You seem to believe that this was a failure on the part of the person/people responsible for the water. That neglects such matters as, design goals (should work on consoles, needs to do have this quality, etc...), that this person/these people need to do more than just the water and that unlike a modder/mod team they have a deadline and can't keep bringing out improvements on the boss' time.

Certainly not in my case, I think I've taken more screenshots of waterfalls and bridge "scenic shots" then in any game ever before. I've already had to do a sort and move of my main game folder screenshots more than once and there are entire Holds in the game world I've barely seen at all. Guess I'm not getting all the supposed problems with the water either, looks great to me.

With the exception of Gothic 3, no game, modded or otherwise, has ever equaled vanilla Skyrim water IMO. I don't care if it's a kick-ass 2011 update of a Morrowind water shader that looks really good (and it does) because Skyrim's water still blows it away. Now just wait until people start modding Skyrim water to the same levels.

No even modded Morrowind does not look as good visually OVERALL than vanilla Skyrim. You can get some really nice landscape going that looks amazing, but as soon as you see an NPC walking through it... bam, back to 'reality'

Yup!!

Morrowind modding makes for intriguing screenshots. Then get into combat and it looks like you playing a 10 year old game that has been retrofitted with to look only 6 years old.

Agree with that.

Not to mention they can focus on one single aspect of the game, whereas a developer has many many things to worry about.

Morrowind 2011 doesn't even look anywhere near as good as Morrowind can get

I think MGE XE's shadows look better than SK's, too.

Yeah I loved MGE's water and wish that Skyrim would've attempted more. But the water does look pretty good in Skyrim with the previously linked mod.

I like the water from mw,ob, and skyrim all the same. I think the mw water looks great for ponds, I think the ob water looks nice for lakes and streams and the skyrim water looks great for oceans. All the waters look good in a diferent way I think. I really couldn`t choose which one I think is the best overall.

Vanilla Morrowind < Vanilla Skyrim.

One of the glorious things you get in modding is people who focus on one thing, and one thing alone. This is what they want to do, this is what they're willing to spend their own time doing. In a company, each person is allocated the resources to create, and then has to meet crunchtime for the release date.

They are also constrained by the technology of the time. Morrowind, at release, could NOT do that much detail. Skyrim, similiarly, will be a completely different game nearly a decade from now.

To compare the work of some people who have been working, reworking, tweaking, and fine tuning their creation for nearly a decade to a game in production for a fraction of that time...

I'll be nice, for once. My momma told me if I didn't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything at all.

And, about this ops post, I won't say any more.

Is like for Oblivion after many years a shader mod has been released, and now the water with it in Oblivion are wonderful !!! (the modders have used somes textures from Morrowind modded water ^^).

So yes Skyrim have gorgeous water, but wait 2 years and the water will be much better than Morrowind with MGE

I have all elder scrolls games installed onto one-ssd-each respectively. Completely modded. And while morrowind certainly looks worlds better than it originally did. It still looks like a world created in the 90's (created, not released) with that world expanding further into the view distance.

And while that might be impressive, I find skyrims world to be a lot more sophisticated on a literally unlistable number of fronts. In every elder scrolls game they learn a great number of things, and in that process of learning they make mistakes which often become the harped on reasons for morrowind being the becon of light for everything that is good in the universe. However I have always found the things they learn positively in creating a world, outnumber the negative things 10,000 > 1

So, while morrowind might have more technically impressive features, that have been hacked into it's aging code. It still feels like a feature overlayed over an old shell. To me.

Bring on skyrim graphics extender and a texture pack that looks like an improved version of skyrims textures rather than something lifted from a texture magazine, I say.

I have not played Gothic 3, but other than that point, I agree with Arthmoor. I think the OP is pretty much ridiculous.

Wow this thread is still alive. I did it just for the [censored] of it but to prove a point.

Point is, Modded water shown in those videos is better than Skyrim vanilla water.
Bethesda obviously not trying anymore.
However you cant blame them now, Console port is Console port.

I don't count those videos you gave as proof, as they are not actually Morrowind, but rather a highly modified Morrowind.

I'll wait until after the modding community's altered Skyrim's water before making a judgment comparing extremely modified Morrowind with vanilla Skyrim.

First off there are open world games that have MUCH better water models:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzpql8zIq_Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxlbF2EDhcg and more http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gSi-a6TASY&feature=related
Far Cry 2
Dead Island

The things that are missing from Skyrim's water:
1. Underwater is still just a fog volume, no different than vanilla Morrowind. It lacks:
- Distortion, refraction post process effects
- Caustics on all surfaces
- Light beams casting through and into water from the sun
- Better sorting between when you're in the water and not (no peeking across an entire lake by being half out of the water).

