I've been poundering on this for a while since I too find the forests underpopulated with trees.
I'm guessing that darn polygon threshold is accountable.

Texture depth.
This is where Skyrim is not casting any golden rays and where
TES VI must excel at it if the franchise is not to lag behind.

I'd like to see a side by side comparison of a game that looks anywhere near as good as Skyrim from 2003/2004

I believe this is when GTA San Andreas was released...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EXbQfoTldXs/TBdik0nVcDI/AAAAAAAAC-E/Uvlm1zHwpG0/s1600/gta-san-andreas-ps3-3.jpg
Also when Half life 2...
http://www.helloclan.eu/images/reviews/images/half-life-2b.jpg


Yeah I see what you mean... The graphics haven't improved at all..... :rolleyes:

The draw distance for shadows is pretty low (due to console limitations I suppose).
For example, look at the http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/9962/mammoths.jpg The mammoth to the right has a shadow, but the trees and rocks in the background don't. Sometimes this gives the impression that there are no shadows.

It looks great and is a major improvement on Oblivion. I really can't take seriously anyone who says it isn't.

Obvious Troll is obvious.

What's with this whole AD stuff anyway? Also Graphics from 2003-2004? Honestly? Trolls eh?

this, and also, I always thought gamers were nice and such, not egoistic as [censored], wich clearly, alot of you are .
Otherwise, you wouldn't be all emo and depressed just because the hardware you have is more capable then some one elses, I'm just glad I'm not like you, because hell isn't my thing you know..too hot for me

True, it is.
Textures (depth) are a bit disappointing though.

Yeheahh !
this game will look much better but you have to think about the release dates

Yes indeed... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29

Everyone can see that Skyrim looks better than Oblivion. The faces and distant landscape are way better, because...well... they svcked in Oblivion. But these things were already done a lot better in the Fallout games:

http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/owalles/Fallout3/landscape1.jpg
http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/owalles/Fallout3/landscape3.jpg
http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/owalles/Fallout3/landscape2.jpg
http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt172/owalles/Fallout3/DocMitchell.jpg

So I can understand why people (who played Fallout) say that Skyrim hasn't improved a lot, because it does look a lot like the last "Oblivion Engine" game. I'm not complaining though, because I think the Fallout games looked fine. (except for the sometimes low-res textures).
In my opinion the only thing that Skyrim really significantly improves compared to Fallout are the mountains. Those things look awesome with all the clouds around the top!

I can't see any different at all hehe :disguise:

I don't know why they aren't using PC screenshots. I'm getting quite worried that they'll just [censored] out the same graphics as the console-users are getting with anti-aliasing stuck on top of it all, which is why they're not pushing for what should be the best graphical quality screenshots possible.

I feel that the leap hasn't been as drastic with trees. Yes they have implemented better positioning etc, but I don't theink they're graphically superior. Everything else is awesome!
To be honest at the start I was expecting crysis-like developments with insane amounts of detail, and was a little disspointed, especially when I saw the textures on the giants. But then I looked at how much I enjoyed so many games with graphics nothing like Skyrim's.
Basically, all I care about from now on is gameplay. This is because i've seen that the graphics in SR are more than sufficient.

And http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c209/dev_akm/oblivion/oto/oto_vanillaLOD.jpg is what oblivion's hills looked like before patch 1.2!!!! What an awful mess compared to the Skyrim mammoth screenshot...

(screenshot link is from http://devnull.sweetdanger.net/totoworld.html )

The amount of irrelevant questions you post really hurts how people view your opinions. I never said Skyrim looks like Oblivion, infact I can quote myself in this thread saying Skyrim looks better. What im saying is that Skyrim is not "amazing". Its average for a 2011 multi-platform game and a little subpar for a 2011 PC game due to DX11.

What you dont seem to understand is that previews are there to sell the game. On a hyped up AAA title like Skyrim people are always going to say the visuals are stunning, etc. MW3 is going to be shown at E3 and it looks exactly the same as Black Ops, MW2 and is hardly ahead of CoD4. Of course even despite this you are going to see comments about how the games visuals are "amazing" even though they are not.

Do you know what DX11 is? Unless Skyrim contains any features from it, its not going to be above average when it comes to the PC platform.

:rolleyes: No Skyrim should look like Skyrim. From what we've seen it is indeed an improvement over vanilla OB, though mod'ed OB can look just as good as the screenshots we are seeing of Skyrim. It's not a "major leap". Why is that so hard to understand? :confused:

DX11 is not some sort of holy grail you know... "The Witcher 2" is still DX9, and it looks fantastic! It's not the API, it's the artists.
And most of the DX11 cards out there today are too slow to fully render a properly tesselated game anyway. That Unreal Engine Samaritan demo needs 3 GTX580's!!!!!

The Witcher 2 is getting DX11 in a patch as far as I know. I did follow the game for a while but decided not to purchase it in the end because the first was too linear with boring combat. Also, it was developed as a PC exclusive game so they can do high res textures, etc without a problem. There is an Xbox version coming but its being toned down from the PC version.

But back to the topic here-
Does Skyrim look better than Oblivion? Yes.
Is Skyrim pushing boundaries with its visuals? Far from it.

Skyrim looks like it does because current generation consoles have very poor amounts of memory which leads to problems with draw distances. Oblivions biggest weakness was the god awful draw distance and Skyrim will have the same problem. Visually there are much better looking games than Skyrim that have come out in the past 2 years. Im not saying Skyrim is going to be a bad game so anyone replying leave the gameplay comments somewhere where they are relevant.

I think you mean Crysis 2? That game will get a dx11-patch eventually. Never heard of Witcher2 getting one...


Yes it is pushing boundaries...the boundaries of the xbox360! :tongue:

Oh well, apart from the low-poly mammoth tusk, I think it looks great. Can't wait for the demo tomorrow.... hopefully we see enough then to better judge the quality of the graphics.

Those tusks remind me of the good old days of AutoCAD, when circles looked like
octagons.

I still say modded Morrowind looks better than both modded Oblivion and vanilla Skyrim. Because it doesn't have that god-awful plastic sheen to everything. :stare:

i woul dagree with this, te newer feel for Skyrim makes it feel more set in the enviroment.

To Stonefrog: Skyrim doesnt have a plastic sheen over it. It looks pretty damn realistic from what ive seen.

It's a good thing we play videogames instead of stare at them. The game in motion will look way more impressive.

I agree it's not a major leap, but when I review the hardware configuration of the consoles, it kinda looks like a major in my eyes
Let's not forget, this is a 360 game ported to PC, not the other way around :sadvaultboy:

PC Authoring (Coding, Asset creation, Textures)
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Xbox 360 Graphics Optimization
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PC and PS3