SKYRIMLE RCRN AE -- HDR Lighting and Weather Enhancement

[TechAngel85]

First let me say that I used to use RCRN and advocated it to a great degree for those with lower-end systems that aren't able to run ENB due to performance. I stopped using it due to compatibility issues that I didn't have the technical know-how to resolve back then.

 

With that said, I agree with what Aiyen is saying. Much of the quotes about RCRN is what I would call "corporate advertising". It sounds like RCRN is giving away bars of gold but in reality your really only getting bars of steel painted gold, as Aiyen has pointed out in the technical details. Much of that description reads in such a manner. Most companies use fancy wording to advertise their products. This is just how RCRN decided to advertise their product. Whether we agree with this advertising or not, it's not really our place to tell them it's wrong.

 

You can point out the actual technical points vs the claims in the wording. But do so in a constructive manner by offering alternative suggested wording. Don't just tell the RCRN team they are wrong. That will always be received in a negative light rather than constructive criticism.

[egocarib]

With that said, I agree with what Aiyen is saying. Much of the quotes about RCRN is what I would call "corporate advertising". It sounds like RCRN is giving away bars of gold but in reality your really only getting bars of steel painted gold, as Aiyen has pointed out in the technical details. Much of that description reads in such a manner. Most companies use fancy wording to advertise their products. This is just how RCRN decided to advertise their product. Whether we agree with this advertising or not, it's not really our place to tell them it's wrong.

 

I have to say, this is always what has kept me from trying the mod -- it looks like a bad infomercial.

 

To me, seeing stuff like that implies that the mod authors aren't being sincere or honest about their creation. This isn't to say it's a bad mod, of course - it might be wonderful (I'm actually about to give it a try for my new playthrough). Just means that a first glance left me feeling like I might be falling into a scam of swindle of some sort :happy:

 

My laptop can't handle ENB, so maybe this will prove to be a nice new gem - will be comparing it to my previous RLO playthroughs.

[aLaaa]

sorry but i still don't see any issue in the wording.

- Dragonborn DLC fully supported, also adds 6 brand new weathers based on the RCRN volcano expedition we did this summer. >>> True, we climbed both Stromboli and Vulcano volcanoes this summer. We also posted some pics of that in our FB page. IE: pic

- Dawnguard DLC fully supported >>> nothing wrong here.

- AE Customizer tool >>> nothing wrong here.

- Smart AutoInstaller (AAA game grade autoinstaller: provides backup, SmartScan and more)>>> True, Autoinstaller is provided by BitRock , a global leader in this market, it's the same software used by most of the Software Houses and big companies out there, like HP, Nvidia, Intel, ecc. License price: $9,995

- Autoupdater: RCRN now has the ability to update and download updates automatically. If an update is available the Autoupdater panel will show up. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Full support to ENB and HiAlgo via the AE Customizer tool >>> nothing wrong here.

- Totally new Regional Weather >>> nothing wrong here.

- No more stuck or slow weather, pick your favorite weather ratio according to your timescale via the AE Customizer tool. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Cloudy Weather Pack! Adds the first batch of brand new Weathers, which includes 20 new handcrafted Cloudy Weathers. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Cloudy Skies Texture pack! Adds the first batch of brand new sky & clouds textures. >>> nothing wrong here.

- HD Snow Textures included, handtaken by our team from Finland. >>> True, part of our dev team is from Finland, basically they taken pics from their courtyard during Jan 2013, and we turned them into the snow textures used by RCRN..

- Photo Realistic atmospherical Lighting, and perfect color balance, based on REAL LIFE data directly collected by our team in Finland and Pennsylvania (US). >>> True, RCRN colors are picked from those locations, and ported in Skyrim. Color picking and migration is done by using camera and monitors, balanced with a 98% accuracy..

- infinite different ambiental and sky Hues, thanks to our float values system. >>> True, inj uses dynamic float values, so weathers using the same in-game ID are always different when casted..

- Supercharged Dusks and Dawns, experience the best sunset/sunrise skies ever done in a videogame. >>> Ok, this went a bit overboard, we should change it. Anyway Dusks and Dawns are probably the most loved part of RCRN.

- Dark and realistic Night-time, with 3 different user-selectable levels of darkness intensity. >>> nothing wrong here.

- New Sun, Sunglare and Sunlight management, solved the vanilla issue that was causing the “bright dot” over mountains during dusk/dawn. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Reworked Snow flakes and Rain drops. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Real Life dynamically driven Snow Weathers with 6 levels of intensity. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Real Life dynamically driven Rain Weathers with 10 levels of intensity. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Real Life dynamically driven Fog Weathers with 6 levels of intensity and 3 different user-selectable Volumetric Fog settings. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Adaptive Bloom for exteriors, perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment. >>> True, we wasted an huge amount of time fixing it, the default Skyrim bloom is so terribly implemented..

- Optimized Torches and exterior static light sources (every single exterior light source has been fixed in hue and intensity). >>> nothing wrong here.

