yeah..........there big jump from obliivon to fallout 3 was NOT that impressive. if its based on gamebryo its not going to be pretty unless they literally changed out at least 90% of the engine. even if its a significant improvement its still being built for the lowest common denominator the consoles.

Gamebryo is not a complete engine. The fact is even if bethesda built their own scenegraph independent of gamebryo tech. and built a completely new renderer, it can't possibly be that much more crazy visual, given the probable level of interactive huge open world spaces, with loads of detailed NPCs on the target platforms.
No doubt they will cram in loads of new goodies and it'll look so f'ing good, there are half a dozen optimisation techniques they can still impliment that will cut the resource overhead down, but I doubt everything will be casting shadows.... again i expect only actors to cast shadows. Man if I am wrong about that I will be very happily surprised.

I hope Bethesda is just going to confirm what the engine is all about soon so we don't get this discussion twice a day anymore.

I hear you on having to pander to consoles (those things that sell more than PC).

But I think Fallout3 Performed way better than Oblvion and provided far better ability to handle stress from AI and texture additions than Oblivion does by far.

what i dont want is to be stuck with a game that looks slightly better than oblivion or fallout 3 for the next 6 years. something like textures can be easily replaced with better one but things hardcoded into the engine like shadows and lighting effects are impossible or at the least very difficult to mod in. they are still working on the shadows for oblivion. i still remember that video of imperial city running on the crytech engine and its way better looking with effects like real time shadows and everything.

at the very least design the games for the PC first and then strip away everything for the consoles. that way everyone is happy.

your looking way to into it...its just a new engine

I'm taking that tweet saying its a new engine with a grain of salt. tbh it's so vague. Why anyone would jump to the conclusion that the have really scrapped all existing tech and have swapped out all their middleware for all new ones, is pushing the boat out a bit. new might just mean latest in this case.

I hope that they use the .obj format for their new game. Depending on what kind of skeletal system they use for bones, you can do all sorts of nice things with .obj's - hair movement, MUCH better animations, realistic cloth simulation..just to name a few. Something that .nif files just couldn't do well, or at all.

However, if they use some brand new file format that is exclusive to their game, it might be a while before we can make something as simple as a piece of armor. Look at Dragon Age, that game is one of the hardest games to make clothing and armor for, at least that I've dealt with...and because of that, there are very few clothing and armor mods for it.

wait what? since when does standard obj format support any of that? what has a file format have to do with "MUCH better animations". lol that is to do with the animation system and the animators. do you realise cloth simulation would likely be part of the havok engine, and thus contained in a nif.

I really wish Bethesda would clarify what the engine dealie is for us soon.

About those shadows... I think it is most probable that Skyrim will have dynamic shadows for objects and structures, since it was a feature that was going to be implemented in Oblivion. They had to remove it, however, because it was too demanding on the hardware. Shadow-casting objects can be seen in various demo videos of Oblivion, this one is a good example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUtvj_pqxvs

Yeah I know all about that. They cut it back to just actors casting shadows.

god I hope so. like i said i would be quite happy. Even if only they separate that shader function onto a per object basis i would be happy. Then at least you can mod everything to have shadows. afaik their engine on F3/Ob is hardcoded in this respect and you can't do anything about it. actors only.

I would imagine they will at least try to push this feature again, but since the hardware hasn't changed I am still reluctant to believe it till i see it. Can't wait to see though
It's all going to be about optimisation and engine wide instancing and culling features. if they squeeze it enough, then there might be room...

I'm pretty much of the same opinion. I know their pipeline uses 3DS Max based on their 'hiring' info but we really don't know anything else. Decoding a new file format and writing a new exporter is a potential though.

A recent article on 1up says that the Gamebryo tech was sold to another company. It's been speculated here that chances are Beth's "new engine" is actually a highly altered/upgraded Gamebryo. I'm no lawyer, but based on the article I would suggest that the TESV engine, may perhaps, be new. Could it legally be anything but new?

Aaw, don't hate on a new engine Yes, it might hinder the modding community for a while, but look at the long term benefits:

- Graphics could -potentially- be much, much better than Oblivion (although I doubt it, if it's expected to work on the 360 :swear: )
- Gameplay mechanics could change significantly
- Less buggy (hopefully)
- And, best of all, it could turn out to be much more flexible for modding.

Dude, you should see what the Xbox 360 is capable of! If TES V looks anything like Mass Effect 2 does then I will be very very happy! And ME2 came out a whole year ago. This new engine will be superb.

But the 360 is showing signs of age, and it can't keep up with the evolving graphics. Yeah, it can do well but it wouldn't run with the best graphics currently available. The consoles simply aren't as powerful as (some) computers.

Graphics can still be, literally, 10-15 times better than in Oblivion and still work perfectly on consoles.
If you think the graphics of Oblivion are the best that can be achieved on consoles, you are very, very wrong.

Of course consoles can't handle as much as a computer, but they can surely quite a lot before they "reach their limit".

Here's a clip showing CryEngine 3 on Xbox360 / PS3, vs. CryEngine 2 on PC. It's still quite better on PC. But seriously, if the consoles can't handle graphics, that's no valid excuse to "drag down" the PC's graphics as well.
Because the graphics on the consoles are simply then just not that good as on PC. This is exactly how Crytek has done it, as you can see on the video.

Video, forgot (LOL, thanks andyw): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WJG14uLA3k

Um. I think you forgot the link .