I was just wondering how Beth is going to pull off the LOD when snow is not texture based.'

If the system is the same as in oblivion the LOD is a mesh with a texture on it generated by screens of the ground texture, so if snow is not a ground texture, how would it work?
Does that mean that we will see all objects in the distance if that is the case then I would be extremely happy I just love stand and look over the world
There is of course the chance that snow will be handled not as a object nor a texture, but a completely new thing.

If any of you guys have some good ideas please post

Hmm... I'm not sure. It seems to me that there are still going to be snow textures. I think the whole dynamic snow will be for objects like rocks, fences, signs, and such. I still think the ground is going to have permanent snow in certain areas (high mountains mainly). So LOD will probably be the same as always.

We won't really know though until we get some more info, or maybe a demo of this dynamic show stuff.

hmmmm but then if you look at an area from far away you would see tress as green and then when you get up close snow is going to appear? it just sounds too weird

I don't know either. I am however very afraid that we will find out that Game informer misunderstood or we are misreading GI and it only means that snow will not clip bridges and stuff. It is going to be annoying listening to everyone complain about how it was cut after it was discussed in GI.

This is my bet. I expect that the snow will look like it really settles on objects, but that will simply be thanks to some nice (and perhaps variable) textures and effects.

And frankly, I can live with that. For example, Uncharted 2 had some great snow effects despite not having true dynamic snow.

I don't think we are misreading it. It said that snow does NOT appear as a preset texture. It falls naturally depending on object's size and shape.
Not appearing as a preset texture can not be misunderstood here, in my opinion. I think it's very clear and I'm very happy about it.

I've been struggling with the wording they chose in the article. I believe everyone is wishing their own wants onto the game when they say snow will accumulate. The article never said that. I'm still trying to figure out how I, as a programmer, would implement something that fits the words they used. So far, I haven't gotten any solutions I'm satisfied with.

I hadn't even considered the implications of seeing snow on distant objects. I have to agree that it would svck to see the distant objects change color as you got closer.

I think there are two possible ways snow might be implemented based on the wording in the GI article.

1. The environment is constructed in the Creation kit without snow, and then the designer will specify that a particular area will be snowy and the engine will then create the snow effect for that area. This will then go into the game as a static feature. (This is kinda how it worked in Crysis, where a snow shader was applied to the standard environment during the snow levels).
2. The snow effects will happen in game, such that a non snowy area will become snowy if it starts to snow.

At the moment I'm evenly split between which effect might appear in the game.