How to Turn ON God Rays?

[xOutlawStarr]

Hey guys! I was wondering if anyone could help me figure out how to turn on God Rays? I have the Anniversary Edition upgrade, if that info is useful. The game looks hazy as if their should be god rays, but I don't actually see the rays themselves. I even booted up the PS5 version (also Anniversary Edition) to see if I was going crazy, but nope, the god rays DO indeed show up for PS5. I have the rays set to High on the boot up options menu. I've tried medium and low too. Still no god rays. Any ideas? Thanks!

[76561198140601386]

Skyrim launcher > advanced > details > god rays quality.

Do you use a manager, such as Vortex or Mod Organizer 2? it is possible that they have individual ini settings for each profile.
In that case you will have to find SkyrimPrefs.ini for your current profile, and change these lines:

bVolumetricLightingEnable=#
1 = enable / 0 = disable

iVolumetricLightingQuality=#
0 = low / 1 = medium / 2 = high

[xOutlawStarr]

Originally posted by Dishonored:

Skyrim launcher > advanced > details > god rays quality.

Do you use a manager, such as Vortex or Mod Organizer 2? it is possible that they have individual ini settings for each profile.
In that case you will have to find SkyrimPrefs.ini for your current profile, and change these lines:

bVolumetricLightingEnable=#
1 = enable / 0 = disable

iVolumetricLightingQuality=#
0 = low / 1 = medium / 2 = high

I don't use any managers or mods installed. Just trying to play vanilla Skyrim SE with god rays lol. I've already tried changing the God Ray quality to low, medium, and high. Still nothing.

[76561198140601386]

Originally posted by xDoctorScientist:

I don't use any managers or mods installed. Just trying to play vanilla Skyrim SE with god rays lol. I've already tried changing the God Ray quality to low, medium, and high. Still nothing.

Well, it's more prominent in certain weather conditions, and barely noticeable in some.

I think that during the rain, observing the shadow/light on the tree branches should be the easiest way to know if it's working or not.

[supernova backshots]

Real: Bethesda's Godrays suck, and soak up frames for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Fallout 4 is an example, as most turn godrays off or get a mod to replace those godrays.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by xDoctorScientist:

The game looks hazy as if their should be god rays, but I don't actually see the rays themselves.

There isn't much to reflect, which were you get godrays, so you wouldn't see them, unless you replace a texture with a metallic one.

[xOutlawStarr]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Originally posted by xDoctorScientist:

The game looks hazy as if their should be god rays, but I don't actually see the rays themselves.

There isn't much to reflect, which were you get godrays, so you wouldn't see them, unless you replace a texture with a metallic one.

That's weird because I see them very much on my PS5, especially through trees and towns. They stand out a lot and make the game look really good. I used the intro cutscene in the game as reference and for some reason it just doesn't show on my PC. I'm using the same monitor with the same settings for both.

[Vlad 254]

Many, not all, ENB's have their own godrays so if you're running an ENB and if it has godrays you can first disable them (the base game's) in SkyrimPrefs.ini by setting bVolumetricLightingEnable=0,

Next, if you're a fan of the rays you can then set them higher for each time of day thru your ENB in enbseries.ini:
[GAMEVOLUMETRICRAYS]
by raising the intensity values.
I would keep them between 1-3 for each time of day if you'll be changing them.

Note:
enbseries.ini is located here:
SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Skyrim Special Edition

edited for clarity

[Doom Sayer]

Its pretty clear from post they are almost certainly running vanilla....
OP: If your not using mods its either weather difference ingame or your confused. I used a youtube video to compare each next gen console version to pc and it looks the same. Most thats changed is the LOD of trees and rocks and visual clarity between releases of SE.

Basically Skyrim SE vanilla isnt exactly supposed to have godrays. Its more volumetric lighting which can mean godrays but devs didnt really implement it just volumetric fog lighting so you get godrays in fog.

The difference is bethesda lighting = washing out of image and godrays dont happen from looking at the sun its like irl if you have mist or fog etc. Then ENB presets usually add actual sun rays so you look at sun with objects partially blocking it and it creates rays. Modders even implemented it with the moons/planets in sky.

Edit: Its possible im wrong and its sublte since its extremely rare for me to even run Skyrim without enb and a weather mod its very rare for me to see the games original graphics ingame.

[xOutlawStarr]

Originally posted by Doom Sayer:

Its pretty clear from post they are almost certainly running vanilla....
OP: If your not using mods its either weather difference ingame or your confused. I used a youtube video to compare each next gen console version to pc and it looks the same. Most thats changed is the LOD of trees and rocks and visual clarity between releases of SE.

Basically Skyrim SE vanilla isnt exactly supposed to have godrays. Its more volumetric lighting which can mean godrays but devs didnt really implement it just volumetric fog lighting so you get godrays in fog.

The difference is bethesda lighting = washing out of image and godrays dont happen from looking at the sun its like irl if you have mist or fog etc. Then ENB presets usually add actual sun rays so you look at sun with objects partially blocking it and it creates rays. Modders even implemented it with the moons/planets in sky.

Edit: Its possible im wrong and its sublte since its extremely rare for me to even run Skyrim without enb and a weather mod its very rare for me to see the games original graphics ingame.

Yeah, so you're right. It's definitely the fog that makes it show up more. However, like I said in an earlier post, I used the intro cutscene as reference (there's fog in the trees on the way to Helgen) and rays definitely pop out more on PS5 than they do on PC. It's barely noticeable in comparison. Again, i'm using the same monitor with the same settings for both. I wonder if the PS5 is doing something that my PC isn't?

[xOutlawStarr]

Nevermind. I think I figured it out. I had my PC on the nightlight setting which turned all the colors to warm. Probably made the lighting and the colors kind of blend together maybe? Either way, It's a big improvement. Still not as good as what my PS5 is showing me, but I'll take it. Thanks anyway guys!

[Doom Sayer]

I might see your point I looked at a video of ps5 and it looks stronger than i remember vanilla being gonna test with no mods. Its possible there is some other color config difference as well idk.

[Doom Sayer]

Nah tested both looked same to me. YT ps5 intro and my vanilla pc one.

[Death Approaches]

ENB people are on their own, you can really jack yourself with those and ini tweaks, so you will need to experiment... there's a LOT more to crepuscular rays than those two settings.

One of the more useful ones if you want to see heavy foggy beam-like ala Fallout 4 is shadow distance...ie. 'fShadowDistance 4096' if you have a 1070/8Gb at least you can go over 10k but try lower, first. But there's settings for distance/range visible, rangefactor, phase (contribution and scatter), there's one for contrast, there's density, intensity and scale... a bunch.

Hit up any skyrim.ini wiki post for all the options, there's also more than a few (probably hundreds) of vids on yt for stuff like this, comparing all the settings...