I thought Risen NPCs had behaviors and such, and I KNOW it has quests. Eh, I haven't played it so I'll take your word for it.

I just toggle SSAO on and off in Crysis and saw no difference in framerate.

Just sayin'.

Personally I don't like ambient occlusion as it tends to shade in things I'd like to see.
I have a diffrent method of tweaking my game specs to get the best look out of a game.

You failed to mention that the Ambient Occlusion used in those games were minimal at best on the console.



That's nice and all, but it's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact. If you have a good enough computer ( which I have and obviously you have) you won't see a difference. However fraps knows the difference, as framerate drops significantly with Ambient Occlusion, I drop from 208 FPS to 174 FPS. I would say that is significant.

It's pretty much been confirmed that the engine does in fact have Ambient Occlusion and all the other nice new lighting effects of the day.

The point everyone needs to realize is that just because the console versions have Ambient Occlusion in them, they are incredibly watered down to fit within parameters of the console. Todd has already said (and Pete Hines to a point) that they will be working on the PC version separately from the console version, making a UI specifically made for the PC, high res textures and almost certainly they will add in other PC unique features such as DX 11, ambient Occlusion fully realized, tessellation and more. People need to stop doomsaying that the game is terrible when they don't know what they are talking about because no matter what people say and show examples of how they are 360 screens and compare them to the games that are supposed to have amazing graphics and they beat them on the 360 version, everyone thinks that the PC will look exactly the same and it's not true.

Even if Risen had all of that, the dragons (and their AI, and their free-roaming pathfinding and other behavior) and traveling NPCs alone could be a sufficient enough performance expenditure to make it unfeasible depending on how they were implemented. I think we're also forgetting wildlife AI.

Ambient Occlusion is, in simple terms, creating shadows where light will find it hard to get. It is a post-processing shader effect and is done entirely on the GPU. The Oblivion Graphics Extender project has many SSAO shaders which have a few FPS performance hit because they have to work out all the maths themselves, as Oblivion gives them very little to work with. Properly implemented SSAO is very light, and looks fantastic. It can change a poor lighting system into something that look decent, and mask the corners of here.

In short: The fact that skyrim is a large open world is meaninless, it is a post-processing effect and does not take significantly greater resources for a large scene, only a more complex scene - and less open games often have more complex scenes. It is entirely GPU bound, so AI and RAM constraints are near meaningless to it.

You know, in the spanish skyri, cover, there is a picture of a dragon perched upon a rock (not the one released with the high-rez screenshots) , this picture actually seems to show SSAO.. The picture with the frost giant might just be rly old.

if I want ultra realism I will use the holographic deck on my starship.

its fine game-play is the most important thing

Gameplay is not so all important as to consume all else. *Video* games are a visual medium, the visuals are very, very important, especially in an RPG series that prides itself on immersion. SSAO can have a huge impact on immersion, as the corners of objects can often not interact with their surroundings very well, leaving little holes and general ugliness, which SSAO hides, as well as compliments a more general light and shadow system to give the effect of greater light diffusion without the performance hit of actually simulating the movement of light.

Here's a shot of the SSAO shader for Morrowind: http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/57416-1270647898.jpeg

Upper shot is without the shader, the lower one with the shader active. Basically it adds a shadow-like effect to object edges.

Another one: http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/57416-1270647858.jpeg

Of course not, but with all Bethesda's talk about how impressive their new engine is, it can seem just a tad dissappointing when it's still behind many other games in some ways. I mean, I don't expect Skyrim to have the best graphics of any game on the market, but what we're talking about here is an effect that a fair amount of games are doing now, and at least some of them are multiplatform or console games.

I hadn't paid that much attention to the lack of SSAO in the screenshots at the moment, but now that you mention it, yes, I'm not seeing it. Kind of dissapppinting, but its absence never quite jumps out at me like a subpar model or texture does or something like that. It's one of those things that's nice to see, but I can live without if it's not in the game, though it's a minor dissappointment if the engine doesn't support it.



