Playing on ultra on my PC. Games looking so amazing I loose track of time.

That would be amazing if someone could do that.

Maybe it's just the game. That'd make me disappointed but at least give me some closure.

i am on xbox and it looks the same as OP so not just a pc issue, for those that are on xbox its the view outside solitude, everywhere else looks great just that view from the bridge

My view over solitude is pretty much the same, only difference is it's more detailed due to the mod I have installed, but still pretty wack looking.

Same thing is occurring for me. Playing with everything maxed/ultra.

i7 950 @ 3.06GHz
12GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHz DDR3
Sapphire Radeon HD5870 Vapor-X 1GB DDR5

Everything looks amazing except for the water draw distance. I took this photo before and now notice it thanks to your thread. Check the left side: http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/649870992092206689/AB718B29BE57034A02596253CEEA437EBB55C1C4/

When I first noticed that strip of land in game I was like "This has to be a glitch".

So it is just the game?

Well damn. That svcks something fierce.

Stuff like ships and waterfalls seem to have messed up LODs or something, they seem to have less detail than everything else from far away.

Sorry if I've missed this but I take it you've gone into the video settings actually in game and changed the draw distance? I see you posted a screenie of changing the settings in the startup menu but obviously there's the video display settings within the game menu once it's running.

http://i.imgur.com/JCO9T.jpg

Can you post a pic of your system running the game in the same location so we can get a cross reference going?

My graphics card is much older than yours and is set to medium, but I seem to be getting similar results as you. Which is why I'm confused. Where was the screenie taken and I'll try and get one from the same place.

Just outside of Solitude.

I don't mind the graphics up close being a bit poor, but I do dislike the poor drawing distance. I raised it in the ini file, but it's still too close for my liking, which ruins the looks from a nice viewpoint or something.

Which value did you change?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v206/staarbux/skyrimscreenie.jpg

This is from a similar place. My graphics are all set to medium and I have a much older card than you (GeForce GTS 250). It's not really vastly different is it?

Y'know what that looks like to me? It looks like your issues are mostly with things involving water; i'm not seeing any reflections in there except for sky. Have you checked your advanced settings to see if it's set to reflect more than sky?

I'm running a different thread on a different forum right now too. Everyone is confirming the same issue.

Looks like this is the game itself, not our systems. Wow. That's terrible.

Whatever happened to those promises of large draw distances, Bethesda? I am so very disappointed right now. Anyone know how long it would take for mods to make this not look awful?

Yeah it's sort of starting to look like 'See that giant pixel over there? You can climb that.'

lol

It has nothing to do with what hardware you have, or what system you're playing on - the coastlines are all right angles above a certain distance away. If you're looking out over an area with a lot of rivers and streams, it looks like crap. Even on Ultra, it makes no difference. Until a mod improving distant LOD meshes and textures comes out, this is what you're stuck with.

Did you just show us a screenshot.......of a screenshot? lol, just link the the steam pic?

I now realize this.

How long do you think it'll be before a mod fixes this this?

Yo dawg, I heard you like screenshots so I out a screenshot in your screenshot so you can look at screenshots while you look at screenshots.

Likely redundant, but I can also confirm this issue... was doing the Stormcloaks caravan quest when I looked over the ridge and was... disappointed, to say the least.

What ini value will correct this, do we know?

I think I posted in the other thread too...it does happen to me as well (on Ultra etc), but sometimes from a little further away maybe. Not sure. It's only when there's large blank areas that I really notice it much, since trees can obscure it.
Assuming it's "everyone", it just looks like the default distance the game decides to use the "distant" low-res textures is pretty short, relative to the distance one can see if on Ultra.

I'm sure there's an .ini tweak for it...there was in FNV. Just not sure which one, or what the max one might be able to change it to would be.

Maybe these:

[TerrainManager]
fBlockMaximumDistance=250000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=70000.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=35000.0000