Have you ever noticed that there are no mirrors in Oblivion? I understand game limitations, but I think it would be really cool to see your characters reflection in real time, instead of opening up the journal to look at him/her.

What are your thoughts? If it was possible would you use a Mirror Mod or would you not bother with it?

Everyone must be vampires

^what blahs said!

No seriously, not only are there no mirrors, there aren't really any windows either. Well, there are windows, but they only seem to let light in, we can't actually see anything thru them though.

But I imagine that PC gamers certainly have a mirror mod. Right? If I could get my hands on some mods, mirrors would be cool to have, but there's other mods I'd prioritize first. Starvation/sleep-deprivation mods would top my list.
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You should by it for PC

The mods arn't the only bonus, increased gaphics is another.

Also, just the controls and the whole feel of the game seems more natural.

AND...

Screenshots

I don't know if there is a mirror mod. I haven't really thought about looking. I have Oblivion for both my computer and xbox, but after installing Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit it seems that some of my modding utilities don't work correctly

This has been discussed numerous times, and AFAIK it was deemed impossible due to the Gamebryo engine

Well there we go! lol It would still be really cool though

The only game I played with functioning mirrors is one of the later Splinter Cell games. Chaos Theory or Double Agent.

Duke Nukem 3D had mirrors, and that was 15 years ago.

Sims 2 & 3 have reflecting mirrors. Can't remember if the first did or not.

Yes, but that was long before games became much more demanding to run. For OB to have mirrors, you would have to generate everything in the reflection area twice (once for ingame, the other for the mirror) and even then, the PC wouldn't show up. For the PC to show up, you would have to have the ability to clone the PC, and have the clone mimic the movements

Unreal the first also have mirrors, and it was in the 90s.

I seem to recall a mirror mod for Morrowind. Or maybe it was discussed and abandoned, I don't remember. I don't know of any mirror mod for Oblivion. But one should be possible, it seems to me. We have water refections in the Gamebryo engine. That suggests to me that a mirror reflection is also possible.

DN3D did have mirrors supported by the engine, but it was still tricky to set them up without running into issues. Just remember, that game didn't even allow for 3D scenes, as seeing one room "above" another at the same time was already causing a visual disturbance close to a time&space anomaly or something similarly unpleasant.

A real mirror surface will always be a pure render effect, likely to be created by vertex and/or pixel shaders and the like, and also likely to be very taxing even on the latest pc setups, considering the engine itself doesn't support it. Duplicate scenes, cloned actors, etc. is only trickery and always comes with drawbacks and restrictions. As far as I know you can switch on additional objects to mirror in the water plane, so in theory a horizontal (or arbitrarily oriented) water plane without ripples and waves and the like could be a possible base for something, but I don't know if the engine even supports this again.

My best bet, if mirrors ever become possible, would be the OBGE project for a feasible solution. This is as far down into the render pipeline itself as we can go. At least that's how I see it.

The original Tomb Raider had a part where Lara's image was reflected on the other side of the room. Not a true mirror, but certainly the same idea. And, let's not forget Sims.



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I've been trying out the free trial of Eve Online. The captain's quarters has a really nice mirror you can check yourself out in.

Funny thing is, that is how Oblivion's water reflections are done. Objects in the reflection are drawn twice. So really it is drawing everything three times. A mirror would be a far less performance hit than say Lake Rumare, especially if it only drew everything in it twice. Making a clone of the PC is also simple enough to do. Oblivion is already rendering you every moment of the game. Making a duplicate of something is simple in the digital world. In fact, Oblivion does it when it makes your statue at Bruma, and Shivering Isles does it as well as one of the opponents you must fight (though it is a dark clone). Mimicing your movements falls under making a duplicate. Again, simple. It is nothing but a series of animation files that the game plays. Instead of kicking them off once for one actor, it kicks them off twice for two actors.

Its not a specifically "gamebryo" limitation. The engine has to be coded for it, and given the graphical demand of modern games, mirrors are not a high priority to mess with.

That was back when the idea was new and everyone wanted to experiment with them. They have since disappeared as the performance impact is too massive to merit full implementation.

Thats a bit different. Water reflections are kindof like mirrors. They do indeed rerender the landscape. They can render trees, and even the player, but the more you increase what is reflected, the more demand. So water are like limited mirrors. They render only the basics to get the point across.

Shivering isles just duplicates your character graphic. To make a mirror you would need to sync the animations and ensure there was no delay between when you moved and when your reflection moved. This is where the performance impact kicks in, as having to update a clone to mimic your movements every frame is very demanding of a process. Now toss on 2 or 3 NPCs, and the demand just goes up exponentially. And got help you if there are items laying around that have havok. Static models are much much easier to duplicate then NPCs and objects with physics.

I'm not convinced there would be a performance loss. Mirrors are likely be located in interiors where the engine has fewer objects to render.

There is a mod that adds a view out of windows; Immersive Interiors. It even reflects the current weather and day/night conditions but it is a little tricky to set up. It requires configuring through Wrye Bash.

For mirror reflection, you need to access the DirectX functions. As far as I know, OBGE is doing some work along the line of updating the game engine to support more of the DirectX functionality but I have not researched enough to mention details of the project.