ELFX is the least compatible because of how many light sources and other changes it does. But it is the most atmospheric and provides the best ambiance. It also has the best ENB options because of the ambient light remover via the Hardcore and Enhancer options giving the ENB authors greater control over their own lighting. RLO is quite realistic but fairly cold in its lighting settings. ELE is simple, effective and very compatible and can be used with RS, they are by the same author, and it's recommended to use both together. Luminosity looks really good but I don't see many ENB setups that support it.
Thanks for your input! I used to run ELFX back in the day but I really like the way LLO looks on RU-vid, the issue with the others is that they just make everything way too dark. That is something I really like if I'm playing for myself but I have to be more mindful of it for content. :)
ELE is much better, it might be darker is certain areas but provides more realistic lighting compared to ELFX, also you're wrong ELE was literally made to work along side ENB's hence the name.
Thx for the input, this is the kind of info I wish AI Cave discuss as well in this video. From my experience (and I have alot... 2000 hours of playtime with modded skyrim), I am not using ELFX anymore because it experienced CTD with it almost everytime after 50 hours of playtime or so
@Lostman - Lady Jaina Proudmoore You fool! I've been trained in your Jedi arts by Count Dooku. *whips out 4 lightsabers then ignites them* Attack, Kenobi!
Luminosity & Relighting Skyrim combined are my favorite for console (Ps4). It keeps the vanilla feel, but just tweaks placements of light sources & enhances the lighting atmosphere. It also doesn't make certain interiors way darker than they need to be, but dark enough to see a difference
Agreed, all these lighting mods look good in one shot and lack in another...ELE is the most consistent in my opinion. It's simplicity at it's finest. It just works ;)
That room with the "troubled lighting", is devoid of all shadows... Placing the light over the table was the best way to hide the fact that there is no shadows in the room, from any lights. Unlike other places, where lights cast shadows. It may also have a forced "ambient", that isn't controlled by the "global ambient", which the developers manually coded in some obscure location, to "fix" an issue with that internal scene. (Eg, without shadows, a lights most logical position is to be central and remove other lights, to "trick the eye" into believing that the lighting is just "more ambient". It worked... You couldn't see what was wrong, and most can not, in such a twisted world of fake light and shadows of a game. It's just a step above "Quake II", in complexity. Which I am sure that is where a majority of all this bad coding came from, ported to DX 10/11. Thus, why so many old-school programmers can MOD it. Unlike some newer games that use top of the line graphics engines, like Unreal-engine and Cryengine.)
I have found that what I prefer to do is to use ELFX with mostly vanilla settings to just eliminate all sources of ambient light and select the option for 'warm' interior lighting but without dimming the overall interior lighting and then use a weather mod for the exterior. I get an experience that is a good combination of realism and fantasy in that I don't have lights without sources but I can actually see where I need to go at night or in a cave without needing half a dozen light sources.
I play on PS4/5, and have found that ELE works best for me because I lean heavily into RP and enjoy having a reason to actually use torches or light spells inside caves and other dark places.
Damn, Realistic Lighting Overhaul seems by far to be the best for me. Followed by Luminosity at some distance. I actually remember using a preset somebody made for the old version of RLO back in the day which was crazy good... Sadly not usable or findable anymore...
Tried playing with RLO, literally couldn't see anything in most interiors. I get it, it's supposed to be realistic, but this is pushing it too far if you are not a hardcore survival player...Even in games like Metro Exodus you can see everything around you without nightvision, except some levels which are meant like that by design.
@@johnshepard3197 I went with Luminosity, since it is compatible with pretty much anything and doesn't overdarken the interiors that much. You can also use it along Relighting Skyrim, and you get the improved and fixed lightsources. However, I am also using Tamriel Master Lights (great mod for outdoor lights) which is incompatible with RS.
Intrigued ENB + Obsidian Weathers + Luminosity is my personal pick, due to their lightweight and compatible nature. The ambience is great without getting overly dark. Other mods are pretty much unplayable without a torch in the darkness and ignore eye adjustment to darkness completely. Just make sure to load Luminosity at the end of your load order or to use compatibility patches from QUASIPC.
I"ll have to try that ENB preset out, it looks interesting. If I was playing for myself, I wouldn't have an issue with the dark areas if the torches actually lit them up but the problem is they're not bright enough. Even with torch brightness increase mods. And I'm already using the QUASIPC patches. :)
@@aicavehub Good thing about the Intrigued ENB is that it allows you to easily adjust interior and exterior brightness settings to your taste. Might be useful when streaming.
