So after installing MGE for the first time and getting the settings to where I like it, I find that, in running around the island, Vvardenfel is incredibly smaller than I thought it was. This is most evident in the area that first pointed this issue out to me: the Vivec/Ebonheart area. Upon traveling to Ebonheart I turn around to see that the Vivec Temple is just across the way. Now, that may not seem very different to you, but to me it was a total mind censored, as I plainly did not think that Ebonheart and the Vivec Temple were so close to each other, even if they were just a bit aways across a lake.

And this has happened all over the game where places that I did not think were very close actually ended up being extremely close to each other, so much so that I was able to cut the time I would take to go from A to B in half if not even more. And I guess this is because there is no longer any thick fog to obscure the landscape as there used to be and because of it distances are made much shorter even though they really are the same as they always were.

Anyone else ever get this feeling?

Yeah, Vvardenfell felt a lot larger than Oblivion mainly because of the shorter viewing distance, even though it's not. And now the longer viewing distance ruin that illusion.

True, however there is an easy way to help this: just lower the number of cells drawn to 5 or 6 instead of the default. This gives the advantages of MGE but with some of the fog of the normal game. I use 6 in my game but you could go even lower. It's easy to change, check it out.

Vvardenfel's mountainous landscape also helps to make it seem larger. Theoretically, Maar Gaan and the Urishilaku Camp are located pretty close to eachother. In reality, it takes so long to walk around all those mountains that they often seem to be located on the opposite ends of the island.

MGEs options include a distance blur effect that is really great for making things seem further away, yet much more visible than they would have been without fog.

yeah. i take drawing distance 2 and i use fog. this gives me the feeling of http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc288/SisterV/MGEScreenshot22.jpg by having all the advantages of mge.

Indeed, after seeing what my initial settings produced I did lower the draw distance and add fog. It looks much better and feels better.

But even so, it is still surprising to see how small Morrowind really is compared to how it felt.

This is just like the road to Bruma for example. Look at the map and it′s really close to Imperial City, yet Bruma is snowy and I.C is not. But thanks to the road being so sinuous it feels much longer when walking to Bruma, even from Aleswell

Game worlds don't take curvature of planets into account, mostly. I think 6 cells would be the case for view distance but you would still be seeing elevated mountains. It adds so much to distance perception in real life.

I have never agreed with the "official" size of Vvardenfell of about 10 sq mi which would be about 3.3 miles on a side.
I tried walking the distances on fairly straight level and generally uninterrupted roads from Balmora assuming my own walking speed of about 3.5 mph. (My chars are typically a lot younger and faster than I am.) Walking from Balmora to Caldera took about 2 hours game time (had to swat a Kwama Forager along the way.) Elapsed time was 2 hours (game time) or about 7 miles. The distance from the Balmora silt strider to Fort Moonmoth took 3 hours or about 10.5 miles. That's at a speed of 3.5 mph. As I say my chars are younger and faster than I am.
I perosnally believe that the grid sizes were rather arbitrarily designated by people who live in places that are small in land area and densely populated with walking distances subject to interruption by traffic flow.
I live in Southern New Mexico where the distances are a lot greater and the population less dense.
The climate and geological changes on Vvardenfell are IMO impossible in an area of 10 sq mi.
But tha'ts how I choose to play. I see Vvardenfell as about 1200 sq mi, the size of Rhode Island, still a little small for the climate and geology but somewhat more realistic anyway.

The Construction Set help file tells us that "Each exterior cell is 8192 units by 8192 units or 385 feet by 385 feet." 385 x 26 is 10,010. One mile is 5, 280 feet long so that means that Vvardenfell is approximately 2 miles wide, according to the CS. 386 x 40 is 15, 400 feet, which comes to approximately 3 miles.

So if the construction set help file is correct, the size of Vvardenfell is approximately 6 square miles.

Thanks for the correction. That's my point precisely. Given the CS, Vvardenfell is "officially" too small It's geographically too small for it's climate and geology.
New York City is rather small in land area. Blizzards hit NYC not Flatbush.

I won't argue that it's a small place. With MGE, it feels like you can walk the length of it in a day or so. (I have)

However, that said, you can see dramatic changes in climate as a function of elevation. The Dixie national forest in Utah is a perfect example. In the summer, if you drive in from the East, you can be in the middle of a hot, arid desert. In about 10 minutes, as you climb in elevation, you find yourself first in a pine forest, and then a birch forest. Birch can't survive temperatures much above 65-70 degrees for extended periods, so that should tell you something there. (BTW - Dixie is an awesome place to visit anyway - well worth the trip)

The only part of Morrowind that is hard to buy is Solstheim. It is far too close to Vvardenfell, and too low in elevation, to have snow anywhere but the northern-most region - and even then, light snow; not a glacier. The rest of the island is at least somewhat believable - especially if you consider the Ascadian Isles is really a lightly forested Savannah.

According to wikipedia:
Dixie National Forest from Yankee Meadow Overlook Dixie National Forest is a United States National Forest in Utah with headquarters in Cedar City. It occupies almost two million acres (8,000 km2 or about 3800 sq mi ) and stretches for about 170 miles (270 km) across southern Utah.

