The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition (free if you own the Legendary Edition)

First-time Skyrim player question; so as you can see from my sig I have no issues running this game at 4K with all settings on Ultra. However, the draw distance for foliage is atrocious. Because of the wide-open landscape in this game I can very clearly see great distances and b/c of the 4K I can see quite clearly even smaller inconsistencies. In-fact I didn't even recognize this issue right away. I only happened to notice it after doing some running around. Anyway, does anyone know of a console command that fixes this? I already changed the FOV to 100 since anything less than that was terrible, but I was curious if there was a way to increase the detail level for distance objects any better?

This is not my screenshot, but this is the exact same thing that I am seeing on my game;

5bt5L6k.jpg
That's just the way the game is. You can either get a mod that increases the LOD level of the far terrain, increase the uGridsToLoad setting in your Skyrim.ini, or do both. Be aware that increasing the uGridsToLoad setting will make world tiles that are farther away from you active in addition to loading all resources, meaning an increase in random vampire spawns, triggering encounters (required and optional) and other things that could possibly ruin your game. Just using a LOD mod without increasing uGridsToLoad will avoid those problems.

A setting of 7 was typical in the original game, but the SE should be able to go up to 13 comfortably if you have 8GB of RAM (19+ with 16GB or more). Doing this will also come with the requisite performance drop. If you do decide to do this you should also manually increase the max fade values for various objects like grass, rocks and foliage.
 
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That's just the way the game is. You can either get a mod that increases the LOD level of the far terrain, increase the uGridsToLoad setting in your Skyrim.ini, or do both. Be aware that increasing the uGridsToLoad setting will make world tiles that are farther away from you active in addition to loading all resources, meaning an increase in random vampire spawns, triggering encounters (required and optional) and other things that could possibly ruin your game. Just using a LOD mod without increasing uGridsToLoad will avoid those problems.

A setting of 7 was typical in the original game, but the SE should be able to go up to 13 comfortably if you have 8GB of RAM (19+ with 16GB or more). Doing this will also come with the requisite performance drop. If you do decide to do this you should also manually increase the max fade values for various objects like grass, rocks and foliage.

Dang, that explains a lot of my Fallout 3 experience. Raising uGridsToLoad also cause FO3 to crash a lot for me so I ended up turning it back down to the max the game would do on its own. I never realized it would activate encounters too.
 
Beta patch up on Steam that supposed to fix the audio issues. Anyone test it yet?
 
Beta patch up on Steam that supposed to fix the audio issues. Anyone test it yet?
I will tonight.

EDIT 1: Sounds.bsa is 1.5GB on disk after the patch. Going to play for a bit with headphones on to see if it's noticeable.

EDIT 2: Played about 3 hours. The sound for the most part is better, but some of the voices are still muddy and crackling.
 
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There's another beta patch today.


Skyrim Special Edition 1.2 Update

Fixes
  • General stability and performance improvements
  • Fixed issue related to using alt-tab while playing the game (PC)
  • Fixed issue with water flow not rendering properly
  • Fixed crash related to changing from werewolf back to human form
  • Fixed crash related to reloading after changing Load Order of mods
  • General bug fixing and improvements with browsing Mods
 
There's another beta patch today.


Skyrim Special Edition 1.2 Update

Fixes
  • General stability and performance improvements
  • Fixed issue related to using alt-tab while playing the game (PC)
  • Fixed issue with water flow not rendering properly
  • Fixed crash related to changing from werewolf back to human form
  • Fixed crash related to reloading after changing Load Order of mods
  • General bug fixing and improvements with browsing Mods
Thanks.

I never had an issue with alt-tabbing, but then again I play in fullscreen windowed borderless.
 
Just sad that they are not fixing game bugs, only engine/graphics bugs.
There's still a lot of people that can't even run the damn thing. I haven't tried it, but two of my coworkers can't get above 15fps on the new version, but their old modded up version still runs great.
 
Just sad that they are not fixing game bugs, only engine/graphics bugs.
Part of the reason that is might be the Unofficial community patch, which already works with the SE. Not that the community already did all the work for them, but if they fixed bugs officially that would mean the process of making another unofficial patch would start over again. Of course, they could have just merged it into the SE release like THQ did with Titan Quest and the Patchfix.
 