ELFX: It's nice, but because it alters so many lightsources it's not fun to work with. Also it makes some of the lights too bright. ELE: Has the smoothest lightning, but can look too dark for many. RLO: Great choice for dungeons and caves, but house interiors look too dark for me. RS: It's the brightest of these mods. Goes for colder tones as well. Luminosity: My personal favorite. Just a good balance of dark and bright and is compatible with lot of mods.
Realistic lighting is very realistic. The Enhanced lights for ENB looks like a very good balance overall though. I've been using 2 different lighting overhaul mods and now realize why some of my lighting glitches.
I have used them all and most recently used RS in combination with Luminosity. RS+ELE is a great combination however when combined with the way ELE darkens image spaces it makes some areas just too dark. ELFX used to be my go to but it has never seriously been upgraded and has a lot of issues that have been present since day one. From a simplistic standpoint and gameplay standpoint (ie not pulling out torches every 5 seconds) I think RS by itself is fine. Luminosity does a great job of changing lighting but some areas lose their ambiance.
@@AngryToasterOven RLO to me is underwhelming at least in SE. I don't like some of the changes it makes in regards to lighting and in some areas, it can overdo it on shadows (not to say ele can't). Some may find the look appealing I didn't. The shots at 7:25 show why I choose RS. RLO the single candle is producing more light then the chandelier. RS you still have window light but can see the effect of the chandelier. My go to is always RS or RS+ELE, then ELFX, then RLO. The dramatic changes ELFX brings are second to none, I just don't find it as hassle free (conflicts and flickering). ELE really needs the right enb to make it shine.
RS + ELE should be used together or its not a fair comparison against the others as they both tackle different aspects of lighting by the same author... RS+ELE would be the equivalent of what ELFX does
I know this is from 2018 but I'm reinstalling special edition and I found this very helpful. Listed the lighting I liked in each comparison and picked the one I wrote down most often. Bringing my attention to items that were moved or removed was also very helpful. Thanks.
Great comparison video. I happen to use RS with ELE and Dungeon Darkness mod. Then I throw in Keizaal ENB. This makes nights very dark so I need a torch to walk around. I also must use a torch in dungeons. It makes the game very realistic because Draugr are real. Peace. :)
2 pts for RLO, 2 pts for ELFX, 4 pts for ELE, 2 pts for LLO. The reason for ELE instead of ELFX despite ELFX having more control for ENB profiles was due to ELFX having table shadows missing which would mean there could be others missing elsewhere. Also, some lights were removed when it didn't make sense according to the depth of shadows being too bright based on the size of its room where the light source dwelled and the size of the fire/light source being used in the said room -- I liked how ELFX removed a large portion of the fog where it didn't make sense though and evened out some lighting problems where it was more consistent in that one tavern though. If ELFX didn't have the aforementioned shadow problem, then it would have received 3 pts instead of 4 pts; however, for it to reach 4 then it would need to recheck the lights' size used in each room and not disable/remove stuff but work with what is there so that compatibility will be less of a problem. It would be okay to add but they should give you the option to make those adjustments in the installer should you want it -- you should never remove stuff unless it is absolutely stupid in having it and it's easy to see that it is dumb they even added it. I think the best choice for torches and stuff would to be reduce the flame as though it were having problems staying lit as though it were a bit wet or w/e instead of removing its light source -- this way it's more believable. In the end, I think torches need flame variation densities where it isn't "always light as normal" but could have variations that occur due to the torch holding too much moisture because the room is so damp or if there wasn't enough oil on it so it's burning oddly where it has consistency problems unlike it being well oiled/tarred where it produces a bright light. If there is a patch for the ELFX shadow problems and it fixes them, then it is 3 points and if it will let me fix those problems through ENB settings then I would say 3.5 while 4 is stretching it solely because there are light sources being removed that doesn't make sense in some areas and I should be given the option to choose if I want that to occur or not... Also, should ELFX decide to add torch flame variations regarding flame density/brightness/height then it would get a 5 if the others were fixed that I have previously mentioned as being a problem also.
