The Lowdown

You may want to tweak or add graphical features or eye candy to New Vegas or TTW. Since the game was graphically years behind even at release, there’s definitely an argument to be made for doing so.

This section will cover the generally safe and generally best methods for going beyond mere textures.

When it comes to actual extenders/shaders, I will present two options - ReShade and New Vegas Reloaded.

ReShade will offer options like color correction, bloom, and minor effects. This may be all you need, and indeed people with lower spec PCs are encouraged to take that option.

NVR contains more effects like shadows, ambient occlusion, and more. It’s also very heavy on system resources, and in active development with certain stability issues in some builds. It will likely not be a plug-and-play solution for many users - plan accordingly.

Note - some of these mods may have already been in the guides you have followed prior to this point. If you already have a mod, MO2 should notify you when trying to install a duplicate copy. If you already have a mod installed, proceed forward to the next step/section.

PErformance Guide

This section will require you have followed Wall’s Performance Guide, at least through the basics. You will not achieve stability or tolerable performance without doing so.

For nVidia users, I recommend using Flip Windowed Mode. This results in the best performance, and enables HDR output. For anyone with an HDR monitor, this alone will improve the look of New Vegas to a high degree. The Performance Guide offers two options for HDR output - either using SpecialK or Pumbo’s ReShade. I recommend using the ReShade, as it’s more adjustable and ends up with better results.

A Note on ENB

For the better part of a decade, ENB was considered by most to be the de facto graphics extender for New Vegas.

Unfortunately, ENB for New Vegas is also unfinished, buggy, unsupported, and necessitates disabling game-native image quality features like multi-sampled anti-aliasing (MSAA).

Most of the effects in common ENB presets involve covering up issues with smeary AA methods and lens effects or distracting with shiny lens flares, rather than improving things. Performance is also generally poor for what you get in return.

I do not recommend using ENB under any circumstances.

Weather

The biggest single upgrade to visuals you can do is all within the actual game systems.

Weather mods are more than just weather - they can also determine exterior lighting, tint, and even things like distant fog or depth of field. Some weather mods will also effect interior lighting.

Luckily, these days we have great choices in terms of weather mods for New Vegas.

My personal recommendation (almost all of my screenshots use it) will be Desert Natural Weathers. It’s the most complete and modern weather mod currently in existence. It has the additional advantage of fully supporting all DLCs and TTW, and with minimal tweaks can be made compatible with Frontier. It also has hefty customization options for fogs, night darkness, and a host of other options including removal of weather you may not like. I recommend taking some time to customize.

Alternatives include Altitude and Restored Weathers and IMODs.

I do not recommend Nevada Skies. While it is theoretically being maintained, there are more modern options that generally offer better results.

TTW users are also free to experiment with DC-only weather mods like True Weathers and Vibrant Weathers.

In the same vein as weather mods, I also recommend using either Dusty Distance Redone or Blurry Distance to help with NV’s sometimes-ugly LOD.

You may also wish to try Cloud Upgrade NVSE for additional immersion. I do not recommend Cloud Shadows from the same author - that mod is basically “dumb” and isn’t related to actual cloud/sun position. Rather it just brightens and dims exterior lighting at seeming random to simulate cloud shadows, and the effect is very jarring.

Coloration

Previously, this section recommended Dynavision 3 for ingame image tweaking, however thanks to Anro, we've got a special exclusive replacement for Dynavision.

It doesn't contain the DoF effects, so won't impact performance in the same way.

The big benefit is the realtime editing of each parameter instead of realtime preset selection, with a standard color picker for RGB values.

Requires Anro's OX Toolkit in order to function - use F11 to open the Editor panel and change all the critical parameters in real time. Includes a "white" mode for people creating NVR presets (it's great for tweaking AO, shadows, and other effects). You can also save, load, and share presets by sharing the ini files it generates.

One more bonus - it will allow OneTweak users to actually adjust ingame gamma - rejoice!

