Fallout New Vegas

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Created by

phoenix0113 AKA Western Dragon

Uploaded by

phoenix0113

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About this mod

Removes unnatural color tints from all exterior and interior spaces including DLC's

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs
Clarity
Vanilla Tints Neutralized


Description
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New Vegas is a phenomenal game with tons of character and charm, but I have always hated the unnatural filters and hues that overlay the landscape.
Having lived in a desert, I can say with certainty that the sky is not supposed to look like an orange creamsicle.

In a nutshell, Clarity changes the RGB entries for all Weather types, ImageSpaces, ImageSpace Modifiers, and Lighting Templates in the base game and DLC's to neutral numbers. What does this mean? No unnatural ambient colors, instead all color comes from light sources and the sky like it should.

Color intensity was kept the same as well, so as an example take an ambient weather RGB as Red-162 Green-202 Blue-112 and add them together for a total of 476. I divide this number by three to get 158.6 repeating or 159 rounded and then replace this number for R, G, and B to keep the same intensity while neutralizing the tint. Additionally, no entries in the Lights category were changed so some areas that seem a little bit redder are because of the warm lighting used.

Don't worry about a performance hit because no textures or models are added to achieve these results. What you see in the pictures is what you will get!


Dark Nights
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An additional file has been added for the New Vegas version of Clarity called Dark Nights. This does exactly what it says, modifying all the nighttime values in the original file to half (50%) of their respective values after tint neutralization. Check the comparison shots to make sense of my ramblings. I use this version personally because it doesn't make it too hard to see, but it enhances the feeling of nighttime considerably. I'm not a fan of mods that make nighttime overly realistic, but at the same time it's a little bit silly to see across the whole world at night--hence the extra file.


Some Clarification
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Fallout 3 was relatively simple to correct for RGB values, but New Vegas is a different beast and a lot of locations had to be tackled independently, and some left entirely to vanilla settings. Off the top of my head, here are some specific changes that are outside of the original scope of Clarity:

Hoover Dam, the Fort, and the Colorado River have had their Regions modified to display a different weather that exists in the GECK, but not in the game. This was necessary, because if I only changed the RGB settings, instead of an orange cloud you would see a grey cloud obscuring everything and it looks pretty bad.
Don't worry, the weather type does not use any new assets and it looks MUCH more fitting for the area, I don't know why it wasn't used in the first place!

The Sink has retained its vanilla values, which was just one ImageSpace. The Sink already has a great color balance and neutralizing the ambient tints seemed to decrease the range of colors in the place.

Searchlight is a unique location that has a reason for the green tints, and most RGB neutralization efforts don't do it justice. That being said, the RGB changes for the Searchlight Weather entries work nicely as long as the ImageSpace Modifier remains vanilla. This change is included in 1.1

If there is a main goal of Clarity it would be to increase the range of colors available in the game without artificially enhancing them with new assets and personal preferences for color. Neutralizing has the effect of being as close to the TRUE colors of models and textures as possible and not what I think they should look like, but as I said at the start of this section it is a lot harder to stay true and noble in New Vegas because they went overboard with the effects. This is why I can't simply wave a wand and disable the ImageSpace Modifiers because each of them has special settings according to time of day, clouds, wind speed, bloom, and sunglare that would be ruined if they were disabled, so neutralizing is the next best thing. Hopefully, I managed to maintain a good balance.

If I have missed any areas or you think the changes are too far outside the scope of the mod or the vanilla artstyle, please let me know!


Installation/Uninstallation
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It's a simple .esp that can be installed either using NMM or manually by moving it to the data folder and checking it in your plugin launcher of choice like FOMM.

Use either Clarity OR Clarity - Dark Nights. DO NOT combine the two because it is redundant and they edit the same entries.

It's perfectly safe to uninstall using NMM or by deleting the Clarity.esp from your data folder, but I recommend moving to an interior cell beforehand so as to not mess with the weather currently loaded on your save.


Compatibilities/Conflicts
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Unfortunately, Clarity DOES NOT WORK with any weather, atmosphere, or lighting mods such as Nevada Skies, Fellout, Realistic Interior Lighting, Project Reality, or Realistic Wasteland Lighting (and Enhancement) because I made it for the sole purpose of  utilizing the vanilla artstyle while displaying more colors than just orange. The aforementioned mods (and many others not listed) modify the same entries and the attempted visual styles are very different.

Technically, your game will run perfectly fine with any other mods and letting them overwrite Clarity, but it sort of defeats the purpose of this mod entirely.


Credits
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Me for using up time I could have spent studying :v
Bethesda for giving Obsidian the opportunity to 1-Up them.
Obsidian for 2-Upping Bethesda.