Hey Boris! Really nice work!

In some of those screenshots you seem to have turned the contrast up a bit, which makes certain parts of screen http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/8546/skyrim12.jpg. How about instead making a local contrast solution? It's very good for getting more "punch" in the picture, makes it sharper in a nice way. I imagine you know what local contrast is, but for other people who are wondering what i mean, see http://www.pixelvistas.com/photolift/photolift-samples.html.

I think there's a language barrier getting in the way of things like documentation and explaining exactly what's current and what is planned. So yeah, maybe someone can offer to step up and help with said things? Might ease the confusion as to what's going on.

veepee
I did screenshots with only some specific things balanced, if you see something worng then it's not what i wish to show you and vice versa. Too much hard to setup all parameters of gamma, intensity to 3 sky colors, to clouds, to the sun, ambient lighting, direct lighting, various tonemapping parameters. When i draw HDR photo by the shaders it looks correctly after all processing, but game weather developed for LDR mode and looks unrealistic even as LDR, so i can't spend time fighting things i can't change without editing weather properties. The same was with GTA4 version, i know which values should be, but tweak game weather file? I'll better do something more useful.

yeah the screenshots arent indicative of anything, just wait for the mod.

I'm following your mod eagerly.

I question one thing however, will your SSAO work for ATI GPU users? For me, I ask since I use a Radeon 5870.

I thought i'd try and find out what local contrast would look like for one of the screenshots that Boris posted, just for kicks. The feature "unsharp mask" in http://www.gimp.org/ is AFAIK more or less the same thing.

AFAIK for normal contrast adjustment you first calculate the average luminosity for the whole picture (or possibly median for better result). Then you calculate offset from the average for each pixel. Then you multiply the offset with a given magnitude. This ends up with burned out bright areas and blacked out dark areas. You lose detail.

For local contrast you do the same, except that the average luminosity is calculated for an area around the pixel. There are two parameters: the radius of this area (pixels), and the magnitude (multiplier, same as with normal contrast). This way you end up with more pronounced detail in areas that seemed bland before.

I tried applying it to Boris' screenshot 27 with different parameters:
http://ubuntuone.com/74DGdyavevBjALIFbpIAav
http://ubuntuone.com/5xHDF7VfappnJhfljyChEa <-- looks nice imho
http://ubuntuone.com/0njurAI3UZuHsgKbcZELCb <-- over the top, similar to the "sharpen" effect for obge, but less distorted colors.
http://ubuntuone.com/79Gov9IqAOVEBCkHMoB7CE <-- might suit somebody's taste, prpobably not mine though
http://ubuntuone.com/0bjNlUH9DNd71WtbLoFLiH <-- softer look, but more pronounced shadows.
http://ubuntuone.com/78DKKCFsDk2YW0Stq1iGSc

I have no idea how much processing power a local contrast shader requires though. Possibly it's not worth the gpu time spent.

SPARTdAN
SSAO for both NVidia and ATI users, same as all other fx.


veepee
Local is slow enough, but i did some time ago another tonemapping math which don't loose contrast in bright areas (unless they are too much bright) and color also. But now i'm trying to stay in default tonemapping and trying to research why in the hell it is correct in theory (res=color/(color+offset) and looks so bad, restoring intensity from textures as they are captured by digital cameras (linear, but gamma 2.2 applied, then "photoshopped")... Hard to say what is wrong, post process works perfect for real hdr photos and bad with any real color values of lighting, sky, sun, etc (only characters are fine, humans only). May be some other kind processing on vanilla textures is done, don't know, the shader math is correct (not like in Deus Ex 3).

PS: i have another screens on my site and in guest book i post nvde screens, they are better.

using this patch drops my FPS by 7-10 fps

I don't know why it would do this, since it claims to simply fix bugs.

Anyone know why this happens?

It's because the patched d3d9.dll replaces your video card device with "ENB". You need to change the "VendorID" and "DeviceID" just like the documentation states. Some people say they can just set both to all 0s to avoid the FPS hit.

ah i see, the documentation's a bit of a mess. I guess this explains why not many people use this. I'll try and report back, thanks so much

edit:
nope I still lose 10 fps

Boris you are awesome!

The tonemapping seems to treat certain lighting situations and bright textures like it's a 5 on whatever tonemapping scale they're using, while everything else is a 0-2, but then they have some sort of minimum clamp that keeps those areas bright until the player stops looking at the bright area. Then the tonemapping treats it as if you've been staring at the sun, or rather reverts to proper adaptation.

