This isn't from a mod - all three of these images were taken with none of my mods running - but I sorta think I'll get more technically-knowledgeable advice here in the mod forums, so here goes.

Can anybody tell me what's causing these odd glitches in the sky?

[img]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1172309635830134640/D1346D0E6C55663C0C7D00755E931072632E211F/[/img]

[img]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/1172309635830139563/4F1002628A07C6BC0EABEC929FB00B7046D905DC/[/img]

This one's a bit less obvious, but it's center screen, looking like a perfectly triangular mountain.

[img]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/1172309635830129520/FBCBA0FF496883B9E3D376AF646D702204194DBC/[/img]

Is this an issue with the high-res textures from Bethesda or something?

Alien invasion? Lol

What mods have you installed that have anything to do with sky textures?

None, really. But no mods at all are running at the moment. It just looks really weird. I'm wondering if it's a result of the higher-res Vanilla textures that Bethesda put out.

If I uncheck HighResTexturePack01.esp and HighResTexturePack02.esp, does it revert to the original, lower-res textures that came with the game as sold?

I don't use the high res textures from Bethesda so I wouldn't know really. I have heard of problems with those packs though.

Hmmmm.

I suppose there are modded textures available to replace the Bethesda high-res packs, but it's just strange to me that this only exists as a glitch in the sky - and that it seems to be present regardless of time of day.

it is a wierd glitch. Have you searched google and found anything?.

No, to be honest there's so much expertise around here that I pretty much figured it would be simpler just to ask around before Googling the issue.

If you got no mods installed, and tried everything (regenerate to default .ini for example and make sure you got no graphics card forced settings), why not try to reinstall the game? And if that won't work, then there's something wrong with your computer...
You could try to reinstall drivers cleanly.

I dont think that is a texture problem, looks more like a bad mesh somewhere.

You say you have no mods running .. But have a look in skyrim\data\ - if you have a meshes folder then you probably still have mods resources installed in there which the game could be loading (if they are replacer meshes as loose files the game will load them automatically, whether you have the mod which requires them active or not .. same goes for textures and scripts and sounds)

Un-installing the resource files for your mods will probably get rid of the problem file, then just re-install them one by one (test game in-between) to find the problem mods installed resource files .. Then you just need to figure out out of the files that mod installs which is the problem file.

That could be a little more involved if the mods resources come in a custom bsa .. easier to remove than loads of resource files, but the individual problem file within the bsa will need to be extracted to figure which of those is a problem.

An old strategy used to be disable half your mods, then re-enable and disable the other half, which helped you narrow down a problem mod .. But with skyrim you need to un-install completely a mods resources to deactivate them, not just disable the mods esp.

Well, another reason I'm suspecting the official high-res textures is that I'm about 99.9999% certain that I've seen this before and just ignored it as a minor annoyance. I also had one and only one dragon show up as all but invisible - no textures or mesh, just some surface shadows on it - before I ever downloaded a single mod, during my first play-through.

I think I might try unchecking the high-res textures .esp files and running without them to see if that fixes the issue. I assume that will cause the game to revert to the original vanilla lower-res textures, so I guess we'll see.

Urgh. No dice. Unchecked the high res textures and it had no effect. I can't even say for sure if it reverted to the original textures.

[img]http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1172309635830646509/037E038E1FC4C53547E7F19D24BAAE1D766EABCD/[/img]

Okay, so I successfully uninstalled every single mod via NMM, but some .esp files still remain, specifically:

• Mighty Dragons Unleveled.esp
  
• exo-whiteruncavehouse.esp
  
• craftablestaffs.esp
  
• ASIS.esp
  
• and of course Wrye Bash's 0.esp

I wonder if I can merely erase these files manually?

might be a better option to download them manually through nexus and see what files are inside of each mod and delete those, just incase some of the mods have meshes/textures etc that could be causing a problem although i dont see what it could be.

Might have to try that, although at 40-odd mods, I'm not particularly inclined to do that, especially since I'm fairly positive I've seen this problem since before I ever downloaded any mods.

I dunno. I took that latest screenshot after deselecting the texture mods, but it was right as soon as I opened a save file. Maybe I'll fast travel to another cell and see if that resets anything. Moving to another cell seems to have quasi-magical properties to it in Skyrim from what I hear.

Well, two of the mods were subscribed to via the Steam Workshop that I had forgotten about. Unsubscribed. We'll see if that has any effect.

If it is not from mods, that definitely looks like a graphic card failure (probably overheat).

Hmm. The laptop isn't running hot right now, and it's consistently ONLY found in the sky in Skyrim; I haven't seen it in any other games whatsoever.

More examples from a few minutes ago:

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831252818?tab=public[/img]

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831256860?tab=public[/img]

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831254820?tab=public[/img]

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831259073?tab=public[/img]

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831247079?tab=public[/img]

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831261530?tab=public[/img]

[img]http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022964923/screenshot/1172309635831250197?tab=public[/img]

Very strange to me.

if its not the graphics card, the drivers or overheat etc...then my best guess would be that its a texture mod conflicting with bethesdas texture replacers.

still, i dont know.

Definitely this.