I loved Oblivion when it came out, played it to death (almost) and used many mods, many idea's came from TOTO. Also used Francesco's mod, plus unofficial patch and a few others.

However my memory of the game is that viewing long off scenery looked amazing, just fired it up again for the first time since Fallout 3 came out and it looks.. well poor. I know the game came out in 2006 and todays games will of course look better, but I am still amazed how my memory tricked me. Now this weekend I will get myself the ATi 6950 so I can really pump out some good graphics, but I will want some mods that make the game look so much better.

Stuck on a couple of mods and also I took a look at OBGE v2 and used Detailed Terrain, the blending looks great on that, however I've noticed a couple of seams playing for less than 10 minutes. I'm not sure if Detailed Terrain is at fault or not.

I wonder if people who have the game looking amazing could share their mod list, or perhaps send me to an up to date mod list on a website? I tried TOTO but that hasn't been updated in a while.

Thanks for anyone's help and time.

I don't know. I read alot about how recent games are graphically superior to Oblivion. However, I must be playing the wrong games or something, because I still prefer Oblivion's graphics (except for the spell effects) to most of what I have experienced in other games over the past several years.

Regards,

Hem

Vanilla Oblivion... yes. Old and busted. Dirty looking in fact. :shivers:
A well modded Oblivion. It's up for debate how the Modblivion holds up against some of the latest games.

Visual problems with vanilla Oblivion and with some mods already:

Distant textures, trees and objects (or lack of)
Faces of NPC's and their animations (have TNR and Improved faces... they have not improved much)
Spell effects, look really awful
Shiny surfaces when it shouldn't be or incorret types of shiny
Shadows on self is awful and no shadows for many objects
Images on water for distant reflections
Close up of textures are blocky
Light levels, ambient light effects (everything is bright!)

Maybe other things too, can't remember. I'm looking at mods to improve these.

Is that 6950 gonna be a 2gb model? You shouldn't have any trouble loading up on graphics with that provided the rest of your system is up to snuff. I'll recommend just one thing at this time, high resolution Landscape LOD. I've tried quite a few but keep returning to http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18497. It has its faults, but when everything clicks, as it does for me in this capture, http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/ESIV%20Oblivion/ImpIslePanorama1.jpg.

-Decrepit-

6950 is the 1gb, save 25% on price for a drop in 7% on performance. Rest of system Core i5 at 3.2Ghz and 4Gb RAM

I'll take a look at that mod later, thanks.

And check out the OBGE thread here sometime. You will be pleasantly surprised Also check out the modded Oblivion Screen shot thread.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm150/far327/ScreenShot16.jpg :foodndrink:

There's no doubt Oblivion looks worse than recent releases these days. Texture overhauls and RAEVWD (seeing forts and ruins etc from a distance, rather than having them pop in) can do a lot, but the main problem with Oblivion's distant land is the jarring mid-ground transition, where high-res textures are swapped out for lower res textures, and the geometry meshes alter drastically. It's an issue with the cell-based structure Oblivion uses, and trying to get the game to increase the amount of cells that are rendered in detail causes game-breaking glitches.

There's also the lack of shadows which are just standard affair in all games recently, and the ugly-as-sin water. OBGE is on the path to fixing these problems, but I don't think the distant land problem will ever be fixed Pray that Skyrim drops the cell-based structure. That way we can have http://s3.amazonaws.com/gamervision_production/1245872169jTYzSALEqd.jpg, and hopefully http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/826/826589/assassins-creed-20071011020351012.jpg too.

But like others have mentioned, Oblivion is 5 years old now. It's just something we deal with. I find a distance Depth of Field blur shader from OBGE helps a lot.

Yeah it was me that said it was 5 years old, I'm not too much of of a graphics [censored] but I found it really noticable going back to the game, since Fallout 3 looks better and is the same engine. Working on mods at the moment that improve it, it's a little confusing to sort out old information and current information on mods.

Currently looking at All Natural and immersive interiors, it looks very promising.

I'm not I'll play it again after spending time modding it, it seems fun just making the game look awesome by pick and mixing mods.

Oblivion Looks... bad
ha.

Apparently you should be modding.

Oblivion Looks... badder
oblivion performs better.
Oblivion Looks... worst
get pixelblivion. It's great.

I have a 'old' card that 'tames' oblivion.
I have two of them actually.
sometimes one, sometimes two.
I rejoice.
Especially every time I CTD.

And when my two cards compete with the rest of them(singlers).
I laugh.
I laugh twice as hard with only one card installed.! HAHAHAHAHHAHHA
HHHHAHHAHA

Mooo

8800GTS/GTX

Plus I have a 1 ghz system rocking duke nukem full blast on an .ATI XTX something old crap card on the side, just for kicks.
p.s. haven't tried to rock oldblivion on the old system ye, but I'm sure it won't be a problem. Haven't been down to the banc lately,
but I know it is the best to rock old nukem!

