I've read about how the snow in Skyrim is supposed to be dynamic and will fall in real-time. I read that there are no pre-done snow textures for the environment.

Now what I'm wondering is:

1. How would something like that be possible with the current technology?

2. If it's not all dynamic, to what extent is it and is it not?

It is my belief that there will be a mixture of snow-textured environments with a certain level of dynamic snow sprinkled on top. Is this the way it is? That's what I'm looking for confirmation on.

I think it will all be dynamic, however not in the context you think. It will dynamically acumulate, it won't necesarily be fully dynamic. In all games to date, when snow falls it just kinda 'disapears' into the ground. There is a rare case in which the ground will become dusted with snow, or change textures. However dynamically acumulating snow will add another dimension to that. As in, it will still use textures, but not just textures.

Make sense?

I think it will be like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkmV9Sz4cQ4&feature=related
It's an example from unreal engine just to see how it works. I've tried this kind of shader myself and the thing that is so awesome about it is that if you use it on an object, the snow will always be pointing up even if you rotate the object :thumbsup:

Just because it has a shader doesn't mean it's dynamic. Dynamic snow most likely means that the snow will have actual physics attached to the each individual particle. So say when a dragon flaps it's wings the snow on the ground will recognize that and act accordingly. If it's snowing really heavily you'll see a build up on your armor and do to the dynamic properties it will know which objects to stick to and melt on. It's going to be a revolutionary piece of tech. So when the wind blows you'll probably see a snow flurry and such. Snow sticking on swords will also know how to react when you swing your weapon or melt when you cast a fire spell. Since it's dynamic it won't have any set properties attached to it and act in a realistic manner. It probably won't just be the snow that's Dynamic either, I would imagine that snow melt will affect river run off ect. It makes sense if you have the tech for it.

Any ideas on how you think they'll handle the snow accumulation feature? I personally imagine that they'll have some sort of limitation to this to prevent the snow from building up too high and possibly covering an important item, chest, etc. Also will it melt over time then build up again later on during a heavy snow fall?

If it's real time and seasonal based you won't need to, even places like the throat of the world will have sunny days in the same way that Mt. Everest does.

@ VeryEvilDudeofDarkness
What you describe is impossible in such a large environment, it would eat up your CPU time like mad and turn the game into a stutter fest. IMO it will be a shader with some added effects to give it a more volumetric and realistic feel.

You're joking, right? Even a cutting edge end video card entirely dedicated to physics processing would struggle with that, and the effect can be achieved without the ridiculous overhead of physically simulating snow particles. Certainly neither console could possibly hope to do something like that, nor could most PCs. It's unnecessary, and inefficient.

Some kind of fake snow depth like this would be pretty nice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4MvrI7u9ZI&feature=related

It's not perfect, but it's a thousand times better than "walking on snow".

Yes some thing like that would be good. I do think that it will be better than most things we have seen as it has been highlighted as a feature that they are particularly proud of.

I left it open for speculation with the last statement of "it makes sense if you have the tech for it".

We don't.

What I'm wondering is will it/can it snow everywhere and anywhere? In the trailer we see the lush, green pine forest and the colorful fall forest. Both don't have any snow at all. Is that something that will be static and snow is off limits in certain areas like that or can it snow their too?

Also, like someone else mentioned what about chests and important items outside? They would have to be protected so snowfall doesn't builf up and cover them.

I had never thougt about that.
Take a small statue with magical powers: 40 centimeters x 20 centimeters x 20 centimeters.
How long would it take for the snow level to rise 40 cm up ? I'd say a lot, unless we're talking a blizard here. Smaller objects left outside, medallions and such, hmmm,
I had never thought about it.

I think the falling snow would also melt when the snowfall is over.In this case,I see nothing wrong with small objects being covered fully in snow to the extent you can't see them.It'd add to role playing,as role playing isn't just drinking and eating regularly with a click on your inventory IMO but not looking for rings outside under heavy snowfall XD

But you know,this makes the game...harder...not something Bethesda likes.

If you are hoping for accumulating deep snow, then you should prepare to be disappointed. I think it mostly means not everything will be covered in snow in snowy areas, like say Bruma. It would just change the texture with a shader to make it look snowy. It's not truly "dynamic snow" but it's better what we seen before.

