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About this mod
Adds an MCM option to eliminate eye adaptation from the game by applying an imagespace modifier that locks the contrast HDR parameter to 1.0
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
What is eye adaptation?
Eye adaptation is a postprocessing effect in Skyrim that adjusts how bright the scene appears based on where the player is looking. This is what causes objects or landscapes to appear darker when you look up at the sky or directly at a bright light source.
Why is eye adaptation a problem?
In regular flatscreen Skyrim, some imagespaces have a slow adaptation speed that causes the darkening effect to linger momentarily after looking at bright light sources. Some people may find this unpleasant.
In Skyrim VR, eye adaptation completely breaks the visuals because eye adaptation is applied to each eye separately. Thus, if one eye is looking at an area of the scene that is relatively bright while the other is looking at a darker area, both eyes will have a different level of eye adaptation applied. This has the unwanted effect of breaking shadows and lighting entirely in some scenarios. Even in cases where the level of eye adaptation is synchronized between both eyes, the effect is still unwanted because it effectively tries to simulate what your eyes do naturally by dilating or constricting your pupils in response to light. The end result of all this is that your eyes can really begin to hurt with areas in Skyrim that rely on eye adaptation quite heavily.
How does the fix work?
After a lot of testing with Skyrim's postprocessing and imagespace parameters, I've learned that eye adaptation relies on the contrast parameter of a scene to function. In particular, eye adaptation requires a contrast value of greater than or less than 1.0 to apply any sort of eye adaptation to a scene. While I don't know exactly how it's used to calculate the final image, areas with particularly high contrast values will cause eye adaptation to engage quite strongly. Interestingly, areas with contrast values below 1 will cause eye adaptation to work in the reverse direction so that looking at bright lights causes the scene to become brighter. When setting contrast to 1.0 exactly, however, eye adaptation no longer works at all.
This mod simply takes advantage of this strange quirk of Skyrim's postprocessing calculations and adds an MCM toggle for an imagespace modifier that locks the contrast parameter for the scene to 1.0. When enabled, the imagespace modifier will always be active and eye adaptation will no longer engage. It can be disabled at any time.
How is this different from other "Remove HDR/Eye Adaptation" mods?
As far as I can tell, this is the first mod which can eliminate eye adaptation entirely from the game because it specifically works through the contrast parameter. Also, as far as I am aware and based on extensive testing, this is the only method to truly remove eye adaptation from the game forever.
Other mods typically address the issue of eye adaptation by altering the "eye adaptation speed" or "eye adaptation strength" parameters. Setting eye adaptation speed to 0 will indeed prevent scene brightness from changing when you look around, but the brightness will still adjust itself when the scene is initially loaded. This has unwanted effect of causing some scenes to be extremely dark or way too bright when they are loaded in initially, because the first thing you look at determines what the brightness gets locked to. Thus, if you enter a cave and the first thing you see is a torch, the scene will appear almost completely dark and stay that way until you load a new area.
The "eye adaptation strength" parameter, based on my testing, is either completely broken in Skyrim or functions in such an unintuitive way as to be essentially useless for adjusting how eye adaptation works in a given scene. Extremely high values appear to function the same as lower values. When the value is set too low, though, like to 1.0 or below, eye adaptation starts to break and behave in very strange ways. What this ultimately means is that you can't set eye adaptation strength to 0 and disable it that way like you might expect. It just doesn't work.
I initially created this mod to address issues with eye adaptation in Skyrim VR specifically, but after discovering that eye adaptation functions the same in SE as it does in VR, I decided to expand it to SE as well as VR so anyone could benefit.
Mod compatibility
This fix should be almost universally compatible with any and all lighting mods. If you use ENB, the fix might not be necessary because the postprocessing is essentially bypassed with ENB installed and I don't think eye adaptation functions the same way as it does in vanilla Skyrim. If eye adaptation is still giving you issues with ENB though (for example, it seems to engage even when disabled through ENB), this fix may help.
Before/After gifs showing the fix in action:
SE
VR
Installation/Uninstallation:
The mod includes only an ESP and a single extremely simple and benign script. Just download the file through your preferred mod manager and enjoy.
You can probably safely uninstall this mid-playthrough if you wanted no problem. There is no need, however, because the fix can be disabled at any time in the MCM if you wish.
Other notes:
Because this mod alters contrast, you will inevitably notice that some scenes don't have blacks as intense as they used to. In some cases this may be due to the tints that Skyrim relies on for many of its imagespaces, but most of the time what you're seeing should essentially just be what a scene looks like without any extra contrast added in or eye adaptation applied. As mentioned previously, if there are any areas where the lack of contrast is bothersome, you can disable the fix at any time through the MCM.
