I love darker dungeons, nights, etc. The whole concept of light playing a huge role in exploration and combat is really appealing and I want to use mods like RCRN for the atmosphere and gameplay. But the problem I always have with these mods is that NPCs continue to have normal vision in near total darkness. Inside of a nearly pitch-black room, an NPC on the other side of a large room will see me if I'm standing up even though I can't see the NPC. It ruins the whole idea of these mods in that respect.

There used to be mods for Oblivion such that NPC's couldn't see in the dark unless it made sense for them to do so (Khajiit, vampires, etc.). And otherwise, they would carry torches with them in the dark. Does anyone know of any mods out there that modify the NPC vision to fit better with darkness mods like RCRN? I keep searching around for things like "NPC vision" and "npc darkness" but I'm not finding anything...

Really looking forward to something like this aswell. Think it was wrinklyninja that did that mod for Oblivion that I so loved, and he doesn't mod for/own Skyrim afaik. But I'm sure it will come eventually, skse just added papyrus support so that should make things like this easier most likely!

I think realistic lighting actually effects the lights in the game as opposed to post processing so stealth actually works. I don't know of mods that automatically add torches to NPCs in the dark though.

I recommend http://enbdev.com/index_en.html

While I am sure ENB works great for making the game prettier and possibly darker, isn't only post processing? As in it doesn't effect the lighting within the game itself (what the AI considers darkness) only what you see on screen. If I'm wrong, please correct me on it.

I'm pretty sure Realistic lighting should affect npc sight.

I dont, that thing is an FPS killer

I'd love something like this as well. great for immersion and fair to the player!

No, only the SSAO portion of it is. Turn that off if you don't want FPS drops. Personally I find the FPS drop worth it for the SSAO/SSIL though.

what is SSIL?

and ENB has actual SSAO? not just normal AO like nvidia inspector allows?

ENB's SSAO is very different from NVIDIAs indeed. SSIL is Indirect Lighting which improves on the SSAO at further performance cost (with .111 ENB it's not very performance heavy anymore though)

Yeah probably. Realistic Lighting affects actual light levels in the game, whereas ENB as far as I know uses post processing effects to change how the world looks to you. So between mods like Realistic Lighting and mods like ENB, Realistic Lighting would probably be the one that can actually affect stealth. As for RCRN, that depends on whether it achieves its darkness through lighting changes or post processing effects. It looks like it might do both.

I think there are mods that make stealth more dependant on light levels and line of sight rather than sneak skill, but I don't remember which ones.

then it's realistic lighting for me. I wonder if adding nighteye to said npcs will allow them to see better!

Yeah the SSAO in ENB is real SSAO, rendered in realtime and looks great. SSIL makes it look even more incredible (SSIL is also unique to ENB series as its a technology made by Boris himself ).

It's way better looking and performance wise ( and much more optimized) than Nvidia's AO too.

so very true, nvidia's AO is just a nightmare.