you mean those "rainbows" reflected from crystals? that could be more difficult to implement.

i'd settle for an aurora borealis instead

It would be difficult yeah. And it doesn't really fit Skyrim somehow.

It is indeed a resource hog, as the game basically have to render the game world from two cameras (player head + mirror) instead of one (player head) for one frame. But the framerate in the interior homes of MW and OB had rather high framerates and if a mirror was put in there, I don't think it would suffer that much. It would be much worse if you suddenly saw a huge mirror somewhere out in outside gameworld in the city streets or in the forest or something, but why would something be there?

Mirrors? Cool, never thought of that.

If you can make water reflective (Which it was in Oblivion, by default, it didn't reflect characters, or many things, for that matter, but that's only because reflections for those things weren't inabled, and very simple changes to the ini fixed that.) I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do the same for mirrors. If anything, I'd think reflections on mirrors would be easier to do than water, since you just need to reflect an image, when you do reflections on water, you need to distort that image and have it move like liquid should, admitably, I don't know all the technical details about this sort of thing, but I see no reason why the kind of technology that seems to have allowed for reflective water for what is a reletively long time as far as video games are cocerned should work just fine for mirrors and other surfaces that should be reflective as well. Yet I actually can't name that many games I've played in recent years that do this, even though they have reflective water. Admitably, I suppose if you want to make EVERY surface that should be reflective have actual reflections, that would be kind of hard on the computer, but while being able to see my reflection in my enemy's sword would look impressive at first, it isn't really something I'd need to have for the game to look believable, now mirrors, on the other hand, look pretty strange when they're not reflective.

If nothing else, though, I'd like to be able to see my reflection in water in first person, but that first requires the character's body exist in first person, because seeing yourself reflected as a pair of floating arms would look really strange, it also requires that water BE reflective, which nothing we've seen seems to indicate is the case, even if it logically should be, since Oblivion could do it and Skyrim is supposed to be a graphical upgrade over Oblivion.

What the hell? Unreal Engine 1 had mirrors. That was 10 years ago.

A lot of people keep making claims like this. Could you please provide some support? Or are you just basing this off of what you've heard/believe should be the case?

I mean I'm perfectly willing to accept that you're right, it's just there are a lot of layman around here throwing things like this out there when they don't have a basis.

It's not a resource hog at all. It only becomes a problem if you do silly stuff like putting two mirrors facing each other.

They had Mirrors in Max Payne 2, so I have no idea why they didn't in the Elder Scrolls games. I just assumed it was a limitation with the engine - but you never know, they might have them this time around. I hope so!

the mirors would be cool especally if you could see your self in water and stuff like that but the sword thing propaly wouldn't work until like oblivion 9

Shame on you people. Trying to get a better look at your characters briasts.

I just came in for the joke.

You'd think so, yeah, but water reflections can cut a lot of corners. A mirror-mirror is expected to look exactly like what it's reflecting, wheras nobody is going to notice if your water reflections don't have shader passes or full detail objects. Also, water reflections in oblivion were crazy-bad for framerate.

Silent Hill 2 also had mirrors as well. Mirrors in current games are often impossible to do the fact that you pretty much have to render the world twice, when nowadays most games have trouble running just one rendering of the world without slowdown. The more the game pushes the capabilities of the system it's on, the harder it is do render it without slowdown, which is really no problem with computers, but does pose one on consoles. This is the same reason many games don't support local co-op or multiplayer anymore.

Well I always curios how will work water Refraction shader and world reflection in water and how it can be applied to models
I saw Environment Map reflection maps for textures like this
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=43527
http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Reflective_metal
Or applied Refraction shader to meshes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcQByxWRxIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw39C7zl6Iw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykCmwT_oiEE
But thats not true mirrors.
Yes true mirrors thats will render game is resource hogs but there is option thats will make it easer
create mirror room thats has the same environment thats has room with mirror divide cloned rooms with reflective transparent 'glass-like' see trough plane and create actor clone thats will synchronism copy animation of mirrored actor, so in such way can be created wall mounted mirrors with scripts and simple level design.
In thats way it even can be done in Oblivion and Morrowind.
Such 'mirror' can be usable for quests when for example need to be attacked by doppelganger out of mirror (actor moved from fake room and forced attack %PCname) or need travel trough Mirror World somewhere or need create special duel with Illusion mage like in Conan( then such 'mirror planes can have on strike scripting for simple animation mesh and texture change, playsound command for glass brake, an generate mirror shards item meshes around, so thats will create illusion of broken mirror), or there can be dungeon puzzle with something thats not mirrored in thats fake mirror thats can be removed or taken and something can trigger on thats for example door opens.

Yes but they should be very expensive and I mean very expensive, if a house was worth 10 000K golds, a mirror should be 3000 golds. Royalties would have one or two, normal folks wouldn't have a single one. I also want to see the water work as a mirror.