With all the discussion of the graphics of the game, I have noted that the amazing draw distance for this game has gone largely unreconized, So I have put up my own pictures to demonstrate.

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg600/scaled.php?server=600&filename=skyrimdistanceshot.jpg&res=medium

Best draw distance shot I could get, note that you can clearly see the dragon chilling on the stone arch, now lets put it in scale with a modified map orginally made by Luke Skyrimmer

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg703/scaled.php?server=703&filename=mapcomparison.jpg&res=medium

The green dots represent the rough locations of the dragon and the player in the first screenshot.

Again, Thank you Luke for your original map.

What I found more impressive is that the distant land doesn't look like crap http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/2973/oblivion201006120538249.jpg.

It is absolutely amazing. I think that you can see farther in Skyrim than in some places in real life. I love it.

If the draw distance for things like grass, bushes, etc was considerably higher I would be 100% happy with Skyrims visuals.

I agree it gets far too little credit.

I challenge anyone to find a single instance of pop in or fade in, in ANY of the footage released thus far. Todd isn't lying when he says they are "drawing all the way".

Yes, one of my favourite improvements over Oblivion.

I know. No more pea soup. It's going to be great. And just think of what high resolution LOD textures and normals will do to those mountains.

Plus if the engine makes better use of multiple cores, modern PC users will be able to crank up the grass draw distance and density without much issue.

@ worm82075: That's a good point, I haven't noticed any. Whereas Oblivion slaps you in the face with it. Even The Witcher 2 had some pop-in and its environments were tiny.

The grass, bush and plant plant view distance is really low and we can see that throughout the whole demo. We can see it at the very start of the demo, as several bushes pop-up like 30 meter in front of the player.

Most notable is the short view distance of grass in the tundra scene, where it just... looks plain awful. It's just as bad as it was in Oblivion. I think is what most people, including myself, are disappointed about.

What you mentioned was the view distance of dragons. In most games (including Oblivion), there are seperate view distances for different kinds of objects. Characters/creatures is often seperated as one view distance itself.
It's great that we can see dragons from so far away, and in my opinion I'd say it's also essential unless we want dragons to svck in the game.

In addition, we can also see a few big landscape pop-ups in the demo, kind of like in Oblivion.

We also have to consider that the real purpose and "special thing" of the "new" Creation engine is to "draw everything". It was because of this Bethesda didn't choose the id Tech 5 engine that Rage uses. We should therefore expect the draw distance to be huge for everything, yet we see pretty big flaws as I mentioned.

Other games have done this before on the console, and those games have even had an open world like Skyrim. A good example is Red Dead Redemption, which got much, much bigger view distance for everything (especially grass & bushes) in comparison to Skyrim.

Therefore, I'd say the "draw distance" is pretty disappointing in Skyrim, seeing that the real purpose and "special thing" of the Creation engine is to "draw everything".

Well at 0:16 you can see a tree straight ahead with no shadow under it, then the character turns to face the rock on the left while still walking ahead, then he turns back on 0:22 and there's a shadow under the tree. I wonder if that was intentional or just lucky.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Ed5MzgCc4

Consider the textures, LOD, etc for the landscape and consider the fact it's still on dated hardware.

I'm willing to bet the draw distance for actors/grass/etc will be much better on the PC, or at least moddable to increase it without huge frame drops on decent rigs.

I did, and Red Dead Redemption does a much, much better job on the same hardware and with therefore with the same "technical difficulties" being also an open world.

I find it more impressive that those images are from the X360 version, as far as I know.

Didn't know old Besty still had that kind of power in her.

I agree with this.

I hate when people complain about graphics/draw distance like it's the most important thing in the world.

RDR isn't as densely detailed as Skyrim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9hJMxw126A#t=3m14s

Watch the grass range as he moves the view down. Not much of a challenge. Running around the world with a small magic ring of grass following you looks awful in my opinion.

I agree with you, i mean people still compare this game to Oblivion wich is 5 years old O.o, why don't you guys compare it with, Red Dead Redemption or The witcher 2 i mean i know you like this game but stop playing ignorant fools and accept what is shown, so pls stop comparing this to 5 + years old games and compare it with new ones like you should, and yes you probably will be disappointed but you need to accept it that the they could have done a better work with not just draw distance but with everything, i mean we waited 5 years and we get mediocre graphics .

Yep, the graphics were certainly the only things that they were working on that whole time. :rolleyes:
There are much more important aspects to a game. Besides, the graphics look great.

Yeah... I mean the tundra scene is so incredibly detailed compared to Red Dead Redemption (which also got no cell seperation).

Just look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9MBqdME14I&feature=player_detailpage#t=162s
and then at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L76TTv10PkA&feature=player_detailpage#t=416s

See all the hundreds of bushes everywhere and all the cactuses in Red Dead Redemption? Skyrim's environments surely are the most detailed in the history of all video games; Skyrim definitely draws more than any other game ever seen before.

/End sarcasm.

Here's Vanilla Oblivion for comparison.
http://i.imgur.com/r7jv4.jpg

People on this forum like to complain not to appreciate..

omg looking at the map with the dots you can see how huge is the draw distance amazing

Why are you comparing a late 2011 title to an early 2006 title? Anything looks good compared to Oblivion.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/skyrim/media/screenshots/whiterun-exterior/

i guarantee you take that character and start running/walking toward whiterun and you'll see grass and bushes 'pop in'.

God, thanks for reminding me what unmodded Oblivion looks like.

Back to shock therapy to purge those memories again...

:sadvaultboy:



Argh, again.... have you no mercy?


Seriously, the draw distances look amazing. Only Just Cause 2 has more amazing ones.

I'm comparing 2005 hardware to 2005 hardware.

I don't mind pop ins.

People sometimes make it sound like they do it to annoy people, but I think they really can't do it any other way, if they don't want consoles to chug along with 3fps..

All media being released is xbox360 footage, if I recall correctly, so I'm sure you can crank grass draw distance up on the PC. Nevertheless, I'm surprised that the X360 can put out images like the ones you posted at all.