Those are probably the same people who vote "dislike" on Youtube for no apparent reason. In other words, trolls.

Then you clearly never heard of something called a cap. Dice does not have a huge world in which most of there hardware goes in. If you expect any RPGto look as good as BF3 hand me what your smoking cause its good.

No, I think you're the one that clearly does not get it. I never said that Skyrim would look as good as BF3. I said it would look better than it currently does. There is no arguing that point. At least not intelligently.

If they had designed for current hardware, they could have...
better lighting
better water
better camera/camera effects
better detail
open cities
more populated cities

And other things I'm not thinking of right now. Some of those come from DX11 features, but others just require more processing power than the consoles have to offer. And when I say better detail, I'm not just referring to tessellation. I'm also talking about higher resolution textures, a generally higher polygon count and more objects on the screen at any given time.

All of that adds up to a better looking game, if they had designed for current hardware.

If you got a problem with it then don't buy it, i don't see no real problem with it; it looks much better then oblivion. And they still have about 5 months to tweak it. The only way to tell the true graphical quality of the game is to buy it on release date and see for yourself. And I'm sure they wanted to do all the things you listed but what they done so far is probably limiting them since they already made a huge graphical leap from oblivion. So just w8 till the game comes out.

It looks better, but not much better. And it's going to look like crap in one to two years as the next console cycle starts. As for what's limiting them, it was their decision to base the entire game around six year old tech.

Regarding the peeps saying the mammoths don't have shadows in the first picture - uhm, they do.

People were *NOT* saying mammoths casted no shadows.
They were sayin' trees weren't.

I have mixed feelings about this.

guys you cant say the graphics arent a huge leap. Theres one thing that had me tearing my hair out in oblivion and its the land seems five feet infront of your face. Nice textures nice textures sweet textures good textures BLURY PORRIGE TEXTURES BLURY PORRIGE TEXTURES

Thats not in skyrim, at all... the distance hasn't been increased, the effect hasn't been lessened, its GONE, combined with texturing better than anything in oblvion and 100 times better animations (honestly: oblivion running forward looked like someone moonwalking backwards. yes sah, go work that out) and you have a huge leap.

Haha Makes me want to copy my charater to look like that girl now!

It's an LOD issue.
The trees have shadows here:
http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/Skyrim/Skryim-Trailer-anolysis-1-Forest1.jpg

You can raise the shadow distance in the PC version

Looking at the mammoth picture, I've been thinking. In both Skyrim, Oblivion and every other game I've played, the most 'unnatural thing' is the ground.

It's always a smooth surface with a texture of real grass/dirt/whatever painted on. To hide this fact, they always put a few obligatory rocks and grass-sprites on top of it. But it still looks weird and unnatural.

I'm no graphics artist... what can be done in future games to fix this? How can the artists simulate real clumpy dirt? A heavily tesselated surface? extremely detailed shaders? Anybody seen a good example somewhere?

Tesselation will allow the game to generate enough 3d grass to make the ground look more natural. Right now, it just takes up too much processing power to make it look natural.

what race is the 2nd picture on the skyrim side not oblivion

It's barely comparable.

So do all new TES games :tes:

can you imagine what the elder scrolls 7 will look like on the next generation consoles.my mind can barely comprehend it.

from the way the poll seems to be going I don't think it's a case of everyone complaining about.... but a case of a few difficult to please people.#

I think the graphics are amazing and for a world as big as Elder Scrolls games try to deliver I think it's impressive they are as good as what they are when they have so many other things to design and programme as well. I was expecting the graphics to be about the standard of New Vegas... but they are much much better.

Graphics aren't even the most important thing in a game, it's how it's played and designed that is more important. Amazing graphics are a bonus and one that we seem to be getting :celebration:

The people who don't like the graphics are the most vocal about it.

Let me ask you two simple honest questions.

1. Look at the mammoths pic.

2. Notice the tusks. Do they look smooth and curvatious or rather polygon-ized and segmented?

3. Notice the fur. Does it look real to you or do you find it wooden and stiff looking?

Graphics stopped improving around 2006-2007 with some minor exceptions being only on the PC.
Also looking at the shots i didnt know mammoths used hairspray to get there hair to stay in one spot.

Battlefield 3.

Big
Leap
Forward

The Witcher 2
Medium
Leap
Forward

Not if they do it on the PC then it'll run just fine.

@Skyrimer

Like on said exceptions being on the PC; BF3 lighting and shadow's are nice but they've held back on some big features like tesselation now if they had full use of that THAT would be a big leap forward.

Witcher 2 was a comparable to metro 2033 as "leaps" go.

A big leap would be a full dx11/opengl 4.1 game using low poly models (Base) with high amounts of tesselation.

Oblivion for its time was awesome, i still play it today, having played much better-looking games, and i still see OB and got mesmerized by its awesome scenery.

Agreed

I think you are confusing tessellation with the grass just being more dense. In my personal experience tessellation does not work well on flat surfaces (like a polygon plane). It works great
on anything more "round" such as faces and rocks ect. I know in Unreal you could just have one plane of grass with an alpha texture applied to it, but if you made it really dense it would look great.
I doubt consoles could run a big area with a large amount of dense grass. It would probably have to fade out very early on. I think you need to look up what tessellation actually is and what it is used
for. It doesn't have to be on everything to make the game look good. In fact if you used tessellation vs displacement on (for example) some cobblestones on the floor, I doubt you would see much
of a difference. A displacement map is just a texture so it would run much more smoothly too.