Available ONLY on the Salamand3r dot Fail discord, pinned in the #mod-releases channel.

At this time this is a guide exclusive. We ask that you do not distribute or repost it in other locations.

Lighting

First, what not to do.

Don’t use Interior Lighting Overhaul (ILO).

While it’s not terribly obsolete, it is heavily conflict prone. It’s not a great solution, and using it means you either have to hunt down or create patches for innumerable other mods.

If you want some very simple tweaks to atmosphere and lighting, Simple Interior Lighting Overhaul (SILO) is lightweight and essentially conflict free. There is a TTW patch if needed. The downside is that it’s automated - it’s essentially “dumb” and works mostly just be disabling/changing certain types of lighting, rather than bespoke edits. I recommend using the mods below instead.

Recommendations

Atmospheric Lighting Tweaks. Much less conflict-prone that ILO making it much more compatible, and not a “dumb” script like SILO.

It also generally looks gorgeous, has TTW support, and natively works extremely well with Desert Natural Weathers.

Natural Interiors is another great option - it removes fake coloration from interiors, allowing the actual light sources to provide coloring. This can be combined with ALT above (which I do, personally), although you will loose some of the pizzazz of ALT the overall improvement is still nice. This mod was created with the texture guide in mind, and does improve the look of interiors in many instances - I do strongly recommend using it for best effect.

General Lighting Overhaul is something that it took me way too long to discover - I highly, highly recommend it (especially for the nighttime tweaks). Assuming you are also using ALT above, use the ALT-friendly version of GLO.

Other effects

Before entering the world of shader-based graphical mods, let’s get the important in-engine ones:

High Res Local Maps

Allows the game to render local maps in the PipBoy at a higher resolution.

Fallout Alpha Rendering Tweaks

Fixes some issues with the way transparency effects were rendered, allowing things like vaporization effects to work as intended.

Fog-based Object Culling

Performance boosting mod, very useful.

Aqua Performa

Another performance increaser.

High Resolution Water Fog

Fixes the stair-step effect when viewing submerged objects.

Pip-Boy Shading Fix

Does what it says on the tin.

High Resolution Bloom

Increases the bloom resolution - or decreases it - for some nice visual results.

MoonlightNVSE

Corrects moonlight position - required for using NVR.

High Resolution Screens

Allows ingame screens like the PipBoy and terminals to display at native resolution, giving a much crisper look. You’ll almost certainly want to make sure you’re following a UI guide to maximize the effect.

Real Time Reflections

The most impressive of the bunch - adds the capability for realtime cubemaps in the engine. This means dynamic reflections on many types of shiny objects. This does require modders to apply certain flags to meshes, which hasn’t been done in any real quantity yet. I recommend using the bOverride = 1 setting in the ini to allow it to apply to all env mapped objects (i.e. things that are supposed to be shiny). I also recommend bScreenSpaceInterior = 1 - otherwise performance can drop to single digits in some interiors.

If you notice reflection “pop in” on surfaces (usually most noticeable on cars and the Megaton bomb if you’re playing TTW), make sure the following are set in the [Display] section of your falloutcustom.ini:

fEnvMapLOD1=16000
fEnvMapLOD2=24000

Anyone using B42 Optics will want this patch.

All That Glitters…

These are a trio of mods that add incredible lighting to both objects and weapons fire. While they may in some cases impact performance, they also give a huge boost to the look of the game, especially in firefights and darker settings.

It may seem that many object in the world produce light. But in many cases, only the object itself glows - it’s not casting light on the surroundings. These mods change them to actual light sources that interact with the surroundings.

Warning - all of these do have potential to crash for some users due to the scripted replacement method they use. It’s completely unpredictable - it may never happen, you may get the randomly at long intervals, or it may be constant. This is not a problem with these mods, and the authors are not at fault. If you experience wholly unpredictable crashing, try disabling these first.