I have an ATI 6990 and tried your ENB patch #4 and gained a few fps depending on the situation. Averaged about 5 extra. With patch 5 and 6 though I lose a very big chunk of my performance.

Inside without enb - 100 - 250 fps @ 1920x1080, ultra settings with high shadows 2AA and 8AF.
Inside with enb - 40 - 70 fps

Outside I average about 45 fps without, but with I only get around 25 with. Something you did between 4 and 5 tanked my peformance. Besides the big loss in peformance which I hope you can fix, this mod is look wonderful.

Thank you for your efforts Boris.

I am now going to gulp now as I reveal that I'm using an ATI HD2600 pro (many years old I know), not only do I have the fx from fire, spells etc, (that would you believe I spent the first 40 hours of playing the game with out knowing I was missing it, just thought some spells were bugged.), but I'm also running on high to Ultra settings and v/sync. I don't play with AA on but I have AF on 8 which is plenty good enough for me, and I only get some slight stuttering in certain indoor light and fx situations, very little stuttering in the outside world. Since your patch 6 I have not tested the beta memory manager as I'm finding what ever you have done, my game is running a lot better and loading times between cells is quicker. I am still on patch 1.1 steam is offline for me right now, after their previous patch made my game so unstable, and from what I have read, seems like a good decision thus far not to update.

Sorry for lack of figures, I used to be really geeky about it, when I could afford to be, but now playing and enjoying with what I have is more important to me.

Just wanted to say thanks, I would love a machine that could handle all these other wonderful things, yet I'm very happy with what your mod has unleashed for my humble machine. Keep up the good work.

Great videos Boris, what texture/body mods are you using?

Very nice stuff! This seems to be the topic to keep an eye on! Can't wait for new eye candy!! TY

Hi Boris.

First, let me tell you that your work looks promising and I'm looking forward to the release of that Skyrim ENB, as I never got disapointed with your work on other games.
Reading the topic, I was just wondering if that graphic enhancement ENB was already released, as people seem to be talking about it that way, but I can't seem to be able to find it on your website, the only Skyrim related download available being the patch fixing bugs (which I am already using btw.).
Thanks for clarifying it, and for the time you take to improve everyone's gaming experience.

Hey Boris, as a fellow programmer I really marvel at your work. I'm glad you're taking the time out to do this for the Skyrim community.

Some people might not be appreciative in words, but your patch has already made my game immensely more fun(actually playable!) and
almost entirely crash free. I can't thank you for that enough! I look forward to see what else your great creative mind comes up with over
the coming time you are developing it!

Thanks so much again!

I'll second this. Awesome and very kind work.

PC Loadletter???

OT: I have to agree with others. I don't understand why people have to rag on a good modders work. They are doing it free of charge for the benefit of everyone it helps.

Wow, I am liking what i see on your website.

Are these not yet released (graphical improvements like skin rendering, ssao, and bloom)?

Anyway, I look forward to it.

First BETA released. I tired too much with bug fixing of game, so published "light" version now and going to rest.

Boris, what do you think of Bethesda's announcement that they plan to implement the LAA 4GB patch/flag thing into the game officially? I know you sounded worried about the games memory capabilities before. Think this will help?

WhiteZero
This will not help if they keep old memory manager and allocation rules. It's not hard actually, i don't know why they didn't that before, may be Bethesda programmers specializing on console development, that's why we have problems with memory and multithreading. At least there is a solution which can help even if game will stay 2 gb limited, but developers must fix bugs first (i'm working on it).

Do you think it might be better to wait for Bethesda to finish their patching, and then for you to finish updating the bug fixes...?
Or alternatively let Bethesda know how to fix their crashing issues (forward your fixes to them somehow?) and have them implement them?

Honestly, Skyrim was only playable for me thanks to your bug fixing.but I know it must be frustrating to have your work constantly squashed
after working hard on it, that's why it might be better to forward them the potential fixes. so you can work on the other aspects...it seems they
are struggling to fix their own bugs after all based on this: http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-were-working-on/

So they just might welcome your fixes.

Edit/Update: Someone posted on Bethblog's twitter they had fixes for the in game books error and Bethblog responded telling them to send the
fixes to the support forum so they can find them. So perhaps if you recommended your fixes to memory allocation it might get seen? Just a thought.

For some reason I crash to desktop when sleeping/waiting and the time passes into 6pm. Using the Beta 0.98.