- Regional Weather system finelly tuned to perfectly match the Skyrim geography. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Photo Realistic Weathers, each one based on real life data directly collected by our dev team in Finland (Eu) and west Pennsylvania (US). >>> already explained before.

- Smart DOF, it will adapt "Depth of Field" dynamically according to the scene you are playing in. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Enhanced Aurora lighting. >>> nothing wrong here.

 

Interior Features and fixes:

- Dynamic interiors: Interiors reacts in real time to exterior lighting and weathers. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Sounds for Dynamic interiors (you can hear exterior weather sounds, like raindrops hitting the roof) from the Interior scene. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Dark and scary dungeons with 3 different user-selectable levels of darkness intensity. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Adaptive Bloom for interiors, perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Reworked 1 by 1 the lighting of each interior location. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Optimized Torches and interior static light sources (every single interior light source has been fixed in hue and intensity). >>> nothing wrong here.

 

Overall Features and Customization:

- RCRN Customizer, a fancy tool that allow you an easy and headache-free RCRN Customization. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Ultra-Easy one click installation via the provided Autoinstaller. >>> nothing wrong here.

- RCRN FXAA Antialiasing, precise and blur-free. >>> True, the RCRN FXAA is currently one of the most precise kind of Fxaa antialiasing, also compared with other games. Tuning it so took a while..

- Fixed the original Skyrim Eye-Adaption issues occuring both in exteriors and interiors. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Improved Ice and Water refelections. >>> This is why bFloatPointRenderTarget=1 is needed.

- Optimized the Sneaking skill in order to match the different shadows level. >>> nothing wrong here.

- Improved Spellcast lighting and optimized fire shaders. >>> True, you may not know, but if you want an example check the dragon fire light casting when using RCRN..

- Hybrid Shaders: mixes the RCRN Dynamic Shaders perfectly with a reworked version of the original ingame Shaders. >>> nothing wrong here.

[mothergoose729]

I thought the video looked beautiful in my opinion and the response has been completely unnecessary. If you don't like the way it looks then that is fine and you are free to say why you do not like it. However, there is no reason to get all personal with your reasoning.

 

This forum is so that others can see potential mods they might like to use and can even be used as a springboard to be put into STEP Core or Extended. As far as I'm aware, there are no rules about how they advertise, the screenshots they use or videos, and who they're associated with. The STEP team simply determines whether or not it fits vanilla and if it's better than what is offered.

Good post. 100% agree. 

 

Alaa thanks a lot for coming on these forums and helping us better understand the mod. 

[torminater]

You're paying 10 grands for a licence for a mod that gets uploaded and downloaded for free? Or did I get sth wrong?

[TechAngel85]

It's mainly your use of the word perfect and it's derivatives. Nothing is perfect. 98% accuracy is not perfect. As Aiyen pointed out. A lot of that is subjective to the individual. All lighting and weather mods are subjective by nature; ENB presets, CoT, RLO, ELFX, RCRN, etc. They're all subject because where one person may love it another may hate it. Therefore, the constant use of the word perfect/perfectly is a matter of opinion as those statements are... subjective to the user.

 

I think that is mainly where some people are getting hung up. Most of the description is accurate in regards to RCRN itself. However, if I were to suggest any changes it would be to revise the lines that use perfect/perfectly as well as "real life". It simply comes across as gimicky. The real life part may be true but you could say, "Dynamically driven snow weathers with 6 levels of intensity" or "Dynamically driven snow weathers with 6 levels of intensity designed from real life data from snowy regions to provide realism". The first just drops it and sounds okay. The second simply adds some information to remove the gimicky sound of the statement.

 

Take the criticism or leave it. I mean no harm. Just pointing out a view point that your team may not have thought about as others have also confirmed the same view point. I also too think it would be a good idea to provide an optional that is a loose files version regardless of the complexity of RCRN. There are always going to be those that want it. It does no harm in offering it with a note attached stating support will only be offered for the autoinstaller version and to use the loose files version at your own risk.

 

At any rate, I still think RCRN is a good alternative for low-end systems that can't run ENBs. Same as RLO+RLO Weathers or CoT. As long as the compatibility issues can be resolved by the modders with any of these mods.

[Aiyen]

Okay since I have been too harsh and fast in my first reply I will do it properly this time! I will also go over the first post again and update it with better wording! While sticking with my initial criticism. Just in case some more people read it down the road! (Yes I am moderating myself! That will teach me to write stuff quickly while cooking, and doing things properly the first time around)

 

 

Anyways to go over your wording, and where I think it is either wrong or dislike to the point where I think it "Just sounds too good to be true". 

From the top.

- Full support to ENB and HiAlgo via the AE Customizer tool

As I have already stated then this cannot technically be true for all presets you might want to use. Hence you give the impression that your button of wonder will always work, when that is technically not even true! I shal not speak about HiAlgo Boost since I have never used it, and never will on my desktop anyways. 

