Skyrim ENB Mods 1 - Sharpshooter (original)
ENB mods have been around since the start of Skyrim and yet several people have not tried them because they either don't know what they do, or are nervous about installing them. So I have started a new video series aimed at exploring the world of Skyrim ENB mods. In this, the first video of the series, I look at a popular classic, 'Sharpshooters Extreme Graphics ENB', and discuss what you get, and the price you pay to get it.
For an overview of the aims of this series see this video.
Watch the installation video for this mod here.
Download link for mod:
Sharpshooters Extreme Graphics ENB
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sorry, i'm a noob
- there's no such thing as "ambient occlusion" in real life
- there's no such thing as "depth of field" in real life (unless you have blurred eyesight)
- there's no such thing as "bloom" in real life
those are camera effects
to summarize, ENBs gives you "cinematic" graphics
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no harsh replies please XD
That seems a bit harsh, considering Loshirai's post contains mostly facts.
FLAME SUIT ON
Depth of field does occur but bokeh on the other hand is a cinematic effect, just concentrate on your nose and you have your "depth of field" which is depth adjusting based on how close a thing is that you focus on. You don't see everything as clear as the spot you are focusing on, it's impossible.
Bloom is correct that it is a cinematic effect, but the ENB bloom is very configurable and optional as with every effect and setting is.
And on a final note where does it say that ENBSeries mods is supposed to be realistic, it's customizable so the end user can choose what kind of style he want's, cinematic, realistic a blend between the two. Realism in a game is not possible no matter which game you are referring to one can only try to mimic parts that occur in the real world and that is the best one can do.
And Skyrim engine will acheive this realistic feeling on it's own? I'm working with all the lighting that occurs in this game and have done so since the Creation Kit was released ENB brings more realistic effects and enhance Skyrims visuals to more realism then what it could do on it's own, when a preset is set up properly and enhances not overhauls the look. you should take a look at Confidence-Man's pictures over at the ENBDev forums gallery.
The world realistic is as overused just as the word HD is on this site.
Sorry if this sounded harsh to you, but I was not trying to be that just made my opinion on the matter.
For me, (opinion) dof in games is annoying. when I move my eyes from one focal point in game to another my eyes creates its own dof. I find it annoying to have to actually move my aim around to change that focus. It would be like if you couldn't move your eyes and had to move your head around to focus, I think owls do this.
Don't get me wrong, it looks cool in pics and all, but when I'm fighting for my life I need snap precision, not blurriness. (again opinion).
I totally agree with you that DoF does not belong in a game or to be more specific it does not belong in actual gameplay as it is so damn irritating, if it is a very intense blur. I have done some gameplay DoF with different enbeffectprepass.fx codes and mixed and matched the codes to achieve some good results, but still I never play with DoF active only have it active for dramatic screenshots.
Last note, what would games be if they weren't cinematic at all in their design and was as realistic as if it was like looking through a glass window.
in the next few years, games will look better than real life
Ok let's end the discussion about this topic or it will go on forever I suspect.
For instance a next gen variant shader for bloom might be the shader that reflects light sources to other to game rendering environment in real time.
I guess bloom is somewhat of a distortion picked up by the human eye and some cameras. I guess maybe my understanding was maybe next gen shaders could be more dynamic and interplay with each others functions. I'm no expert but something like emissiveness/glow maps emitting light sources? Is there such a thing could this be achieved with illumination techniques?
You might find this article interesting, though it is wikipedia so take it a grain of salt of it's accuracy on things
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_illumination
and here is I think the lighting rendering Crysis 3 uses, unsure though.
http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~ritschel/Papers/SSDO.pdf
Boris has different SSAO methods and most use the "the Nvidia" or typical game SSAO as it looks better in their eyes, and most users don't know about it. But I prefer Boris latest SSAO method that acts more like SSDO in Crysis 3.
Set the AOType to 0 for the SSAO method I prefer, and set it to 2 or 3 for the typical SSAO method that can be found in most games.
