Five Essential PC Mods For Fallout: New Vegas
Even though it’s been less than a week since the release of Fallout: New Vegas, the PC modding community is already hard at work making the game better. Being an experienced G.E.C.K user and Fallout/Oblivion modder myself, I decided to head over to the New Vegas Nexus and bring to you five mods that I feel are essential to improving your enjoyment of Fallout: New Vegas.
1. D3d9 Awesome Performance Fix – by Wing Pao Shiggz
1a. D3d9 Awesome Performance Fix – ATI Version – by Aleksei Vasiliev
If you do not yet have this mod, stop whatever you are doing and install it NOW. For whatever reason, this .dll file will increase your frame rates across the board. Nobody is quite sure how or why, but it has something to do with how F:NV detects your video card. Just trust me and install it. You can thank me later.
UPDATE:
Fallout decides its render path based on one of two things. The first is the name of your video card. This is an incredibly bad idea for a number of reasons; Fallout tends to guess information about your card wrong because of this and the result is terrible slowdown. This .dll lies to Fallout about what card you have, resulting in much better performance with no visual quality hit (unless you’re unlucky or Fallout hates you)
Thanks Aleksei!!
2. Centered and Raised 3rd Person Camera -by Jahandar
It’s amazing the difference a camera angle makes on how you see the world of Fallout. With this mod, not only will your character appear in the center of your HUD, but you can also zoom out and get a much better idea of your surroundings. It makes such a difference in the way I explore the wasteland, that I even made my own video depicting the changes. Enjoy:
3. MT UI – by Max Tael
It’s also amazing the difference this essential UI mod makes. By adding smaller fonts, larger item selection areas, improved conversation menus, and a new background texture for speech windows, this mod makes playing on screen resolutions of 1024 x 768 and higher infinitely better.
Note the Improved Background Texture of the Speech Window
You Will Scroll Through Text MUCH Less
4.Realistic Lighting and Color – by Marcurios
This mod makes the world colors more realistic. Similar mods existed for Fallout 3 and this one lives up to those standards. It’s been hundreds of years since the bombs fell, so the world should be a little less brown by now :-) This mod will also make your nights darker and more realistic.
*This mod will only work correctly with HDR enabled, although it does something with bloom in the way of color, it does not affect bloom lighting.
Check out the time lapse video below to see what a day in Goodsprings will look like with this mod.
Not Quite So Bleak Anymore
5. Civil Defense Radio – by Macabre Productions
Now while this mod may not be essential, it sure is awesome. A port of one of the best Fallout 3 radio mods, this mod adds a great new radio station to your Pip Boy 3000.
Hosted by Katrina, the station plays 55 music tracks from the era of the Atomic Threat, including 29 authentic public service announcements from Civil Defense Washington.
The songs, as well as the announcements are downright hilarious and fit the tone of the game perfectly.
CONELRAD (Control of Electromagnetic [or Electronic] Radiation) was a method of emergency broadcasting to the public of the United States in the event of enemy attack. It was intended to serve two purposes; to prevent Soviet bombers from homing in on American cities by using radio or TV stations as beacons, and to provide essential civil defense information on 640-1240.
2 hours, 20 minutes of Music across 55 tracks
22 minutes of PSAs & Civil Defense
Custom station host dialogueThe station is fully scripted as per official stations.
Now, let’s see what the game looks and sounds like when you’ve got all of these mods installed!!
These modders don’t get paid and would greatly appreciate your support. So after you’ve finished downloading them, be sure to leave an endorsement as well as a comment telling them how awesome they are. Also be sure to frequently check back into the New Vegas Nexus for all of your modding needs.
*THIS JUST IN* by popular demand!!
Free Play After The Game Ends – by Goacbc
Although I certainly don’t find this mod essential, and have no issue with New Vegas having a finite ending, it seems as if many people just want to keep wandering the wastes after the main quest has concluded. Very well then, have at it!!
Want to talk about the G.E.C.K or Fallout modding with me? Want to try and convince me to finish my own mods!? Email me at Dave@RipTen.com or follow me @DaveOshry on Twitter.
Modding - So Easy, Even I Can Do It.