Skyrim Special Edition 1.3 Update


Fixes

  • General stability and performance improvements
  • Fixed an issue where Slow Time effects weren't behaving properly
  • Better support for 144hz displays


"support":unsure: I don't have a >60hz display to test this but other users are reporting they implemented a hard cap at 60hz to prevent the physics bugs.
 
Hmm don't like that. Took me ages of trying different settings to get SLI to work and the game not crash every few minutes. Part of that was 144Hz with 1/2 refresh v-sync so my fps stayed locked at 72. Seemed to work well. Hope this doesn't screw everything up.
 
Skyrim Special Edition 1.3 Update

"support":unsure: I don't have a >60hz display to test this but other users are reporting they implemented a hard cap at 60hz to prevent the physics bugs.

That's not a surprise, for a long time Bethesda games have had a physic engine that ticks on framerate. If you run the original Skyrim with Vsync off everything goes nuts physics wise.
 
Skyrim Special Edition 1.3 Update


Fixes

  • General stability and performance improvements
  • Fixed an issue where Slow Time effects weren't behaving properly
  • Better support for 144hz displays


"support":unsure: I don't have a >60hz display to test this but other users are reporting they implemented a hard cap at 60hz to prevent the physics bugs.
Do you mean they capped the game at 60 FPS? Because limiting your display to 60 Hz isn't supporting 144 Hz displays. I'll see what the deal is tonight.
 
I normally refrain from bumping a thread any older than three months yet in this case my post is relevant to the topic.

Skyrim Special Edition (SSE) is, by a great margin, much more stable than original Skyrim. I've played upwards of 10 hours without a single crash where I couldn't do that in the original. The scenery detail is a good deal better than original. I'm getting a solid 60fps at max detail with ENB enabled no matter where on the landscape my character traverses. By far, SSE has been a trouble free experience. I cannot say the same about the original.

Regarding mods, SSE mod count on NexusMods.com pales in comparison to original (5,603 vs. 51,300) yet is catching up slowly but surely. Once SKSE64 is released - possibly March - I'm sure there will be a huge surge of mods being ported from original to SSE in a relatively short time. I'm anxiously awaiting SkyUI along with Mod Configuration Manager (MCM) as the mods were must have for original.

One point I feel must be mentioned are mods ported over to SSE which are not properly ported; mesh/texture mods excluded. These types of mods can cause SSE to CTD or just flat out fail to load a save when installed. Please be aware of these improperly ported mods.

Regarding texture mods, there is a newer compression routine named BC7 which, when compared to uncompressed textures, is for all intents and purposes the same quality. When BC7 is compared to DXT1 it is a night and day difference with BC7 producing a higher quality image with only a slightly larger file size. On Reddit, steveowashere has created a topic discussing BC7 named Texture Compression and You - Skyrim SE Edition which is a great read. If any of you are mod authors I hope that you'll consider using BC7 as it makes a huge difference in quality over DXT1 and is practically identical to uncompressed textures while reducing file size. Which, in turn, reduces texture load times.
 
I normally refrain from bumping a thread any older than three months yet in this case my post is relevant to the topic.

If it's any comfort, you haven't broken that record just yet, 2 days short :p

EDIT: Did you notice if you had also gained performance from the SSE or it's mainly a stability thing?
 
Please resurrect game specific threads in perpetuity - my Steam backlog is huge & it will take years!

I'd prefer to find ONE thread on ONE game that's 3-5-8 years old vs 3-5-8 different threads w/ bits & pieces.

The forum will list our posts chronologically, so if old / early posts are irrelevant since a patch, just skip to the last page. ;)

PS: I resurrected a 3.5 year old thread this month = "Remember Me"
https://hardforum.com/threads/remember-me.1767997/#post-1042815317
 
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Well, damn. I gotta work on that. :D

If it's any comfort, you haven't broken that record just yet, 2 days short :p

Gained a great deal of performance as well as stability even with 2k or higher textures installed with ENB. At this current time I yet to install the remaining Models and Textures to equal what was installed in original Skyrim but so far there hasn't been any performance degradation. 60 fps everywhere.

Thinking about it, in original Skyrim I did a grass test with maximum density and height. It was a performance tanker. I was lucky to stay above 20 fps. I think I'll try the same test in SSE just for good old S&G. :D

EDIT: Did you notice if you had also gained performance from the SSE or it's mainly a stability thing?
 
