Vanilla Gradients Waifu'd

All vanilla lighting gradient textures have been upgraded and denoised in Waifu2x to (hopefully) improve lighting clarity.

You've been here before. The cold, dark oppression of the Dwemer Ruin, illuminated only by the dim, flickering light of the odd gas/lamp/lamp. Falmer ahead of you pauses, sniffing the air. Will it transform? You draw back your bowstring, aim carefully at the hazy, distant figure - and then it hits. Eyestrain. A brief throbbing in the back of your voyeur. Instead of committing sociopathic genocide against the Falmer race, you decide to "relax" and maybe read a book.

Am I exaggerating? Yes, but also no. I've always had a problem with Skyrim's lighting. Although my eyesight isn't great, I always find it difficult to focus on a game for more than 20 minutes at a time. Even with ELFX and the lighting module installed, the lighting remains consistent...blurry. Sure, it could create some fuzzy, photogenic atmosphere, but I wanted something more.

In short, I became aware of the existence of Waifu2x and naturally thought I could relax with it in a video game. I started by messing around with the subsurface scattering shader, increasing the resolution of the texture and denoising, and thought I could see a difference. Repeating the experiment with a dwemer gas lamp, I came up with the same idea. To get better lighting, I started upgrading the entire vanilla 'gradient' folder. I think it makes a difference. But I'll let you decide.

So what brought me here? In a nutshell, like I said above, the entire contents of Skyrim's 'Gradient' texture folder, upscaled in Waifu2x to four times its original resolution, with 3 levels of denoising and 16-bit depth. It may be subtle, but I'm pretty sure it makes a difference, so I thought I'd give it to anyone who doesn't have the time to spend extending textures.

Comments/observations welcome! Thank you for your time.

*EDIT* All textures are in DTX5 format. Not sure about alpha mapping/DXT 1 compatibility and all that.

Known bugs: The waterfall fog effect seems to be fading in and out where it wasn't before, whether it's the upgraded textures or an issue with my hardware, I'm not sure.

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You've been here before. The cold, dark oppression of a Dwemer Ruin, lit only by the murky, flickering light of an ancient weird gas/light/lamp thing. The Falmer ahead of you stops, sniffing the air. Will it turn? You draw back your bowstring, carefully taking aim at the hazy, distant figure- and then it hits. The eyestrain. The brief throbbing behind your peepers. Instead of committing sociopathic genocide against the Falmer race, you decide to "take it easy," maybe go read a book.

Am I exaggerating? Yes, but also no. I've always had issues with the lighting in Skyrim. Granted my eyes aren't great, but I've always found it difficult to concentrate on the game for more than 20 minutes at a time. Even with ELFX and lighting mods installed, there remained a consistent... murkiness to the lighting. Sure, it can create slightly fuzzy, photogenic atmosphere, but I wanted something more.

In short, I became aware of the existence of Waifu2x, naturally thought I could turn it loose on video games. I messed around with the Subsurface Scattering Shader first, upping the resolution of its texture and denoising and thought I could see a difference. Repeated the experiment with the dwemer gaslight, thought the same. Desperate for better lighting, I proceeded to upscale the entire vanilla 'gradients' folder. And I think it made a difference. But I'll let you decide.

So what am I getting here? In short, like I said above, the full contents of the Skyrim 'gradients' texture folder, upscaled in Waifu2x to four times their original resolution with level 3 denoising and 16 bit depth. It may be subtle, but I'm pretty sure it made a difference, so I figured I would make it available to anyone who doesn't have hours to spend upscaling textures.

Opinion/obser …