 

- No more stuck or slow weather, pick your favorite weather ratio according to your timescale via the AE Customizer tool.

Since timescale changes are bound to mess up many things in the game depending on what it is, weathers just being one among them, then I find it hard to believe that you have fixed a game engine issue of this magnitude. Again this gives the impression that it will no longer be an issue when you read it. I am not saying it says that it will fix all timescale related bugs with the engine, but just that weather bugs will sometimes happen because of a quest bug that forces a certain weather, like the helgen intro. 

 

- Photo Realistic atmospherical Lighting, and perfect color balance, based on REAL LIFE data directly collected by our team in Finland and Pennsylvania (US).

 

The problem here is not that you have done it the proper way, it is that perfect lighting color balance can only be done if you also overhauled every single texture that it is applied on along with image spaces (which you did to some extend). Part of the reason it is so silly difficult and time consuming to make any lighting overhaul for skyrim is that you can make something that looks epic in location one, but will then look silly in location B. Add in the quirks of the ingame adaptation and your perfect color balance makes no sense to me anyways. Again this is not saying that what you have looks bad! It does not, but it is not perfect. 

 

- infinite different ambiental and sky Hues, thanks to our float values system.

 

This one is just confusing... Since well there is nothing in your shaders that have the option to only affect the sky, you can apply a different tint to every pixel, but that is about it. Getting the game engine to randomly pick sky hues would properly be an option, but then again it would not be infinite... since well the color spectrum is not infinite, and there are certainly a great deal of it that you would never want to use due to saturation, blending issues etc. So again it sounds more like a loose use of the word infinite sales talk, without grounds in what makes sense. To me anyways. 

 

- Supercharged Dusks and Dawns, experience the best sunset/sunrise skies ever done in a videogame.

We covered the dusk and dawn one already... and yeah they can be really epic, and super beautiful, but not the best in ANY video game. 

 

 

- Adaptive Bloom for exteriors, perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment.

Yeah the word perfectly and every used in a manner that sounds good if you are trying to sell something, but from a technical standpoint makes no sense, for many reasons. Mainly you do not hook in and disable the games buggy bloom code, you use it, hence your own result will never be able to be perfect. And certainly not everywhere, part due to the buggy nature, part due to the reason mentioned with textures above. 

 

- Regional Weather system finelly tuned to perfectly match the Skyrim geography.

Again the use of the word perfectly, just screams...! Yes you have fine tuned the regions, but again due to the way regions are implemented then there will always be quirks with it. This again relates to the above issue with weathers, and timescales. Even in a vanilla game with only your mod then there would still be silly quirks, making the use of the word perfectly hard to back up. 

Also there are bugs in the vanilla game boundaries of the various regions depending on region if you look close enough. Like you can get snow where there is no snow etc. and you did not go in and alter those. 

 

- Adaptive Bloom for interiors, perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment.

Same as above. Guess this cooks down to .. you know you are dealing with a buggy implementation, yet you still call what you have done to alter it perfect... I just do not get it. 

 

- Reworked 1 by 1 the lighting of each interior location.

Okay this one is not bad... I just do not get what you mean by it! I think it could be more descriptive of what you have done. Looking over the edits, then you have large done mainly image space edits. 

 

- Improved Spellcast lighting and optimized fire shaders.

Granted you did improve the lighting, but you did not optimize the "fire shader"... what would that be? You mention dragon fire. The only thing the mod does with dragon fire is alter the ID 9EE7C MagiclightDragonFire. Here you increase a few values so it looks more RWAR... but you do not alter the actual shader. In fact the only thing under effect shader is MannyGT´s fog. 

 

- Hybrid Shaders: mixes the RCRN Dynamic Shaders perfectly with a reworked version of the original ingame Shaders.

Now this is the one place where the use of perfectly makes some sense.... sadly the reworked version of the original ingame shaders kinda does not make sense. Since ya did not rework them, it would require a hook as a minimum, and/or source access. You only tweaked values they use. I know it is a bit thin semantic argument, but since all of this is, I wanted to take it along. In general your whole use of the word shader does not add technically up most of the time. 

 

 

Phew... that was a long one! 

 

All of this along with the visual presentation of it all, and the fancy built in donate buttons etc. Just makes the whole presentation scream oversell! This is the only thing I dislike, and from what I have hard and read, quite a few other people also dislike. 

If ya could get the presentation toned down a little with a bit more humility, and technical accurate info, I think it would remove any sort of this, and help make ya mod even more popular. 

 

That said then the actual content of what ya are done, is a good work. Not perfectly good but a good work (Sorry just had too!)! And there are a few ideas that I really do like and might implement in my own load order (No worries most of what I do I never release...) 

 

That said then I will proceed to rework my initial posts since I was just a jerk there. I will make it so it is both more respectful, and clear! For now I want to cook some food, and watch some fools get blown up! 