Thank you so much for this great comparison. You helped me finally track down my lighting issues. For the record: - You MAY combine ELFX and Enhanced Lighting for ENB (ELE) if you use the compatibility patch for them (separate mod) - it's way better than ELFX alone (e.g. in mines) - You may NOT combine them with Relighting Skyrim (RLS) in addition. It breaks the harmony between ELFX and ELE. - You do NOT need ENB for the ELE mod - it contains the required components from ENB in itself :) - I recommend a ReShade in addition: I use Stylistic Realism, but disabled the colormatrix inside ReShade (otherwise you get a yellow tone). - Smoking torches and Candles looks better than the smoke from ELFX (disable the smoke option when installing)
@@astrius4125 but windows shadows is not overall interior lightning mod. it only works specifically on areas with windows adding light and shadows from windows, that's it. it's just a window effect. it doesn't overhaul all interiors like dungeons and interiors with no windows, and other light sources etc.. you can use it with these mods but you cant really compare the two.
@@mayaamis Shadows was never an 'all-interior cells' lighting overhaul. Unlike ELFX or RLO, it only touched a couple of dungeons, but it did cover all of the 'friendly' interiors, such as inns, NPC houses and the like. Window shadows was the direct conversion from Shadows, which was later polished up by the person who converted it. Window Shadows IS NOT a stripped-down version of Shadows, it features everything the original did. My choice was to install Shadows and ELFX and remove all conflicting cells from ELFX. Best of both worlds for me. It took me days of repetitive work, however.
Thank you so much for this, i didn't know what lighting mod is better ,so i didn't install one(because it's such a pain in ass installing & and comparing all of them) For me it's "Relightning Skyrim"
My biggest gripe with the current lighting situation with Skyrim is that every lighting mod seems to fix some things, but "breaks" others. I'm in a never ending juggle between RLO and ELFX. I do not use ENBs. I tried RS+ELE, but, it was way too dark in some interiors. One upside to RS+ELE is its highly compatible nature, so it has that going for it. RS by itself isn't so much a lighting mod and more of a patch for the vanilla lighting. Don't remember my experience with ELE by itself, but it must not have been good. ELFX is better than RS+ELE regarding things being "too dark" because it adds new light sources, although it still persists in some non-hostile NPC areas where you'll see someone mining or sitting in a chair in utter darkness. ELFX seems to make the underwater blurrier than normal, I dunno, maybe it's in my head lol. ELFX also gets a little too bright and orange, almost nuclear. However, despite the minor gripes, I love what it does for dungeons, but NOT what it does for civilian interiors. RLO's color and lighting better suits Skyrim's cold and harshness, imo. It pairs well with weather mods like Obsidian or Rustic Weathers. The features like spells emitting light are pretty cool, too. However, there are a couple problems I have with RLO. It's almost the opposite of ELFX in that it's perfect in civilian interiors, but it lacks the darkness and atmosphere of ELFX when dungeon delving. RLO is also the worst offender of mod-added interiors, such as Arthmoor's settlements. It causes the sunglasses effect inside them. Luminosity? Honestly, tried it once and uninstalled. Sorry, but I think it's more of a novelty right now; it's the new kid on the block so people are raving it. Luminosity is like Deus Ex: Human Revolution with a yellow and orange pee filter. Was not impressed at all. My perfect lighting mod would be the atmosphere of ELFX's dark dungeons combined with the more lucid interiors of RLO. Oh, and with patches that don't bork mod added interiors.
Have you figured out which one you like now? I too do not play with ENBs, and am new to modding. Also, I play on oldrim. I am wondering what's the best option for me, I've heard ELFX removes light sources but also am hearing that it adds light sources such as yourself. I want something that generally is more warm but not to the point where an NPC's face is too bright or something. Idk much honestly as I'm new to modding and haven't installed these large overhauls before so would like to hear your input since you too do not use ENBs.
Luminosity was a favourite of mine for a long time because I felt that it was the brightest, since I didn't have the best of monitors to handle the darker areas well. I'm using ELFX now, wanted a change of scenery since Luminosity tends to make certain areas look washed out(especially with EVLAS), but I think I might use Relighting Skyrim in my next run once I tire of ELFX(I find some of the candles too jarring when placed in certain spots, but only a few)
Man I would just like to say, what a fucking well produced video! Clear, concise, and informative, and great angles and transitions. Youve earned a sub here! Keen to check out more of your videos!
@@HungryHelpings Yeah, to bad. I hate those unthankfull snitches who never even attempted to understand what an effort programming or modding can be. But RLO, it runs really stable and since I did some cleaning with Xedit I have no light flickering issues so far. This mod still runs pretty well.
I much prefer ELE, I enjoy the true darkness feel, feels like there is no ambient light. Combined with ENB light it makes your torches/candlight spells feel necessary.
