Is there a way to fix water reflections in New Vegas? Most water doesn't reflect anything except the sky, Lake Mead is especially noticeable. The Colorado river on the other hand does, good example is at Blue Paradise Vacation Rentals. I checked the PlaceableWater files in the GECK, a lot of flags for reflections are not set in various water types, I enabled them but it doesn't change anything in-game. Could there be another reason for this weird behavior? Why does the game ignore the flags set in GECK?
One for worldspace water, that is water defined in the worldspace itself. It has only one height level. This water can receive full scene reflections.
Other one, is placed water. Its height can vary, but due to that, it cannot receive full scene reflections, and only reflects sky.
Why? Game uses planar reflections for water. What does that mean? The water plane basically has a camera, that renders the world from that plane's "point of view" (correct term would be from its normal).
Since worldspace, generated water, is one large group of planes, all at the same height, you can render the reflection only once per frame, and it will be correct for all those planes.
But... if you wanted to add a water plane at a different height... well, then you would need to render a new reflection as well - the point of view has changed. And since you can have multiple placed water planes, at various heights, this would be problematic.
Rendering in this game is very heavy. Full scene reflections alone, are like 1/3 of the render time. Repeating this, per every plane in the scene, in the frustum, would be even more expensive. That's why Bethesda chose to only reflect the sky for those planes.
Thanks a lot for the explaination, it makes more sense to me now. I checked in GECK again, PlaceableWater is used almost everywhere (at least in my understanding), but it behaves differently by location. At Hoover Dam you can see how it neatly divides the two types of water, one with reflections and one without. So does one area of the game use worldspace water and the other one uses placed water? I'm sorry if I'm being stupid here. I'm trying to get my head around this.
Open the World Spaces view, you will find a Default LOD Water Height there - all water planes at that height (with a margin of error of 0.0099999998), will get the full scene reflections.
This is evaluated in game, when water is being loaded. Which means that if you were to change the default LOD water height through a script, and load a cell, you could have a situation where you'd have planes at different heights, using full scene reflections.
Obviously, the reflections would be broken for all planes that were placed with the previous height value.
Ah thanks for the info, I compared the default water hight from WastelandNV in world spaces to a few of the "Wilderness" cells, some match it and some have a different height. Again thanks a lot for the explaination here.
For those wondering what "Compatible with everything except ENB apparently. Good." means for us ENB users:
Whenever you enter a cell that has water in it, the lighting will completely break when facing the direction of the water. (The water does not need to be visible on the screen) For example near Goodsprings source, when facing in the general direction of the small water trough, even when youre at Jean Sky diving, and can't even see the water trough, the sky will turn black and everything else will be very brightly lit. (I forgot to take a screenshot)
Yeah, water (depth at least, idk about reflections) rendering has no occlusion checks, so it renders as long as a water plane is in the active cell, and in camera's frustum. I wonder what ENB does with this render target.
FriendshipAndRainbows It is New Vegas Reloaded, but... According to the VIVA NEW VEGAS site... you know what? You better read it yourself, here is the link: Mods to Avoid https://vivanewvegas.github.io/avoid-mods.html#utilities_avoid I'm not saying that everyone should follow this, let everyone do what they want, but at least we'll learn something.
NVR is this type of mod that does great things, but due to that its dev process is slow, so the current state is not really feasible for normal gameplay. It is recommended to check it out from time to time, because the team is doing a great job.
As a very longtime user of both NVR and ENB, I will offer my thoughts.
Spoiler:
Show
1. NVR is not meant to be compatible with ENB but it actually is (with caveats), and users who get the best visuals out of the game almost invariably use the two in conjunction.
2. Viva New Vegas is sort of the Mission Mojave of FNV "getting started" guides, but because we have no "Yukichigai alternative" so to speak, it remains the go-to. That said, what it has to say about ENB and NVR (to touch the tip of the iceberg) out it as incomplete. You could reasonably say it was trying to steer users clear from headaches, since ENB in particular isn't for the "I need a guide" sort of user, but it really should have said as much. Outright stating that the utilities aren't worth using, and giving an arbitrary list of reasons why—including a lot of the features people specifically use ENB for—is not helpful.
3. In my humble opinion, NVR's water replacement gives the user the best water visuals possible in FNV. It's also a very convenient way of solving ENB's "glowing water" problem without having to root around in the game's water data.
4. Like others have said, NVR is "in development", but this sells it short. Using NVR 1.3.1, you can take advantage of most of what it has to offer right away. A little trick I recently learned was to replace 1.3.1's water shaders with those from 3.4.1.
5. These versions of the plugin can be found on their Discord, which can be googled.
Like I said, I don't play FNV without NVR, and I state unequivocally that anyone not using NVR is needlessly missing out on useful features.
There's much more that could be said on this topic, but I believe that covers the original question and the concerns over Viva New Vegas's warnings.
Who uses ENB anyway? People who dont know how to mod because there are plenty of better working alternatives. Not even the ENB maker recommends ENB for FNV...
> People who dont know how to mod because there are plenty of better working alternatives.