[aLaaa]

It's mainly your use of the word perfect and it's derivatives. Nothing is perfect. 98% accuracy is not perfect. As Aiyen pointed out. A lot of that is subjective to the individual. All lighting and weather mods are subjective by nature; ENB presets, CoT, RLO, ELFX, RCRN, etc. They're all subject because where one person may love it another may hate it. Therefore, the constant use of the word perfect/perfectly is a matter of opinion as those statements are... subjective to the user.

 

I think that is mainly where some people are getting hung up. Most of the description is accurate in regards to RCRN itself. However, if I were to suggest any changes it would be to revise the lines that use perfect/perfectly as well as "real life". It simply comes across as gimicky. The real life part may be true but you could say, "Dynamically driven snow weathers with 6 levels of intensity" or "Dynamically driven snow weathers with 6 levels of intensity designed from real life data from snowy regions to provide realism". The first just drops it and sounds okay. The second simply adds some information to remove the gimicky sound of the statement.

 

Take the criticism or leave it. I mean no harm. Just pointing out a view point that your team may not have thought about as others have also confirmed the same view point. I also too think it would be a good idea to provide an optional that is a loose files version regardless of the complexity of RCRN. There are always going to be those that want it. It does no harm in offering it with a note attached stating support will only be offered for the autoinstaller version and to use the loose files version at your own risk.

 

At any rate, I still think RCRN is a good alternative for low-end systems that can't run ENBs. Same as RLO+RLO Weathers or CoT. As long as the compatibility issues can be resolved by the modders with any of these mods.

Guys let me understand, are we arguing about a DESCRIPTION of a mod instead talking about the Mod it self? Is this a some kind of joke?

 

Our meaning of "real life" is simply referenced to the context, in this case: Skyrim. This means that the meaning of it is not "THIS IS REAL LIFE WOWOWOWOW" but simply "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO INSTALL A SUPER SATURATED KIND OF ENB BRAZILIAN EDITION BUT A LORE FRIENDLY THING". If this is really your issue with RCRN we will swap "real life" with "lore friendly", but I don't really think that someone, apart here on STEP boards is caring about it.

 

Again the RCRN-ENB comparison is totally pointless, you cannot compare things that may work together. And if you really think that RCRN is for low-end systems only, you are totally wrong, sorry but this pic doesn't look low-end at all (this is also from more than an year ago, pre-AE), and no, you will never able to "really play" (and as really play, I mean 60+ fps) something like this with an ENB. So RCRN is for every kind of users, simply there are people who like more to experience environments like that instead of having a couple of weird rendered sun rays and a 20+ fps drop. As I said, the good point of modding is that everyone can use whatever he likes more, so please stop "marking" stuff as low-end without doing the proper logical considerations.

 

Okay since I have been too harsh and fast in my first reply I will do it properly this time! I will also go over the first post again and update it with better wording! While sticking with my initial criticism. Just in case some more people read it down the road! (Yes I am moderating myself! That will teach me to write stuff quickly while cooking, and doing things properly the first time around)

 

 

Anyways to go over your wording, and where I think it is either wrong or dislike to the point where I think it "Just sounds too good to be true". 

From the top.

- Full support to ENB and HiAlgo via the AE Customizer tool

As I have already stated then this cannot technically be true for all presets you might want to use. Hence you give the impression that your button of wonder will always work, when that is technically not even true! I shal not speak about HiAlgo Boost since I have never used it, and never will on my desktop anyways. 

We never wrote, SUPPORT TO ALL PRESETS (this is in progress btw, but needs some time, since there is not any standard about them, we need to create one) but we wrote SUPPORT TO ENB, this is limited to the installation/uninstallation and proxy configuring and dll chaining. This is already explained in the official doc, so nothing new.

- No more stuck or slow weather' date=' pick your favorite weather ratio according to your timescale via the AE Customizer tool.[/color']

Since timescale changes are bound to mess up many things in the game depending on what it is, weathers just being one among them, then I find it hard to believe that you have fixed a game engine issue of this magnitude. Again this gives the impression that it will no longer be an issue when you read it. I am not saying it says that it will fix all timescale related bugs with the engine, but just that weather bugs will sometimes happen because of a quest bug that forces a certain weather, like the helgen intro. 

There is no margin to argue here, we fixed it. period. We didn't mess with timescale and it works perfectly fine. Again: try your self.

- Photo Realistic atmospherical Lighting' date=' and perfect color balance, based on REAL LIFE data directly collected by our team in Finland and Pennsylvania (US).[/color']

 

The problem here is not that you have done it the proper way, it is that perfect lighting color balance can only be done if you also overhauled every single texture that it is applied on along with image spaces (which you did to some extend). Part of the reason it is so silly difficult and time consuming to make any lighting overhaul for skyrim is that you can make something that looks epic in location one, but will then look silly in location B. Add in the quirks of the ingame adaptation and your perfect color balance makes no sense to me anyways. Again this is not saying that what you have looks bad! It does not, but it is not perfect. 

Maybe this is why it took 2 years for properly re-tuning everything. Every single imagespace has been reworked from scratch. And they are tons. if you find a place that looks bad let us know.

