I never said it was a good reason or that I was happy with it, though. As someone with a DX11 capable rig, I really wish they would put forth the time and effort to actually do something with it.

Meh. I guess theres always Witcher2 and BF3 when it comes to taxing my PC.

I just wish BSG took a different approach and atleast tried to implement some extra features. Waiting for gfx mods

But why would bethesda care about that? Is my money somehow worth less because I'm a PC gamer?

Oh, I am not saying is a bad thing
But like anything not considered a commodity or a staple, game consoles are pretty much in the "luxury" item category, and like I said, if (luxury of great) graphics is indeed a big selling point, and the consumer can get that from computers, there would be a shift to computers that would hurt not only the sale of consoles, but also the paid services offered through the consoles. I don't put it past MS to grease developers to hold off on graphics as to prevent PCs and PS3s to present better graphics than what you would get on an xbox.

What do you mean?

No offense, but didn't you read what I said? If graphics are that important to people who play on consoles, and they "turn" to play on PCs if it has a lot of DX11 features, it wouldn't hurt Bethesda in any way. It would hurt the console companies, but not Bethesda at all. Bethesda would only benefit from it from a selling point of view, because it's more good they got to show and market.

The fact that it would hurt the console companies would have nothing to do with Bethesda, unless, as I said before, they got this "deal" that BGS are to focus less on PCs than they definitely could.

Why do bethesda care if a console user goes to PC because of the graphics? They get the money either way - arguably more for a PC sale, especially if it's digital.

Neither did I. And I agree completely, but if we want those capabilities utilized it looks like the modding community is going to have to do it unless Beth releases some sort of hi-res texture pack like Bioware did for DA2.

Glad we're on the same page, amigo

Ah, ok. You're statement just confused me with a quote to my post, since I wasn't exactly referring to the consoles. I was just calling Bethesda lazy for not wanting to do the extra work to get it up to what it could be on the PC.

edit: Their exact motivations are hard to speak of, but we can say one thing with certainty. By keeping each platform looking similar, rather than taking advantage of their unique qualities (since I'm sure the 360 and PS3 have qualities that set them apart from each other), Bethesda is doing the least amount of work needed.

I read what you posted. I was just merely expanding on the console comment I made. Although, it could end up hurting Bethesda, if say, MS would turn and, rather than offer money to them to keep graphics equal among platforms, they merely state "if you don't, you don't make games for xbox anymore". Obviously, you really never know about the inner dealings of companies, but certainly there are plausible scenarios where one, or more, or all sides could end up getting hurt.

Yeah..that's just not true. Both AMD and Nvidia are very good , the major differencess nowadays are exclusive features like PhysX or Eyefinity.



http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/8/918428_41208_back.jpg.

Anyway I want all of the features DX11 offers, however I doubt we'll actually have any Modders will probably have to add them. I'm saying this based on what Todd himself said.

Yeah I know, but it's kinda sad isn't it. They make this new engine, give it DX11, but don't take use of the latest features...
It feels like running up a hill, you've come so far, and you're just about to reach the top... until someone suddenly throws a rock at you, causing you to fall all the way down the hill.

Modders won't be able to add DX11 features for a long long time. And perhaps then, they might not even be able to. The modder responsible for both graphics extenders (MW and OB) is Timeslip. He started the projects and made both foundations. He should be able to add some DX11 features, but most likely not tessellation (as I understand, that requires you to alter all the meshes/textures in the game). Perhaps shademe can help too.

In any case, it will most likely take years before a graphics extender is even started by modders.

I just think it's so sad that Bethesda COULD add DX11 features, but they don't. We're so close to reach the top of the hill, but we're not there yet so we fall all the way down the hill when the rock hits us.

I know very little about PC gaming and very little about DX 11 since I'm a console gamer PS3 and Xbox 360. Played Morrowind on PC and 360 and played Oblivion on PS3 and 360. Gonna try to dumb down OB on PC so I can try out some Mods and try out Nehrim. Don't know if my crap, old PC can handle it but I'll find out lol.

My point is, I'm not really a PC gamer, but why should PC gamers not be given the ability to utilize their PC's to the maximum capacity. They've spent money on a top of the line machine, so they should be given the option to play a game using the newest tech available at maximum capacity. I don't think it should matter if consoles display the game differently. I honestly don't think PC users would complain much if their version of the game looked/played slightly different than consoles. And what do us console users care if PC gamers get a "graphically" better version. I don't plan on getting games for PC so as long as a game is optimized to take advantage of my PS3 hardware at its fullest potential and utilizes my HDTV's 1080p setting , I will be happy with how it looks on my HDTV.

