I never run out of stuff to mess with when it comes to Fallout 4. I'm starting to play with different weather/lighting mods again. I used to use Vivid Weather, which looks impressive initially and has a ton of unique weathers, like crazy super radstorms and all levels of snow. Loved the snow... never got why the game didn't have that. You also get a bunch of effects you never knew the engine ALREADY had, because it rarely or doesn't use them at all. My favorite is how radstorms have little glow particles that slowly float up, like snow in reverse. More colors in the radstorms too. It even has a little bit of customization and some ENB-like imagespace stuff. On its own, it looks pretty good, but with ENB you don't have a lot of wiggle. By default it applies a LUT that makes it really easy to clip the sky. Not to mention, it always looks harsh and contrasty, even without any post processing. Trying to correct with ENB just results in detail loss. It washes-out. But I'd say it's biggest flaw is the fog line. It's so pronounced your character looks like they're in a bubble and there's sorta just milky water outside.
So I went to True Storms, which is really oldschool as far as weather mods go. A lot of the scripts and the techniques used go back to earlier Skyrim modding. It's a port with slight tweaks and Fallout-specific features like ghoul hordes in radstorms (which are legit unsettling - you hear their screams echoing like crazy starting off in the distance until they just start popping out of the fog.) Not very customizable. Not as many weathers, but adds dust storms and is generally a lot less harsh. True to it's name, the stormy weather looks really good. But this one also messes with the color grading in a way that makes it hard to tweak. Like Vivid, the look you get, you're kinda stuck with. My big issue with it is that with the LUT I like to use, it winds up looking very yellow a lot of the time. Like, reeeeaallly freaking yellow. The LUT leans warm but not like that. The dust storms really make for a neat effect, though. The cloudy, foggy weathers generally look good. Nights are not overly bright or zero visibility. It's good if you just want all around improvements with little adjustment needed.
Screenshots in spoilers from here on in.
Now, I'm using Natural Atmospheric Commonwealth. It's BY FAR the most advanced one, with I think the most weathers, too. Really in-depth seasons. Ton of extra effects for things like hits, drugs, and rads. A whole bunch of post processing settings. Into the minutia. And it pulls so much more from the engine, even adding better reflections to glass, like on sunglasses and the pip-boy. Cloud shadows. Water overhaul with new underwater effects. A bunch of imagespace edits to the exterior... properties of different lights, shadows and more. Other weather mods don't go that far. And then it has a companion mod that redoes the interiors, giving more depth and dynamics to the light by turning off a lot of the fake ones, changing emittance of real ones, changing the fog, adding flickering/blinking/rotating lights where there are sources, and my favorite, turning on dynamic shadows for a bunch of things. There are other mods that do this, too, but this one is so far beyond those in impact. A good lighting mod makes such a difference in the atmosphere. If I could only run one visual mod, it'd be that.
Just a ton of stuff all around. I think that's why I skipped it the first time around. I think it also has the best cloud textures. Vivid looks photoshopped. True Storms looks bland.
But my favorite part is how the colors are balanced. Definitely looks less cartoony. The author chose to apply a neutral lut to give the flattest, most workable image. Gives you a lot more control in ENB and ReShade. And just generally winds up being less harsh. The downside is you really have to set it up from scratch if you wanna do that, because at defaults the images don't look right. You have to make it what you want. I'm still just getting a feel for it, but already I'm seeing I'm gonna get much better, less ridiculously overdone results with it. I think it's time to start over with my ENB and ReShade settings. DOF adding banding aside, it's just too much. I think when you spend enough time staring at a game and changing it around you go numb and become like the old lady who can't smell her own perfume.
My favorite so far are the nights and storms. But the interiors are cool. It makes such a difference when it comes to making things look dark and foreboding. I pair it with a headlamp mod to make being the dark feel like being in the dark. I think he nailed it with the Institute. There are mods dedicated to making the Institute not look terrible with ENB, but this one does it massively better while also adding fancy effects like those dynamic shadows.
I haven't got the range of SS with NAC, yet, but I caught a few decent ones, I think.
How are your eyes? Can you still see okay?
I tried to keep the filesize down and tuck em away. And yes, I know... I've gone beyond too far. I'm slowly bringing it around.
I had to get some quick video of the dynamic shadows. I don't know why but I've been infatuated ever since I saw them. I know why they don't use them... even on my modern system it's still a decent performance hit. They're just so cool though! Watch the elevator. I wish I had realized it was gonna do that, with all of those shadows projected on the wall. These lighting mods ad all sorts of touches like that.
I think all I can do now is share my most special, cherished mod.
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His nickname is 'The GoldFather' though all of the ladies just call him 'Daddy'
ruinergame.com
Thank you for pointing me to this 
When you don't see them all of the time and happen upon a light source that readily produces one, it looks cool. When you see them everywhere it's just a distraction.