Respectfully, no. ENB lets you do things in FNV that can't be done any other way. The visuals I get, for example, manifestly cannot be achieved through any other means. Though I would like to think intuition would make this pretty obvious. Pick an ENB preset here on Nexus. Rudy ENB, for starters. Now try to match it with "better-working alternatives."
Ah, yes Asterra, you are correct. ENB does allow you to do things which you cannot do through other means. For example, it breaks a long list of things that you would ordinarily not be able to break in the vanilla game without some sort of xNVSE plugin. So in that sense you are correct. Pretty astounding you can fit so many bugs and destroy so many vanilla engine functions with only one DLL.
And Rudy ENB? Nothing against Rudy themselves, but I don't want the game to look like that. It's a non-issue when people who don't use an ENB think ENB makes the game look much worse. Combine that with the long list of bugs and broken features, as well as the performance cost, you might as well just not use it. Oh, and Boris is also not someone I'd like to support in any way shape or form.
I like my game looking like this. Similar to the "true sunlight" approach FO4 took a shot at and which has since been the de facto look for any game that takes itself seriously, Cyberpunk being a recent example, as well as that UE5 demo. There's only one way to get my game looking like this, while also having nice contrast and blacks indoors and at night. The arguments you've put forth don't change this fundamental truth, especially when
> and Boris is also not someone I'd like to support in any way shape or form.
I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be the underlying impetus behind the vitriol. X sucks because... thing that is irrelevant to X. I don't approach my game's visuals that way.
That looks dreadful Asterra, and it's sad that you use Cyberpunk, a literally unfinished non-game piece of crap, as your benchmark for quality. This is why nobody uses your "fix" mod.
I agree. That screenshot is less than attractive. Why do people think that high contrast looks good? I'll never understand why you'd want it to look that bright. Looks garish.
I consider it a step away from the Xbox 360 days. Too much like newer games? Perhaps. When you step outside on a sunny day, that's what you see, which could explain why it's shaping up to be a standard look in more modern titles. Is everyone getting a little sidetracked? I'm not here to sell my personal tastes. I'm underscoring what you can't do without ENB. Got nothing more to offer than a disagreement on aesthetics? Then I guess we can call this one closed.
hey may ask what enb is that? ive been wanting my game to look like fallout 4 its the game that got me into fallout, i already got the sprint mod it works great. didnt feel like fallout until i could sprint. tried other enbs to get the look but best ive found is apocalypse, close but no cigar lol this looks way more like real fallout 4. i am already using realism wasteland lighting apocalypse enb needed it but it helps even by itself imo. tough choice between apocalypse and this water mod
The trick with NVR is to ensure that none of its functions overlap with other post processors or extended vanilla functions. Sounds obvious, I know, but you'd be surprised how tricky it is. Anyway, it is absolutely possible to get it running without issues such as shadow flickering, etc. In fact, I highly recommend it, because when you do, it's seriously good. I have it running with a hybrid ENB/Reshade setup with no issues. And make sure to get rid the weather.ini it ships with, otherwise you'll get weird day/night skies at certain hours. Just use a weather mod instead.
There are lots of great ENBs for a lot of games last time I played TTW back in the day I used Marcurio's. And it was solid. I think most of these ENB critics have never played with one that was configured for gameplay instead of screenarchery. Or they're just haters playing on potatos that don't have the power for extra post-processing. Anyone that says ENBs look like s#*! are just exposing themselves as failures implementing it.
i understand theyre argument if they mean it takes more power, i can tell it does. doesnt bother me i have a 1080 ti and thats good enough to run apocalypse enb no problem i mean the game is old, even fallout 4 is old and fallout new vegas is ancient by comparison, a little extra power isnt asking much fora game that old apparently. i just really like the fallout 4 look everything bright and shiny, i knew it would be a great look for the desert and that shot posted earlier proves i was on the moey. the default game is orange lol, and dark. i also found the dusty distance mod which adds a nice effect to the horizon, maybe not true to nevada but still a good look. for now i will stick with apocalypse enb, i dont know how to change settings to make it bright like the above fallout 4 enb look i will leave that to the experts
Last weekend I went to the eye doctor. It turns out I had some severe blind spots. I told him I had tried an ENB. And they said "If you continue to use ENB, then you're going to go blind probably within six months." It damaged my eyes. But is so bright and vibrant! It's worth going blind!
lol bro peace. its okay u dont have to use a bright desert enb, thats the nice thing about it theres all kinds. even ones that are darker than the normal game. maybe that would be a good choice, lower the risk of damageing eyes more
Suppose Enb has its quirks. But hopefully someone fixes it. It still has quite a bit of problems that just hurt the soul. Btw, your fixes are helpful. Don't let people bring you down :)
For users who use enb and attempt to uncheck this mod in mo2 but still experience water issues. You need to delete files with the same name in the Fallout New Vegas \ Data \ NVSE \ Plugins game directory. I am just a new player on NewVegas and it took me some time to solve this problem.
This is awesome but honestly the lack of waves, foam, ripples, etc. in Fallout3/NV water makes it look worse with the higher res imo. Is there a way it can be increased by a custom amount or just by half?
