I feel Skyrim has so much love and culture put into the game...that unlike Oblivion, I feel its a bad idea to just
re-texture everything without keeping the original feel that was implemented, it's just we were given really bad
resolution textures to start with... Even retexturing a rock the wrong way seems almost blasphemous.

Honestly, if we were given a Vanilla HD pack I'd be super content.

Does anyone else agree?

Agree. Seems like an official HD texture pack wouldn't be that hard to put together and release...anybody have any insight into how likely that would be? (Not cynical "it'll never happens", but actual insight into Bethesda's protocol on stuff like that).

Well, they're looking into why the Xbox looks worse once installed. Maybe they'll look into giving us better textures as well? I can hope, at least. >.>

I'm going for highly unlikely. Bethesda patches tend to be centered more around bug fixes and the like. What would be awesome is if they pieced together a team that would do none-expansion like content for the game that people would not have to pay for. Such as how quests and the like were done in Morrowind.

The Xbox texture thing is clearly a bug but lacking texture quality on PC isn't. They just didn't do it for some reason and probably won't release a HD pack. Of course there is always hope.

I did say hope. Just saying that while they're looking at textures, just possibly they could look at ours as well? Or at least fix the noses? Please? Eh, no matter, I got used to Oblivion's and I'm still playing games on last gen consoles so I'll manage all the same. I'd just like for it to happen. May be wishful thinking, sure, but I can hope all I want.

I think worst(best?) case scenario, the designs can be redone, sharpened and upres'd in Photoshop by modders. It would just take some time. I've already seen some promising mods that do this with the landscape already.

In the worst case, stretch them out in GIMP and recolor with the dropper. No design redoing would be necessary in that case. It'd just take a lot more care with the dropper and a lot of time to do it pixel by pixel. Also, GIMP is the way to go. Photoshop is proprietary. Only go proprietary with games, I say >_>

Not really. I haven't really noticed the same thing myself; the textures are in my opinion for the large part very generic, I don't feel like much love has been put into them at all. What's actually special, or in any way good about them?

From what I've seen of the vanilla textures so far, I'd avoid upscaling them, they're a little on the small side and won't upscale very well, even if you did sharpen them.

Best to make new textures and do so like you mentioned, keep them the same style as the vanilla ones, it's tricky but definately can be done if you're willing to put in the time and effort

There have been a few really good retextures of Fallout3 ... like http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12056 ... looking at how those are handled might be worthwhile.

There is, I think, a change in how textures look going from Oblivion to Fallout ... Skyrim feels a lot like Fallout to me. Oblivion was very cartoonish to me. And having it like it was - almost an anything goes approach would work too.

I think also that since there are all these ambient space color shading things going on that once those are understood better and more under control this will get easier.

One good thing is that while heavy texture packs brought my Oblivion games to their knees - this was not true of Fallout3 - I could use the heaviest ones with little impact.

To anyone doing facial textures: Be sure to make imperfections, not like Better Heads made everyone with flawless skin. You could add scar features probably with acne scars or w/e

In a way, yes, but not really because I'm afraid of taking away the unique Skyrim flair. I'm redoing the eyes, so the flair parts that are there are really apparent and I'll try and stick to. But it's mostly that they're bad recolors of each other, and the whole texture is 128x128, only about 50x50 of which goes to the pupil (this texture also includes eyelashes and some shadows). So it's a matter of balancing what they ended up with, what I think the intention was, and how I think the eyes should look. I like the editing itself but that little game gets irritating.

I agree that I don't like the feel of the textures to be changed. There are a few mods out there for furniture, or the Post-Process one, that make the game look too different. The furniture loses its used look. The Post-Process mod removes a lot of the cold, snowy feel of the game. I've been sticking to mods that keep the original look. The Flora Overhaul keeps to the original feel, just makes it a higher quality texture, so I use that. There are others too.

For me to use a texture replacer, they are going to have to make sure they keep the feel of the original game.

Im quite a fan of the textures we have for vanila skyrim too, and Im not into shoddy retexture mods that just chuck in a ridiculously highrez photo texture that just doesnt fit. It is quite possible to upscale textures though, although it requires more work then just resizing. Best thing is to resize the texture and then start overlaying higher frequency details from similar textures, hand painting certain stubborn areas etc, but keeping the values and the colour balance the same.

There are ways to improve the textures without up-scaling etc. The results actually would look quite satisfying. I'd tackle this myself if I had more time.

I definitely agree, too many texture packs (especially clothes textures) change or add color to the textures. I won't replace any of the current textures with anything except a higher resolution of the exact same look.

Sorry but some of these vanilla are just plain poor. Have you seen those green brick wall textures in dungeons? They're all blurred, and as they're in corridors you can't help to see them up close. Road signs? Unreadable - I already use a mod which fixes this.

This is a really good retexture pack, worth checking out.
Skyrim certainly feels more like fallout than oblivion, in the way it looks and the controls. Not playwise tho, obviously
What bit of dual core optimisation FO3 had certainly made a massive difference to performance. Considering Skyrim recommends a quad core hopefully we'll be able to load it up without overloading the engine.
For Oblivion it was extra NPCs and/or creature which crippled it. I remember suffering massive slowdowns and stutter in a dungeon from all the NPCs and they weren't even on the screen!

One problem I have with many texture mods is that they just use high-rez new textures.
Let's fix wood... let's make all wood in structures as if they just got it from their local sawmill 10 minutes ago.

I'd be happy if the creatures would look half way decent when you get close to them. Most of the animals look like they were made out of feces when you see them up close.

Ive had to pass on some retextures already out because they changed too much, like removing the weathered look and don't seem to fit the setting. I'd be happy with just fixes to the really low res ones. snowy Windhelm actually made me exit the game and check my settings and ini to see if anything had changed

Is professional artwork for game companies not high resolution to begin with? Then down scaled for shipment; naturally a smaller resolution file will consume less space, therefore can fit on a smaller disc saving the company on disc cost. I can definitely see high resolution content as DLC as they would be consuming tons of bandwidth to distribute it and should at least get some compensation for that if done. On the other hand, offering high resolution content as paid DLC would not be so wise as you will definitely have people overestimating their hardware, then having their game run like crap and complaining.

No it is scaled down for consoles.

You know those outdated computers from 2006.

Those things that most video games are made for.

No... just no. They'll lose a lot of respect if they offer higher resolution textures as paid dlc.
Skyrim is a small game. Many games these days are easily 10 gb. Bandwidth costs aren't that bad, really.
Besides that, Steam would be the ones that would suffer for the dlc download, not Bethesda.

I have to agree with the OP. I've seen some of the hard work that some folks are putting into new textures (both indoors and outdoors) and I personally don't like them at all. The quality of their work is quite excellent, but in most of their works, the end result seems to detract from Bethesda's art direction and vision/feel for the setting. I really love the art direction in Skyrim, and I like the colors and tones and the outdoor textures are excellent. Sure, higher res would always be nicer, but I really don't see a need to change textures just for the sake of changing them.

I think Bethesda has done a great job with the texture work...we just need higher res textures in some cases and I do hope that someone will take it upon themselves to make a vanilla HD texture pack that stays true to the original texture work (in look and color).

Still, I wouldn't discourage any of the folks who are making texture packs. I certainly appreciate all the hard work done by the modders, even if I don't necessarily need or like all of the mods out there. More choices are great for everyone