And the other dynamic snow thing I've heard is mostly with the falling snow. They say that it won't fall trough ceiling again and it takes the wind into consideration so it won't just fall down.

I don't know if items and NPCs/monsters/player can also be covered with snow, it would be neat though...

Watch some stuff on Uncharted 2. That's all I'm saying.

I'm curious if the snow will settle on the players character (and the people) if they aren't moving, then fall/drift off when they become mobile again. I kinda doubt it (atleast I'm not expecting it), but that would be kinda cool. Just seeing them sprinkled with snow I mean. = )

Noone can know for sure until we've seen it in action. My guess is that it's placement will be dynamic, but it's movement on the ground will not. Every once in a while the engine will recalculate the new snow distribution of a given location and adjust the ground's polygons and textures accordingly (note, both of these can be updated without much strain on the cpu as it does not need to be rerendered until you're actually within range of the changes - it's only a matter of altering a few numbers). The end result is that you won't really notice a thing (as in real life), but if you return to the same location after, say, a half hour, you'll notice that the snow will look slightly different than before, giving off the illusion that it's just like in real life. Also, my guess is that the engine will only update areas that are out of your "near" draw distance as there is no real point in letting the player see it as it happens (would you really stand around for hours just to check something like that?).

I think dynamic snow may be a referral to snow thickness, so when it snows for a longer period you get a larger build up of snow and when it's been some time since it's snowed, the snow you can see is patchy or becoming translucent in places. It also maybe that foot prints might be a bit more then just 2D images stamped on to the ground, but right now I am doubting that they are going to go that far.



Seconded, I doubt even a super computer built with 100 nVidia GTX 560s in it and running PhysX would have enough power to handle it to that level, Assuming PhysX was rewritten to a level where it could work over so many cards, of course.

That probably depends on whether we get snow in those areas or not. I'd assume that dynamic snow works everywhere snow can fall in the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean every location will have snowfall. I just hope that it would be easy to make snow accumulate on an object properly if a modder were to put an object never used by default in locations where snow can fall in such a place.



We're not sure about that, but from what I've gathered, it seems likely that snow doesn't change the 3D geometry of the environment, but rather that it's just a 2D shader applied to objects and terrain, so an object out in the snow will take on the appearance of being snowy, but we probably won't see huge snow drifts dynamically build up and possibly bury things over time, so the chest might look snowy, but it wouldn't stop you from looting it. This theory seems to be supported by the screenshots we've seen so far as I don't think I see any snow actually piling on anything, it looks like it's just a snowy looking texture applied to objects, this doesn't prove anything, of course, but it certainly seems to support the notion I mentioned.

In any case, I think we can assume that snow flakes won't actually pile up dynamically using real time physics. Instead, the game probably takes into account how much it's snowing as well as properties of objects that determine how much snow should accumulate in each place, and applies a snow effect to them based on this. Possibly, the falling of snow will also take into account things like wind allowing it to fall in different directions depending on where the wind is blowing and how strong it is, and hopefully, it won't fall through solid objects anymore. I'm not sure if we'll see snow getting kicked up by things like footsteps and such, but I'd imagine that wouldn't be too hard to do using particle affects, and footprints in snow could also be simulated using decals. The dynamic snow sounds impressive and I'm sure it will be a pretty nice effect when the game is finished, but we must remember that Bethesda does not have magic. They're not going to be able to do anything that wouldn't be possible with current hardware.

I wonder if temperatures change and water freezes.

How can you be sure... if its like this it would be great but I doupt it...

Indeed, if the traces would stay in the snow it could provide some real fun hunting in the nature in Skyrim, following the footsteps of animals or bandits.

Indeed the Uncharted franchise has been so good at this micro level stuff.
Bethesda, learn from these guys!

Incidentally, Uncharted 3 is coming out. Guess when?
11 - 1 -11

Im pretty sure it accumulates via texture replacement, not physics particles. And we'll see a few other tricks to make it look more realistic.

But it won't be "true dynamic snow" IMO. That requires having each snow particle have physics attatched and accumulate like that. Thats a bit unrealistic to have.