Well Tbh I'm just going off the screenshots here but it looks like there's no refraction coupled with the fact that the water doesn't actually interact with objects at all, which makes the water look like a thick fog instead of actual water. The aliasing at least makes objects under the water look refracted.
As I said, I have no issue with your mod. I was merely making the observation that in my opinion, the higher resolution of objects under the water makes the vanilla water's lack of realistic refraction and movement more noticeable.
104 comments
One for worldspace water, that is water defined in the worldspace itself. It has only one height level. This water can receive full scene reflections.
Other one, is placed water. Its height can vary, but due to that, it cannot receive full scene reflections, and only reflects sky.
Why? Game uses planar reflections for water. What does that mean? The water plane basically has a camera, that renders the world from that plane's "point of view" (correct term would be from its normal).
Since worldspace, generated water, is one large group of planes, all at the same height, you can render the reflection only once per frame, and it will be correct for all those planes.
But... if you wanted to add a water plane at a different height... well, then you would need to render a new reflection as well - the point of view has changed. And since you can have multiple placed water planes, at various heights, this would be problematic.
Rendering in this game is very heavy. Full scene reflections alone, are like 1/3 of the render time. Repeating this, per every plane in the scene, in the frustum, would be even more expensive. That's why Bethesda chose to only reflect the sky for those planes.
Pics for reference.
Not very intuitive, I know.
Obviously, the reflections would be broken for all planes that were placed with the previous height value.
Whenever you enter a cell that has water in it, the lighting will completely break when facing the direction of the water. (The water does not need to be visible on the screen)
For example near Goodsprings source, when facing in the general direction of the small water trough, even when youre at Jean Sky diving, and can't even see the water trough, the sky will turn black and everything else will be very brightly lit. (I forgot to take a screenshot)
Besides that 10/10 mod for non ENB users.
ENB users should use NVR's water replacement if they want the same thing.
It is New Vegas Reloaded, but...
According to the VIVA NEW VEGAS site... you know what? You better read it yourself, here is the link:
Mods to Avoid
https://vivanewvegas.github.io/avoid-mods.html#utilities_avoid
I'm not saying that everyone should follow this, let everyone do what they want, but at least we'll learn something.
As a very longtime user of both NVR and ENB, I will offer my thoughts.
1. NVR is not meant to be compatible with ENB but it actually is (with caveats), and users who get the best visuals out of the game almost invariably use the two in conjunction.
2. Viva New Vegas is sort of the Mission Mojave of FNV "getting started" guides, but because we have no "Yukichigai alternative" so to speak, it remains the go-to. That said, what it has to say about ENB and NVR (to touch the tip of the iceberg) out it as incomplete. You could reasonably say it was trying to steer users clear from headaches, since ENB in particular isn't for the "I need a guide" sort of user, but it really should have said as much. Outright stating that the utilities aren't worth using, and giving an arbitrary list of reasons why—including a lot of the features people specifically use ENB for—is not helpful.
3. In my humble opinion, NVR's water replacement gives the user the best water visuals possible in FNV. It's also a very convenient way of solving ENB's "glowing water" problem without having to root around in the game's water data.
4. Like others have said, NVR is "in development", but this sells it short. Using NVR 1.3.1, you can take advantage of most of what it has to offer right away. A little trick I recently learned was to replace 1.3.1's water shaders with those from 3.4.1.
5. These versions of the plugin can be found on their Discord, which can be googled.
Like I said, I don't play FNV without NVR, and I state unequivocally that anyone not using NVR is needlessly missing out on useful features.
There's much more that could be said on this topic, but I believe that covers the original question and the concerns over Viva New Vegas's warnings.
Respectfully, no. ENB lets you do things in FNV that can't be done any other way. The visuals I get, for example, manifestly cannot be achieved through any other means. Though I would like to think intuition would make this pretty obvious. Pick an ENB preset here on Nexus. Rudy ENB, for starters. Now try to match it with "better-working alternatives."
And Rudy ENB? Nothing against Rudy themselves, but I don't want the game to look like that. It's a non-issue when people who don't use an ENB think ENB makes the game look much worse. Combine that with the long list of bugs and broken features, as well as the performance cost, you might as well just not use it. Oh, and Boris is also not someone I'd like to support in any way shape or form.
I like my game looking like this. Similar to the "true sunlight" approach FO4 took a shot at and which has since been the de facto look for any game that takes itself seriously, Cyberpunk being a recent example, as well as that UE5 demo. There's only one way to get my game looking like this, while also having nice contrast and blacks indoors and at night. The arguments you've put forth don't change this fundamental truth, especially when
> and Boris is also not someone I'd like to support in any way shape or form.
I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be the underlying impetus behind the vitriol. X sucks because... thing that is irrelevant to X. I don't approach my game's visuals that way.
I don't need any more notifications for this...
File is smaller and takes less memory, but requires user to have all required libraries installed (so C++ redists, system libs etc.)
Can you possibly do this for Fallout 4?
Water no look real when can see perfectly through it.
The vanilla aliasing looks like fake refraction. Fixing this removes any "sense" of there being refraction. So it looks flat.
Solution: Add refraction...? I don't know. Or just don't use this.