- infinite different ambiental and sky Hues' date=' thanks to our float values system.[/color']

 

This one is just confusing... Since well there is nothing in your shaders that have the option to only affect the sky, you can apply a different tint to every pixel, but that is about it. Getting the game engine to randomly pick sky hues would properly be an option, but then again it would not be infinite... since well the color spectrum is not infinite, and there are certainly a great deal of it that you would never want to use due to saturation, blending issues etc. So again it sounds more like a loose use of the word infinite sales talk, without grounds in what makes sense. To me anyways. 

Hues detection + random picking over a + - range based on the default value. Nothing really hard to do.

- Adaptive Bloom for exteriors' date=' perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment.[/color']

Yeah the word perfectly and every used in a manner that sounds good if you are trying to sell something, but from a technical standpoint makes no sense, for many reasons. Mainly you do not hook in and disable the games buggy bloom code, you use it, hence your own result will never be able to be perfect. And certainly not everywhere, part due to the buggy nature, part due to the reason mentioned with textures above. 

And who says it's buggy? It isn't buggy at all, it works fine, you just need to learn how does it works and what are the tresholds. Bloom is one of the few things that is not totally crap, codeside I mean.

- Regional Weather system finelly tuned to perfectly match the Skyrim geography.

Again the use of the word perfectly, just screams...! Yes you have fine tuned the regions, but again due to the way regions are implemented then there will always be quirks with it. This again relates to the above issue with weathers, and timescales. Even in a vanilla game with only your mod then there would still be silly quirks, making the use of the word perfectly hard to back up. 

Also there are bugs in the vanilla game boundaries of the various regions depending on region if you look close enough. Like you can get snow where there is no snow etc. and you did not go in and alter those. 

No. You will not experience any snow where it is not supposed to happen. Done since AE Beta 2.0.0

- Adaptive Bloom for interiors' date=' perfectly tweaked bloom to adapt well to every environment.[/color']

Same as above. Guess this cooks down to .. you know you are dealing with a buggy implementation, yet you still call what you have done to alter it perfect... I just do not get it. 

Fixed bloom in every single interior imagespace. And also in this case they are a lot. Who says that it causes issues blablabla is just because he's to lazy to learn/fix it. Ofc is a pain dealing with it, but this allow you to handle it in different way in every location, unlike an Injector that will set the same tresholds/values for everything. This is why we are not using it INJ side.

- Reworked 1 by 1 the lighting of each interior location.

Okay this one is not bad... I just do not get what you mean by it! I think it could be more descriptive of what you have done. Looking over the edits, then you have large done mainly image space edits. 

We reworked single interior imagespace. And we added our own Dynamic Interiors in 50+ locations across Tamriel. Dynamic Interiors means that you wil get sec by sec 24h lighting like happens in exterior locations, so you will experience ever every phase of the day and all the fading between them, this is done according to the exterior weather. Additionally if for example outside is raining, inside the interior you will hear rain drops, thunders and windows will flash if a lighting occur.

- Improved Spellcast lighting and optimized fire shaders.

Granted you did improve the lighting, but you did not optimize the "fire shader"... what would that be? You mention dragon fire. The only thing the mod does with dragon fire is alter the ID 9EE7C MagiclightDragonFire. Here you increase a few values so it looks more RWAR... but you do not alter the actual shader. In fact the only thing under effect shader is MannyGT´s fog. 

Simply because we are not using an exterior shader but a pre-existing linked. But well we did that an year and half ago, for 3.0, so if you want specific info i need to look in CK, since i don't remember everything.

- Hybrid Shaders: mixes the RCRN Dynamic Shaders perfectly with a reworked version of the original ingame Shaders.

Now this is the one place where the use of perfectly makes some sense.... sadly the reworked version of the original ingame shaders kinda does not make sense. Since ya did not rework them, it would require a hook as a minimum, and/or source access. You only tweaked values they use. I know it is a bit thin semantic argument, but since all of this is, I wanted to take it along. In general your whole use of the word shader does not add technically up most of the time. 

Nay. This is a long matter, and it should be well explained in a thesis that we did for an university, i'll try to find it for you in a not viking language.

Phew... that was a long one! 

 

All of this along with the visual presentation of it all, and the fancy built in donate buttons etc. Just makes the whole presentation scream oversell! This is the only thing I dislike, and from what I have hard and read, quite a few other people also dislike. 

If ya could get the presentation toned down a little with a bit more humility, and technical accurate info, I think it would remove any sort of this, and help make ya mod even more popular. 

 

That said then the actual content of what ya are done, is a good work. Not perfectly good but a good work (Sorry just had too!)! And there are a few ideas that I really do like and might implement in my own load order (No worries most of what I do I never release...) 

 

That said then I will proceed to rework my initial post, so it is both more respectful, and clear later this evening! For now I want to cook some food, and watch some fools get blown up!

