LOl again , are you making up all those statements ? Why you write without any cognition and you never post anything that is barely quotable as valiable source for your affirmations?

Crysis is a FPS , is a Great shooter sci fi themed and is recognizedas the best Graphics on PC ever so far ... enough said ...

Whats that has to do with Crysis ? It doesnt have to have quests couse is not a RPG , the place in Crysis is not a Real place , its a fictional place as well and doesn't exhist , Crytek is a company that develops a engine wich is used by sub company for their games.... and just to show some other Cryengine 3 powered game ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85R1k39YM5o

Do you not realise that the artists are not the same people who create the artificial intelligence for this 'wildlife' or any of the rpg elements?

I believe the main reason to be the rise of the consoles. With inferior hardware to the most basic computers and being the main focus for development, a major blow has been struck to the development of graphical improvement as consoles do not have the ability to run very intensive visuals.

How can you not understand? All those things I mentioned, all that list... implies that Crysis and Skyrim can never be fully compared. That includes the Cryengine.

We're not talking about comparing the game, we're talking about comparing the graphics. All the NPC scheduling, quest design, and content you like doesn't make it harder to render the same scene.

Im expecting something big, graphics is everything to me and ive seen the screenshots why bother getting a GTX 570. i wish Skyrim would have better graphics. Ill see if ENB Series could fix their mistake.

HUGE mistake.

whenever i look at that elder scrolls picture, i keep thinking that the creation engine is just an upgraded gambyro, on the bottom left you van see the clothes clipping through the monster's leg

Actually it does, since that's what Bethesda is focusing most on. They focus much more on lots of quests, dungeons, locations; more than any other game out there.
That takes lots of time and money. Which in turn means less money and time spent on making top-notch graphics.

Your first two points are irrelevant to the graphics. If anything, closed dungeons and house insides make it easier for the Oblivion engine.

The fact that the island in Crysis is a real one is an obstacle for it. Made-up places can be shaped such as to mask problems with the engine. Real places don't follow those conventions.

The other two points ... yes, Crysis put more effort into its graphics, and the results show it. That's what the whole thread is about: If Bethesda put the effort or licensed a proper graphics engine, they could do it too!

Quest designers and mappers don't program your graphics, and graphics programmers don't design quests or dungeons.

You don't understand :confused:
Think carefully as I try to explain now.

The many many many more quests, dungeons and detailed locations (as well as the design/idea to make them) takes time. Lots of time.
Every gaming company has a budget.
Bethesda's games have always been these huge open world games with tons of locations and stuff to do. More than any other game. This has always been their main focus.
Therefore, the main share of their budget goes to this. It takes time, and time is determined by how many you hire, which is, in turn, determined by how much money you have.

The reason this affect graphics is because less people are hired to focus on this. Less people means less time. Less time means that the graphics won't be as top-notch as Crysis, of which Crytek surely had many many more employees focusing on the development of technology and graphics.

Todd Howard said some time "We can do anything, but we can't do everything."

This is the connection, do you see it now?

Oh, yes, because they fire their graphic programmers as soon as they've hit some arbitrary graphical aim. I see now, poor graphic programmers.
Bethesda could be making the game out of bits of string and a dirty green button, that doesn't change the fact that technologically, we could make a Crysisesque TES style title with current technology. Bethesda aren't going to do it, that does not mean it cannot be done.

and why are you comparing then? We are talking about graphic engine not two different games with different gameplay features ... .your post is totally irrelevant to the topic ....

This doesn't change the fact technologically, Skyrim could be just as good-looking as Crysis. TRUE!
But!, REALISTICALLY, it CAN'T happen. It just can't, sorry. It's practically impossible for a game to focus as much as Bethesda on depth and content, and at the same time as much as Crytek on graphics and technology.
It's too much for one company to handle, unless Bethesda and Crytek are combined into one. THEN, it can happen.

It's relevant to this thread because it undermines the condition required to actually make this happen realistically.

No, there's quite a gap between implementing a few extra features and becoming the prettiest game ever made.
Technological superiority these days is less about very high quality textures and models (though they're still important) and more about well optimised shaders. They have had 5 years, if not longer, to develop this, that is more than long enough for the graphics team to write very pretty shaders. They have not, of course, because shaders run entirely on the GPU, and if you're already starved of resources there's not much more you can add. That does not mean it could not be done.

