Is there a list of the technical differences (program and engine) between OB and F03? Trying to get an idea of what has been corrected or added between the two.

Wow. Slow board.

It's a pretty vague question. Some specifics would help.

Yea give us more details, and it is slow when nobody is on. Between like 5-10am MT and 4-8pm MT is when it really gets going usually. (Mountain Time)

Hi Hel Borne!

There are a lot of differences, but also a lot that is the same since its the same game engine with refinements made to it.

I know you like to make nifs, so I will make a comment there with what I know. This has been advanced quite a bit, and the two are not compatible with each other. My most favorite feature is that ALL of the textures are defined in the nif, not just the main color texture. That includes the normal map, environment maps, glow maps, material maps, the whole works. And to retexture a nif, you don't have to copy the mesh, you only have to make a new 'Texture Set' in the GECK and apply your new textures to the NIF in the GECK.

So you can re-path the textures in the GECK. Thats cool. What about the following:

HDR and Bloom support - Better daytime shaders?
Custom Animations - Conditional dynamic switching?
Rigging (skeleton.nif) - More or fewer bones than OB?
Body slots - Specify different bodies based on race or individual?
Face slots - Ear, hair, head, teeth slots?
Hair - Riggable hair in FaceGen?
Weather - Collidable particles? (ie no rain thru sheds)
Lighting system - Shadow support, lightmaps, bleeding?

Nope It still rains no matter what as long as your outside just like Oblivion, under a roof or not. Hopefully NV fixes this.

Dynamic anim switching: No, although there's a lot more anim groups and each weapon can have its own attack anim.
Rigging: Fewer, IIRC, but there's dismember partitions to set up, and each body part can have several health levels.
Body slots: More. You can add head parts that don't take up a slot per individual.
Face slots: Yes.
Hair: Don't think so.
Weather: No.
It'd be easiest to just have a nose around in the GECK, really.

Didn't think you could run the GECK without the game installed and I don't own the game. No intention of modding F03. Looking to see what Beth has done with the engine and design updates.

As far as the animation switching. Are weapons defined by type and each type gets its own group or can you create new weapons with unique amins?

Does FaceGen have 'asymmetrical' sliders like the full version?

Can you use more than one body mesh per six?

There's a preset number of weapon types (about 8) and a preset number of attack anim groups (about 16). Each type has its' own set of attack anims. Few/no weapon types have all attack anims filled, but you can't expand the list or define new groups- which anim (0-15) is just denoted by 5 bits on the field rather than allowing for a full path.

Body meshes are still just the one per six.
Haven't tried facegen.

Even if you don't plan on modding it, FO3 is fun to play .

My kid has it on the PS3. I've watched him play was wasn't sure how it was put together. Looks like they are using some baked textures cause the world 'seems' to have more shadows/depth.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 both have asymmetrical sliders, they're just not exposed in the games' UI. But they are in the CS and GECK when creating a race or NPC, and the game does read the values.

Never seen an asymmetrical face on any NPC in any mod and I wonder why they disabled those controls during player setup.

Any other innovations or fixes added to F03?

You can assign one male body mesh, one female body mesh per race in GECK. So you can use BABE for Asian female, Exnem for Caucasus female, and so on. However, clothing still matters.

hm, on the graphics side of things, here's some off the top of my head:

Image Space modifiers; we have excellent control over screen tone, blur, color cast, etc.
Dismemberment.
Easy configuration and control over the various shaders/materials for meshes.
More IK stuff going on with skeletons.

And awesome load times.

There are more bones in the skeleton not less. It is exactly the same(bone lengths are different though) but with the addition of 2 pauldron bones.

support for custom environment cube maps. and the ability to add a mask texture that controlls the level or to completely mask off areas being affected by the env map.

Flip controllers are out. I actually tried as well. it just hangs the geck.

the terrain LOD algorithm is improved.

normal mapping is zillion times better on vannila assets.

the whole invisible hair/ears while equiping a helmet is somewhat solved. ears are no longer a separte nif, and are part of the head mesh. there is a separate hair piece that gets swapped in when equiping headgear. there is facial hair

nifs use a string listing.

yep, the texture baking is more complete than was in oblivion. and also slightly more exaggerated.

alpha sorting works better imo.

form lists and texture sets.

'True' cube maps? As in you can make a functional mirror?

They're just regular cube maps, the game doesn't support 'true' reflection of the scene, if that's what you're thinking.

they aren't zone specific either. 1 map per shape. regardless of location. which kinda svcks. but its a step up from oblivion, which was ugly as hell.

You didn't like the stand of pine trees and the blue sky?