Aiyen... I'm a graphic designer (apart being also front-end dev), doing fancy things is my job, so can you please explain me why should I make ugly stuff voluntarily? This is totally pointless, it's not an our problem if other mods cannot do the same, we can and we do, but we are not special, everyone can do the same and I also did that for free for HiAlgo and some other mods that asked me some fancy graphics.

 

About suggestions/ideas, I will be happy to hear you! Most of the stuff implemented by RCRN comes from user suggestions, so this is the collaborative spirit i like.

 

Cheers!

[Aiyen]

First off, Thank you for taking the time to respond to my criticisms aLaaa! Some of the clarifications have put some of them to rest! 

 

Getting into it then. 

 

RCRN/ENB comparisons: 

Yes these are largely pointless, since one cannot compare a hook to a non hook, just because the hook can do some of the same things the non hook can. (Try saying that sentence really fast!)

 

What I mean when talk about it is the following! On a high end system that laughs in the face of ENB then ENB can do all that you can do, just with more effects added on top. Hence if the goal is getting the most pretty experience, then for a low end your work here might be the best around (And I in fact think it is, it goes beyond just doing a SweetFX preset, and add that extra stuff that makes it really good), however for a high end system an ENB can do the same (Yes your CK edits can be put in and used, and your external shader settings put into an .fx file and used as well.) just with more stuff on top.

I am not talking about doing such a thing and releasing it or suggesting that anyone should etc. just that it can be done!

 

 

That said then to reply to a select few of your comments! 

- Full support to ENB and HiAlgo via the AE Customizer tool

We never wrote, SUPPORT TO ALL PRESETS (this is in progress btw, but needs some time, since there is not any standard about them, we need to create one) but we wrote SUPPORT TO ENB, this is limited to the installation/uninstallation and proxy configuring and dll chaining. This is already explained in the official doc, so nothing new.

You write FULL support as a feature of your mod you have a button that supposedly makes it so.... hence in my world this means take any ENB with corresponding shaders, and plug it on and it works.... why else have the button etc? And I know for a fact that this will not be so since some shaders are made so they disable the vanilla game ones and hence your changes would never show, hence not compatible, even though they can work together.  

While there is a standard for the .fx files then the beauty is that more and more people move away from them since they are finally figuring out how to do stuff that is not just dependent upon the ingame ones. This is going to be hard to standardize with what RCRN is doing since it rely so heavily on the ingame ones. 

 

- No more stuck or slow weather, pick your favorite weather ratio according to your timescale via the AE Customizer tool.

 There is no margin to argue here, we fixed it. period. We didn't mess with timescale and it works perfectly fine. Again: try your self.

Since the vanilla weathers themselves can be made slow by adding on enough extra mods, and textures etc. then it is a game feature you claim to have fixed.... Where I am skeptical it would work for super large and complex mod lists etc. Most of the time you have to go looking for it, but it does happen. Same for stuck, the game can easily lock up the weather due to something non weather related. Takes longer to notice however, since any transition normally fix it the few times I have experienced them. 

 

- Photo Realistic atmospherical Lighting, and perfect color balance, based on REAL LIFE data directly collected by our team in Finland and Pennsylvania (US).

Maybe this is why it took 2 years for properly re-tuning everything. Every single imagespace has been reworked from scratch. And they are tons. if you find a place that looks bad let us know.

I know it takes ages, in the process of doing it myself these days. The point was that you claim a perfect balance, which would largely depend on the observer (And their monitor), and also on the textures used in a given area, even if it is just the HDDLC. It would only be perfect (color wise anyways) on the monitor, and similar ones, that you used to make it. 

 

-Bloom stuff

And who says it's buggy? It isn't buggy at all, it works fine, you just need to learn how does it works and what are the tresholds. Bloom is one of the few things that is not totally crap, codeside I mean.

First off... how would you know that it codeside is not totally crap ? Unless you somehow got the source used? 

The Skyrim bloom is buggy.. if you try to take a blank ENB, and load in the vanilla bloom shader and only that, and then try to crank up the various intensities so you can see which parts of the scene causes bloom, then you will get lots of various models that are not even light sources go nuts (depending on location ofc.)! This is largely due to weird shader flags on the model, but also due to how it is implemented. For example the sky bloom is a certain way compared to any point lighting source you might place. In my world this is a bug, and since you did not hook into the bloom, or offer loads of meshes with corrected values etc. then you will also be subject to these bugs. 

Also again... perfect is only in the eye of the beholder, especially with something like bloom then some love it some hate it. 

 

-Regions 

 No. You will not experience any snow where it is not supposed to happen. Done since AE Beta 2.0.0

Since this is a bug with the vanilla game and the region borders, depending on the textures used in that region then YES I will be able too. Since you use vanilla values for the region boundaries, then said bug can happen! Will it happen often, most likely not, but to claim that it never will is a long shot. However this happens so rarely that you have to go out of your way to find it...so actually more confused why it is mentioned as a feature in the first place. Since you added more weathers into the mix, then you properly just reduced the chance of it happening further. 