I'm playing around with various texture mods to get the look and feel I want. I realize not everyone is comfortable modding their game. With meshes/textures, there is no worries as they won't corrupt the save you've put many hours into. This also applies to Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas, Morrowind, etc. What must be realized is there could be a limit depending upon your hardware config; mainly graphics card VRAM. Not enough VRAM and swapping will occur which could lead to pauses in your game while it is loading new textures. I've found this to be a common issue with 1GB and 2GB VRAM graphics cards when people load up too many high resolution (2K, 4K, 8K) textures.

Now, I'm not a complete expert on the subject yet I've spent at least a couple hundred hours modding the previous mentioned games combined and helping out many others here on Hardforum, NexusMods.com and a few other places to get the most out of their game visually. I realize everyone has their likes and dislikes. I'm going to cover this with my preferences and if you like it, fine. If not, that's fine too. :)

Forewarning: if you don't like a certain aspect of a mod, for the love of modding don't go bashing the mod author for their creation on their NexusMods mod page. It is downright rude and disrespectful to the efforts and time the mod authors have put into their mods. If you don't like their creation, bypass and find one you do like. If you are unable to find what you are looking for, give me a holler and if it exists then I'll find it for you. It is that simple. :)

By the way, if you do like what a mod author has created, then don't forget to endorse them. It is a simple button click that tells the mod author somebody liked what they did and encourages many mod authors to create more wonderful works.

I started off with a graphics overhaul mods which were installed with Nexus Mod Manager (NMM). Graphics overhaul mods *normally* replace every mesh and/or texture within certain areas of focus. There are mods which alter cities and towns, others which alter terrain, others which alter trees and others which alter objects such as baskets, candles, food, etc.

I'm only going to touch on the subject of landscape with this post. Other graphical aspects will be touched upon later on in this thread.

Note: NMM isn't perfect. You'll find when installing various mods NMM may place the mods in the incorrect category. Just drag the mod to the category it belongs in.

Speaking of food, I don't care whether or not people like horker loafs, it sounds wrong and looks wrong. Seriously, there is spiky hair on it!

AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0002.jpg

Anyways, back on topic. :D

Several of the pics I post here are with and without ENB affects.

1. The absolute first mod I install is Static Mesh Improvement Mod, or SMIM for short. SMIM replaces meshes which give objects their shape. Stock, default meshes in original Skyrim and SSE are utter crap (no offense to Bethesda as I love their games). Walk-up to a building support and look at it. It is a hexagonal piece of crap. SMIM fixes this issue and the mod author has provided plenty of pics on the mod page to show the differences with and without SMIM.

2. Next up was True Touch of Color which I highly recommend. This particular mod livens multiple objects. Just take a look at the second pic on the images tab. I'd eat that in a heartbeat!

3. Terrain:

3a. Next is Skyland - A Landscape Texture Overhaul. As with Vivid Landscapes, this is also replaces various landscape textures. Realize, this is only the base and will get overwritten with other models and textures mods.

3b. The next mod to get installed was Vivid Landscapes - All in One. This mod replaces:

- Mountains
- Cliffs
- Creeks
- Dungeons
- Ruins
- Imperial Forts
- Wood grounds (Huh? Unclear what mod author means)
- Birthsigns
- Orc Strongholds and Farmhouses (I edited description for clarity)
- The Volcanic and The Tundra region

I really like what the mod author has created as it is performance friendly yet definitely ups the look of SSE.

Some of you are probably asking yourselves:

"WTF Ace? Why did you install two landscape mods?"

Whelp, it is a matter of preference. I like some of the features of Vivid Landscapes and other features of Skyland. Since I wanted to have the, in my opinion, best of both mods, I let Vivid Landscapes replace a few of the textures of Skyland. Screenshot of mod list for reference. Look at the install dates and times to the far right.

AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0003.jpg


4. Let's address the trees... the default trees in SSE lack, for lack of a better description, depth. Sure, they do look a bit better with the new engine than in original Skyrim but definitely could use some improvement.

4a. First, I started off with Fantasy Forest Overhaul since it livens up SSE with color.

4b. If there was ever an excellent mod aimed at trees it is Realistic Aspen Trees. I love this mod. It is permanently placed in my essential mod list. Partially overwrote Fantasy Forest Overhaul since both use the same meshes.

5. Water. Absolutely, positively the most immersive water mod available is Realistic Water Two. I am impressed with the what the mod author has done.

Alrighty, after spending over three hours writing this, here are a few screenshots of the result so far. Please note I am using ENB so your result, if you decide to follow what I did, will look different. Additionally, I am far from being done with installing graphics mods. I've only got 29 graphics mods installed out of the 140 or so to install from my list of must haves.

