Skyrim running in 16 bit color instead of 32 : Othor Games

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:43 pm

Could just try out a different ENB based mod, I picked that particular one because it was aiming to minimize the amount of ambient 'light from nothing' and would create very dark and very bright contrasted lighting depending on where you were, This one for instance has been picking up popularity pretty fast too http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5253

If you want to try it just remember to extract all the current ENB mod's files else this other one may untentionally try to use some of them. I'll warn though I found it also over-saturated all the colours, things like torches were too deep of a red and many of the flowers just started looking very out of place.

I tried that mod earlier and thought it was over saturated. I guess I'll have to play around. Is your character ever dark looking like on the side the sun isn't hitting? Can you show me a screen cap?

» Sun May 13, 2012 7:35 am

Good that you are liking some of what you have ....the lighting in the game can shade things too much and everything on the back side is in deep shadows...

Guess I should have mentioned i also have ENB running (stock), along with a bunch of texture mods...including blood ..

I love that with ENB, I have to use a torch in dungeons...I can't see crap!

» Sun May 13, 2012 12:44 am

Good that you are liking some of what you have ....the lighting in the game can shade things too much and everything on the back side is in deep shadows...

Guess I should have mentioned i also have ENB running (stock), along with a bunch of texture mods...including blood .. :smile:

I love that with ENB, I have to use a torch in dungeons...I can't see crap!

I use a blood mod too, haha.

Also I have a lot of those "HD texture" mods.

Which ENB are you using? and what do you mean when you say stock? Does that mean unmodified?

EDIT: I reinstalled the "confident ENB" mod (because now I have all other mods off.. and I forget what it looked like)

It's night time in game right now for me and when I loaded the game I couldn't see anything. I turned the brightness all the way up and this is what I got:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0819-42-20-40.png

I feel like something must be really off for it to look that bad... I'm going to roll back my drivers to the non beta ones.

» Sun May 13, 2012 2:31 am

Did a bit of researching and this may work.

Spoiler

Launch NVIDIA Inspector and click the small 'Profile Settings' button at the end of the 'Driver Version' line.
Click the Profiles drop-down box and select 'Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim'.
Edit the 'Ambient Occlusion compatibility' setting and select the '0x00000003 (Fallout 3)' profile.
Under the Common section, set the 'Ambient Occlusion usage' to Enabled.
Set 'Ambient Occlusion setting' to off, see if that makes a difference. If it does simply increase the setting untill you like it.
Click the 'Apply changes' button at the top right.
Launch Skyrim as normal to see the changes.

» Sat May 12, 2012 11:49 pm

I use a blood mod too, haha.

Also I have a lot of those "HD texture" mods.

Which ENB are you using? and what do you mean when you say stock? Does that mean unmodified?

Snip....

This one...http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5253 without any changes..not fully up on all this ENB Stuff...just downloaded it a couple days ago..still learning..and testing...

» Sat May 12, 2012 10:05 pm

There are many games that will do that with smoke from the lack of dithering even in 32 bit color as was said before not enough color values to smoothly render a very smooth gradient.

As for why its smooth on xbox i have no clue, maybe something didnt copy and paste over correctly?

» Sat May 12, 2012 4:04 pm

This one...http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5253 without any changes..not fully up on all this ENB Stuff...just downloaded it a couple days ago..still learning..and testing...

I installed that and I've been messing with the settings.. Trying to figure out how to get the ground to look less saturated... and the trees.. Maybe the water too lol.

I feel like I'm getting closer to what I'm looking for:

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0820-33-00-82.png

There are many games that will do that with smoke from the lack of dithering even in 32 bit color as was said before not enough color values to smoothly render a very smooth gradient.

As for why its smooth on xbox i have no clue, maybe something didnt copy and paste over correctly?

It can be right on PC there were screen shots posted earlier in this thread where it looked a lot better.

» Sun May 13, 2012 1:35 am

Ahoy sorry I disappeared there for a bit, So yah that confidence ENB version definitely has the overly saturated colours, didn't figure out which particular value triggered them but if you compare them to how say that first one R3 realism or whatever is configured I'm sure the differences in the lines will give it away. I found the colour values were just too high for my taste and went back for the starker light/dark of the R3 ENB package. Yes you're often looking at a sillouette of your character when your running around a dark dungeon or the wee hours of the morning but the lighting just felt right regardless.