 

-Interior stuff

Fixed bloom in every single interior imagespace. And also in this case they are a lot. Who says that it causes issues blablabla is just because he's to lazy to learn/fix it. Ofc is a pain dealing with it, but this allow you to handle it in different way in every location, unlike an Injector that will set the same tresholds/values for everything. This is why we are not using it INJ side.

This was interesting stuff... for me anyways! Been fighting a lot with bloom inside interiors. The implementation I currently use is 50% intensity on the vanilla bloom, and then a tweaked version of the injected one based on Kyo´s bloom shader. Again like I mentioned above then to my understanding then the things that cause bloom to mess up half the time is models having weird settings. As long as you use the vanilla bloom, you can use the thresholds in the CK to control it though individual image spaces. If you end up in the future you to use an injected version, then you can just reduce the intensity of the vanilla one until most of these bugs are not longer there, while using the injected bloom to create the ambient features you want. 

 

- Reworked 1 by 1 the lighting of each interior location.

Here you talked about the dynamic interiors... however in your feature description you have already added that above this... hence why I was puzzled with what you exactly mean by this. If it is just that you altered the image spaces then fine... Just not very clear in my opinion. 

 

-The last stuff

Aiyen... I'm a graphic designer (apart being also front-end dev), doing fancy things is my job, so can you please explain me why should I make ugly stuff voluntarily? This is totally pointless, it's not an our problem if other mods cannot do the same, we can and we do, but we are not special, everyone can do the same and I also did that for free for HiAlgo and some other mods that asked me some fancy graphics.

Oh I do not mean to say what you have made is ugly... and would never suggest that you should go and do something that is. What I meant was that along with the very liberal use of the words such as "perfectly" along with the visual representation tends to throw some people off, like what you have done is more marketing then the good lighting overhaul that it is!

I hope that made more sense! But of course this is just my opinion on the matter.. I just think it would help make ya mod more popular!

 

Nay. This is a long matter, and it should be well explained in a thesis that we did for an university, i'll try to find it for you in a not viking language.

Hehe while I can read some viking language, then I cannot read finnish... Not even while semi drunk. But yeah this sort of semantic argument can always wait! It is purely me who is interested in this sort of thing. 

 

Uh before I forget! 

 

-About the dragonfire

Yeah you just edit the effect, you do not touch any shaders. At least in my world then altering the effect parameters for a given effect does not constitute altering any shaders, but rather a specific effect. 

 

 

As for suggestions, then the ones I have out of the box would involve some optimizations to your coloring shaders. I can PM you that stuff if you want to hear about it! 

 

That said, then I guess that would be that for this post.

Edit: I have moderated my initial posts, so they are more respectful etc. It was not worthy of these forums, and I hope the current version helps keep the discussions here more on track!

[TechAngel85]

The point I was making was the same as Aiyen's regarding low-end and ENBs. I never said it was for "only" low-end systems did I? No, I did not. You're reading between the lines. I specifically said, it is a good alternative to those with low-end systems who can not run ENBs due to performance. This in fact, is promoting RCRN to lower-end users so I'm not seeing why you have an issue with my statement about low-end systems. For high-end systems, users obviously have more of a choice. RCRN is logically and naturally one of those choice if it is also a choice for lower-end systems...as well as would ENBs if they wanted to solely run an ENB without RCRN. Lower-end user wouldn't be able to run ENBs so; therefore, RCRN is a good alternative to those users. There...said it twice in one paragraph :P

 

As for the "Real Life" part, I totally read realism to the real world and not to the Skyrim world. What other meaning does, "Real Life" mean other than real life?...meaning not the digital world. My mistake.

[dunz]

I cracked open rcrnShaders.esp in TES5Edit and noticed quite a few conflicts with the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp.  rcrnShaders.esp appears to use 0.000000 for XCLW - Water Height.  What are your thoughts about updating these to match the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp or Skyrim.esm?

 

Noticed some other conflicts with:

XCMO - Music Type

XEZN - Encounter Zone

FULL - Name

XCCM - Sky/Weather from RegionCell\000A9194 has no value

     Other areas have values that match Skyrim.esm but not the values changed by Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp

     Some areas have custom values from rcrn so assume those are intended

 

Some missing items from Dawnguard.esm inlcude:

RDSA - Sounds

XCLR - Regions in Worldspace Tamriel "Skyrim" [WRLD:0000003c]

 

Would it be okay or beneficial to create a custom patch for some or all of these conflicts?

[z929669]

First of all, I have to agree with aLaaa one one important point:

What's with all this debate over a mod description? We only really care about the mod itself here, so whether or not the description is too subjective or not doesn't really matter. As long as there are detailed instructions for using the mod somewhere in there, everything else is all just text and sales pitch ... I personally ignore most of it (but I too am somewhat off-put by grandiose claims, TBH).

