The Imperial Firmament
Version: 14 September 2014 (most recent update of base package)
Date: 23 September 2014 (most recent file)
Category: Visuals and Graphics
Requirements: None, Natural Environment is recommended
Author: discovery1

Description
===========
(This text is an excerpt from discovery1's page, so it's discovery1
speaking here.)

This is my own take on the oblivion sky environment.

Being perplexed as to why the sun disspeared with certain weather mods I
did some investigation. It appears that certain 'clear day' weathers hide
the sun (something that often is mentioned on gaming forums).This seems odd
to me. The original 'cloudsclear' vanilla textures dont, the sun is clearly
visible. It appears that these updated textures were rendered from bit maps
to dds files rather than transparent backgrounds like the originals.I have
addressed this with some completely new and radical designs. There are no
cloud free textures, I dont like seeing a great expanse of featureless
sky..that is not immersive!

Ok its a matter of taste..I just love looking at clouds

http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/
I am a paid up member and anorak...

There are Textures for Natural Environments included if you use that mod
which is highly recommended.
If you use All Natural, choose the Natural Environments option in the All
Natural ini file.
I dont use any of the other options...to many choices.My mod will work ok
if you dont have either of these installed, but they really do make a big
difference!
Some of the textures, notably the rain and overcast ones are of opaque
backgrounds to preclude the sun from breaking through, however the
Thunderstorm textures are transparent to give the impression of a dynamic
cloud environment with the odd glimpse of the games moons. I think this
works quite well and coupled with my realistic raindrop textures gives a
more natural and real life like experience.

The 'cloudsclear' textures are made from my observations of clouds building
on a fine day. The sky background colour will vary according to your set
up, I have set it as a low saturation, neutral for realism.All textures are
painted using freely available photoshop brushes...with a little adjustment
on the opacity for realism and to let the sun be seen!

Sit back and watch the clouds build.

For the best look possible I have included some ultra 4096*4096 textures
there is also a lower rez version of mostly 2048*2048 textures

I do not recomend OBGE godrays to be active...it causes smears in the
realistic clouds,(and you will gain some fps)

It may be alright on some set ups, experimentation may prove me wrong and I
have no idea if ENB sunshafts perform the same or not.I have included as an
optional file, a pretty decent alternative sunglare texture with the
ommision of godrays in mind.
I may provide a lens flare version later, I am currently assessing this
option.

set your ini as follows....or thereabouts as long as the sunglare size is
not bigger than the sunbase size!

[Weather]
fSunGlareSize=250.0000
fSunBaseSize=250.0000
bPrecipitation=1
fAlphaReduce=1.0000
SBumpFadeColor=255,255,255,255
SLerpCloseColor=255,255,255,255
SEnvReduceColor=255,255,255,255