I agree fully, but just because something isn't the most important thing in existence doesn't mean it's not desirable. If that were the case, there would be no point to video games at all, because they're by no means essential. No one ever said gameplay isn't important, here, it is, but that doesn't mean it's the only thing that matters. Good graphics, like good sound or a good story, is not the most important thing in the game, but it can improve the experience and make it even better than the gameplay alone can make it.



Considering it's been done in both Morrowind and Oblivion with their respective Graphics Extender plugin, it may not be as impossible to know its feasibility in a game like the Elder Scrolls as you might think. Admitably, in both games, its only accomplished through fan-made plugins, but I'd think that it would only be more efficient if it were implemented as part of the engine by default.

What about the ps3 though?

RDR and ACB both mad minimal AO, and Borderlands and Metro 2033 were NOT open world games... at least not in the same sense that Skyrim will be. Borderlands might have been a free roam game, but its world was divided into smaller areas to be explored sorta like Fable or Knights of the Old Republic.

Yes, a few games have had AO for the console over the last couple years... but for the most part its very limited due to the system resources it consumes. Skyrim will certainly have AO, but I wouldn't expect to see it in full force on the console.

Doesn't uncharted 2 have it? I know it was doing some excellent stuff under the hood for a console game. Uncharted 3 is going to be amazing.

Arma2 have SSAO, and a larger world than Oblivion (but less smooth and densely detailed). But the cost is quite high, so I tend to not use it on my mediocre hardware.

Little-to-no more powerful than the 360, so don't expect it there either.

I too hope for ambient occlusion for PC at least. Maybe a minor version for consoles if they can handle it without blowing up :rolleyes:

Bethesda hasn't been good at all with shaders in the past, right?
I hope this has changed.
SSAO, god rays, Subtle distant-DoF are just a few of those.

Look at my above post about uncharted.

I play on 360 and to be honest i'm kind of glad i don't know about AO and all that stuff. When i'm kicking the ass of some frost troll or dragon i wont really check out how the light reflects of the rock in the distance or whatever. I know it means a lot to some people and i respect that fact, it is nice to sit back and soak up the visuals and the lanscapes now and again, but i think the visuals look damn good anyway!

I suppose one of the main factors is that i played Oblivion on 360, played Fallout 3 on 360 and the difference was massive in the graphics. I have only recently started playing Fallout and i was supprised at the graphics to be honest, and i'm pretty impressed still. I think for you guys with the "super PC's" you are just getting way ahead of us console peeps, and what we are gonna get with Skyrim, you have already had with something else a year ago.

So i'm just happy with the steady progress games are making visually as i'm sure are the rest of the console players, and i'm happy in the fact that i get what i'm given. I've been tempted many times to get a PS3 or a gaming PC rig, but i love my 360, it just feels better to play than anything else and even with all the graphical enhancements out there on other platforms, feeling good to play means the most to me.

Sorry what was we talking about?.........

I think you're confusing "caring about graphics" with "graphics are all consuming". If you like having graphics stagnated so much that there's been very little advancement in the past 6 years, then fine, but don't act like it's a good thing. "Happy to get what they're given" is how I describe many console gamers too - but I mean it negatively. People should not be paying $60 for lazy games on underpowered hardware and be -happy- about it, it's 2011 and modern hardware is so much more powerful it's almost obscene. I probably wouldn't mind as much if (microsoft mostly) every peripheral or related product wasn't rediculously overpriced. Games are too expensive, controllers are more than they're worth, microsoft's hard drives are stuck at pre-2000 prices, so on.

@ Valandil Ciryatan I couldn't agree more nicely said. I game on the ps3 (I have a 360 too but prefer ps3) and I'm very happy with what it gives me.

Haven't played the uncharted series I take it?

Uncharted is pretty artistically, not technically. Come back when something on the level of uncharted can be played at a halfway decent resolution and with decent textures or shaders.