VESTIGIA – A Graphical and Environmental Overhaul V1.3

Are you tired of the jarring and unrealistic weather system, or the color-filtered and often desaturated look of the game? Maybe you find Red Dead’s wilderness not wild enough, or maybe you just think that birds don’t flap their wings fast enough! Luckily, I’ve wasted almost a year of my time so that you feel better playing the game!

VESTIGIA is a bit like four mods in one. But, at its core, it’s about a problem I have with this game: despite all of its glorification of wilderness and attention to detail, its depictions of the yet-to-be-“civilized” America can fall a little flat. The visuals, while beautiful, often feel a little too colorless and gritty to inspire and encourage exploration. Wilderness, again, detailed as it is, often feels empty and lonely, instead of lush and inviting. Worst of all, there is the goddamn weather, often failing to provide anything more than background noise for missions, and that is only when it is not busy changing radically every five seconds. With these issues, it can sometimes be hard to see the vestiges of the era that Dutch and his gang want to hold on to.

Acknowledgments:
Before getting into more detail on features, my utmost thanks to:

DayL, who provided me with the base for my timecycles.
Majestic253, who provided us Advanced Game Settings, some settings of which are used in this mod.
Swartz420, the work of whom has been essential for visual modders like us.
WhyEm, who has helped me throughout this process, and has been so kind to design a cover and some screenshots.
And even though I’ve never talked to the Visual Redemption team, they’ve still been a massive inspiration.

Features:
The mod is divided into 4 sections/modules, all of which can be enabled/disabled by double-clicking the mod in LML.
Regardless, the mod unlocks all graphics and audio settings, and enables DLSS. (again, thanks to Swartz420, Majestic253, and WhyEm). Below is a list of major features, there are a few more minor ones; important or game-changing features are shown in bold and italic.

Module: Weather Systems
-Overhauls all weather transitions and makes them constant. Above making the game’s weather system feel like a connected system, rather than a bunch of disjoint timecycles, this means that transitions are now slow enough to not be jarring and much more natural. However, the game can still force transitions in some instances.
-Changes the temperature system to be more in line with late spring-early summer US.
-Adjusts chances of different weather events accordingly.

Module: Visuals
-All timecycles completely overhauled to create more lifelike weather conditions (regional/ground fog, low clouds, more realistic rain, snow and dust storms, etc.).
-A lot of visualsettings.xml changes, including, but not limited to TAA, sharpening, and cirrus clouds.
-An overhaul of all rain, snow, and ice drops.
-Changes in the wind system, and other weather.xml changes.
-More foam when in contact with water.
-More realistic ped effects (breathing cycles, sweat, etc.).

Module: Flora-Related Changes
-Changes in material simulation to create more responsive terrain.
-Denser underbrush for forests.
-More realistic scrublands.

Module: Ped Densities (can be somewhat performance intensive)
-Raises the ped limit to 255.
-More peds in cities.
-More realistic wildlife placement.
-Generally more birds.
-Changes in animal and human AI.
-Peds are more likely to converse between themselves.
-Birds flap their wings a little faster.

Installation:
Of course, you need Lenny’s Mod Loader for this mod to work, but other than that, it is pretty simple: put the ‘lml’ folder and ‘xml-translator’ files (both .asi and .xml) into the game directory. If you already have an ‘lml’ folder, it will ask you if you want to combine the two. Say yes. After this, you need to open the LML UI (the .exe called ModManager.UI, in the folder called ModManager), double-click on VESTIGIA, and select the modules you want.

Credits:

no12 – DayL – WhyEm – Majestic253

Download mod

File	File size
VESTIGIA-1-3	4 MB
VESTIGIA (for Dynamic Seasons)-1-3	4 MB
VESTIGIA-1-2-9-HOTFIX-2	1 MB
VESTIGIA (for Dynamic Seasons)-1-2-9-HOTFIX-2	1 MB
DarkNight Addon-1-2-9DN	1 MB
LightNight Addon-1-2-9LN	1 MB
Missing Strings Fix	22 KB