Eye adaptation is a postprocessing effect in Skyrim that adjusts how bright the scene appears based on where the player is looking. This is what causes objects or landscapes to appear darker when you look up at the sky or directly at a bright light source.
Why is eye adaptation a problem?
In regular flatscreen Skyrim, some imagespaces have a slow adaptation speed that causes the darkening effect to linger momentarily after looking at bright light sources. Some people may find this unpleasant.
In Skyrim VR, eye adaptation completely breaks the visuals because eye adaptation is applied to each eye separately. Thus, if one eye is looking at an area of the scene that is relatively bright while the other is looking at a darker area, both eyes will have a different level of eye adaptation applied. This has the unwanted effect of breaking shadows and lighting entirely in some scenarios. Even in cases where the level of eye adaptation is synchronized between both eyes, the effect is still unwanted because it effectively tries to simulate what your eyes do naturally by dilating or constricting your pupils in response to light. The end result of all this is that your eyes can really begin to hurt with areas in Skyrim that rely on eye adaptation quite heavily.
How does the fix work?
After a lot of testing with Skyrim's postprocessing and imagespace parameters, I've learned that eye adaptation relies on the contrast parameter of a scene to function. In particular, eye adaptation requires a contrast value of greater than or less than 1.0 to apply any sort of eye adaptation to a scene. While I don't know exactly how it's used to calculate the final image, areas with particularly high contrast values will cause eye adaptation to engage quite strongly. Interestingly, areas with contrast values below 1 will cause eye adaptation to work in the reverse direction so that looking at bright lights causes the scene to become brighter. When setting contrast to 1.0 exactly, however, eye adaptation no longer works at all.
This mod simply takes advantage of this strange quirk of Skyrim's postprocessing calculations and adds an MCM toggle for an imagespace modifier that locks the contrast parameter for the scene to 1.0. When enabled, the imagespace modifier will always be active and eye adaptation will no longer engage. It can be disabled at any time.
How is this different from other "Remove HDR/Eye Adaptation" mods?
As far as I can tell, this is the first mod which can eliminate eye adaptation entirely from the game because it specifically works through the contrast parameter. Also, as far as I am aware and based on extensive testing, this is the only method to truly remove eye adaptation from the game forever.
Other mods typically address the issue of eye adaptation by altering the "eye adaptation speed" or "eye adaptation strength" parameters. Setting eye adaptation speed to 0 will indeed prevent scene brightness from changing when you look around, but the brightness will still adjust itself when the scene is initially loaded. This has unwanted effect of causing some scenes to be extremely dark or way too bright when they are loaded in initially, because the first thing you look at determines what the brightness gets locked to. Thus, if you enter a cave and the first thing you see is a torch, the scene will appear almost completely dark and stay that way until you load a new area.
The "eye adaptation strength" parameter, based on my testing, is either completely broken in Skyrim or functions in such an unintuitive way as to be essentially useless for adjusting how eye adaptation works in a given scene. Extremely high values appear to function the same as lower values. When the value is set too low, though, like to 1.0 or below, eye adaptation starts to break and behave in very strange ways. What this ultimately means is that you can't set eye adaptation strength to 0 and disable it that way like you might expect. It just doesn't work.
I initially created this mod to address issues with eye adaptation in Skyrim VR specifically, but after discovering that eye adaptation functions the same in SE as it does in VR, I decided to expand it to SE as well as VR so anyone could benefit.
Mod compatibility
This fix should be almost universally compatible with any and all lighting mods. If you use ENB, the fix might not be necessary because the postprocessing is essentially bypassed with ENB installed and I don't think eye adaptation functions the same way as it does in vanilla Skyrim. If eye adaptation is still giving you issues with ENB though (for example, it seems to engage even when disabled through ENB), this fix may help.
Before/After gifs showing the fix in action:
SE
VR
Installation/Uninstallation:
The mod includes only an ESP and a single extremely simple and benign script. Just download the file through your preferred mod manager and enjoy.
You can probably safely uninstall this mid-playthrough if you wanted no problem. There is no need, however, because the fix can be disabled at any time in the MCM if you wish.
Other notes:
Because this mod alters contrast, you will inevitably notice that some scenes don't have blacks as intense as they used to. In some cases this may be due to the tints that Skyrim relies on for many of its imagespaces, but most of the time what you're seeing should essentially just be what a scene looks like without any extra contrast added in or eye adaptation applied. As mentioned previously, if there are any areas where the lack of contrast is bothersome, you can disable the fix at any time through the MCM.