With all the spoilers flying around now, I'm very curious to know if anyone can confirm weather (heh heh get it? weather...) or not rain actually passes through outside strcutures and awnings and such. This seems to be the last of the major "issues" that the majority of forum users were asking about (along with werewolves and dual wielding DPS) so I'd love to know if anyone can confirm one way or the other.

Last thing I heard was that the rain from the weather system (the same system that produces the awesome new snow effects) is in fact different from the dragon shout rain, which is just an overlay.

I did see snow going through the floor in a tower but it got into the building because the top of the tower was gone.

The video previews Bethesda has released shows rain falling through objects. As this problem has existed in the engine for the last 10 years, it's not likely to be fixed in the last months before release.

That rain you say that goes through objects is from a shout. That shout is seperate from the actual weather system. You don't know what you're talking about

There's no reason to believe normal rain will behave differently, especially as it's been a problem with the engine for a long time.

You have to understand
They have touted a bew dynamic weather system
So we can only assume

The shout has to at-least work in-doors right? If not why bother spending souls for it, so I think it is just the shout that caused the rain falling through... It is a idea but saying that I am usually a Glass is Half-full kinda guy.

You have to understand that Storm Call is the 3 Tier of the Shout, the are 2 levels below that we don't know what they do.

LvL 3 of any Shout is like a God Power that kills everything in a 2 mile Radius, but LvLs 1 and 2 will probably be better suited for tight spaces.

Plus, the way Shouts seem to be structured is there's one for every situation, like Utilities.

Right so still nothing solid. I'm still thinking the two rain effects are separate. The weather system does it's own thing, it's hard for me to believe that you using that shout forcibly changes and causes the weather system to rain immediately right where you're standing. I think that effect is a separate overlay that has nothing to do with the snow and rain of the world.

Minecraft can pull off rainfall properly - and that's an indy game written in Java, 'cmon I'm sure Bethesda can do better than this xD

Yes rain did go through the roof on the demo but several journalists have said that it didn't do that in their playthroughs so I guess it's fixed but not really sure.

Journalists as in prewiews you've read? Where? Link?

Hardly. Rain in minecraft is just a transparent block. For proof just stand in the rain and look up and move around. Not to mention I have rain and snow fall through the roof of my cave-base all the time. It looks really weird sometimes..........

Yah that happens in SMP after reloading during a rain shower. Mostly though it's reliable, but I do understand it's due to the voxel based nature of Minecraft; the rainfall blocks ARE actual voxels, just like the ground. Skyrim's a little different with a height mapped landscape, and entities with a collision mesh painted onto it. Calculating rainfall would require a degree of line of sight calculation, whereas minecraft need only trace lines of rain voxels til it hits a block that isn't air

Nice technical explanation. I did read in a preview that rain makes ripples/little splashes on lakes and ponds, so there is some sort of detection going on there, just don't know if it applies to structures too.

I'm not a programer so this is just a theory biased on simple logic, but if you already have a weather/rain system why would you make another program for a shout? Seems as though it would be easier to just add some lightning and bring on the rain that already exists.

Skyrim uses a completely reworked engine though... it's the not same exact engine used on Oblivion.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1144412p1.html

I'm assuming some playtester found a way to exploit the weather somehow to do something or other. So they simply made it seperate so it wouldn't overwrite the weather.

What you guys are basically asking for is volumetric Rain (and snow). Though not difficult in of itself, it IS extremely difficult to apply it in open world games like this. Especially since they would have to cube out every instance where the rain would and wouldnt fall. Its a heap of work, specially to make sure that it works and looks right in every instance applicable. Btw, thats a hellova lot.

Easy in most FPS, not so much in a giant open world. I dont think bethesda would take their time on such a trivial (though nice) detail... Besides, i doubt the 360 could really handle volumetrics, but with all they've done i couldnt say.

I can confirm that rain does go through huts at least.

I can can confirm that the normal (not shout) rain) goes through roofs
Saw it in a livestream

What build was that stream from? Is there a link available? Does the snow do this also? I mean I thought snow was supposed to accumulate on things, so those things will just be...the ground? Or the roofs of structures that have a separate inside space (where no percipitation will ever go through), like taverns and such?

I guess that can make sense, I won't be drastically effected by it one way or the other but it's driving me crazy not knowing for sure that's it's one way or the other, whatever the answer is will be less impactful than obtaining the answer itself.