This is most likely the main reason why some when using distant land with MGE like to keep the view distance fairly low, because it may be that the short view distance in the game makes it feel larger than it is, and extending that view distance may remove this illuion.

I still like to play with a view distance of ten cells with distant land myself, because I like the views this permits, plus I can see the geography more clearly, with the short view distance of the original game, since I could generally see nothing other than what's directly in front of me, it was hard to really get a good view of what the overall terrain looks like.



Maybe in terms of in-game size. But we must remember that the game is likely scaled down from what it actually is in lore. What we see in the game is likely scaled down considerably from what it should be in lore. I'd say that the geographical variation is still not really realistic even after taking that into account, but I wouldn't have wanted Bethesda to make a generic, monotonous world for the sake of a bit of extra realism anyway, so I won't complain.

I think what Morovir was trying to say was this: in a desert the climate can change unnaturally fast, due to changes in elevation. I've experienced this myself. I lived for a number of years in Nevada and Arizona and can still remember the first time I drove up to the top of Nevada's Mount Charleston. In a mere fifteen minutes I traveled from barren, moon-like desert to lush, deciduous woodland (much like Oblivion's Cyrodiil, as a matter of fact). It's a phenomenon I've never seen on flat land. I think Morovir wanted to say that bizarrely rapid changes in climate can happen in real-life too, if you take elevation into account.

Either that or I don't understand what he's saying, lol.

http://oi35.tinypic.com/2r6my3d.jpg has it a bit over 40,000 sq ft. or roughly the size of Ohio. This gives Vvardenfell a bit more substance comparatively as a large island which is a part of a large continental mass on Nirn.



The scale is correct.

I set MGE's fog distance out to about 6. That allows me to just barely see the Vivec cantons from the Balmora silt strider platform through the haze. Playing without the fog made it all seem claustrophobically tiny, the same issue as I had with Cyrodiil in OB (except that was even worse, because that huge province was supposed to be something like 50X larger than the small island of Vvardenfell, not 1.5X).

I also adjusted the time rate from 30X down to 8X, which gives about a 3 hour day, which also "shrinks" the map, in effect, but makes the game's pace feel more realistic, in my opinion. It still takes a couple of days to traverse the island, given the maze of convoluted paths and the large central obstacle. That's long enough to feel like you've spent some time there without having the sun racing across the sky and changing position every couple of steps, yet I can effectively "do" a full day in about a 2 hour session (the third hour passes instantly when the character sleeps). The longer day also works well with a "necessities" mod, so you're not eating, drinking, and sleeping every couple of minutes, yet it's still a concern. My recommendation would be to adjust your game day to coincide with the length of your own typical playing session.

I had exactly the same feeling. The limited view distance made it very difficult for me to imagine the actual distances between places. http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/57416-1283349596.jpg

Same for when I had to travel from http://www.tesnexus.com/imageshare/images/57416-1269363055.jpg, for the puzzle box. It sounds like a complete journey, having to go past this 'Fort Moonmoth' first, a fort you normally can't even see from Balmora. But it's all right over there!

Nope - you got it precisely correct. I've seen crazy stuff like that happen a lot. My favorite example was on my honeymoon. We were staying in Yosemite National park, and we wanted to visit the Sequoia grove - since the wee part of Yosemite where you find them was closed due to snow. (and she didn't want to hike in...)

When we left the park, it was about 60 degF. When we got to Fresno, it was in the mid-80's, and by the time we had climbed up the mountain to where the Sequoias were, it was already below freezing. (It did take a few hours, but we left early in the morning - so it was early afternoon when we arrived) On the way down, we stopped at a pizza place around 6pm, and it was warm enough to eat outside.

This was in mid-march, so it was still pretty snowy, but still - what a different a little elevation can make!

IMO since oblivion has omnipresent fast travel options, its actually shrunk down lots and ends up being significantly smaller than Vvardenfell .

Try running all the way to Ghost Gate, before realising youve left something important behind and having to go alllll the way back O_o
But in oblivion (cyrodiil) its just "la la la la mkay i'll just teleport back and kill the roleplaying tralalalala"

The vast differences between the geograghical diversity in the two lands also makes Vvardenfell FEEL bigger, cos you pass through different "biomes" (AHH a minecraft word has infested my language)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome


I think the fact that Oblivion allows for instant fast travel to all corners of the map also has a lot to do with it. You never have to travel far, because wherever you have to go there's a city somewhat nearby that you can conveniently travel to.

Morrowind starts at some corner of the map, with a few travel services, and no quick way of getting everywhere.

I know what you mean here. I've lived in New Mexico for the better part of 40 years.
I live in Silver City New Mexico (elev. 5895 ft.). Silver is about 50 miles (80 km) north of Deming (elev 4300 ft.)
Six miles (9.6 km) north of Silver City is Pinos Altos (elev 7000 ft.)
In a distance of less than sixty miles the climate and terrain change dramatically, but the distances though short in driving time are still much greater than 3 miles.

EDIT: Deming has a major problem with sand storms (reminiscint of blight storms.) Silver City and Pinos Altos have problems with periodic floods.

It must be quite heartbreaking to have the illusion shattered.

Yah.