I tend to agree with Acadian about vanilla Oblivion scenery at close distance. At far distance (LOD range) I tend to lean toward Mr Wyrd. Not that I think it's all "butt-ugly", but it certainly lacks compared to close-range viewing. That said I far prefer Oblivion's infinite-view to Morrowind's more restrictive approach. For me it's one area where the newer game easily outshines the older. I do readily admit that Morrowind's more limited view distance better conceals a multitude of potential sins.

Those who like me favor seeing the whole of Cyrodiil at distance should be aware of a new utility, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40549. It can create a set of Landscape LOD meshes (it doesn't deal with textures) of much higher quality than vanilla. One can either do as I did and create a set from scratch or use one of several pre-generated mesh sets. At the moment the pre-generated options are vanilla mid-res, vanilla hi-res, UL mid-res, UL hi-res, and a few with Elsweyr-Anequina added to the mix. The advantage of self-creation is that the meshes can reflect your exact load-order. That's best for me since I run only six ULs but a number of other landscape altering mods.

Here's some captures I took with my self-made his-res meshes in place. These were NOT taken with any artistic intent in mind. They're just simple screenshots grabbed during the course of my avatar's daily adventure routine. Nothing special was done to doctor them after-the-fact other than cropping and resizing. I did apply a weak sharpening filter to several to compensate for detail lost during shrinkage.

http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/TES%20IV%20Oblivion%20Landscape%20LODs/WeyeArea1_v121_hi-res.jpg
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/TES%20IV%20Oblivion%20Landscape%20LODs/ImpIsleNorthBridge1_v121_hi-res.jpg
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/TES%20IV%20Oblivion%20Landscape%20LODs/ImpIsle2Aleswell1.jpg
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/TES%20IV%20Oblivion%20Landscape%20LODs/ImpIsle2Akatosh1.jpg
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/TES%20IV%20Oblivion%20Landscape%20LODs/ElsweyrDune_far1.jpg
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn303/Decrepit_Waste/TES%20IV%20Oblivion%20Landscape%20LODs/ElsweyrCorinthe_far1.jpg

Captures of the Imperial Isle / Rumare Basin area feature, with one exception, self-created Landscape LOD color-map and normal-map in addition to the mesh. That exception is the very first view. It shows another author's landscape LOD textures for most everything right of the Talos Bridge. Both Elsweyr views feature my normal-maps, but at least one sticks with Iliana's color-map.

Self-created textures can be important. In particular, the road extending from the North Imp Isle Bridge to Red Ring would not be made visible via mesh alone. Nor would a few other things. Still, these new meshes by themselves are a marked improvement over what I had before.

I'd encourage anyone whose load-order reasonably resembles any of the pre-made mesh sets to get them a try. Also, go for a hi-res set if you computer can bear the load. I made both mid- and hi-res sets for myself and noticed an appreciated increase in visual quality switching from mid to high. My Intel i7-930, GTX-470, 6gb DDR3 ram rig has no performance issues with hi-res meshes in place.

In fairness I must point out that these meshes don't solve all problems. For me floaters are all but eradicated, as are LOD-quad border mismatches. However, some near-distance LOD height mismatches remain, and I've an instance where one of the new meshes created a very noticeable mismatch that didn't exist before. I decided not to show a screenshot of that because the meshes can be hand edited to remove such anomalies! I'll likely do that with my next set of self-created meshes.

-Decrepit-

EEP! Sorry, took too long composing this. The forum went ahead an auto posted it before I was near finished. It's very rough-draft with lots of corrections to be made. (Guess I should have pre-composed it in my Word Processor.)

I'm stuck with the piece of [censored] ps3. :'(

woot. Official specs lead me to believe my current Oblivion performance will be similar to Skyrim performance.

hmmm .... that also suggests that Oblivion is not very optimized. But this isn't a surprise to anyone, is it?

I played on my 360 for the first 2 years until I could get a decent PC. Now my cheap laptop plays Oblivion at max settings and it looks gorgeous. I see folks talking about the graphics but I love wearing headphones and listening to the music and the sounds of things around me, like the water, people walking, wind,etc. It's amazing.

You're surely not using Really AEVWD and still get 60fps?

And curiosuly Decrepit, what are your average FPS with that?

The simple answer is that I don't know. Over the years I've lost interest in FPS counter readings. For me a game is either smoothly or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then I start taking framerate readings to help determine why. Overall my Oblivion install is sufficiently smooth. There are exception, like Bravil Barrowfields (UL) near the southernmost sheep pens and some spots in Elsweyr. I can live with it. It helps that I prefer that my avatar travel at a walk, even while mounted. All else being equal, a fast pace triggers more lag and stutter than does a slow one. It might or might not also help that I have Oblivion installed on a dedicated SSD SATA III drive connected to a SATA III controller. (To be honest I'm not yet sure the SSD helps all that much if at all.)

I did briefly turn on the game's FPS counter sometime within the past week. My avatar was on the Imperial Isle east bridge (NR+B). I was pleasantly surprised to see the meter hover at 30-31, which is where Oblivion Stutter Remover caps it. I suspect it would have dropped when nearing the Waterfront had I left it running that long. I'm sure that one stretch of Barrowfields would register in the single digits. I'm gonna have to enable the meter in an upcoming session out of curiosity.

ADDENDUM: The bit about my FPS meter hovering at 30 is in error. Well, not quite an error perhaps, since it did indeed register 30-31 at the time. I have sense learned that that reading is not a true reflection of my framerate during much of my game-play. The other day I turned the meter on just outside the Market District and let it run while I traipsed through much of the Capitol then rode the Silver to Bruma.

Inside IC and in the wilds when facing away from IC, even in congested areas, FPS generally stayed between 27 and 30. But when I turned toward the Capitol it tended to drop to the low 20s, sometimes entering the high teens. This caused no noticeable lag and only occasional mild stutters associated with cell loading. I did notice that when FPS dropped too low I'd start getting constant "micro stutters". Bothersome, but not game breaking. FPS dropped into the low-mid twenties as I approached Bruma.

I turned the meter off at that point. Too much of a distraction.

-Decrepit-

Well, I had been running at 1080p, but I recently reduces to 1280x720p to get a little better performance.

I was only able to play Oblivion on highers settings when I got my new PC and graphics card this spring. My old PC could only play Oblivion on low settings, and it could only just barely run Fallout 3 at all. Now I'm playing both games on the highest graphics settings and it's awesome.