Basically, what it comes down to is Todd blowing smoke. He has to downplay the fact that it's being limited by aging hardware in order to keep the hype up and encourage sales.

Well maybe they could also add iPhones and PSP to the platform list? Sales would be even higher.
Who cares that the game would end up being crap, sales are everything right? :facepalm:

Fact is that current consoles are outdated. In other forum one person stated that we don't make games for outdated platforms.
I don't have X360 or PS3, but I have SEGA Genesis. I WANT PLAY TES5: SKYRIM ON MY SEGA GENESIS GOD DAMMIT!!! :verymad:

Am I the only one that likes invisible war? I agree that the first game is better, but Deus Ex is highly overrated IMO.

<-PC gamer btw.

1) We are discussing TES5

2) IW was ok, but not great, like original DE

What did Todd mean by saying that DX11 users will get some "performance gains"? Isn't that pretty much obvious? I mean, I'd imagine a DX11 card would be better than a DX9 card, and would give better performance...

That's what I'd assumed. Who knows, though? Do DX11 features like, say, tessellation offer any more efficiency over having the modellers simply add more polygons to that amazing hyper-realistic rock aside from the fact the former method is less time consuming?

Also, if Todd actually paid attention to my old signature and actually threw in some occlusion culling for Skyrim, something tells me that my current machine could run Skyrim better than it does Oblivion.

Cards that are DX11-capable can also play DX10 or DX9 mode obviously. In most cases I have seen higher frame rates for the exact same game when using DX11 mode instead of DX10 or DX9.

Tessellation is a feature of DX11 that is the one people talk about most often, because it allows more hardware processing of tessellation with rendering of higher polygon count without compromising the frame rate, and the videos that demonstrate this feature are pretty cool.

However, there are 2 other important features of DX11 that when implemented properly in a game, essentially just improve performance.

• Better Optimization for Multi-Threading – The ability to scale across multi-core CPUs will enable developers to take greater advantage of the power within multi-core CPUs. This results in faster framerates for games, while still supporting the increased visual detailing.
  
  
• DirectCompute – Developers can utilize the power of discrete graphics cards to accelerate both gaming and non-gaming applications. Basically better hardware (GPU) accelleration for gaming and video editing tasks.

How the hell could Bethesda have pulled off the graphical improvement over Oblivion with Skyrim without using occlusion culling? Who said they weren't? I want answers!

Walled cities, of course!

Although I'm still hoping that if the smaller open "towns" are at least as big as Oblivion's cities, we could consider it a step forward in technology.

...But we already had walled cities...

Seriously, though, how did they achieve what they did? Any ideas? What optimization techniques did they introduce to their engine?

They rewrote alot of the original engine code that they had been using since oblivion which came out right as the xbox 360 was released. So basically they knew what to code for this time instead of shooting in the dark.

AFAIK, it depends of how it's used. Tessellation can be either used to improve performance, improve quality, or a balance of both.

Yeah, I had assumed that somehow generating tessellations on-the-fly would be less taxing on the machine than if the models already had all of that extra detail. Or at least, I suppose it could take strain off either the GPU/CPU and transfer it to the other.

Bump.

It is less taxing on the system than a model that just has lots of polygons. Not only that, but since the polygons are created procedurally, the number of polygons it generates can be adjusted according to your system and according to how far away you are. So the closer you get the more detailed objects become.

If memory serves, the Serious Sam HD engine has a LOD system that dynamically adjusts the number of polygons as you get closer or farther away from models. It would be nice to see something like this in future Bethesda technology, with an option in the graphics settings to set a preferred "threshold" for how quickly/slowly detail begins to drop as you get farther away.