So, I'm looking at the screenshots, then looking out my window... Fir trees branches are slightly curved with the tips of the branches hanging lower than where they sprout from the trunk.. the divisions on each branch hang downwards.. what the heck is so hard about that? I'm surrounded by fir trees when I'm off the computer and I have never seen any game do it right. The branches don't look like a scared cats tail! Unless recently hit by lightning or seriously startled, fir trees branches and sub branches all droop downwards. Part of being a good artist is not just the doing but the initial seeing. Someone please post me a link to a game that has got this right! I hope Bethesda tweaks their toilet brush looking fir trees before release. Surrounded by pine trees seems to be this games thing in the wilderness screenshots so far, lets get it right please for once. Sheesh, looks like a deer hunting game from 1994...

More polygons, perhaps? Having a realistic curve on all the trees might mean a severe drop in performance.

Or the devs could just be idiots.
So there's that.

Er, maybe you're around fir trees too much... Skyrim might not be the best game for you to be playing.

Presumably because gravity effects real trees making thin, flexible branches curve downwards. But why waste physics programming on the tree branches? So long as the models look ok, save the computing power for the important aspects of the game.

Because the conifer family is a huge one and by no means do they all share the appearance of the fir trees out your window.

Tree thread already up... BUT its at page 9 <3

Sometimes I think we get too wrapped up in the details of something that seems trvial, at least to me so hopefully no hard feelings from others that think this is totally important.

Imagine waking up in a totally different world where there are lizard and catlike "people", giant mushrooms, dragons flying around... you don't question those things because just then you spot it.....it's........it's..... a friggin pinelike tree but the damn limbs are not sagging like they did when you was on Earth.... sorry just seems kinda funny to me.

They are called Douglas Firs. Looks it up bro.

Lots of pictures on Google proof that I'm not imagining that non-droopy fir outside my window. Phew.

I don't know, I think Skyrim has the best looking tees.

This is nirn not earth. The trees might be meant to look like that. Much like the mushrooms

Your crazy, Skyrim has some of the most realistic trees I've ever seen in a video game and I grew up in the mountains of Pennsylvania and Virginia so I've seen a few trees.

Tree's are usually the most difficult things to sell in games. If you think back on games, tree's are usually some of the first things that break your immersion because sometimes...they don't look great.

I've always thought Elder Scrolls has done a nice job, though I heard in Oblivion may have used a piece of external software, Speed Tree, to make their trees.

As a game artist myself (specifically environment art), we don't usually pride ourselves on our ability to make great trees. Most environment art guys love making buildings, rocks, vehicles, and other various hard-surface props and when it comes to trees, we're left scratching our heads. There's all sorts of threads on game art forums about the struggles with trees and foliage. So with a pine tree, and most others for that matter, the trunk and main branches are probably modeled in polygons, and then the leaves are usually on cards. The card is usually run down the branch and on these cards the artists make the leaves texture with an alpha channel so there's transparency. That's usually where the disconnect is, oftentimes games leaves LOOK like they're on a flat card, rather than being a uniquely modeled piece. That's just the way it is now, if it was done any other way, it would be extremely expensive (polycount), and if the forests are as dense as they are in the Elder Scrolls series, it's just not worth it.

I for one think Bethesda does a great job nailing that organic, natural vibe...

Only a bosmer could notice that

imo they look nice and I'm not going to complain about them.

They aren't bad. They're definitely not the best trees ever, but they're not bad.

My main question concerning trees in video games is, when are we going to get away from the leaves and foliage being composed of basic 2D images rather than the more realistic 3D meshes and textures? That is one thing that disappoints me with the current implementation of trees.

When the average system can handle a 100 million+ poly scene.

I remember looking at the trees this time thinking they look good. If you look at an Oblivion screenshot you can see the leaves patterns kind of repeating, like they've been copy and pasted. In Skyrim there's none of that. Looks awesome to me.

Ever think they arn't pine trees? This is a fantasy game with orcs, goblins and dragons. Maybe the vegitation is imaginary as well?

I thought RDR did a pretty good job. when I went up in to the forest, I looked out my window and saw that the pine trees looked pretty good.

Or infinite point cloud data.

nvm.

Because Skyrim's trees are....MAGIC. That's the end of every argument about why the elder Scrolls' world is different from ours.

Oh love talking about trees

I'm more concerned about the variety of different kinds of pine trees. One might say that we haven't seen all of Skyrim yet, and yes, that's true, but even in the same region area, there should be a much greater variety of pine trees.
Not just the same pine tree model being bigger or smaller all the time.

Vurt did a better job than Bethesda on this for his Morrowind mod imo: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=101650, http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=96468

you realize there are like 50 types of fir trees right?

Lol, yes I'm Canadian and i live in the bush. Saw a bald eagle perched in a fir tree the other day. holy Geez they have big giant yellow feet! Like big as my hand with huge talons!!