To be fair todd said that they had squeezed every drop of preformance in terms of graphics that they could out of PS3/xbox360 in their current game. And altough all these effects and stuff could be supported on the PC, they decided to work on the xbox 360 which is the most dated of the 3 "consoles". Goodwork bethesda :sadvaultboy:

I've seen God Rays to an extent in Fallout: New Vegas. When you're inside during daytime, light will shine through the windows.

lighting and shadows are my big issue. textures are actually at the bottom of my list simply because its the easiest thing for modders to change.

What I would wish for? Everything that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kvl31g77Z8 has, perhaps?

Most important though would be detailed depth for textures (either through parallax occlusion mapping or tessellation) and an advanced lighting system (this one would especially be needed...).

We've already been told what it will look like, same across all platforms with PC getting slightly larger textures and probably some basic features like being able to turn up the AA. The PC isn't going to look leaps and bounds better than what we have already seen.

That said, I agree with OP.

Try Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl with the Stalker Complete 2009 mod. Absolutely stunning. If Skyrim can't at least match it I'll be gutted.

...and larger draw distances for everything, including foliage and shadows, and the ability to increase shadowmap resolution, and more in-depth graphical tweaking through the ini. and graphics mods. and, if you have an NVIDIA card, the ability to force driver-side SSAO.

i don't get why godrays are so popular. the only game that has EVER done them right is STALKER: Clear Sky. the sun doesn't just [censored] out rays at you - there have to be certain conditions met, like fog or dust or early-morning dew.

the only thing i care about is cloud shadows.

- Godrays There are screenshots on www.elderscrolls.com that have clearly visible Godrays, so, no worries there

- Ssao (Screen space ambient occlusion, a technique that shadows the screen realistically) svcks a significant number of frames from a game's performance, and doesn't really make a game look that much better.

- Full, dynamic shadows system, with a shadow lod, allowing for distant objects, or mid range objects, to also cast shadows.
It seems that Skyrim has such a system. If the graphics options are anything like they were on the PC for Oblivion, there will be an option for increasing the distance at which shadows are rendered

- Tessellation, and steep parallax on the environment. A lack of tessellation is regrettable. However, it has not really been used well in the past, and to be honest, the hardware really hasn't arrived yet in terms of making tessellation fesable when used frequently in a given scene (it usually brings the frame rate very low). As far as steep parallax goes, I think they should include it. There really isn't any reason not to.

- A high texture resolution Agree x(1/0)

- A more comprehensive culling system, enabling more distant buildings and objects to be viewable at a long range.culling is the removal of geometry from a scene, either because it is too far away, or behind the camera, that sort of thing. I'm going to assume you know this, but it is misleading when what you really mean is a system that does *not* cull distant buildings and objects as often. (given beefier hardware, this problem could very well be solved by tessellation.)

- A fully reflective, high definition water system, involving tessellation for waves.Using tessellation to render water is like killing an ant with Optimus Prime. There is no need for such an advanced technique. Remember: tessellation is really used for dynamically increasing the geometric detail as you get closer to a given object (and vice-versa). A simple vertex shader is all that is needed. Besides, tessellating that much geometry in real time (an entire lake) is frame rate suicide

- A reflective surface system for rain and snow. Very easy to implement, sounds good to me.

- A more comprehensive world lighting system. Making everything look less plain. I really have no idea what you mean here. After all, they have real time dynamic world lighting. I think you might want different fragment shaders, but I'm not sure.

- Cloud Shadows. Sounds awesome

- Grass that moves as you walk through it. Features like this make me giddy. Would really like it if this were in the game.

- Soft Particles. The fog on the mountains and the fire effects from the e3 demo look pretty damn soft to me.

Basically this^

Those are not godrays the OP is talking about. Its a simple particle trick that is static and has nothing to do with an actual light source. There are many ways to mimic godrays but they are fake and dont really have the same effect once you test them out.

This game will continue to be limited by the Xbox 360 since that is the primary console it is developed for, just like Oblivion. Its sad but the only thing consoles really offer to better gaming is use of peripherals, other than that, they hold it back.