Looking at some screenshots of the new LOTR game made me wonder how I have neglected to think about this.

Will there be depth to the Snow in Skyrim? Oblivion is rather silly in that you are always running on the very top of the snow like it is a groomed ski slope. Generally walking on snow in the wilderness requires snowshoes, as one will quickly find themselves waist-deep in snow otherwise. I'm not asking for that exactly, but having people feet disappear when far off the road deep in the wilderness snow would be nice. The footprints would be difficult, however, and based on the look of Skyrim's engine, I would guess its not very good at that type of thing.

There was talk on snow accumulation. Not sure if that implied much difference in depth depending on where you are.

I'm looking forward to see the snow.

I hope it's possible to reshape the snow by fighting in it... Get knocked down by an Ogre (Not Orge... those things are just stupid.), make some Snow Angels, roll out of the way, knock the Ogre (Not Orge... those things are just stupid.) down, watch him make snow angels... stab him, then fall down a cliff. Hopefully, then I can do a Madmartigen impression, and POOF! Liberation from Massive Snowball Against Side of House!

I only want snow, I don't really care how they make it, anything with snow is fine with me I guess for skyrim, but closer to the borders of other provinces should be less snow, but I wouldn't be bothered if there's a bit snow near the border of other provinces, it's not a big deal...

I would like the snow to accumulate to a point where it could be knee-deep and leave tracks.

However, I would not like to be strolling along and find myself falling into 10 feet of snow. :sadvaultboy:

Agreed. I've been dealing with so much snow IRL I wouldn't wish the annoyance of wading through snow on my Skyrim character.

It would be awesome if it did get to knee-deep in some places. What would be absolutely awesome would be if the engine had advanced so much that it allowed (as others above have said) snow angels and deep tracks to be made, depending on how you land and everything. Somehow, I think the deepest we'll get is up to our ankles (if that), but surely there'll still be convincing footprints.

well realistic snow would be good, though i've never really seen snow before (other than TV) so i wont know how realistic it is.

I'd like to see realistic snow too. But imagine, maybe people in central america or mexico or southern states will think it is a graphic glitch. "Why are my feet not showing?" It would probably be kinda hard to implement that sort of thing but what do I know.

Fly to Missouri right now, you'll get all the snow and ice you want. Snow is so beautiful and I love it no matter how many times I see it. When it's snowing hard I make sure to drop everything and go outside :celebration:

Sadly, this sort of thing is completely impossible as long as the game is being developed on the 360/PS3.

Those 5 year old consoles just can't handle that sort of stuff. Technical limitations make me sad.

Want to buy - PC only Elder Scrolls game.

I think that snow will be "bump mapped' or "displacement mapped" decal, or texture overlay over the game terrain and statics, so we will see the depth allowed by those mechanisms, and no more.

Alot of people despise its existence, but the Sims 2 tackled accumulating snow, and the depth of the snow, fairly well. Its possible, but unless its mentioned, assume its out.

Displacement mapping is almost certainly what they will be using but it will be retroactive while the snow falls making it seem like it accumulates. That's what I would do anyhow.

Yes, me too, but I would provide both methods for different gears. The basics are the same.

While I doubt they'd bother allowing you to make "Snow angels" and such, the consoles could handle realistic snow with depth.

Have you heard of this little game called Uncharted 2? One of the major PS3 game series, the second one had some of the BEST Snow I've seen in a game.

For those who haven't played here, this video shows some of the snow and effects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMFDw4ZXKUg

Having snow lilke that is entirely possible in this day and age, I hope that Skyrim's is as good or better at least.

If Skyrim is even close to the amazing snow and ice effects of Uncharted 2, I'll be satisfied.

I want snow you can sink into and rain effects like red dead redemption had. Puddles and Rain Drops on your screen = Immersion. Snow flakes better hit my screen and if I can't make a snow daedra on the ground im gonna be ticked.

I'd think that some degree of simulated snow depth wouldn't be all that hard to do, actually, though it also depends on how the accumulated snow thing works. The hard part, I think, would be realistically simulating how the snow reacts to someone walking through it. My guess is that for that, we'll get a decal with some shaders added on to make it look 3D.

No.

There is not going to be any snow depth. I've seen enough of the pictures of the game by now to see they are using a fairly standard (and simple) snow shader technique. On the 720p images especially, it became very obvious, the limitations of the effect. They do something ala Crysis and Crysis Warhead to pixel shade the snow onto surfaces. Apparently there is some artist-directed component so as to not make the cover seem too even (which was said in an article).

When it comes to the surfaces you're walking on, I would hope they at least do something like in Uncharted, where the "snow" was actually another mesh on top of the ground, without coliisions. So your character was remaining on the ground but your feet appeared to be inside of the snow mesh, then on top of that there would be a lot of particle effects around your feet to mask this, and a fairly decent trail of footprints, though they faded way too quickly. But honestly I expect only some footprint decals. The Uncharted snow areas were very small, and scaling that kind of effect to an entire game would be a lot of hard work, I think, unless like they did in Oblivion (for terrain, tree, rock placement), randomly generate a snow mesh over the terrain, based on the terrain, so it's realistically deeper where it should be, with snow drifts and such.

But no, nobody is going to be making snow angels, and trudging through knee-deep snow while displacing it, and it "remembering" these shapes. That all takes a physics particle simulation with millions or billions of particles.

the first lost planet had quite convincing snow effects i seem to remember, and thats must be old tech by now...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj5HY3PhuME&feature=related looks like that mesh thing as mentioned because theres no footprints, just a few particals displaced

I agree with this, I've played with shaders a bit in DS3 and I've seen similar effects shown by people looking for a snow effect. One of the people working on snow shaders in DS3 was able to have snow fall on top of the tree but not underneath the tree to mimic real life. The shader is probably set up to randomise when and where the snow falls. It may even be that the shader includes some form of displacement to get this effect. The question would be can the shader be attached to script for controlling the effect also... for example is it linked via scripting to the weather in the game so if it's been snowing for a long time does it get deeper?

Those 5 year old consoles haven't been even remotely optimized yet.

Games have yet to use all of the technology, so don't say it's impossible.