Images have been resized down to 800 x 450, and changed to .jpg from .png to save bandwidth. Transparencies were lost in the conversion.

AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0004.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0005.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0006.jpg

Oh, and just for good old S&G, "Riekling, it's what's for dinner." :D

AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0007.jpg
 
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Bravo for a detailed post !!!

I have not read it in it's entirety... YET.

I sincerely appreciate the effort & will read it again as soon as I convince my buddy to buy Skyrim SE !!!

PS: I got Skyrim for $5 on a Steam sale in 2014 & the SE came along later for free :D
When I first got into Skyrim, I started this thread & struggled with FPS & mods - HERE
 
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Thanks, talk2troy

The next part, which I'm working on now but won't post until tomorrow, will cover additional environment/terrain details. Things like rocks, bushes, caves and such. I'm aiming to keep each post to a limit of 5 parts of enhancements with maybe one or two containing more than one mod.

Edit: I will also be covering LOD (far off details) with a fantastic mod I happened to stumble upon. Details can be seen in the screenshots posted previously.
 
Q-BZ I've used several of Vurt's mods in original Skyrim and won't hesitate to recommend his mods for SSE. However, this playthrough I was going for a different look than normal. While Vurt's SSE and original Skyrim mods are awesome I chose to add an abundance of color this playthrough which is why I didn't use any of his mods this time. In the future, I will be wiping SSE and including Vurt's mods as at that time, when it happens (maybe a couple of weeks from now) I'll be returning to a more 'natural' look, per se, to SSE. :)

That said, on to the next snippit of modding SSE.

By the way, I'm excluding screenshots from this post as there are more than enough on each mod's page to give you all a good idea of what the mods do. Now, don't fret, the next post will definitely include screenshots from my game to give you all a good idea of what I see on my monitor. Count on it. :)

In the previous long-winded post I covered terrain, trees and such. In this post I will be covering environment (weather and clouds), caves, mines, ores and ingots.

1. First up is the Vivid Weathers Special Edition. Want sum rain? Of course ya do. Vivid weathers gives the character a feeling of nature as it incorporates a natural look and feel to weather within Skyrim. I highly recommend this mod for your weather needs or wants.

2. Next is Ethereal Clouds Special Edition. Yeah, I know, simple thing of clouds. Clouds float through the air. Big deal, right? Well, how about if those clouds were retextured to give off a more natural appearance? Well Gamwhich has you all covered in this aspect. Gamwhich is a truly gifted mod author. Check out his mods for SSE when you get a chance. I believe you will be glad you did.

3. Let's get down and dirty. Caves. Yeah, that's right, I said caves. So, your character is wandering through a cave. It's, in most instances just a hole carved out in rock. Caves have rock walls. Duh! Some caves are nature made. Water flowing through caves tends to leave patterns on the wall which coincides with, of course, erosion. Others are man made. Man carving out rock to get to those pesky ores. No, no, no! Not boat oars! Not the oars a character would row a boat with or give a pesky Foreswarn a paddlin' with. We're talking ore, as in minerals as in the stuff needed to smelter down into ingots to improve weapons, armor and such. Such a simple thing as ores, eh? How about if those ores were given a little visual pep?

Turn to ClearanceClarence for your SSE cave, ore and ingot visual needs. He's got you covered in that aspect. Check-out CC's Enhanced Ore Veins. Install CC's All-in-One Texture Pack or install each individual mod separately. I did the latter as CC states not everything is included in the All-in-One Texture Pack. CC also includes glowing and non-glowing versions of the ore veins. I chose glowing since it seemed appropriate in my eyes given this particular playthrough goals of adding color wherever appropriate to achieve the look I'm going for.

That's all for this post. Next post I'll be covering standard objects such as fruits, vegetables and other similar items.
 
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Keep it up sir! I've had Skyrim and DLC for years now it seems, waited to pick up cheap of course since was going in back log anyway, but have yet to actually play it, kinda glad I waited till now to get started since SSE has been released freely into my library! Just waiting a bit longer for SKSE64 and then I can dive deep into the modding and finally start playing. I will follow your info once I get going on it. Look forward to reading more as you progress with the modding sir. Thanks for sharing!
 
Alrighty folks, even though I have the next listing close to being done, I thought I would take a break and detail a player home I've been using for the last day. In my eyes, this player home is more than worthy of mentioning and owning even though it costs 50,000 gold.