2. Alpha depth blending of water edges (the hard edges you see of water on the shore).

3. Flow maps in the shaders to suggest water flowing (or not flowing) . The shores should have foam and low flow at the rapids for example.

I'm really hoping some industrious modder steps up with the CK and gets to making a better water model like they did for Morrowind and Oblivion.

This whole thread is pointless, the OP couldnt even provide good comparisons.

Pfft. close it.

I just gave good examples of how there are way better water models out there for open world games. And with the right modder we can probably get pretty close to those examples.

There are two main things that bother me of the water , other than that I could live with the Skyrim water that on streams I find nice ......


1 from distance it become very azurine , and reflecting the sky on an unbelieavable way .... it seems a caribbean sea instead than a dark sea , when you are close to the sea the water is blu dark , from the top of a mountain you see this azure that is really a punch in the eye contrasting too much with the landscape ....

2 the annoying passage from up water to underwater that for a brief moment or a specific angle of visual makes you see the underwater as without any water , so cristaline clear , also I don't like that you can swim with armors and full equipment but that's another thing ...

as for the "extras" the crysis water is 3d and impacting with physics of the game so you can have actually boats riding on the waves .....

but the best water I have seen is actually here .... an old game by bethesda , I honestly didn't like much the unfreedom that it had but it was nice when piloting a ship , if they just implemented this sea in elderscrolls together with ship controls etc woudl be nice ....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTgNsly3YSc&feature=related

ofc now there are even better renderization of sea and stromy seas....

like in the great Uncharted III

In skyrim the sea and water are still flat surfaces with just a bump map scrolling over....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSk8mGfAZHA&feature=related

Why isn't the water better? Because spending ages on prettier water is a waste of resources. Because the water in the game looks fine. Because nobody spends their time playing the game looking at water. Because adding a prettier water shader would take up a bunch of extra resources for very little visual gain - most of the game doesn't have water.

Consider that Skyrim is a pretty resource heavy game, thanks to it's very nature - i.e. being an open-world game with varied environments that aren't just sectioned off or anything. None of the games listed above can really compare, unless you're seriously going to tell me Just Cause 2 has environments as varied as Skyrim's. And don't point at modded games as examples, either - by the time said shaders were created, the games has already been out for several hardware cycles. Do you see any water shader mods for Fallout? Or any shader mods at all?

I don't think the Vanilla Morrwind water was much different than the first video in the OP's post.

Tomerk's LiquidWater for OBGE, the best looking water shader for Oblivion, is pretty much identical to Morrowind Graphics Extender's most up-to-date (indeed, Tomerk himself had a hand in some of that), except that MGE's looks better on account of 3D water waves.

If SKGE is anything like OBGE or MGE and/or is worked on by the same people, you can expect similar results. I have a feeling that Morrowind's 'best' will continue to stay ahead of the curve, though.

If this thread is pointless to you then did you post just to raise your post limit or are you looking to start an argument. Are you trying to infect others with angry persona?


I personally like the water better in some areas in Morrowind but I do like seeing rapids even if they aren't perfect. I believe we will see some truly amazing water in a couple years when new consoles come out able to do tessellation much more effectively.

You also have to deal with the innumerable ai, general texture quality, and other improvements they implemented. There's aLOT more scripting running on in this game than in previous games.

You. Do. Not. Understand. Businesses. It's this simple. They want to make a product that will: meet the console system, meet the PC system, AND meet the AVERAGE PC system. Mine? No, it's not average, and I'm looking into upgrading it further with the 600 series of Nvidia when it releases. Am I average? With a OEM machine? No. I realize this.

Further, as I said before, modders worked, as a labor of love, for years on a single aspect of the game. Developers CAN. NOT do that. They have something called 'managers' and something called 'investors' who want to... oh... I don't know... see the product come to market so they can justify, to a thing called 'stockholders,' the expense they've been paying every HOUR to the people who work for them.

In short, you don't understand the difference between a dedicated (some might say obsessed, I might say brilliant) modder and a developer.

Furthermore, you made the first step: you just did it for the lulz. I'm waiting for you to backtrack even more when you've realized how completely unrealistic your expectations are. I'm pretty sure you'll do it. You've done it once already. I'm betting a quarter on "It was just a thought experiment."