Btw remember that value "Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling" in the Nvidia inspector? The higher that value the cooler your smoke & fog will look but like anything the more it will tax the hardware. In most places you can safely keep that value quite high but if you try to wander through that icy swamp south-east of Solitude in the early dawn with high supersampling it will put your video card to the test for sure.

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:20 pm

Ahoy sorry I disappeared there for a bit, So yah that confidence ENB version definitely has the overly saturated colours, didn't figure out which particular value triggered them but if you compare them to how say that first one R3 realism or whatever is configured I'm sure the differences in the lines will give it away. I found the colour values were just too high for my taste and went back for the starker light/dark of the R3 ENB package. Yes you're often looking at a sillouette of your character when your running around a dark dungeon or the wee hours of the morning but the lighting just felt right regardless.

Btw remember that value "Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling" in the Nvidia inspector? The higher that value the cooler your smoke & fog will look but like anything the
more it will tax the hardware. In most places you can safely keep that value quite high but if you try to wander through that icy swamp south-east of Solitude in the early dawn with high supersampling it will put your video card to the test for sure.

I have been comparing the two files side by side to get an idea of which values are very different and those are the ones I'm playing with. I've changed it around quite a bit from it's original state and I like where it's going.

» Sat May 12, 2012 7:03 pm

OP what connection type are you using to the monitor ?

I noticed a significant difference using HDMI > DVI.

» Sat May 12, 2012 5:55 pm

Those screen shots look normal and besides I wouldn't even really know how to force Skyrim to 16bit colour or the reverse, 16bit vs 32bit hasn't really been a topic in the video game world for like close to a decade now.

Thats a pretty ignorant statement. Whats going on is following. 16bit vs 32bit is a closed topic, however for other reasons than an average consumer would expect.

The problem is, the majority of LCD displays can only display 18bit colors(!). This information is ofc not being transmitted into consumer minds by the PR department. But its amusing to see how one or another user notices banding in his games, and is being shot down by other brainwashed consumers, being told that it is "normal".

The other problem is: gradient textures, like fog or sky use so many colors not even 24bit(so called "32bit") colors are enough. So there will always be banding in those places, even on an IPS LCD( the not cheap LCD, with real 24 bit color support). However both ATi(since 2002), and much later nVidia added support for 30bit color, aka 10bit per channel. Which would solve the problem and eliminate banding. But only a CRT can display 30bit color. And no average consumer has them anymore. Most LCD can 18bit, and some 24. And ofc Skyrim will never be reprogrammed to support 30bit. But the hardware does exist.

What to do: 1. Get a CRT. 2. Play on your TV. 3.Get a better LCD ( of at least same quality as your TV). There is nothing you can tweak here. Bad hardware.

» Sat May 12, 2012 8:06 pm

Just thought I'd post again to say that those lines of gradient in the sky for example, are also present in my game, and also there in fallout 3.

My monitor is good I think and so is my tv I sometimes play on, so maybe it's just something to do with the way colour gradients or transitions are handled.

» Sat May 12, 2012 10:29 pm

according to http://m.lg.com/uk/it-products/monitors/LG-led-monitor-E2251VR.jsp the LG E2251VR only supports 18 bit color. Sorry.

» Sat May 12, 2012 4:52 pm

OP what connection type are you using to the monitor ?

I noticed a significant difference using HDMI > DVI.

If you do then that means your monitor has different setup profiles for them since otherwise the technologies are identical in terms of transporting a 1080P video signal quality wise.

