» Fri Apr 08, 2011 8:16 am Lighting
There appears to be a large improvement in the lighting engine. Noticeable new features include
Dynamic soft shadows on all objects – shadows evident in most of the screenshots both in- and out-doors. Shadows cast by buildings, individual objects, trees, and scenery.
Self-shadowing – looks as though the rocks on P54 are casting shadows on themselves.
Screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) – P52 in the tavern it looks as though ambient occlusion is being used in addition to the shadows.
Textures
The character models appear to have more detailed textures. However, this could be just an improvement to the art rather than a technical on. It’s hard to say if the environment textures are higher than FO3. Botton of P49 and top of P51 suggest that it’s about the same.
Polygon count
Subjectively, it looks as though a few of the shots have a higher polygon count that FO3 (P48-ruins). This is pretty hard to determine by just looking at the screenshots though.
Skybox
Unknown if the skybox will be more advanced than Oblivion/FO3 or not. P57 shows two levels of clouds (the same as in Oblivion).
Water
Lake on p48 looks like a modest improvement on oblivion water – it’s just a flat surface with animated texture. We can assume that it will have refraction and Fresnel effect (as these were present in FO3). It doesn’t look as though the waterfall is creating any effect when it hits the water.
The centre screenshot on P49 shows waterfalls have been greatly improved. They appear to be polygonal, and tailored to fit the surroundings.
The GI article talks about rivers flowing in swift currents. This will probably be accomplished using animated surface textures. Possible that fast flowing rivers will have animated 3D surface.
Snow
According to the GI article "Snow falls naturally onto the stones and branches, appearing not as a preset texture, but falling exactly as it would onto that object given its shape and size."
This seems to have fuelled lots of speculation about how snow is implemented. I think the statement in GI could be interpreted in several ways:
- Textures in snow covered areas are created automatically from non-snowy textures algorithmically. This is then put into the game in a completely static way, meaning that the player will never get to observe any area change between being snow covered or not.
- Same as above, but this will now happen dynamically. I.e. when the player is in a non-snowy area and it begins to snow, the textures will slowly update to show the snow settling on everything. This will be done via textures, so there will be no 3D build up of snow.
- Full 3D snow effect, where each snowflake lands and builds up in a realistic manner, creating 3D snow.
Check out this http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1158033-amazing-snow-and-enviroments/page__view__findpost__p__16971345 for a more in depth discussion of snow in the game.
Foliage
The trees all appear to be fully 3D (unlike the partly sprite-based trees in Oblivion).
Animation
The new GI sound design video shows a Skyrim enemy character in motion. The animation is noticeably smoother than all previous BGS games.
Draw distance
The GI article states that the draw distance has increased from Oblivion. The mountain screenshot on P48 and the desktop http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8528/ss20110115211505s.png visible in the sound video appear to confirm this.
graphics have most certainly improved and textures seems to be far better then most, after all this is a whole new engine where as FO3 etc were on their old engine 
