Example:

http://oi42.tinypic.com/nx0qvm.jpg



Sometimes they are there. Other times they are not. I hate seeing trees or mountains in the distance that aim to the heavens. Any known remedies?

I know of two causes for this kind of stretching: 1) your video card is overheating, and, 2) a faulty mesh (in this case, my guess would be a body or clothing mod).

This is not texture stretching,, texture stretching is when an image on a model(mesh) is distorted due to the way its mapped. usually stretching is caused and prevented by the texture artist and modeller.
This is a skinning bug where several vertices (points on a mesh) are no longer translated with the bones..

I've seen this happening indeed with broken or corrupted videocards. If you'r mountains are also doing this, i'm assuming your videocard is not supporting a feature skyrim uses. i'd say either update drivers, reduce settings quailty, or remove some mods that change NPC bodies .

I once had this and a reload fixed it beyond that it can be a broken or corrupted videocard, a broken (modded) mesh or a broken skeleton.

To me that looks like artifacting, usually a result of poor air circulation or clogged heatsinks on your 3d card. It can be cause by a improperly made mesh.

It could be video card, but sometimes it is a bad mesh or other problem. I have had it happen with certain mods and my video card is fine.

My old 9600GT started to do things like this in almost every game (incl. Oblivion btw) when it's VRAM was going bad. First I also thought about overheating, but temps were ok after checking. Try find some video ram testing software to see if it's fine or not. If it's faulty video ram, and you don't want to buy a new graphics card, try to lower texture settings, it worked in the short term for me. If it's not the video card, try to find out if it's caused by mods, try the game with/without them.

Edit: and of course, check the temperatures too. If that's the problem it's better to solve it sooner than later.

Okay... you're gonna do a test.

First, do a hard save right before beginning, because you don't know what Hroki's weight slider setting is.

Now that you have, click on Hroki. Make sure nothing else is in the way, especially mist/clouds/light beams, etc.

Enter the console command "setnpcweight 100" or "setnpcweight 0". Do the stretchy bits disappear?

If so, then your likely problem is a badly done body mod reconform on Hroki's outfit. The vertex index match-up needs to be perfect and meticulously preserved between two meshes that comprise the bounds of the weight slider range for any given outfit, or else the outfit does what I technically termed a "Polysplosion". Both 0 and 100 weight values simply use the corresponding mesh outright instead of doing an interpolated morph between the two.

Exit the game, then load the hard save you made beforehand to restore Hroki to her original weight, otherwise you'll have a conspicuous neck seam.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.


MadCat, it seems to be random.

So I traveled back to Markarth and Hroki was normal again. I know it's not a heat issue with my card because I've been checking that every time something weird or a CTD happens. I guess it may be a Vram thing; not sure why it happens in some lighter places while the heavier sections of the game can look fine.