I've switched to using Ayleid Palace SE by skyrimlazz (Or, Lazz for short) as my primary player home. In a word, it is beautiful. Place is completely decked-out in marble and the walls have a blue or teal glass inlays. There is plenty of storage and plenty of displays but not too many which could cause lag when decked-out. What I really like is the fact that the display room is a separate cell along with crafting and bedrooms. And, with unlimited adoptions mod, it is kid friendly. I currently have 3 boys and 3 girls living there. There are plenty of NPCs to interact with. Four merchants and a few companions. If you don't like the NPCs then there is the option of removing them via a button in the master bedroom. One other thing to mention: Lazz has decorated the sword/shield displays with iron shields and iron greatswords. Those can be removed and sold off to recoup some of the gold spent to buy the place.

Check out the mod as I fully give it my thumbs-up. Here are a few screenshots for your perusal:

AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0008.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0009.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0010.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0011.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0012.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0013.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0014.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0015.jpg
 
For foliage, unless you decide to go the grids route there isn't that much to be done about it. For far off objects such as the mountain range, there are several great FOV mods which will provide a great deal of clarity. One such mod is Skyland - A Landscape Texture Overhaul. I think you'll find the FOV detail much, much better than vanilla.

First-time Skyrim player question; so as you can see from my sig I have no issues running this game at 4K with all settings on Ultra. However, the draw distance for foliage is atrocious. Because of the wide-open landscape in this game I can very clearly see great distances and b/c of the 4K I can see quite clearly even smaller inconsistencies. In-fact I didn't even recognize this issue right away. I only happened to notice it after doing some running around. Anyway, does anyone know of a console command that fixes this? I already changed the FOV to 100 since anything less than that was terrible, but I was curious if there was a way to increase the detail level for distance objects any better?
 
Alright, another pause in producing the next modding post. Just today I've found two mods which I highly recommend to anyone who wants a immersive atmosphere within Skyrim SE. Before I go on to detail, let me state I have removed Vivid Weathers from my mod list because as far as I am concerned the replacement better represents the look and feel of the environment I am aiming for this playthrough. Without further ado, here are the two mods I am more than happy to recommend:

1. Dolomite Weathers - NLVA II by Dr Mega and Kojak
2. Relighting Skyrim - SSE by --JawZ-- and NovakDalton

My god, with these two mods coupled with the previously mentioned terrain and cloud mods is simply fantastic. Foliage colors are medium bright and beautiful. Nighttime is true night when compared with the nights where I live. I could go on and on explaining how impressed I am with these two mods yet as has been said many times, pictures speak a thousand words. These screenshots may pique your interest. Enjoy! :)

AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0016.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0017.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0018.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0019.jpg AceGoober_Skyrim_SE_0020.jpg
 
I am playing Enderal. Great except that I had not played in a bit. I updated and now whatever fix I was using to cap my fps at 60 is gone. I do not see it in the ini file either but I think I did something different from that. My allergies are playing havoc with my mind atm. Please, how do I cap the fps in Enderal without manually turning down my 144 fps monitor? I just want a more elegant fix. Thanks
 
spaceman

Frame rate isn't controlled by the Enderal mod at all. FPS limiter can be controlled by one of the following methods:

1. SkyrimPrefs.ini: find iPresentInterval=. If it is set to 0, change it to 1 so it looks like iPresentInterval=1.

2. Graphics card control panel: nVidia Control Panel you can set the fps limiter by enabling VSync. Same with AMD control panel.

3. If you are using ENB, open the enblocal.ini in the game folder and ensure the following entry is in it:

[LIMITER]
EnableFPSLimit=true
FPSLimit=60.0
 
There is an actual framerate limiter buried in the driver settings if you use the nVidia Inspector app, rather than having to use VSync.
 
I thought that I had set that already. Shrug. Guess I better check it again. Dunno. Allergies screw with my memory and IQ. Death to trees!
 
I thought that I had set that already. Shrug. Guess I better check it again. Dunno. Allergies screw with my memory and IQ. Death to trees!

Not sure if you are referring to my post or the PresentInterval thing, but with the framerate limiter, it tends to reset every time you update drivers.
 
Ah ha! OK. That is what happened. I did not remember that either. I really should just shut down for spring.
 
Sorry. Why get the special addition again? I have the regular old school version. I guess I can't update it without paying?
 
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