http://gamestage.com.br/temp/forest.jpg
ok, you may not see it as a huge improvement but im going to ask you to look a little harder.

first thing im going to say is that the grass is a huge improvement, there are variations in size color and shape of the mesh. its impressive to say the least when you compare it to oblivion. those of you who are drawing similarities are also not looking very deep.

next i am going to point out the mesh detail and lighting on the trees. you can see clearly that it is much more detailed and unlike the oblivion trees you can see through parts of the mesh, a flaw in oblivion [for me] was that light did not pass through parts of the mesh like it should, and that the leaves were for the most part just a solid texture. also the build of the trees is far closer to reality than that of oblivion's.

the statics in the environment MAY suffer from a bit of stylization. but i hardly see that as an issue.
i think its safe to say that this game is going to look amazing on ALL forms of hardware that its released on, so stylization should HARDLY be an issue.

please people focus more on content than graphics, look closer at the animations.
and be less critical. they look great.

Words of wisdom :thumbsup: Shadows is the single most great thing about Skyrim I can come up with, the lego-brick shadows of Oblivion are starting to annoy me.

bless you another positive thread what is wrong with the forum at this hour lol.

on topic: i think the forest is miles better instead of being sterile and un-dynamic like in oblivion, it is dirty and thick and overgrown.

hear, hear!!! I approve of this post!

I agree that the forests look better than Oblivion. They are definitely good enough for me. Maybe not as good as Two Worlds 2, or the Witcher 2, but they are definitely pretty good for an open RPG of this size.

Looks great. Anyone who says they look the same maced themselves before they compared them. It explains the inability to see the HUGE difference in quality and their irritated posts. Occam's Razor (google it)

I guess it's just a different region. But I thought Oblivion's forests suited Cyrodiil very well. They were dark and lush green and I liked them. But I look at the Skyrim shot and think: "woah, that's pretty bright grass." But perhaps it'll grow on me.

Speaking of depth, it looks like Skyrims got that distant blur effect going on. Hope its just an option because that stuff always hurts my eyes(and I can watch 3DTV just fine).

Not enough flowers.

Did you really think that skyrim would look worse than oblivion? Come on, oblivion is like 5 years old.

Skyrim looks much more realistic than Oblivion. Who can doubt it?

I love Oblivion. Even though it's graphics are a bit 'cartoony', they are beautiful and emotionally evocative, perhaps impressionistic.

Though I am impressed, I'm not sure yet how I feel about Skyrim's technically superior graphics. But once I am in the 'driver's seat', I will likely be thoroughly awestruck.

I agree with everything you said except for this add-on:

I don't like the grass type shown in the middle of the screen. Its color look very off, and the grass itself is very "messy".
Other than that, looks great.

Also, one thing I hoped to see in the game was dense forests... The fall forest was "middle-dense" (which looked AWESOME btw. It's my favourite part of the game so far). I wanna see something really really dense

The trailer was filmed using an xbox360, let's just wait and hope the PC has extra features.

What do you mean by "the statics may suffer"?

I sort of second this. While I wished that Oblivion wasn't so uniformly generic forest, it actually did forests very well. Looking at that shot above, Oblivion's forest has a very dreamlike quality to it; its cohesive and mellow color scheme and soft-looking greenery really make you feel at home, in a surreal way. Skyrim's version doesn't capture that. Color variation is usually good, but that shot is not very aesthetically pleasing imo. The dirty looking yellows are not nearly as nice as Oblivion's soothing greens.

Technical improvements? Sure!

The shadows: higher resolution; statics actually cast them now, not just tree leaf shadow projectors. But notice that the use of shadowing is not aesthetic, as in the Oblivion shot. The statics may now cast shadows, but not very artistically pretty ones.

The textures: mixed. Upgraded in some areas, downgraded in others. Notice the tree bark. Oblivion's looks much cleaner, both technically and aesthetically.

So while Oblivion may have been monotonous, it actually made its forests dreamily soothing and interesting, whereas most of the Skyrim scenes I've seen so far are unable to use the technical improvements to get a better "look."

Nothing that can't be easily modded up though! :thumbsup:

Honestly the forest looks wonderful, and even the waterfall scene has great potential. I will say this and please just take a minute and think about it. Graphics are the last thing updated in a game (of course there are bug fixes that come afterwards but I mean development wise) so we can expect the "messy" grass to be cleaned up and many other things to be updated to more ascetically pleasing goodness. How much better I really don't know because I am not with Bethesda, but why I do know. Lower res textures and models with lower polygon count are easier to implement then higher quality ones. They can also be updated later to better ones with low effort and aren't the highest thing on the priorities list. Just saying one shouldn't assume that everything there is the final version. Most might be, but it isn't a stretch to expect it to get better. Although it is already quite good.

Oblivion looks like "cartoony" to much Bloom ... Skyrim looks way better

I loved the forest in the beginning of the vid

Don't forget that the Oblivion screen is the PC version and the Skyrim screen is 360.

I disagree on the fact that Oblivion's forests were actually forests. At no point did I feel like I was in the wilderness no matter how secluded from civilization I was in Oblivion. The forests felt like a tamely grown orchard rather than a natural forest. Skyrim, to me, does a much better job as the grass is overgrown, the tree placement is very random, and there is much more vegetation/rocks and other statics. It's true that the Oblivion shot is more tame and idyllic, but Skyrim's shot looks so much more interesting to explore.

People keep saying that, yet I see nothing official saying as such.
Source?

I think Gstaff said it at one point.



I actually liek the look of those forests, although I don't think they'll feel as grundbreaking as Oblivion's did. They remind me more of the forests I've been in in Scotland and Sherwood. The ones in Oblivion were a bit more fantasy, enjoyable, but not very realistic.

Gstaff said it, all the previous media has been 360 and not to mention it is blatantly clear when you see the trailer because of the low quality shadows and lack of AA. A dead give away of a console shot.

Lack of AA? Au contraire, the video seemed to have too much AA to be a console version. Same goes for the gameinformer scans(the only things that I have seen to be confirmed to be Xbox 360).

What? Look at the forest scene. Look at the last scene of the trailer, as it moves into the valley, you can see the edges of the temple that the dragon was sitting on, you can see the edges fray as it moves. AA is definitely at a low setting. Also, another indicator is when the dovahkiin shouts, you can see the horn shadow cast on his neck from his helm and it has jagged edges. It's obvious by sight it is 360 but that is just the extra thing, but BGS has confirmed it was from the 360.