The main factor is where thie base of this new engine Bethesda is using came from. Is its a strip of everything they did from when they were using the gamebryo or was it designed from the ground up, or is there some other tech in there that we don't know about?

Honestly, I think the best we can hope for is DX10

If there were tessellation so far, they would have showed it. It would be very dumb if otherwise.

And when they tell you the screenshots are on the consoles through personal comments, without any official notification that everyone can see easily, there are very good reasons to believe that their goal of showing these console pictures was not to show people how the consoles look. If they wanted to stress that, they would have mentioned it officially in the article.

So, as I said before, you can rather safely assume tessellation is not yet. Whether it will be in later, I doubt it. Support for it would be great though. I hope for it as you that they include it.
If it's not it, they should really implement another graphical feature to bring depth to otherwise flat, ugly and unrealistic textures.

It has already been said to death that the engine is entirely new, and nothing to do with GameBryo.



Why it would be dumb? Todd has stated a politic of "non-overhype" after what happened with Oblivion. I see it perfectly logical not to publish such screens.

And I think (I may be wrong) that it's confirmed that the screens are from consoles (I think Pete Hines confirmed it on his Twitter). It maybe isn't implemented yet, but I'm optimistic.

It wouldn't be overhype... tessellation is a feature that you tick on/off. There's no uncertainty of it. Therefore, if it was in already, we would have seen it or heard of it.
It would be like if Bethesda wouldn't show HDR before Oblivion came out.

I'm more like neutral. I'm doubtful, because few games have tessellation. I'm hopeful, because it can thanks to DX11 be done with much much lower performance hit than before.

Parallax mapping is probably in, it was already there in Oblivion. Can't see why it won't be in Skyrim. It's pretty standard nowadays.

Parallax mapping was on a few dungeon textures in Oblivion. Nothing else.
I'm talking about full use of parallax occlusion mapping by the render engine

What??
I am not trying to be selfish or anything all that I'm saying is if Bethesda are comefortable with dx9 let them use it, and yes I want all those sliders to the far right, again not trying to be selfish but I delt with this when I had the old rig, and it's really disturbing when some things look exelent and others just awful.

It's just how i think. Rather then "I just got a new pc so let the devs use all the new tech. so I can have graphycs to the max" I think "I wish that devs wouldn't make a requirement heavy game so that my pc will make it to TES 6.

And how am I selfish. The more people run it the better for Bethesda and for us.

Also if Bethesda uses dx11 you think that it wouldn't be a requirement heavy game??
If they even mention dx11 a couple of months after the announcment that means they are focusing on the graphycs and that means another Crysis 2.

think about this


will tessellation work on terrain?

will heightmaps work on terrain

will it work on dungeon tilesets



lastly- do bethesda need to try HARD with this? this is a pc only feature, so it should be ok for bethesda to include it in the engine but not work hard with it as modders can add height maps /

The 7000 steps would look lovely...

Lol.
Just lol. You're very way off, sorry.

1. Have you ever heard of SCALING? Like, if you got your really bad computer, you can play the game, but it will look horrible. Ever heard of that? Crysis had it. Every game have it. Look it up.
2. If you got such a bad computer. Go and play it on consoles and you won't have to worry about that.

If you think DX 11 just means a requirement heavy game, you're wrong. It also means optimization and much better performance of older techs. Things like tessellation is an OPTION. Like HDR. -Sigh-

You're being selfish because the game having a higher ceiling doesn't mean it has a higher floor. DX11 specific features don't require you to drop DX9 support. They're additional, on top of. If you can't run them, your game doesn't look any worse than if they weren't in at all, it's just that people who can run them get a better game. The fact that we even have to defend advancement at all, especially when it comes with both visual and performance benefits, sickens me. Having a focus on graphics isn't a bad thing either, the primary output method of a video game is very important, being able to smoothly eliminate the often jarring switch between distant objects and local objects in oblivion would be a very good thing.

Additionally, Tessellation doesn't let you add more detail, it lets you smoothly scale detail out. This has the side effect of letting you have more detail close up, but the real advantage for a game like TES is that the large open world can be seamless and not require obvious additional "distant" models and textures, because the detail level can be changed to match the distance, and then smoothly put back in as you get closer. Completely unnoticeable, but can make the game look hilariously better, as well as have possible performance increases.

Many games have both DX10 and DX11 support.

Yes, Yes, Yes, Some of them do. I hear making video games is hard anyway, though!
Why modern technology should be held back because 6 year old hardware is popular I'm not entirely sure. Obviously I can see the capitalist perspective, the total lack of knowledge required for console gaming is obviously attactive to people who don't care about computers - but that shouldn't mean that great features are abandoned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_DirectX_11_support

It does seems like a nice bunch to me

I'm going to say now that I expect this game will use DX11

Tessellation works on everything. Not sure how it's calculated though, if it's based on height maps or whatnot.

All of those games don't have tessellation.
And that's not too many games either, seeing how many other games there are out there.

Dirt 2 have tessellation.
Edit: Or is it Dirt3 that's got it?

I would like it to but i can't help but think that Todd would have mentioned it in the podcast. He knows PC's

AvP has it.
DiRT 2 has it
Battlefield has it.
Metro 2033 has it.

...and I only mention the ones I'm absolutely sure they have it.

The way things are, I don't think DX11 will be included... I just have a feeling that it isn't an area Bethesda is going to cover. DX10 support seems more likely. Maybe they could support DX10.1 as that supports tessellation, but I think full tessellation on such a big world might bog down all but the top end systems. Maybe this is why they might not go with DX11.

DX11 could always be added later though, even after release. DX compatability isn't something that needs to be coded into the engine from the ground up, it can be patched in.

Unique Heaven has it too.
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X 2.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.
Civilization V partly uses it.
Lost Planet 2.

All in all, that's very few games in total. But it shows hope that if a game has DX 11, it often use tessellation for all the game, or some parts in the game. So it's hopeful.



The performance drop from DX10 tessellation is huge compared to DX11. I remember some NVIDIA guy saying somewhere that DX11 can use tessellation at a tenth of the performance otherwise, or something like that.
Also, tessellation doesn't have to apply for all objects. From the benchmark tests I've seen, a game that otherwise runs on ... say 120 FPS, will run on about 90 FPS with full tessellation on. At least that's what the benchmark tests I've looked at has shown.

And yes, you're right, DX 11 can be added later on. But why on earth would Bethesda add DX 10, just to later patch in DX 11? That would be really dumb
In all hopefullness (if that's a word ), maybe awesome Timeslip could add DX 11 support from DX 10 ^^
Looking at what he did for Morrowind, he should be working at Bethesda

For test tesslation and if your video card support it, download Heaven benschmark
http://unigine.com/download/

It's very beatiful and really imerssive, i can't wait for a game using real tesslation on "texture" like this benchemark

I hope that too.
I mean they build up a engine from scratch for a game that is released in 2011.
DX11 render paths for PC are a must IMO.

And for those who say that the consoles are holding this back:
Consider that DX11 is an API for computers and not for console. Each consoles have its own.
So the programmers have to program at least 3 different render paths into the Skyrim Engine, one for XBox APIs, one for PS3 APIs and one for Computers (DX11 for Win7 and/or DX9 for WinXP).
There is no holding back in terms of graphic APIs they use.

We may not see Tessellation, but I want to see DX11 (its easier to program anyway) and DX9 support in a brand new engine of the year 2011.
DX11 is two years old, its time for games to support it.

I'm not really sure I agree with that example of yours. There are times when Tessellation make things look swollen and not really better. Especially when it comes to square rocks, bricks and that sort of thing.


Then be prepared to become disappointed.