I'm not even going to comment on my current graphics...LOL

first of all...modded Oblivion using all kind of texture replacers, OBGE, Weather All Natural etc etc still looks better than many many new games and is still being improved big time...water shader, static shadows and all the amazing stuff the OBGE team is working on...

and ...where the hell are the people talking about gameplay ???? Minecraft, Mount and Blade and Risen look "terrible" but what a great fun are these games...Gothic Arcania for example has all the new visuell effects..but is a crappy game compared to the old parts of this series...

just my thoughts


btw in my eyes there is only one real problem that Oblivion has and which will never be solved I fear...CRAPPY Landscape Meshes... :flamethrower:

Gameplay not mentioned as that is not my priority at moment, I've used and enjoyed Francesco's mod and it really helps. I'll look at others later.

Has anyone seen the Samaritan video for the Unreal 3 engine... now that's beautiful.

As Fab said, we know the gameplay in Oblivion rocks, and no doubt it's why we still all play the game 5 years after release! Mods like your amazing Tamriel Heightmaps really help in that regard too.

But I can't agree that it looks better than 'many many new games'. Absence of shadows and that awful midground are the ugliest aspects of the game, worse than games that are a few years old now like Assassin's Creed and GTA4. As for the latest games, they're now incorporating DX11 features like tessellation and some really gorgeous lighting models - making Oblivion's textures suddenly look a little flat in comparison even with normal maps, and the stock HDR is just... bleugh.

But you're right that the gameplay is what makes the game so amazing, and when we can take screenshots like http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm150/far327/ScreenShot16.jpg here, we can all pretend the midground tearing doesn't exist and the game runs at a smooth 60fps while looking this gorgeous from all angles

Just wanted to follow up. I forgot to mention that Oblivion has a ton of animation replacers as well. MAO - Mayus Animation Overhaul is probably the most popular. But there are many others available. I might post a YouTube video soon so others can get an idea what modded Oblivion can do these days. As soon as I dive deeper into Oblivion War Cry New Dimension to get some good footy.

Eh, looks are relative. Arena, Daggerfall and Morrowind all looked great for their time (and for the technology available), but they look terrible now. Kudos to the community for extending Oblivion's graphical life by offering hi rez texture replacers and other options.

The same thing will happen with Skyrim - from previews it looks gorgeous now, but how will it look compared to games released in 2016 for systems or hardware that haven't even been envisioned yet?

Indeed. It's quality of the game, not the looks, that produces longevity, although being a leader in the field on release doesn't hurt. Comparative prettiness will fade with time, but substance endures. I'm a bit of a graphics junky (or would be, if I could afford it), but that doesn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying the classics.

Can somebody make an ultimate list of modded Oblivion (perhaps to look closest to incoming Skyrim) and make it sticky thread? Tnx

In 2016 we may be playing games in Virtual Reality! (Who knows?)

Based on the trailer Skyrim has fantastic distance land, the best I have seen. Artistically its the best looking game I have seen, even if its a step behind some of the top FPS technically.

Is there anything like MW Overhauled for Oblivion? Thats what OB needs, but its a lot of work.

While I like my games to look nice if I can, if I -can't- that's okay. Look at Minceraft...not the prettiest game in the world.

Quite right - mincing rafts is ugly business. :yes:

I like my Oblivion pretty. As well as awesomely playable and replayable. I Want It All! Hehe.

Make sure you flash your cards BIOS to the 6970 (pretty easy upgrade for nuthin) I am also building a new PC and reloading OB just waiting for the new AM3+ Mobos to come out. What kind of CPU will you be using? It seems like some of the bigger mods AEVWD etc will really tax your CPU and GPU.

Obviously, Oblivion is going to look dated compared to more recent games. It was pretty impressive in terms of graphics when it was first released, but graphics march on, and it's inevitable that the game will be outdone in that department by more recent games. If you want Oblivion to look better, graphics mods are definitely the way to do. Due to engine limitations, I'd say there are some things that recent games have been able to do which graphics mods haven't been able to fully replicate yet, although with mods like Oblivion Graphics Extender, we can come closer to bringing the game's graphics up to current standards than can be achieved by just replacing models and textures. Of course, it also comes down to a question of hardware. For me, Qarl's textures just wouldn't be reasonable for my computer, especially when I'm also running some fairly system intensive gameplay mods like OOO, but for that purpose, we also have some nice texture mods that help to improve the look of the game without using higher resolution textures, like Bomret's Detailed Normal Maps and Vibrant Textures, so I wouldn't say one necessarily needs the latest hardware to be able to run a better looking Oblivion, but one's options may be limited somewhat by the capabilities of one's computer.

I played around with QTP3 and while it looks nice, my problem with it is when I replace textures in Oblivion or Morrowind or just about any other game I normally try to stay close to the vanilla textures. I think the vanilla textures look just fine, they just need to be higher resolution. I like Vibrant Textures as it basically does just that and frees up lots of system resources for other mods like FCOM. I've noticed that the difference between Morrowind modding and Oblivion modding is: with Morrowind you can choose from tons of texture overhauls. With Oblivion, its gameplay overhauls.

Vibrant Textures is not higher resolution. And if you want even closer than Vibrant, maybe try the Mtgr Texture Pack.

The other thing I would recommend is to either use one of the above-mentioned, or simply vanilla textures, but to also add Bomret's Detailed Normal Maps for Vanilla, either way. It's not a texture replacer, nor is it a mesh replacer, and it won't impact FPS, or the textures being used, except by virtue of the fact that it brings out more, well, detail. The overall effect has to be seen to be believed.