Opinion on lighting and weather mods

[StreamWhenGuy]

Just a blant and to see whether I'm not alone.
I've tried them all. Most of them are highly overrated, too vibrant, too dark, oversaturated, have too many dependencies (ENB included), have too many conflicts (some of them don't even forward records from USSEP or/and Update.esm), unnecessarily remove interior or/and exterior fog, remove dust and floating particles to make the image "cleaner".
After years of modding this game I think I finally found my preferred mod setup concerning weather/lighting mods:

Wander - A Weather Mod:
Mostly to hide the ugly LOD and grass draw distance behind the distant fog. Even with high DynDOLOD preset LODs still look kinda bad ngl fr + no cap.
Extended grass distance in NGIO does its job, but if overdone, is too demanding and the FPS drops are inevitable. Same with DynDOLOD grass billboards - they easily cut off 10-20 FPS.

Classic Weathers:
To bring the old "washed out" colour palette from the OG game. Never been a fan of how colourful SE looks.

Classic Weathers: interiors add-on:
To be more on par with Classic Weathers in terms of saturation, although there's no changes in colour between LE and SE in interiors.

True Storms:
Simply for more intense rain and snowfalls. The vanilla ones are a joke.

+ a couple of patches to make all of the above work as intended.

Everyone plays their own Skyrim, I understand that. Throughout the years of modding and trying out hundreds of mods I've realized one simple truth: the closer it is to the vanilla looks and gameplay, the better. It's almost like there was a specific artistic vision to hide imperfections of the engine behind distant fog, and also to add to the atmosphere. In Nordic ruins the fog is blue-ish. In forts it is yellow-ish. In some other dungeons it's grey. In some others it is brown. A bit overdone? Yes. Just tone it down by tweaking the saturation in Lighting Templates.
Lightbulbs weren't meant to be realistic or perfectly placed. It's to avoid flickering, to drag player's attention and to show the scenery.

Maybe I'm getting old or simply tired of looking for a perfect combination of lighting/weather mods, which doesn't exist, so I stick to vanilla more and more...

Yeah, but... Who asked?

[SpeedFreak1972]

I use cathedral + enb and lux for interiors

[-={LG}=-]

I feel the same way. I usually avoid weather mods altogether, because they become mostly blindness simulators. I'm currently using Vivid Weathers SE though, installed with no extras, no seasons, no shaders, no LOD, no nothing. It's not bad as far as things go and I can always see.

[Randox]

Saturation is something that has bothered me more and more over the years, and I I've definitely had issues in the past with odd colours where like, one specific plant will be super saturated.

In Fallout 4, I was able to find an ENB I actually really liked. Don't actually know which one it is anymore, but its major selling point was that it doesn't touch the colour palette of the game, which helps avoid weird vibrancy issues.

I've never found an equivalent for Skyrim, and no longer use an ENB at all.
I currently use Obsidian Weathers, True Storms, Darker Nights, and Luminosity Lighting Overhaul as far as mods that touch lighting and atmosphere.

I agree with the general thought though. The game was made with an artistic vision, and at the end of the day, I actually like that vision. Others might not, and that's cool, but I do like it myself. There are some rough edges I want to sand off, but I try to stick to weather (and texture) mods that follow the original design and palette.

[Corinze]

I personally like the bright vibrant true to color ENBs that just use the Nat Weather plugin. Insanity and Patrician were the 2 I liked the most. I’m currently using Berserkyr with Obisidian, but it is just a few steps above ok and the best I could find with game version 1170.

I never really cared for Cathedral Weathers for how popular it is. I think I Iike Obsidian the most followed by Azurite if stuck using a true weather mod. They all are pretty close to me.
Lux Series all the way for me for lighting with EVLAS for the shadows and volumetric lighting.

Obsidian Fog still handles clouds and mountain mist the best - imho
Everything must have particle lights added if it has a glow feature. This is like an easy 50 mods along might even be more.
It seems I have not used true storms since early 22, weather mods have gotten better and don’t seem to need it.

My GPU was never good enough to go nuts on graphics but after upgrading to play Starfield, I’m really digging how much Skyrim can change appearance wise. I was always about immersion game play mods but I don’t think I could go back to vanilla graphics at this point.

