Hi, everyone!
I recently got a new laptop and I want to get into playing around with graphical mods now that I can actually run things well. For Shadow of Chernobyl it seems as though the main options are Autumn Aurora or Starter Pack 2019, so if anyone could tell me which they think is best of those two, I'd be grateful.

Things are a little less obvious for Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat, so if anybody could point me in the right direction for which mods are considered 'standard' for those, that would be fantastic as well.
Thanks in advance! =3

Autumn Aurora changes everything, from the look to the economy to certain quests. Makes it more like MISERY. Starter pack contains mostly visual updates and the bugfix ZRP mod, but leaves the core gameplay intact.

I found vanilla combat to be garbage; I just couldn't enjoy the game. Autumn Aurora changes it completely, and looks pretty damn nice too. Somehow after playing AA and looking at screenshots of the vanilla game, it looks like the vanilla was made to look like some sort of fantasy land. Too colorful and jolly. AA is more gritty and real and bleak, which feels fitting for the zone.. a place where mutants and people alike kill each other, looting corpses for food and bullets to stay alive.

Maybe you should take a look at the real zone of alienation and then tell me that the drab brownish grey colors of autumn aurora look realistic. Even autumn doesn't look like that in real life. If there's one thing that MISERY and AA aren't it's visually accurate, especially compared to the real zone.

You can tell me those golden autumn leaves won't turn brown when the weather gets colder and colder. These photos and videos must be fabricated, because they look so damn drab?

https://youtu.be/CGSlpQjV5SU?t=292
https://youtu.be/Sfpk_EA6KbE?t=415
https://i.insider.com/5cc315cb0ff30d3db64510b2?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp
https://i.insider.com/5cc3156fd4ca473b9c20cc24?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp
https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article14211656.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Chernobyl-Feature-by-Ryan-Parry.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2C3D2PH/abandoned-house-among-the-trees-in-chernobyl-2C3D2PH.jpg
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2C3DGMC/ruins-of-a-wooden-house-in-chernobyl-ukraine-in-autumn-2C3DGMC.jpg

No, the mod isn't photorealistic nor is it going to ever be. It's stylized to enhance a certain atmosphere, which is perfectly fine and fitting for the game. (Let me remind you that the random death screams and mutant noises you hear in the background aren't very realistic either, and neither is the frequent thunder) I think it manages to capture the drab late autumn cold & rainy period well enough. It's much more consistent in style than the vanilla game.

The vanilla game also has a rather autumn-ish vibe (dark and rather brown, not at all anything resembling summer photos from the zone) but it fails to be any particular time in autumn; you see plenty of well doing green foliage that belongs to anywhere from spring to mid-autumn, but you also have plenty of drab brown plants and bushes and trees that have dropped all their leaves as if in late autumn or winter, yet somehow you have none of the colourful mid-autumn period.. it feels very confused, and definitely isn't realistic at all. It's more "all over the place because artists didn't know what they were doing" than somehow stylized.

For the 'Shadow of Chernobyl', after my vanilla playthrough, I am heading to enjoy - and early tasting - a mod called 'Autumn Time'. It is actually a combo of various elements, borrowed from certain mods. I find it somewhat optimum, to a degree. It uses visual aspects of 'Autumn Aurora', along with weather-affecting changes, improved - subjective - character icons and tweaked combat system. Not too big of a deal as a visual mod, though. You can find it on MODdb, under 'Shadow of Chernobyl' / 'Addons' section.

EDIT:

Aye, I have also tweaked it with custom textures for greens, that is, to complement the 'Autumn Time'. These textures are located as well on MODdb, under 'Shadow of Chernobyl' / 'Addons' section, under the name of '[Real Autumn] for Autumn Aurora'. It is particularly about the colour of leafs.