» Sun May 13, 2012 2:02 am

Thats a pretty ignorant statement. Whats going on is following. 16bit vs 32bit is a closed topic, however for other reasons than an average consumer would expect.
The problem is, the majority of LCD displays can only display 18bit colors(!). This information is ofc not being transmitted into consumer minds by the PR department. But its amusing to see how one or another user notices banding in his games, and is being shot down by other brainwashed consumers, being told that it is "normal".
The other problem is: gradient textures, like fog or sky use so many colors not even 24bit(so called "32bit") colors are enough. So there will always be banding in those places, even on an IPS LCD( the not cheap LCD, with real 24 bit color support). However both ATi(since 2002), and much later nVidia added support for 30bit color, aka 10bit per channel. Which would solve the problem and eliminate banding. But only a CRT can display 30bit color. And no average consumer has them anymore. Most LCD can 18bit, and some 24. And ofc Skyrim will never be reprogrammed to support 30bit. But the hardware does exist.
What to do: 1. Get a CRT. 2. Play on your TV. 3.Get a better LCD ( of at least same quality as your TV). There is nothing you can tweak here. Bad hardware.

24 is because the other 8 bits is devoted to transperancy. You can continue to live in the past and using a more then already dead technology to get your placebic extra range of colour but please, take the conspiracy FUD elsewhere, this is not the root cause of the banding in this situation. 16.7 million btw: 24bit, again stop with the FUD. Do it in another thread please.

» Sun May 13, 2012 6:20 am

blahblahblah transperancy.

Has nothing to do with colors or anything. 32 is just a round number. (2^5). Filler space.

» Sat May 12, 2012 6:56 pm

Has nothing to do with colors or anything. 32 is just a round number. (2^5). Filler space.

Last time I reply to you: 2^24 = 16.7 million, that's the colour palette portion of every digital 32bit colour segment, the other 8bits or 0-256 number range is to indiciate to the video engine that's making use of it how transparent to draw it vs what might be behind it. By the time that texture reaches the displays that 8bits is meaningless since transperency is no longer a factor in the final frame being sent to the display. Again, please shift to another thread if you wish to really get an education on how 3d engines vs textures function.

ED: *0-255, 8bits is 0-255, need moar coffee

» Sun May 13, 2012 3:58 am

Last time I reply to you: 2^24 = 16.7 million, that's the colour palette portion of every digital 32bit colour segment, the other 8bits or 0-256 number range is to indiciate to the video engine that's making use of it how transparent to draw it vs what might be behind it. By the time that texture reaches the displays that 8bits is meaningless since transperency is no longer a factor in the final frame being sent to the display. Again, please shift to another thread if you wish to really get an education on how 3d engines vs textures function.

ED: *0-255, 8bits is 0-255, need moar coffee :tongue:

Pardon me if i have difficulties understanding the "knowledge", but what is it you want to say? And how is it relevant to the topic. ( And its transpArency, for gods sake)

» Sat May 12, 2012 10:30 pm

Since this thread has devolved into specifics of Bit counts and color depth of monitors, it is time to move it to CD

» Sun May 13, 2012 3:09 am

What to do: 1. Get a CRT. 2. Play on your TV. 3.Get a better LCD ( of at least same quality as your TV). There is nothing you can tweak here. Bad hardware.

Incorrect. If the problem was just with the monitor then the screenshots would look normal to other people, and they certainly don't look normal to me when compared to other screenshots.

» Sun May 13, 2012 2:23 am

Truth be told its not looking different from what i see in the game. But i also have an older 18bit TV (hey at least its big). Can be checked though, OP just needs to connect his PC to the TV(which apparently doesnt have that problem) and check it out. If he played around with Catalyst settings, it'll show, and if he gets a full color picture.. well.

Calibrating is pain.

» Sat May 12, 2012 10:33 pm

Okay ladies, calm down. Lets move away from the very heated debate about color bit and move back to the purpose of this thread: find out what is wrong with my settings and make my game pretty. :happy:

If it was my monitor then wouldn't all of the screen shots of loading screens that I've seen from computers that are displaying it properly look faulty to me? Also, wouldn't my screenshot look normal to everyone else if it was just my monitor?

Just for the record, I do not have this problem in other games.

Not to forget, the smoke was beginning to display correctly until I did something to mess it up again. Not really sure what I did... But I was screwing around with a lot of mods and settings.... That probably had something to do with it :tongue:

But I would like to pin point the source of the issue.

Also, BumpInTheNight, you seem pretty nice so I added you on steam. :bunny:

EDIT: also, I calibrated my screen and it was pretty spot on. I needed to tweak the gamma a hair, but it let me see the before and after when I finished and it was nothing noticeable.