Is it impossible to have good animations and trees Bethesda wanted in the game at the same time? I think no.

They licensed one technology while ditching another to make it possible.

If you ask me, Cryengine 2 is not the perfect engine for Bethesda games but it is the closest by FAR.

Day/Night cycles...
weather/sky effects...
Open world...

They could have licensed Cryengine 2 but it doesn't work on consoles. It is also 4+ years old. They didn't choose Cryengine 3, something still in development. Bethesda made their own engine. Best outcome if you ask me. But I agree the game should have SSAO since I don't think it will be easy to mod SSAO behind that new FOG system, it would be great if Bethesda implements it natively or maybe they can share their rendering engine with modders this time. cough.. cough.. Graphics Extenders. cough.. cough..

They have already realtime shadows, it is only a matter of tweaking/polishing from now on. I am OK with as good as but not better than Crysis level of graphics.

Again big statement like if it come from Graphic engine programmer geek, you have no idea of what you are talking about , we aren't talking of a bunch of people working in a basemant with cocacola , pizza and a couple of pc to make a game ... we are talking of One of the most if not the most important Game company in the RPG field .... if the Oblivion engine was such a revolution I would expect a top of the art one, Oblivion was a huge leap foward compared to the contemporary games around and was the first to use procedural vegetation all around , after it all other games around started to use it or generate something like it on their own ... after 5 years I would have expected a huge leap foward too and eventually a huge game world , instead the tech , altough nicely , much much much nicely improved comparing to thepreviouse title and able to deliver very pretty images , from the few seen it seems backward compared to Unreal engine, Cryengine , The RAGE ( rockstar engine ) or Frostbite 2 ....

Anyway I could also be wrong and the pictures we saw are just temporary and no PC versions , whatever it is I will still highly enjoy that game a lot ...

Here you can see the 10' best game engines of contemporary games and most of them run on Xbox360 ...

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/100/1003725p1.html

Second picture look really damn good and way better than first one.

It would have been possible... had they decided to licence the crysis engine To think they are still using that ol'gamebryo! I think Netimmerse has shut down, right? It might have been a waste of time adapting to this new engine though..
Nevertheless, crysis engine is not all about graphics, it's also about how easy it is to mod and make custom elements. I had lots of fun making islands with it when it came out. At the same time I think it's nice that they are concentrating on the gameplay though. New Vegas clearly showed the path: you can make a pretty cool game with an aging engine.. and an even better game than the first one still... that's usually what working with a matured engine allows. no major bugs knowledge of the tools. One can concentrate on making the game. Maybe that's why this time they are not cutting on features and that they have managed to squeeze in stuff that had been long requested like dual wielding ( and beards lol ) I hope it plays a part on the overall quality of the game like it did with New Vegas.
And well, ssao or not it's the first Elder scroll game with full shadows! I am not talking about dynamic soft shadows I am talking about shadows. All previous games had no shadows except for cheap embarrassing dynamic shadows on the characters ( like you could see them through the ceiling if someone was walking upstairs in a tavern so I would turn them off ) Even if it's just an improved version of an old engine, the screens look pretty good anyway.

Personally, I would like Skyrim to have it but I won't care either way. Oblivion didn't have it and, me being a hobbyist graphic artist, it did annoy me slightly to see rocks touching the ground with no shading. However, there were many places where Bethesda simply built the shadowing into the texture itself and, in the case of terrain, there was a feature to shade an area to sort of fake the effect a bit.

All in all, I would love for it to happen, but I'm going to be having so much fun playing (and eventually modding) that I simply will not care either way.

Dudes, could you guys explain why you are comparing renders with shadows and ao with images where there are no shadows casted, that doesn't even make any sense.
Most of the detail you guys have in your "with and without ao" images comes from the difference in lighting.

I dunno what u refer too but most of those are reference pics to show off SSAO....

I woudl really like to see tough a DEMO clip of how the Snow works and something ingame shots from PC to have a better judgement on the topic ....

...I don't think it's in development anymore. After all, Crysis 2 is only a month and 5 days left to be released (I've just preordered it ).

That one seems just a bit deceptive. http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m245/A_User_Name_That_Isnt_Taken/Untitled-1-21.gif is a better example.

Even minecraft can be rigged to use AO... Don't worry about it.

AO is like drop shadow in Photoshop and stuff... only moar dynamic...