I always up the brightness for every game I play.

I know it may have no bearing on the TV/Monitor brightness, but I wonder. Does the light modifiers from Mods affect your sneak detection?

If you have the PC version, I highly recommend the Realistic Lighting Without Post-Processing mod on Skyrim Nexus. The brightness and contrast is much more realistic in caves and dungeons.

That's what mods are for. Some good post processing mods makes the nights and caves darker, the day brighter and can just generally make the game look a lot better.

The post processing injector type mods don't have any effect, but the Realistic Lighting without Post Processing mod actually changes the light levels, so it does affect sneak.

Funny thing, most PC monitors need to be set at 25% Brightness for proper White/Black levels. You may have been talking about Gamma here.

However, LCD monitors (and TVs for that matter) are way too bright out of the box. My LCD is set at about 35% Brightness, but my gaming room is not usually dark.

I have noticed that the in game candlelight spell sometimes makes it hard to see more than a few feet I'm front of you. But then if you were to hold a real light bulb with no light shade on it you would also get the same blinded by the light result. So the lighting effects work very well in the game.

We must have played a different Oblivion or something. I never needed any torches. I collected the things, but I never needed to use either them or any light spell, either outside or in dungeons.

But that is completely illogical and goes against all laws of science.

Look up. See that moon? There is no way a moon could be that bright while reflecting the sun at Nirn and it NOT be bright at night. That's how illumination works.

I do not tinker with the brightness settings it makes the dark to dark and the light way to bright and it adds a haze to the screen and it gives me a headache.

Having been outside at night, when there is no moon in the sky it does get really dark, stars don't provide very much illumination. The authors of the darker nights mod I'm using also have plans to make nights with full moons brighter than nights without, once the CK is available and they can start scripting things.

Yeah stars do not provide light but that moon does. And the moon is always out at night if i'm not mistaken?

I have been out in the woods at night on moonless nights. I was in a astronomy club when I lived in Flagstaff. Go 20 miles outside of town and there is no light pollution. We used to go out once in month during new moons to view the stars. Anyway, sit outside in the dark for about 30 minutes and the Milkyway alone provides a surprising amount of light. The sky was almost gray the stars were so visible. This may not be as prevalent at lower altitudes and in areas where there is air pollution/dust. Anyway, it was more than bright enough to see where I was going and to be able to find people or things with just star light. Of course, if I were to light up a flashlight around that crowd, I would have been lynched. Plus, I would not have been able to see anything for another 30 minutes.

Now, a night where the moon was more than half full and there was snow on the ground? It might as well be daylight, even at midnight. On full moon nights, I could read under those conditions.

That sounds great. I have a massive PC build in mind for mid-spring. I have got to make the move from the 360. I long for mods something awful. There is so much I want to do to and with a character and to the environment. The console gives none the option.

I'm actually happy that darkness was reduced here. In Oblivion I either ran around blind at night time or spammed Night Eye.

The darkest night I can remember also involved being among a lot of redwoods, so the stars were mostly blocked out (it involved a game of paintball, where a handful of professional paintballers stalked around with guns that shot glow in the dark balls, while a bunch of unarmed amateurs crept around in teams playing something sort of like capture the flag.) It would be great if a mod could take things like cloud cover and trees into account, in addition to the cycles of the moons.

to anyone that thinks night time = impossible to see with out candle needs to take a walk in teh dark at night in real life it isnt that dark (also go down dark ally ways and un illuminated areas) (heavily treed areas work)

I have been in some dense old growth forests that during the day it was like night. I would imagine it would be pitch black at night, even with a full moon in those kinds of forests.