Oblivion Mod:PCS Library/Black sky (day or night) upon loading save game

Problem

Black sky (day or night) upon loading save game

Cause - OBGEv3 or earlier

Shaders in use may not be hardware compatible.

Solution: Try other shaders, or uninstall the older OBGE and install Oblivion Reloaded (OBGE v4).

Cause - Incorrect 3.0 Shader

Use of the incorrect 3.0 Shader. (See "Additional Information".)

Solution: Restore v2.0 shader file.

Cause - Corrupt shaders

The shader files have become damaged or corrupted.

Solution: Restore vanilla shaders, or download Official Oblivion Shaders.

Cause - Bad sky textures

Corrupt or Incompatible sky textures.

Solution: Try deleting your "Oblivion\Data\Textures\Sky" folder. Use original files, Improved Sky Textures (cleaned up originals), or other sky replacers. Don't forget to use ArchiveInvalidationRedirection.

Additional Information

bAllow30Shaders=0 - If set to 1, this configuration file option allows (but does not force) the use of Shader Model 3.0 on graphics cards which support it, namely Nvidia GeForce 6600 or newer, or ATI X1000 series or newer. This can potentially improve performance when using HDR rendering for example. Check your RendererInfo.txt file in your "\Documents and Settings\User\Documents\My Games\Oblivion" directory to see if your card supports SM3.0 next to the option '3.0 Shaders'. Note however that even by enabling this option, Oblivion still appears to use 2.0 shaders (check the 'PSTarget' and 'VSTarget' lines in RendererInfo.txt). In any case, if you have one of the cards mentioned above, it cannot hurt to enable this option.

To force the actual use of 3.0 Shaders after making the above change, you will also need to view your RenderInfo.txt file, and on the last line of the file check which shader package it uses (e.g. "Shader Package: 13"). Then go to the game "\Oblivion\Data\Shaders\" folder and rename that particular package to something else (e.g. rename "shaderpackage013.sdp" to "shaderpackage013._bak". Now copy "shaderpackage019.sdp" and paste it back into the same directory, and rename this new copy to the package name your card uses (e.g. rename it to "shaderpackage013.sdp" in this example). This will force Oblivion to use the Shader Model 3.0 shaders in the game, which may increase (or reduce) performance and typically shows no image quality difference. There should only be one such file renamed. Restore any others.

Note: You will lose the daytime sky by forcing shader model 3 if you do so without enabling HDR lighting. For whatever reason, you need HDR lighting for shader model 3 to work properly. For at least some people, things ran smoother once they forced the use of the 3.0 Shader package. Things weren't as choppy and performance was a tad better.