Just to be clear, this isn't a threat for ranting about water in general. I thought the water effects throughout the rest of the trailer were either good or excellent. What I'm interested in is What proportion of the viewers thought the rapids looked a little odd or jarring?

I ask simply because there has been a lot of traffic over the subject and opinions seem to be polarised. I'm wondering whether my visual experience is in the minority or not, and why that might be.

So did the rapids in the trailer look okay to you? Yes or No? Gut feelings and first impressions only please!

Sure it could always look better, I think my biggest issue with them is that they don't look as good as the rest of the environment we've seen in Skyrim. I know that they're supposed to be white water rapids so we can't expect it to be crystal clear water but a little bit more effort into the mesh and animation wouldn't go amiss.

The water looks fine. If they can do what New Vegas did with the water then I'd be pretty happy.

They look like rubbish. I could puke or vomit a better looking water effect than that.

Definitely not. There's a lot more room for improving in that than in everything else I've seen in the trailer (graphically speaking).

They were flat and below the standard of the rest of the game world (including other water effects).

If it were red I could squint my eyes and imagine I was playing DOOM.

No, they looked incredibly flat and they looked more like a white carpet or conveyor belt moving along rather than a flowing rapid.

As I've stated in other threads, not nearly as good as Pete Hines was leading on about. Even in motion. I don't know how else to say this, but the water there looks more like a moving flat texture than actual water.

If this is what's going to be in the final product, then I really don't want to go near any rapids anytime soon, unless I feel like doing this. :facepalm:

I don't really think we need this many threads about the water. I mean, I wasn't impressed by it, but I don't think so many threads are needed to get that point across, but since you ask, no, the rapids did not look good to me. For the most part, the trailer looked pretty good, the graphics certainly aren't the best of seen, but most of what I've seen doesn't dissappoint, but the subject discussed here is one thing that is bad enough that it just sticks out in comparison to everything else, while I can't see how anyone could be impressed by the other views of outdoor water we saw either, this one is definitely subpar even compared to all the other water effects shown in the trailer. The way the rapids move does not look natural, and the texture just screams lack of effort to me. I hope it's like some have said in it's defense that it's just a placeholder and will look better in the finished game, but I'm not really convinced by that, after all, why would you show a placeholder in you're trailer? It's not like the trailer just wouldn't have been complete without that one shot of rapids, Bethesda could have put something that would probably be much more impressive there, yet instead they decided to settle for this, while that's already a poor choice, it would be more baffling if Bethesda knew the water would actually look better in the finished product.

I'm so sick of this, they have white water rapids in there (how many games do?) and it's not completely perfect so what? it looks fine to me, white water rapids (with snow and cold water) tend to look a little weird in person anyways. Most people are basing it off of STILL SHOTS though which is dumb, rapids arent meant to be seen stopped, i think it's going to look fine in the game.

What Selbeth said. It's certainly far from being game breaking. It's just a rapid. But it does look bad.

And to be honest I think there are far too many [censored] around here. People who always think everything is better than perfect, no matter what it is, what the screenshots show, what the video shows, what the previews say. No matter how other games look, no matter what previous ES games did wrong. It's all fantastic and Bethesda can do no wrong. That really gets on my nerves. What is this forum for if all you are supposed to do is cheer?

All people here (except for the occasional troll) are looking forward to this game and we all think it will most likely be a great game overall. Why do so many people have a problem with the fact that there will be some less-than-optimal things in the game for sure, just like it was the case in previous games? Do they think the game will be worse just because other people talk about it? Do they feel like it's 'their' game and thus feel like you personally attack them? Discussing things that are problematic or might be problematic makes sense, it might even tell Bethesda were they can improve their game if enough time is left to do so. Always saying 'It's fantastic! Everything is fantastic!' doesn't help anyone and if I were a developer and would read posts by certain people I would think the people who play my game are idiots who would even be besides themselves with joy if http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-C7lHLFLU8&feature=related was the first in game trailer for Skyrim.

Yeah, they look fine. People are [censored]ting bricks over nothing. It's not like the rapids are made out of the tears of angry fans who wanted spears in game...

Besides, we have texture replacers.

from a modder's viewpoint, I can see that the waterfall in caves took awesome, adding those waterfalls in front of rocks, pointing downstream tilted 45 degrees back would add the splashing water effect, and water dodging rocks effect needed to make those rapids look awesome. maybe add a fe along the way too for submerged rocks and shallows. I can guarantee a modder with 15 minutes to spare can fix it, so i'm not concerned about it. if beth doesn't have the time to fix it, i will and release it on the nexus.

but i do hope they take my small advice and apli those fixes, or make smaller, lighter on resource effects for rapids themselves. haven't played with the creation kit modding tools yet (of course) but from an CS standpoint, fixing it would be easy.

They were my fav part of the trailer.

'Okay', yes, but okay is not enough for The Elder Scrolls!

There is already several topics on this - a little search next time please.

Use one of the others http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1169673-water-looks-better-than-we-think/