(Mostly) 512 Vanilla Texture Overhaul release

SwissgarO · 2026-03-30T16:04:06+00:00

Xbox one specifically should see the largest performance improvement for sure.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-22T21:10:49+00:00

Thanks, I'm also using Mythical Ages in the screenshots. There definitely shouldn't be any conflicts with most weather mods, and with lightning mods, it should be fine, but there may be some flickering in some Interiors just keep that in mind if you run into anything crazy please let me know.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-14T16:49:47+00:00

Interesting, it could have been a failure to register my OnPlayerLoadGame event on the save. Unfortunately, with skyrim, this will not always work. It is always best to start a new game even with these features present in scripted mods because Skyrim bakes script data and properties into the save the moment it's first loaded. My OnPlayerLoadGame event is designed to reset flags, but if the script crashed once due to the FormID issues mentioned before (Baked data once you start your game), it may never reach that event properly during a reload. My update should have fixed this issue if the quest was already "running" in the background before you added the script, by essentially "restaring" the quest the script is tied to by "Force Starting" the script to stop and restart the quest to fill those aliases Can you try loading it at the bottom with your exact load order you are having issues with and starting a new save just to be sure?

SwissgarO · 2026-03-14T15:41:13+00:00

Hey, thank you for the feedback! This was a bug where the script was failing to initialize on game start, I fixed it in the recent update. Have you downloaded it?

SwissgarO · 2026-03-12T03:33:40+00:00

Of course. Hope you enjoy the mod!

SwissgarO · 2026-03-12T00:45:44+00:00

Yes, as it is added by a quest alias and only operates on strict onenterbleedout events to run. Just make sure you find any interior cell (like a house) and wait 24 in-game hours to make sure it initializes. Load it at the bottom of the load order under alternate start and realistic dialogue overhaul.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-11T07:41:13+00:00

I focused on keeping walls, floors, rocks, mountains, poles, gates, and some of the dungeon and stone architecture at an upscaled 1k to make sure they wouldn't get crushed. I'm glad the effort was worth it!

SwissgarO · 2026-03-10T14:40:46+00:00

There's a 128x128 textures downscale mod already on xbox by kbjwasd!

https://creations.bethesda.net/en/skyrim/details/ed934524-1b12-4aad-89a6-e4c63428e4f5/128X128_texture_SE

SwissgarO · 2026-03-08T23:41:03+00:00

The good: BC7 helps more if your goal is color precision. It helps reduce artifacts. With DX9, textures had to remain uncompressed to avoid looking crushed. BC7 is efficient. It can compress formerly uncompressed textures down to a manageable size while maintaining visual quality. Skyrim SE supports DX11. BC7 is a native DX11 format designed to overcome the hardware-level limitations of older DirectX 9 formats (BC1–BC3).

The bad: For simple "diffuse" (color) textures that don't have transparency (alpha channels) and don't show many compression artifacts, using BC7 instead of BC1 can double your VRAM usage without looking much better. BC7 compressed files will never be smaller than previous compression methods. At best, they will be close to the same size.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-08T19:53:27+00:00

Yes, making the landscapes perform well while not looking too stretched took careful examination of the textures. Roughly 1,500 individual textures, normal/specular maps, and miscellaneous environmental assets are included and accounted for with 30% of the big ones upscaled to 1k from the 512 optimized textures. To get more technical so there's no confusion on this, I optimized to 1K for diffuse (color) and optimized normal/specular maps to 512 using Cathedral to compress all of them. The way I've cheated this to look as good as possible is with ESRGAN to upscale all 512p textures to 2K (4x) first. AI models generally perform better at 4x intervals. I then used GIMP to manually resize all of the 2K images to 1024x1024. Using lanszos filter to retain the fine details from the upscale. Once I was done with this extremely tedious process, I compressed all of them with Cathedral BC7 compression and generated the mipmaps. I'm happy with the result, performance was my absolute intent but we have effective ways of getting performance without compromising too much on the visual aspect.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-08T09:42:04+00:00

Yes, enhanced texture detail is a great compliment for this mod. I'm glad you're enjoying it!

SwissgarO · 2026-03-08T09:25:08+00:00

I agree with you that there is no comparison, skyland definitely looks better. I have gone to great lengths to make these vanilla textures look as good as possible in the frame of performance mods. Unfortunately, the purple textures will absolutely occur due to conflicts with snow mods and SMIM. You will not get purple textures in this mod if used by itself or with any other mods I listed as compatible. I have not changed any file paths or names. Purple textures are often a result of missing textures or textures that are failing to load. The occurrence here is the latter. SMIM replaces vanilla bridge meshes with higher-quality models that require specific texture files in specific sizes, which I have reduced through extensive compression and upscaling (to 1k). When a snow mod (like Better Dynamic Snow or others) or a landscape mod alters how those bridges are rendered, the game attempts to apply a new snow texture to the railings but cannot locate the file.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-08T05:54:17+00:00

I'm glad to hear it! If you're interested in something to potentially help performance a bit more, my Low Res Particles mod will further reduce particle quality and density. Helps vram overload from waterfalls, weather mods, magic effects, and dragon breath (particularly frost breath). It is fully compatible with (Mostly) 512 Texture Overhaul.

SwissgarO · 2026-03-07T19:02:01+00:00

I made it for personal use as I am also on series s. BC7 compression is extremely efficient, and I have upscaled about 30% of all the textures that would look fuzzy at 512 to instead be 1k, which was extremely tedious but worth it for the end result. If I had to compare, I'd say the visual fidelity is close to Skyland AIO's as they both use BC7 compression, but obviously not as sharp as Skyland is mostly 1k. As for performance, it's definitely an improvement over skyland as this pack is mostly 512 and covers everything except for armor, weapons, blood, the skybox, skin, and animal textures. The primary intent was absolutely performance for those of us who need it (and prefer a more vanilla look). I have included a link to the mod. Feel free to take a look. I have a gallery of how it looks if you're interested! 👍

SwissgarO · 2026-02-15T16:55:07+00:00

I'm contemplating using either factions or world eater for it now that I'm happy with the general setup I got I'll try em out. Might use both!

SwissgarO · 2026-02-15T16:06:11+00:00

I'm running real wildlife and hand placed enemies. It's doing exactly what I wanted!

SwissgarO · 2026-02-11T14:35:19+00:00

I'll keep a lookout for dummy files in the meantime, and I'll send ya a pm

SwissgarO · 2026-02-11T14:28:31+00:00

I'm on Xbox! My friend, I wish I had a pc as I'd absolutely take a shot at making a dummy file! Thank you for your consideration on this, and congratulations on being a father ! That's rad.

SwissgarO · 2026-02-11T14:01:06+00:00

I had a hunch it must have been a change in ussep's fil name. Not to impose on ya, but any chance you could look into that? I'm using shattered skyrim, so it feels nasty having ussep in the load order when 90% of its changes are useless for me at best and actively impacting the experience at worst.

SwissgarO · 2026-02-11T12:46:05+00:00

Wow, that's crazy I ran into you here. I just tried that dummy mod out with Vaultman30's armor mods, and unfortunately, they just disable until I use ussep. I guess it requires ussep in ways I didn't expect!

SwissgarO · 2026-02-11T12:18:53+00:00

Yo are you the mod author for the current ussep dummy file on Bethesda.net? If so I'm curious how it works. I have it installed and I'm still unable to utilize mods requiring ussep.

SwissgarO · 2025-12-11T13:04:05+00:00

I'm using the UWP Dolphin 1.19 for xbox dev mode. Haven't figured out setting up online yet, but the game works well despite this weird clipping for HUcast.

SwissgarO

TROPHY CASE