Hey everyone!

I have a weird graphics problem that I am trying to fix, but I have had no luck so far.

• http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/301/tesv2012011322123375.png

Basically, I have figured out that it is a Anti-Aliasing problem. Whenever I turn on any level of Anti-Aliasing from the Options menu in Skyrim's launcher, I get these really ugly white lines around my character and certain other objects/NPCs in the game world. In the screenshot you can see it clearly around the edges of the bow. A 'fix' I have come up with is to turn off Anti-Aliasing altogether and turn on FXAA instead, but that way the game does not look nearly as good as it would if could turn AA on and not have to suffer any artifacts.

So I was wondering if anyone here knows what is causing this issue, and more importantly: is there anything I can do to solve it? I have a 27-inch monitor running the game at 1920x1080 and the white outlines make the game look terrible. It's a real pity.

If it helps, I have an Nvidia GTX580 graphics card and I am using the 290.53 beta drivers for the Ambient Occlusion options.

Should you require more information than this, please let me know.
Thanks in advance for your help!

Have you tried making a skyrim profile in your Nvidia 3d settings, and using that AA instead of the skyrim options?

I have an Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim profile, to which I've made some tweaks (anisotropic filtering, ambient occlusion), but from the four different AA settings the one I would need to change is grayed out. It's automatically set to 'application controlled' and it won't let me change that.
I'd post a screenshot of the Nvidia Control Panel but it's in Dutch, so it might not be very helpful.

Pretty sure it's a game bug though is could be driver related.

Do you reckon I should revert back to the previous driver (285.62 WHQL) and see if that makes any difference?

you need to change your AA method.... something other than the likely multisampling mode your using..

super sampling is killer on the hardware... but for some is doable at 2x fsaa..

you may have to try and set it as a global settings and not via the profiler though just to test.

Not sure if it is a driver issue though but you could try.

I've read elswhere that that is a 'feature' for when you're standing in shadows but you can turn AA off in Skyrim and force it on with Nvidia Inspector as some people have found this method to improve things. ( Anything that is greyed out and won't let you change it means that your video card doesn't support that feature or sub-set but that shouldn't be the case with a 580!)

I have this exact same issue and I'm running 2 x ATI HD 5770s. So I think it's just a bug with the game. Hopefully they'll get around to this one as well as the hundreds of other issues.

Flensje, are you talking about the line that you can see around the outside of your bow? That's the only outline that I can see in that screen shot.

If that is the line, it's caused by the enchantment on your bow. The enchantment seems to sit a pixel or 2 from the surface of the weapon, which can look like a line around the edges of the object. If you see the same effect on armour, it'll be the enchantment again.

You may not be able to see it when standing in light because the background is a lot lighter, and it may mask the enchantment's glow.

I've seen that outline show up in a variety of places and while running the game with a variety of AA settings through both the ini files and within the Nvidia profile. I don't think its intentional either: I've seen people, objects, held items etc all show those and there doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern to them. Could be the beta driver though for sure, that's about the only constant I haven't adjusted at any point.

I'm fairly sure that's not the problem, as I didn't have an enchantment on my bow at the time I took the screenshot.

It seems to be working fine at the moment. I have my game set to 4x AA and I'm using FXAA as well. In the Nvidia profile I've also set up 2x Transparency Anti-Aliasing and for some reason the lines don't seem to show anymore.
However, my character and other NPCs do seem to emit a sort of glow during the daytime. This might be intentional, but it does look a little weird.

Oh well, no more ugly lines at the moment, so I can't really complain.

I know what is the problem and I found the solution. Happens only when using any non-postprocessing type of AA.

To fix it you have to edit your Skyrim.ini and add following under display section:

[Display]fNear1stPersonDistance=0.0000

Variable is some kind of cutoff distance for rendering hands and weapons in 1st person and probably part of the player model is not rendered in same pass so AA doesn't have background sample to smooth out the edges so you see the outline because it tries to blend it with blank background. Default is 5 and we set it to 0 so there is no cutoff and everything renders in same pass. Playing with it for 200 hours and didn't notice any side effects.

Enjoy.

I had to set the variable to 1 because at 0, the upper part of some of my melee weapons became slightly transparent.
Once I fixed that little problem, everything worked like an absolute charm! Perfect solution, sir. I thank you very much for your great input! *tips hat*