a parallax-enabled mod). He has no problem having both parallax and alpha.

 

If you wanted to run with Terrain Parallax disabled, then yes, these textures and their parallax add-ons would be fine; but I am evaluating them with terrain parallax enabled; which means that many of the terrain textures don't work if they do not fully support parallax, and so a different texture pack's version would need to be used for those textures. Note how I currently rated NobleSkyrim below SkyrimHD, but in terms of texture quality, Nobel Skyrim is probably slightly above SkyrimHD albeit even with the parallax mod, it is only partially parallax compatible.

 

Also, thanks for the "tamu75's Terrain Parallax Textures", I had not found that one.

Link to comment
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Use.