Good Luck finding something Guy.

[ChrillBill]

I am using Vivid Weathers combined with Embers XD, Storm Lightning and Relighting Skyrim. Vivid has a well known and super annoying brightness bug that you can avoid if you enable and use Classic Mode. Quite happy with this setup. It feels not over the top but still a big improvement from Vanilla. I used to use Cathedral, but... I don't see myself going back to that. I always felt it was a bit too bright for my taste.

[Tiberius]

Darker night and interior lighting are there so those torches finally have a purpose. I currently have elfx (shadow) and cathedral weather in my modlist. I personally prefer obsidian (and dolomite) weather, but the abrupt transition between weather conditions made me abandon it for cathedral weather

[theo]

Vanilla is ok.
I was satisfied with ELFX until I reinstalled the game and was too lazy to set up all mods again. It doesn't matter and doesn't make the game that much more fun anyway

[mikk011]

I've tested most of the big weather mods in detail (several hours of play) and the ones I've stuck with are Rustic Weathers and Lighting/Harsh Preset or Kyne's Weathers (which is basically an advanced version of Obsidian). Both have drawbacks, but I keep them because as I wander around the land I periodically see something just breathtaking. My general tastes run towards a slightly desaturated color palette.

I've been without an interior lighting mod for a while because I'm not entirely happy with any of them for one reason or another, and don't want to expend the time and effort to mash together some "perfect" mod setup or learn graphics design so I can build a custom enb preset.

[Liquid Inc]

Climates of Tamriel + ELFX.

With some extra parts from mods like Ethereal Clouds, Smoking torches etc..

"CoT" loves the rain though, which i think fits Skyrim very well, but others might not think so.

[Bad Distraction Carnifex]

I use ELFX + Shadows, a custom ENB, reshade and Nvidia's built-in filter feature. Works great for me.

[StreamWhenGuy]

Originally posted by Liquid Inc:

Climates of Tamriel + ELFX.

I was considering CoT actually, but seeing lots of bug reports and author being on hiatus regarding the mod for a long time threw that idea away. The good thing is CoT modules for dungeons and interiors can be used individually with no need to also use its master files. After testing out those interior modules further, I decided that it's too dim for my taste, after all.

[StreamWhenGuy]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Darker night and interior lighting are there so those torches finally have a purpose. I currently have elfx (shadow) and cathedral weather in my modlist. I personally prefer obsidian (and dolomite) weather, but the abrupt transition between weather conditions made me abandon it for cathedral weather

I was a fan of darker nights and interiors for years. ELFX for interiors and ELFX Weathers were my choice. The problem with darker nights and interiors for me personally is the fact that only you as a character are affected. There are of course mods such as Realistic AI Detection that somewhat get around that issue, but once enemies have detected you, they see you clear as day, whereas you still are left standing in pitch black...
Given that you're an overpowered creature and have lots of tricks in your disposal makes it sound like something insignificant, which it is to an extent, but I guess I just don't wanna struggle in such an artificial way anymore, thus prefer vanilla lighting these days.

[-={LG}=-]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Darker night and interior lighting are there so those torches finally have a purpose

I never found torches to be an important part of the game, like being able to see is. They're just clutter.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by StreamWhenGuy:

Just a blant and to see whether I'm not alone.
I've tried them all.

What..... ALL of them?
you must have a lot of free time

That said, I don't bother with weather mods, I prefer mods that add content, not repaint what's already there.... And before anyone critiques that, yes I'm aware that weather mods do slightly more than that, still not interested.

[z__frog__z]

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

I am using Vivid Weathers combined with Embers XD, Storm Lightning and Relighting Skyrim. Vivid has a well known and super annoying brightness bug that you can avoid if you enable and use Classic Mode. Quite happy with this setup. It feels not over the top but still a big improvement from Vanilla. I used to use Cathedral, but... I don't see myself going back to that. I always felt it was a bit too bright for my taste.

using now the same combo ,
when using a lot enb ( shaders and co ) mod for monster/armor/weapon , cube map enb , parallax stuff : no spending time to tweak each mod files/setting ..

pro tips : sometimes , most popular mods , or mods used on famous modpack not the best to use , or at least you"ll spend hour and hours to fix this mod to work properly :)