Hey I'm no expert either, but after working with ENB both as a tweaker and resource contributor since the release of Skyrim you pick up a thing or two along the way
Depth of field is something that exists based on your eyes' point of focus, but adding it to another camera doesn't quite work in the intended manner. If you don't believe depth of field exists in real life, I beg you to go look up the structure of the human eye before you keep talking, because you're making yourself look ignorant. Hell, go outside, look at a book, and WITHOUT MOVING YOUR EYES OFF THE BOOK, check out your peripheral vision just past the book's edge - you can't see s#*! there until you actually move off the edge, then you focus on the far away object and can't see the book. There's muscles there that provide focus, much the way a camera lens works. There's an equivalent to an aperture too. You can really think of it as a camera lens in function, with a biological backend instead of a CCD or film backend.
If you could determine where the person was looking (i.e. where their eyes were pointed) on the screen and use that as the basis for where the depth of field was on the screen, it'd be much closer to reality in providing a realistic effect, but having it based on the distance from the aiming reticle to the first object on that ray only works if you only ever look at the center of the screen. There's some issues with scaling at long distances too with the ENBs I've used, where they have way too wide of a DoF at distance. They could also use work on the way the blur occurs, since the methods used by ENBs more accurately simulate a camera lens than an eye, but that's not the biggest problem with depth of field.
Bloom also exists to a degree, but the bloom used in games is WAY more extreme than what people see. It's also related to depth of field, which isn't considered in games yet, likely because of the technical complexity of implementing it.
"...tries to mimic lighting that occurs in real life."
But to debate a bit more on this topic;
"ENBs more accurately simulate a camera lens than an eye"
Which is the more appropriate approach for games in my opinion based on the fact that you are looking "into" the game world "through" a monitor in the first place much like when you take a picture and look through the lens.
".... but the bloom used in games is WAY more extreme than what people see"
Bloom effect which is highly configurable with ENB. One can adjust the Skyrim bloom as well with the proper code addition.
I don't think depth of field adjustments are something games should use unless they're done with eye tracking, though. There's too much variability between where they player is looking and where the cursor is. When they're not aligned, the depth effect breaks both realism and immersion, since it's a trigger for you to go back and move the camera to a spot where you can see what you're trying to look at. They're great for screenshots/machinima (both of which are based on the premise that there's a camera), but it can go as far as being moderately disorienting during active gameplay (based on being in that character's shoes) when the effect is based on cursor position.
As for bloom, I was referring to games more generally, since I actually didn't look into what the mod community was doing on the ENB front until this article, and had a whole ton of trouble setting it up (just got it working last night), so I have no idea what kinds of settings they're all using. The real life equivalent of bloom is really subtle except in rare situations, and that's not the way you usually see it in most games. It's usually a highly pronounced effect to add to the feel of an unrealistic world, not a mild realistic one.
They are both using the same (or at least very similar) methods of displaying and creating images so they can be perceived as a boat or a truck in ways that we are used to see them as.
The current 3D effect that are used in movie theaters and monitors is more or less a bunch of 2D images fit together to simulate a deeper depth feel, not actual 3D that can be rotated around as one can do in real life. in simplest terms that is.
I wish I could plus rep you for saying that.
i7 860
HD 5870 (latest drivers)
8 Gb
Win7 64bit
Mainly ENB 0.119.
This is my Spec
i5-3570K 3.4Ghz Quod Core with boost to 3.8GHz when needed on a Z77 chipset.
Radeon 7850 2GB Graphics Card
16GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz
500GB SATA3 6Gbs drive (C: drive)
I also Have a dedicated 60GB SSD drive (SATA3) That I only use for part of my Steam LIbrary, Skyrim is Installed on this drive.
I have had loads of Gliches trying to run ENB mods on my system, including full system crashes, I believe changes to the INI file have been a culprit in some of the system crash problems, changes to the INI file that have been required according to the descriptions on installing these mods.
So tell me is my system powerful enough to handle an ENB mod setup on Skyrim and if not what min spec are you seriously looking at.
bFloatPointRenderTarget=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1
bShadowsOnGrass=1
The last 3 is for skylighting and SSAO to work properly.
If you are running a ENB version after 0.119 you need to disabled all Hardware Antialiasing also transparency Antialiasing. Both in the drivers if activated there and in the ini files.
I have had different computers running ENB with parts exchanged now and then and never had a problem with Skyrim+ENB on any of the computers.