I love immersive lighting but as someone who is Visual impairment, i also would LOVE to be able to actually see where I'm going and not be in pitch black all the time
Well....... I've narrowed it down. After watching the vids on this channel, I only have to test only: vivid weathers vs dolomite Relighting skyrim vs luminosity lighting overhaul noble skyrim vs skyland
I love modding like crazy but I think we have become so obsessed with it we feel we need to change something, put in a mod that makes any modification to make it "better". well I'm looking hard at all of this and still find vanilla interior lighting the best in the end
I think it really depends on if you use an ENB or not though.. Problem with videos like these is it will look different in everyone's games because if you use ENB you can tweak contrast and brightness. And yea modding is addictive here I am at 4 am looking at mod videos! Sometimes you just have to say "no more" and start playing lol.
@3:50 you forgot to point out that RLO removes the candles in the table to the right at the winking skeever inn (solitude). And that ELFX adds candlesticks as light sources for every table. None of the other mods remove that light source or add more.
but you also forget that RLO adds crazy stuff in markarth, like steam powered lighting system and npcs... and you cry over a candle that caused flickering in every mod.
Great video and perfect timing! Making my first transition to Skyrim SE after years away from the old version. Used to use RS with ELE but ELE's transitions from light to dark look way too harsh this time around. Think I might give Luminosity a go. Now to figure out what ENB preset I want to use...
This is flawed in the sense that other lighting mods are usually used alongside Relighting Skyrim. Relighting Skyrim is used less for its lighting settings and more for its lighting placement "corrections". So the other mods handle the brightness levels of the "light bulbs" and RS handles where the light bulbs are. For myself, I love Luminosity+RS. Fantastic performance friendly combo that doesn't make things unrealistically dark or bright..
So coming from a modder there is a hardcap in Skyrim in the fact that you can only have 3 light sources in the same place that's actually why sometimes you can notice the lights or stuttering or flickering as you move it's because you can only have those three sources but because you have more than that they fight together and it's pretty annoying visual
@romeohio 2006 I find for Skyrim VR. Just plain old ELFX works the best. Darkness and lots of orange! Just the way dark caves lit by only candlelight would look. With VRIK. You can just pull out a torch anytime in a realistic manner too with the holster system or just flick your controller to throw a Magelight or ten. I tried most of those mods, and eventually just decided to go back to ELFX. As flawed as it is. It provides the best contrast between light and dark spots the best. The problem i have with other lightning mods is that they add "fake" ambient lightning. ELFX removes all ambient lightning, keeping light sources only from actual things ingame that would radiate lightning.
@@aielias89 I suggest you try it out again Luminosity was just recently updated last month after this was made and all lights were overhauled significantly reducing saturation and brightness so that they fade more naturally into the environment! If you're looking for the best lighting overhaul it's Luminosity.
I play on Xbox btw and don't use an enb and don't find it necessary anyway. I just use Obsidian + Truestorms for outdoor lighting and weather and make sure my display is properly calibrated most importantly. Then I turn down the in game menu brightness a notch or two. Perfection.
Man, I've always been an ELFX kind of guy, but maintaining it in my load order as it changes can become time consuming and tedious. Now that I'm on the VR version, ENB's aren't ideal to begin with, so I appreciate the apparent versatility of Luminosity. And is it just me, but that mod looks like what James Cameron would have done with the horizontal light glares. Can we get a Terminator mod to go along with it? :D
Hi AI Cave , After installing "Relighting Skyrim ", i installed "RLO" because it has more features ☺. But it also makes changes in Exterior lighting witch has made reflections brighter during the day. It makes stone pavements & followers faces unbearably bright for me. What Exterior lighting mod that is compatible with the "RLO" Do you recommend ?
Thanks for all your hard work bro we all appreciate it. You helped me pick what weather mod I truly wanted to go with a good, non-conflicting, light mod *cough elfx cough* although u heard elfx is good with dolomite, thoughts ?
If only we had an in depth enb comparison. I liked the way I can see at night with aequinoctium and mythical, but I'm also intrigued by suki, apex, silent horizons, and NVT. My main ENB complaints are: 1. I can't see anything at night 2. This ENB shoves the color palette in the same direction all the time A good ENB should subtly modify the color palette, but according to the currently lighting. Clouds should desaturate, leaving more grey and brown, a bit like bleak ENB. Cloudless sunshine should leave everything looking crisp, like sharpshooter ENB. Sunrises and sunset, moonlight and dungeons: in each case all color should be handled slightly differently. In Oldrim I really liked antique dragon for the range of difference between skies of red, blue, and grey - and how those effected the coloring of everything else. Currently, I'm not sure what I like best.
