Skyrim graphics

[Sean_W]

The water doesn't even come close to games like Just Cause 2 and The Witcher 2, Crysis yeah. Just Cause 2 uses CUDA. Skyrims water texture looks flat, there is no tide and light doesn't shine on the water dynamically.

Games have shadow quality issues because they're mostly DX9 and old tech, Just Cause 2 didn't because it had High resolution shadow support, so did Gothic 4. Skyrim doesn't employ any blur on such shadows, that's why they look pixelly and crap and even Oblivion had better quality shadows. Skyrim's waterfalls don't even animated long distance, they just a low quality texture.

Gothic 4 is a lot more dynamic in the graphics department.

[nutcrackr]

As expected really. Looks ok, for me its oblivion with better shadows and a crisper feel. Witcher 2 is a better looking game for me though.

Not a fan of the jerky cycle shadows.

[Ancient76]

Originally Posted by Bah!

I have both of those games and neither one of those games look as good as Skyrim. They have higher resolution textures, but as far as things like vegetation, distance, lod, models, etc go Skyrim clobbers them.

To me Skyrim also looks better. It has better design and atmosphere.

But graphical features are important when we talk about performance.
Why game without SSAO, Parallax occlusion, real dynamic lighting, with poor shadows and textures, perform bad in some cases!

Here is Two Worlds 2 with POM:

[FastRedPonyCar]

Originally Posted by Crow_Nest

Poor textures, i was hoping for better. But the environments and landscapes are breath taking. The best ive seen in any game.

This is my consensus as well. It's the same old gamebryo engine with some polish to it.

The textures up close aren't anything to be wowed by but when you take a step back and look at the environment overall, it's stunning and far superior to witcher 2 (since we're trying to make that comparison).

The details in the environment are absolutely mind numbing and so far ahead of any other game on the market. Witcher 2 has nice scenic vistas and back drops but the game confines you into small little combat areas. Skyrim's massive open world gives SUCH a better feeling of being tiny in this huge expansive world.

This whole low res texture business will be a moot point anyways as there are already high res texture mods rolling out.

Skyrim for me is hands down the most incredibly immersive and addicting game I've ever had the pleasure of playing. I can't imagine how much better it will be after 3~4 months worth of modding after the dev kit comes out.

I've gone back and looked at some of my screeshots of my fully modded oblivion with quarls texture pack and other graphics tweaks and aside from some higher res surface textures, skyrim dominates oblivion in every way graphically.

[nekrosoft13]

Not a big fan of Skyrim graphics, I love the water effects, snow, weather system, but i hate the limited color pallet, white, grey, black with hint of green here and there, almost same color pallet like Fallout3, very limited.

about textures, textures could be a lot lot lot lot better.

what bothers me the most is the animations, they made zero progress in animations from Oblivion.

[Sean_W]

Texture mods are not the point here. Some people here cannot get over the fact that it's a Xbox360 port and are taking the graphics point out of context, either that or they have a Xbox360 and think 2006 tech is mindblowing because there is nothing much on the PC to compare it with.

Again, size of the environment has nothing to do with graphics quality since all of the quality is drawn local anyway. Skyrim would look 5 to 6 times better if it were done properly for the PC, with DX11 support. Bethesda couldn't even be bother to update their engine with advanced features or even deferred lighting, which would have made it look much better. Their "Creation Engine" is just marketing bull.

Exhibit A


Exhibit B

[Vanzagar]

Originally Posted by Bah!

When I first loaded up the game I was disappointed as well. But after playing for a while, I'm completely impressed with how it looks overall. It's a living breathing world, and I'd rather have a wide open world that looks like this than a closed off corridor game that looked like TW2.

This.

[munkus]

People who b1tch and moan about the graphics need to remember why most people play games to begin with - the gameplay. I would rather have fun playing a game with decent graphics than be bored "playing" an uber tech demo.

[Sean_W]

Originally Posted by munkus

People who b1tch and moan about the graphics need to remember why most people play games to begin with - the gameplay. I would rather have fun playing a game with decent graphics than be bored "playing" an uber tech demo.

We're talking about graphics so go troll somewhere else or use the sticky thread then.

[ATOJAR]

Originally Posted by Sean_W

We're talking about graphics so go troll somewhere else or use the sticky thread then.

To be fair he was actually referring to the graphics & i must be honest i 100% agree with him, I dare say so would 99% of the people on this forum.

[Sean_W]

Originally Posted by ATOJAR

To be fair he was actually referring to the graphics & i must be honest i 100% agree with him, I dare say so would 99% of the people on this forum.

I'm not disputing that but this thread is about the graphics side of the game and gameplay has nothing to do with it, hence "Skyrim graphics".

[Roadhog]

Its a huge game, that has HUGE environments, yet only uses 5GB of HD space. I think the textures are great minus the one or two low res ones here and there which I still think is a bug. If you look beside the low res texture you will see much higher res ones all around it. The game already uses all 2gb Vram on my system. Sure you can decrease draw distance and increase texture res, but that would be pointless. I think there is a nice balance right now in the game as it is. Stop nit picking at nothing.