Ho look,another Skyrim vs Crysis graphics thread.......
Sigh,this is getting old.....

Just because it's a different game doesn't mean one can learn from it's technical achievements. Crysis is compared because it has been superior in terms of graphics and technology for several years, and still pretty much is.

There's no harm in learning from another developer, whether it's how they handle mounts (RDR), lighting (Crysis), parallax occlusion mapping (Crysis), fast travel (RDR), etc etc.
Why are you being so close-minded? We all want the best game as possible in every aspect. And sometimes that requires us to look at how other games do this. Bethesda is not a god in all areas, although still in a lot.

Tessellation is for high end computers anyhow, so I'm not going into whether or not it matters towards performance. However, parallax occlusion would have issues in a game like Skyrim. Our view distance has been drastically increased. Not only would it take a lot of time to apply parallax occlusion to a massive world like Skyrim but you also have to realize the amount of rendering of the textures will be with the increased view distance, which would really press on the system. If you think about it, what open world uses parallax occlusion? (just covering my bases in case Guild Wars 2 is using it, which I'm sure they aren't from the videos I've seen so far) FPS get to use certain techniques to add certain interesting looks to their environments because they have a very narrow scope of rendering to be done, so they can triple layer their models, add parallax occlusion to their entire environment and so on but add that to a 360 panoramic view for several kilometers in each direction, that is exponentially more needed processing power to render. They make the base game to be able to work on the majority of peoples computers due to the crossplatform way of making games that the majority of game companies use now. Now, the rest can be left to modders, we can add the little details that the dev team is too busy making a great game for. That is the realm of modders, to work on a specific thing for months that are just for eye candy.

@hlvr BF3 wins now hehe.

The ground textures look awesome in my opinion.

In fact, I've heard a thousand times that the PC version will look BETTER than the consoles' one...and I've even re-read it in one of today's newly released articles (don't remember which one, but I've definitely read it).

Isn't paralex mapping a feature of DX11?? EDIT: My bad, it isn't. And isn't Crysis a PC only game?? And isn't Skyrim epically more complex and open, in terms of what's going on in the world?? Think of Crysis as an Ariel Atom, and Skyrim as the latest E-Class Mercedes,

Stopped reading right there. http://i.imgur.com/V4QoQ.png Why aren't you on the Crysis forum? The games and game engines are not comparable. People like you are the reason I'll probably eventually get banned for flaming.

The environment in that Orc pic is amazing.

The people on this forum exhibit classical defensive behavior when a flaw of Skyrim is pointed out, it's funny that a game is so close to all of our hearts. If you find yourself getting angry because someone shows a picture of a set of rocks that look flat, take a deep breath and realize that the graphical quality of Skyrim doesn't determine your value as a person.

The 'flat' objects in the world express what happens when games don't have some of the new graphical features. TES games haven't historically been the best visually so although it's disappointing they won't take advantage of it (Of any game I think TES games would take advantage of DX11's tessellation / displacement mapping just because of how useful it is on outdoorsy terrain compared to manmade terrain).

There won't be a big push to have tessellation/displacement mapping in games until consoles support it or its equivalent in the next generation. Right now the investment in supporting it isn't a high priority because only 20% or so of gaming PCs support DX11 anyway.

At the very least it'd be a great feature for an expansion pack to incorporate in 2-3 years.

...as an aside, I've never really been fond of the texture packs like Qarl's. The stonework and metalwork in them is always way too..... gratuitous? Incredibly over-textured (pitting all over, bumps, holes, grain, etc) and over-contrasty. Too "busy". Yeah, the base textures can use improvement, but a lot of the texture replacement packs come across as ugly.

A road is supposed to be flat, try driving with a carriage over the crysis one, lets see what happens.

Besides why do ppl keep comparing crysis and tes, cut that already will ya?

Just because you compare a feature (texture depth) between two different games, doesn't mean you compare the games in whole. There is a difference between comparing specific things and entire things. A very big difference.

Yea, they`re really flat, among other textures as well. Skyrim already looks amazing, but a little parallax mapping can make it even better!

aww cmon dude what the hell negative threads already????? :banghead: they got all the way til november :facepalm: dont mess up the rest of this whole glorious week of info alright just wait til monday :sadvaultboy:

Also keep in mind that it has been stated that all the media shown by Bethesda so far is on the Xbox 360. Comparing Crysis, a PC game to a game on the Xbox 360 isn't really a fair comparison. If I recall correctly the PC Version will have better textures, and with modders taking advantage of DX 11, Skyrim on the PC could look significantly better than what we've seen so far.

Anyways, I think what we have seen so far is incredible already, and that's mostly based on the screenshots, which don't do the game much justice based on what I've read.

I would rather have some flat landscape with great textures and even better game play and story line then top of the line graphics myself, cause if they dumbed down the game just to improve on the look I won't be entertained enough to play it for long. =/

About the village screenshot
It's normal that it is flat, nobody likes to walk on edgy rocks all day.

And the forest shot means nothing, it's a tiny bit of what you'll see in-game.

PC will have higher res textures. We don't even know how high. Could be only slightly higher.
Higher res doesn't mean depth. PC version will be pretty much the same as the console version according to Todd, sadly.

It will take years for modders to take advantage of DX 11 through a graphics extender, if such a mod would ever come. You have no idea how hard it is for modders to do such things. There are many difficulties and it takes immense amounts of time. Having a closed source engine force modders to "hack" features in. This causes many problems.
Don't expect modders to ever make "depth" in textures through tessellation or parallax occlusion mapping or whatnot.

Best thing modders would be able to do is to enhance normal maps, and that's only half-mediocre compared to results we could get otherwise.

It may sound harsch, but what I said above is pretty much the bitterness of truth. I hope I will be wrong before 11/11/11 though, but I doubt it, seeing as the development is so far and seeing Todd's view on it.

Yeah, see your problem?