Problem is, that isn't really happening. What it comes down to is money. I would assume it is costly to release across multi-platforms if you have to tailor to all different types of hardware. So, you program to your weakest platform then try to tweak and optimize for the stronger ones, in order to save money. That being said, I'm not a game developer and again, I am a bad resource of info when it comes to gaming PCs. Really, my statement was just my personal opinion, so please, someone correct me if I am way off base. But I know if I did dish out money to get a high-end gaming machine, I'd want to run games on it using all the newest tech available.

On a side and possibly unrelated note, should I bother re-installing Morrowind and getting some mods? Does it change the game play experience much?

Of course I would prefer if they were already in game but if modders are able to fully use them I'm glad. BTW I know something like this would take a lot of effort by modders but do you really think adding such features would take years?

After speaking to one of the modders myself, yeah. That's what he said at least.
It takes A LOT of time for modders to add DX features, or even shaders. And first they need to "hack" it in. They can't implement it normally as developers can. And when they "hack" it in, other problems occur, etc etc.

Expect a graphics extender for Skyrim to take years, or if we're unlucky, never come. There are very few modders that know how to do this. Very very few. And not all of the few that do know how have time, or the urge do put so much work on something like that.

So, basically, DX11 without any features would only give us better performance, even though it COULD give us so much more from the start.

The most important things to me in graphics is lighting, water, and texture resolution... of course, the tex resolution will be higher on the PC... but I doubt we will see tessellation, although it looked great in just cause 2. Man I'm gonna go play that now.

For those who might know, I have a question about textures. On the Bioware forums there was this discussion about the HighRes Texture pack for Dragon Age 2 and the fact that most of those textures are not visible on WinXP/DX9. Someone claimed that was because DX11 supports larger texture sizes than DX9. Is this true? If so, how then is "Qarl's Texture Pack" for Oblivion possible in DX9?

Hm, I'm very confident that this game will use DX9. There's not much point in using the DX10 or DX11 libraries when they don't take any advantage from it. Also the game will probably run on Windows XP, too, so in order to allow that, the game must use DX9. Of course it is possible to write a DX9 renderer for XP and a DX11 renderer for Vista/Win7, but these kind of engines are not typical for Bethesda. It is more typical for companies that make graphically intensive games and want to sell the engine. Also, as we know that nif model format will return and this also means that the Creation Engine is based on Gamebyro.

I also hope that Nvidia doesn't pull anything like their physics stuff with us ATI owners. I want to be able to take full advantages of all features without having to buy into Nvidia's products. I don't care which card manufacturer I go with it's just that when I bought my current card, ATI were on top of the mid-range pile.

I don't have a Dx11 capable card, but I will after summer. I just want to know that whichever card I get it will run everything fine.

Huh? Why would the nif file-format be tied to the entire gamebryo-engine? Just because my computer can play quicktime movies doesn't mean I have a Mac.
As far as I know Bethesda just took the things they liked from the tech they owned and glued it together with some new tech to create the new engine.

Texture is the easiest thing to do mod, so that should be the smallest of our... problems in terms of how the game looks.
I also agree about the lighting, SUpahDonkeh. The lighting is what makes a game look realistic and beautiful imo. Skyrim's lighting kind of look like Oblivion's, and nothing at all like how lighting looks in newer games.

Not really sure about what you mean with DX11 supports larger texture sizes than DX9. I can create a 4096 x 4096 resolution texture in Oblivion. There's nothing stopping me. QTP3 has generally "medium" resolution (often 512 x 512 or 1024 x 1024). The normal maps is what makes QTP3 look so good. It's simply very well done normal maps.

So yeah, I've never heard of DX11 supporting larger textures. Larger textures isn't what makes the game look good anyway. It just wastes VRAM. What can make fairly medium resolution textures look amazing is depth. Normal maps can help, but there are far better things out now today. Parallax occlusion mapping and tessellation is the best thing now. They make textures look like actual shapes and not ... flat.

It's been confirmed Skyrim will have DX11 option. It will run DX9 on consoles though sicne they're limited <_<

I believe QTP3 also made use of some parallax occlusion mapping, didn't it?

Parallax mapping (on a few textures, not all... I think). Default oblivion uses it as well (but only on a few cave textures). Parallax occlusion mapping doesn't exist in Oblivion, as far as I know? I can be wrong though, so please correct me.

This is how parallax occlusion mapping look in Crysis:
http://h-2.abload.de/img/2j935.jpg
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/screenshots/original/2008/07/Crysis_Parallax_Occlusion_Mapping.jpg

Without it, all those stones would just be a flat texture. Quite amazing, isn't it?

That second link doesn't work hlvr.... And the first, is that with a beauty mod or something? I don't remember the ground looking that good in Crysis!

EDIT: and I googled it; DX11 max texture size has indeed been increased from 4K to 16K, so the Dragon Age 2 textures must be bigger than 4K.