Lumen

Lumen adds true lights to a large amount of objects in the world. From lanterns to computer screens to the tips of plasma rifles, they’ll all cast a glow to the surrounding area - and with NVR, they’ll even cast shadows (point shadows must be enabled in NVR)

I do not recommend using the LLL add-on. The extra light sources can cause significant performance problems, and if used with NVR they will result in some extreme shadow pop-in as they push past the light limit in many cells.

Afterglow -- Neon illumination

Similar in concept to Lumen, but for various neon signage in New Vegas. Looks amazing, and has a patch for LightBright Strip Overhaul. Same deal with NVR - the lighting will cast shadows and look phenomenal.

Energy Visuals Plus 2.0 - NV and TTW

Similar to Lumen, but adds lighting to energy projectiles, flames, explosions, and more. While again it may seem that the vanilla game has “light” for these objects, again in most cases only the texture or object itself will glow - it doesn’t cast light.

As with Lumen, NVR’s point shadows will interact correctly (and spectacularly) with this mod.

NOTE: This mod is linked to some significant increases in crashing. It doesn’t seem to directly be the mod at fault, but rather something in one of the Script Extender functions it utilizes. I recommend testing this with some form of energy weapon while in god mode in a heavily populated area. If you don’t crash, you’re probably good to go.

ReShade

ReShade is the defacto post-processing suite for almost any game. It can apply a range of effects and do almost anything you’d like to the game. It’s also critical if you’re running the game in HDR.

Installing is simple - download and run the installer. You’ll want to search for and select New Vegas as the game to apply it to. In the next step, you’ll want to choose the Vulkan option if you are using dxvk (see Performance Guide) - generally, ReShade will warn you about d3d9.dll already being present if you attempt to use the DX9 version with dxvk installed. If you aren’t using dxvk, use the DX9 version of ReShade.

If you are planning to use a preset, ReShade will let you choose one and will automatically install the needed shaders.

My personal preferred presets are SimplyShade for a more stylized look, or Vibrance for a more grounded look. You’re free to browse the Nexus and elsewhere for more presets to try - they aren’t game-specific (generally), so if you find a preset for another game there’s a good chance you can use it in NV.

It’s important to note that ReShade does have issues with depth-dependent effects in New Vegas. Effects that rely on the depth buffer like raytracing, ambient occlusion, and depth of field generally won’t work correctly. If you have artifacts, start by disabling any depth-related effects.

You’re also free to just select all the available shader packages when downloading ReShade and tweak things for yourself.

There are many excellent tutorials out there for using ReShade

The Next Steps

The next section, RENOVATION, will cover retexture the bulk of game objects and landscapes - read on for more!

New Vegas Reloaded

THIS IS IMPORTANT - NVR is intended for more advanced users or those willing to spend time doing their own learning. I cannot and have not written a guide for it at this time since development is very active - anything I commit to writing could change in weeks, days, or even hours. Support is also limited since as a bleeding edge project, many bugs are simply not known and therefore the fixes may not be known. If you are not ready, willing, and able to put some time into NVR, stick with ReShade for now.

New Vegas Reloaded - or NVR for short - is essentially a bespoke equivalent of ReShade (yes, this isn’t technically a perfect analogy, but it gets the point across).

Script extender integration allows NVR to interact directly with game data to enable a lot of effects that aren’t possible with ReShade. These include things like realtime shadows, snow accumulation and rain puddles, and more.

It is currently in an alpha or at best beta state, but in most cases is quite stable. It is currently only available via the TESReloaded discord. Additional details can be found at dlpnd’s NVR site and on the discord.

For the time being, I recommend using the latest Nightly build of NVR, and one of the presets on the NVR discord, or mine available on both NVR and the Nexus.

HeliosNVR

Follow the instructions on the HeliosNVR page as to which mods listed here are required with it - much of this page will be required, although I recommend against using ALT with it.

Most of the screenshots on these pages show the game with NVR enabled.

EXTENSION