Exactly! It varies from person to person.

Agree.. When Bethesda make a game I always find myself immersed in the surroundings, maybe it's the sound effects, maybe it's me being silly. Either way, I always enjoy this immersion which is sometimes tarnished by pop-up.

Too bad, too sad, you don't have this, ability, to do so. You are missing out on something
truly awesome. I guess you have to just take our word for it that it's a really, really cool thing.

Wow.

Draw distance isn't really a good description, because it relates to a lot of thing. For one, the draw distance on the distant land is amazing in Skyrim. However the draw distance on the grass is pretty low.

Your major concern are the pop-ups. Rocks, bushes and even entire buildings would pop up just in front of you in Oblivion. I agree that, at times, it was really annoying and way too in-your-face. Luckily, they partially fixed it for Skyrim, within the limitations of the systems running it of course. Fact of the matter is, we'll be seeing this at least until the next generation of consoles. In Skyrim, it'll probably be way more smooth than it was in Oblivion, and you can see for a fact in the gameplay that distant ruins and such are now actually drawn and won't pop up right in front of you. It will, however, use LOD models for distant ruins and the moment something becomes a detail model instead of a LOD model, you'll probably notice it if you pay attention. And small models won't have LOD models at all so you'll see them 'pop' (probably smooth through alpha this time around) up.

It'll take years before we have systems strong enough to make LOD streaming completely unnoticable. You can see it in all open world games if you pay attention.

[EDIT] Spelling

looks fine to me

I'm not sure "forgetting you are playing a game" is the right term, certainly when I'm engrossed in a game the real world around me is temporarily blocked out, but I llke the OP can be knocked back to reality when I see an object suddenly appear out of thin air, it reminds me instantly that this is software, I've always said, you won't notice a developers hard work if they do it right.

This is what I was asking about in my original post, would the pop-up be as bad. Thanks KorVegor.



Agree with this 100%, exactly what I'm talking about, well said.

I agree with the op, I can't play Oblivion because I find it such an immersion breaker when wandering through a forest and large part of the land suddenly changes directly in front of me or a building suddenly appears. I think there are far less conspicuous systems that should be used so I too would like to know if this has been fixed.

Let me assure you, this is NOT the case! (what I underlined in bold and bigger font)

I never played the PS3 version of Oblivion, but I have more hours in it, both on the 360 and the PC, than I care to remember.
They both heavily 'suffer' from this phenomena of buildings, especially forts, dungeons and the like, popping up out of nowhere
once you get fairly close to them. Some of the best modders out there has spent many, MANY, hours bringing out mods to try
and rectify this problem, and they did a great job of it. The whole thing is very performance heavy though, and this is the reason
it is as it is in vanilla PC and on the 360 version. I sincerely doubt that Bethesda completely rewrote this for the PS3, especially
since the PS3 is pretty much on par with the 360 performance-wise, and light-years behind PCs.

This doesn't happen to me on my Xbox :shrug:

If the draw distance issue is as similar to Oblivion's it won't be an problem to me.

I never had any issues like that while playing Oblivion, and I've played thousands of hours.

If you look at the Skyrim demo footage, you can see the draw-distance is very far. So I wouldn't worry if you think it might ruin the immersion for you.

I can assure you it does happen, perhaps you just aren't bothered by it. For some of us though it is a real problem when we notice it.

I don't have the Xbox version anymore, only the PC version...

If you walk out from the tutorial dungeon, you have Vilverin straight ahead across the water. If you then look a little to the right, over
there you should see Fort Ursarek, and if you look a little to the left and behind Vilverin, you should be able to see Fort Chalman.
You don't. They will only pop up once you walk closer to them even though both are them are very close in distance from Vilverin
and where you stand. If standing up on a hill, looking out over Lake Rumare, you should be able to see a [censored]-ton of places, you
won't. You won't unless you walk close to them...unless, you have a modded PC version that is, and boy, does it ever look good
if you do!

Yes, exactly. Another example is if you travel to Anvil and stand near the painter on the harbour, then walk toward the ship you'll notice the church spire magically appear around 20 metres ahead of you.

Just to reiterate what's already been said, some object will have long draw distance, specifically large objects, this can be done using an LOD lower quality version of the object until you get closer at which point it's replaced by a detailed object, but not all objects in the game world will or can use the technique, it's not possible for instance for static moveables to use this technique, so for example if there is a barrel that can be moved this would be the kind of object that would suddenly appear out of thin air if the draw distance is short, mountains on the other hand are relatively easy because they are static and LOD version can be used until you get closer, thereby they are always in view.

You're going to get some draw in. A good idea of what to expect is to watch the segment around 6:30 in demo video 2:

http://youtu.be/En3jCg7KYjs

As the player approaches the raised area with the word wall, you can clearly see objects being drawn in up there.

Will the draw-in distance be farther in the final game? Maybe, but I wouldn't put money on it. Just expect some drawn in and learn to live with it. Most of the time I probably won't care, as both the near area and distant scenery look quite nice.

This is similar to the draw in that rocks have in Oblivion, a gradual fade in that isn't so conspicuous. The problem for me is buildings, ruins and the actual landscape suddenly blinking into existence or in the case of the land, drastically changing in huge chunks. I would hope these problems are significantly improved.

This. When I play my 360 Oblivion (Livingroom with 52" screen) and move on to PC Oblivion (even without mods on my 42" screen), I notice more of a "Pull-me-in" effect. When I go back to the livingroom, on the 360 it tends to feel like when you play Morrowind, then play Daggerfall. You instantly notice all the issues.

In this case, if you don't play on a PC, then don't fret. What you don't know won't kill you and ignorance is bliss.