 

Second, I thought I had a penchant for writing long posts, but the passion taking place on this thread is manifest as a gargantuan beast that presses down on the very soul and will to sift through the thread in order to pick out the useful info o_O

 

I really wonder what's happening to STEP' date=' this looks everything but not a fair discussion, quite good amount of misinformation. I really miss the old times with TheCompiler.[/quote']

TheCompiler is still here, but he does not post much. He has chosen to let STEP evolve organically, and we strictly keep STEP:Core set to his original specifications for the project.

 

Criticizm can be constructive or destructive. I see both in this thread. The STEP team (including TC) supports 'constructive' criticism and respectful communication (although some of us on occasion wind up having to wrest foot from mouth and smooth things over). TC has a tendency to overly credit and praise the achievements of others (bless his big warm and fuzzy heart :P ). I personally prefer raw and unbiased commentary and respectful opinion.

 

Our leadership here is pretty objective, IMHO.

 

 

Lastly, my only criticism of RCRN in my ignorant present state is the lack of a manual installer. The modding community is dominated by tech savvy, OCD, and extremely controlling people (in terms of how they use their boxes), so offering up a manual installer as a secondary option is mandatory if you want the support of your potentially most qualified and accrediting users. Please offer up an archive less the fancy installer that makes many of us feel like we are being treated as children or obstinate codgers. Installers can be quite insulting to those that want to mod and assume complete control of their 'command centers' ;)

[deathneko11]

At the risk of stirring the pot here, I feel that this post is necessary on my end to clear up something in light of 2 things:  a new attitude on my part and an apology of sorts.

 

deathneko11 Wrote

    If I remember correctly they have also made false advertisement claims in the past, saying that they worked directly with nvidia and some game companies that "supported" their work...

 

I confess this is not something I was stating as proven knowledge, but something that I had heard secondhand.  After clearing my head a bit, I realise that even though I have heard this I should not have posted this here and kept my thoughts to myself.  Please do not take this as my confirmation of proven data, but just some rumor and speculation that had been heard in the past.

 

    Sorry, but I've had some bad experiences with this mod in the past. I don't know about its current state but it tried to do what RLO/ELFX and COT do better. Too much in one single package and not enough quality control because they were spread too thin.

 

It was QUITE some time ago that I had tried this mod, and was my first lighting mod.  In a lightly modded skyrim (I do remember that there were at least no conflicting mods installed) this mod was buggy in a number of ways in regard to weathers primarily.  I understand though that this mod has evolved since then and I might even take another crack at it for the sake of at least advising others in regard to lighting and weather mod useage.

 

    I admit though that I'm a bit biased. As a lighting modder I can speak truly here, RCRN and the RLO/RLwC team do not get along well with each other. There is a blood feud between us, from some very bad hurts in the past that no amount of professionalism on our end could overcome.

 

I still somewhat hold to this.  There has been some bad blood between the Realistic Lighting team and RCRN team in the past.  Much of it was due to some misunderstandings on both ends.  I confess that due to various reasons I have not been communicating much with the RLO team over the past couple of months though (due to the fact that my mod making days for skyrim are at a standstill until I can finish some hardware upgrades) so if things have been patched up between sydney666 and aLaaa and co., then that is good news indeed!  I hope that the teams can be aquaintences, if not co-workers or friends.

I hope this clears any misunderstandings I may have brought up in this thread.

[aLaaa]

I cracked open rcrnShaders.esp in TES5Edit and noticed quite a few conflicts with the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp.  rcrnShaders.esp appears to use 0.000000 for XCLW - Water Height.  What are your thoughts about updating these to match the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp or Skyrim.esm?

 

Noticed some other conflicts with:

XCMO - Music Type

XEZN - Encounter Zone

FULL - Name

XCCM - Sky/Weather from RegionCell\000A9194 has no value

     Other areas have values that match Skyrim.esm but not the values changed by Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp

     Some areas have custom values from rcrn so assume those are intended

 

Some missing items from Dawnguard.esm inlcude:

RDSA - Sounds

XCLR - Regions in Worldspace Tamriel "Skyrim" [WRLD:0000003c]

 

Would it be okay or beneficial to create a custom patch for some or all of these conflicts?

not needed, is just TES5Edit that is unable to understand the DI behavior. Ignore those errors.

 

deathneko11 Wrote

    If I remember correctly they have also made false advertisement claims in the past, saying that they worked directly with nvidia and some game companies that "supported" their work...

 

I confess this is not something I was stating as proven knowledge, but something that I had heard secondhand.  After clearing my head a bit, I realise that even though I have heard this I should not have posted this here and kept my thoughts to myself.  Please do not take this as my confirmation of proven data, but just some rumor and speculation that had been heard in the past.

I already cleared this point pretty well few pages ago, those speculations are here just because there is a good amount of people on Nexus with some serious envy problems.

[Galahad]

I use this mod since a long time now and i love it. i think it looks waay better than any Enb - CoT setup i tried out. what i do is i use it in combination with a minimal enb preset with only detailed shadows on.