Amazingly ~perhaps... but I don't actually like those pics. The shadows seem awfully unnatural (even in the one with the turtle ~which I think is best of the three).

**I think its the crevices among the rocks... the shadows are unnaturally dark IMO; too dark. But I suppose its [possibly] because the light hitting one stone is not reflected on to any other stones. (that'd be rather expensive.)

Yeah and all of those textures really took a hit on performance and take extra dev time to make. People need to realize there is only so much time to make the game from scratch and put everything in it. Things like these are what mods are for. We can focus on a single thing for months at a time, devs can't. That is what the job of modders is for. To cover every single texture in Skyrim with the preferred texture method is unrealistic in a game development time span with as much content as TES has.

Besides, I don't see what everyone else has with the ground, it's fine. I'd understand if it was flat as a plane across the whole game but they are using the most commonly used practice in games by painting textures onto the ground and then morphing the ground to make it seem it has texture. If you think about it, the only games that use parallax occlusion are usually linear games.

its fine for the console but im hoping that they did a much better job for the PC version. the witcher 2, dragon age 2 texture pack, crysis 2(supposedly, havent played it yet myself) and two worlds 2 all have substantially better textures for the PC version. qarl was one guy doing that stuff on his free time. there is no reason that a couple of full time guys coudlnt pull that off in a matter of a few weeks at most. this game has been in development for years now.

as for perfomance hit you could opt to use his lower res textures which were still way better than vanilla and later on people even optimized them further. i had no issues with them on my old AMD system with an 8800GT card.

More pics via http://kotaku.com/#!5793058/new-skyrim-shots-feature-orcs-cat+people-and-the-dreaded-giant-spider/gallery/1 the khajit looks pretty cool.

Ground tends to be flat.

Those are nice. :tops:

It sure would look nice, but the pictures you showed even they are mods of Crysis.
This game is developed for consoles in mind first and they are 6 year old tech and they have limited amount of memory , no way they can EVER do what your pictures show.
I know this is sad cause PC players always suffer, which is especially the case since Todd is making sure PC will look the SAME as it does on console, he wants PC to be 6 years old.
We will get higher textures but it really seem that BGS couldn't care less about PC and sort of just tossing in higher textures cause if not, the industry and game reviewers and us PC players would go nuts.

I can't for the life of me understand how MS and SONY want to keep these consoles for many more years, that is insane.
Since after 5-6 years we are already starting to react to them getting a little long in the tooth when it comes to graphics, IE lacking.
So imagine another 4 -5 years of absolutely zero change, at least there was change during the first 5 years, but they've hit a wall now.

I believe Todd said something about not using all the features of directx 11 so i'm guessing this is one of them. They probably were too deep into development to make these kind of changes. Maybe in the future they release a better texture patch for PC?

I'm so glad Nintendo is pushing forward with a new console. Hopefully Microsoft and Sony will follow soon.

I have read about 16 new articles today and all the writers were very impressed by the graphics, one saying "it may be the most beautiful game world I have ever seen". These guys play games for a living and there amazed. Yet there are people on here calling SR graphics mediocre,not that great,etc. What kind of absurd expectations/standards do these people have? Why would Beth pay any attention to them?

Yes, its sad Todd want PC to be 6 years old...

Also, I dislike mods, I prefer playing games as vanilla... so I really, really wish todd changes his mind and give PC the awesome graphic features

Then you should use mods if you care so much about the graphics, why would Beth waste time and money for people you have DX11 cards when less than 20% of pc gamers have them, and pc are less than a 1/4 of total sales?

I think what's meant is the http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/Example.jpg... No natural path is nonporous, or slick as painted glass.

*http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/example2-2.jpg

Doesn't bother me, roads are supposed to be flat.

bump mapping can only accomplish so much.

OP sounds like he is already spoiled with tessellation. Honestly i would like to see skyrim use tessellation but if it means taking away from any of the story or quests i say dont worry about it. i had fun playing morrowind if it looks better than that its icing on the cake in my eyes.

Crysis, Crysis, Crysis, how many times does some1 have to bring that up b4 they get it thru their head that it for 1 is a linear game not sand box as is TES, so it does not meet the same criteria as TES, they are 2 different types of games and Crysis would not work for a game this size, jeezus people get over it this game is gonna be beautiful just as they intend with only a little drop in graphics from Crysis, so relax and enjoy it when it comes instead of trying to depress yourself b4 it is even released.

Oh No God help us! The ground looks bad D:

The game looks okay. Nothing crazy.

You have to remember that consoles are severely limiting the potential so we don't get anywhere near crysis/bf3/rage/witcher2 graphics.

There's nothing that says tessellation and parallax occlusion mapping and whatnot wouldn't technically work for an RPG like Skyrim. That's absurd.
What's not absurd is different financial priorities. We don't know how BGS has planned their finances, do we? Unless you can give me their budget in hand

So it all comes down to how much money (time) Bethesda want to put in graphical and technical stuff and such. What they want to aim on. And I think that question can only be answered by Todd himself and not by a random forum member.

Other questions that only a developer him/herself can answer is also how difficult it really is to implement such features. How much time (money) does it really take?

Let me get this straight: you are expecting a town road in Skyrim to look like a close-up of a pile of rocks in Crysis?

Could it be that those screenshots are from the XBOX version and probably the PC version ( Hopefully ) Will have parallax mapping?

I don't see how when Todd said all platforms are supposed to look equal... <_<

WHY DOES EVERYONE COMPARE THIS TO CRYSIS?

THIS IS NOT CRYSIS!

agreed, they should compare it to Rage and BF3, both loook better than crysis