I've been using Relighting Skyrim in tandem with Luminosity and I have to say that I just don't like it very much. It keeps the vanilla feeling of everything being too luminated. I love ELFX, but I could never figure out how to stop candle flickering on just about every candle, or shadow clipping on modded areas. It was so game breaking that I just gave up and switched to the safer options. Do you know a way around the candle flickering in ELFX (RLO too)? I sort of understand the concepts behind why it happens, but I don't know how to fix it to not be destructive on the game. Cheers!
I may have some things wrong but basically, Skyrim has a limit on the amount of lights that can be present in a scene that cast shadows. I believe that it's 4. When there are more than this number you get the black flickering you are talking about. The problem with ELFX is that it adds more of these sources around the world, as many as it possibly can. So when you have another mod that alters the worldspace and adds another shadow light or a mod that makes your torch cast shadows, it goes over the shadow light limit. I don't believe there are really good ways of preventing this aside from manually patching (removing) shadow lights in the CK. Honestly though, ELFX is really old at this point (same with RLO) and I would recommend giving ELE a try. I've noticed that it's WAY better when it comes to flashing lights. :)
@@aielias89 ah OK, I knew the part about the 4 limit, but not about the initial impact ELFX has on that. Thanks for the information. I use the Nyclix ENB because I'm still using a laptop GTX 1060 and have found this to be the least taxing on my system, but I think he specifically said that ELE doesn't look good with his preset... Might just ignore that and give it a try. I have no flashing light problems at all with the RS/luminosity combo, but I want something darker. Again, thanks for the videos and for taking the time to help me out
It's strange because I remembered playing oldrim with ELFX and it was fine. Not too dark, neither too bright. Tested it a week ago. Can't see SH*T in caves/interiors. So you need to play with a torch, forget archery, transformations, etc... I wonder why it's so dark. I'm using default settings.
I know I’m a little late answering this question but the reason that mods don’t work the same on the new version of Skyrim is they modified the lighting engine and updated the shader so things like textures and lighting are more difficult to use if you use certain texture mods it looks like shimmering or bad problems
The default lightning in Skyrim is impressively bad. And it doesn't help that there are so many mods out there but none of the are able to give a good and consistent overhaul to the lightning
ELE works very nice at most scenes, but some of then gets darker than eyes would see in real life, as LLO and ELFX don't have this problem, being LLO less saturated. I guess ELFX do a great job keeping the visual informations on all scenes but with a more similar look that ELE does.
Indeed. I kept scores for each scene while watching this. ++ for great, + for good, nothing for meh, - for bad, -- for failure. Afterwards the vid my notes looked like this: RLO: ++++----+------ ELFX: +++-+--++-+ ELE: -----+--+ RS: +-++++++++ LLO: ++++++++++++++ But i didn't keep track of vanilla - had i done so, it prolly would have ended up similiar to RS in my book: No real weaknesses, just kinda dull for a fantasy-setting.
For some reason realistic lighting overhaul makes the flames super super bright and way over saturated and light up the entire room. I turned ultimate HD flame off and all my fire mods off and they are still super bright and over saturated, so I turn the lighting mod off and the flames are still bright and over saturated, I don’t get it. EDIT: Nevermind I downloaded surreal lighting and now the flames and saturation inside are at bay!
I don't know what this comment section smoked but LLO is the best in almost all comparisons. And when it's not the best, it's tied. It's the perfect balance between being "epic", "realistic" and good for gameplay. Especially for gameplay reasons, it doesn't take the 100% realistic way. For example, in interiors like houses, buildings, places where you expect people to be living in, even caves that have bandits, it's well lit. But on dark caves where you only find monsters, it's really dark. It also doesn't try to be epic all the time like ELFX . It's impressive when it needs to be. It's an elegant mod, it's Vanilla should've been.
I was running elfx with enhancer for a while then tried NAT which lets you modify interior lighting. I didn’t like the night time settings for NAT but really liked the way it adjusted interior lighting. It seems like rs with ele comes closest to that look. Any suggestions?
Would the interior plug-in for ELFX be compatible with surreal lighting? I'm still running base SE interiors but their needlessly dark in a way that tweeking the brightness doesn't seem to fix. plus some light sources seem to just not work right. Asking mostly because I'm a modding novice and play on Xbox.
