I think Skyrim has it's pros and cons and for everyone's best interest it is a good idea to go through what thing Beth should and shouldn't fix.

What is graphics and why do they matter?

Basically graphics is essential part of the game and anyone who tries to deny it is an idiot. Graphics are composed of two things, artstyle and technology that drives it. As I play on the greatest platform.

my system, settings and mods are as follows:


Lighting
I personally like Skyrim's overall graphics. The combined effect of dynamic and static light that provide convinsing shadow but perfromance stays decent without excessive use of dynamic lighting. There are places where this wont work (Blind Cliff Cave just makes my eyes bleed, blackreach also looks poor). Bigger problem with lighting is the extremely low quality shadows. It isn't much of an issue if Beth could have chosen a better way of updating the shadows outdoors as now they just break the immersion. Other thing that bugs me alot is actor shadows as tree shadows aren't that bad because their complex shape makes even low res shadows look convinsing. Rocks on the other hand are already blocky so blocky shadows for blocky rocks isn't bad but actor shadows just look bad. They should be much more higher resolution and it is a shame that there isn't a separate option for quality them (this way we could have nicer actor shadows without the performance impact of higher overall shadows).

Also if torches would cast dynamic shadows instead just being static lighting objects that would be nice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2LquccNrg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS49sdba9hQ&feature=related (this has german commentary, so you might want to mute)

Water
When I had only seen Skyrim's water effects in trailer before release I was very suspicious about various river effects Beth had used (mainly the "small stream mat" -effect) but I've seen it ingame it looks really nice. I also like how river have current. Only one thing that bugs me that water sources have "hard" edges. I find it quite surprising as in FO3 there were soft edges. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfn_0WzGq9Q . Also for some reason my water ripples flicker like crazy. It might be just my system, lack of vsync or Beth effing things up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqDpYwdjkGY&context=C3e1ef56ADOEgsToPDskI2ngzDMipeYl-J3cHSr9Ro

Trees
They are not sprite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs

Snow
Beth used some wierd woodoo stuff to get a nice sperm flat snow effect on stuff. Snow effect is nice, sperm flat is not. I feel bad for console owners who dont have mods. The effect is not perfect (glitches on objects) but overall it works and I'm not sure if Beth could have done it any better (except not making it look like sperm flat and boring). Also I was hoping that Beth wouldn't have used the "stuck in your screen raining" effect but instead would have gone for a more convinsing effect (like in minecraft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE3hJiGiPgo ).

Art resources
In Oblivion I found many ingame objects not fitting to overall style of the game .Compare glass armor to daedric, glass is smooth daedric is not, in skyrim both armors have some similarities which pull to overall artstyle together. I also like how each race looks unique as well as each town while not being too different. It is a shame that some textures are just so low resolution (ragged flagons bricks just look terrible). I would have wanted to see more shiny textures (like metal being shiny, dungeon rocks could be a bit moist)

Perfomance
Pretty looks ain't nothing if you can't run them luckily I can but barely. I get usually 35 fps in the wilderness which is fine because the fps is stable. Some cities like Markanth and Riften and Hlaamarch (the area not town) are a but choppy (around 25-28 fps). I heard that beth had effed up cpu optimization is skyrim and I'm not sure has it been fixed. Also I had cap my fps 45 because in the 60 range I would a lot of mouse lag (only getting over 80 would stop fix) this a serius issue especially in dungeons were fps would easily pass the 60 mark.

Thats it. I hope you read it before posting something irrelevant or stupid (like "I don't care about graphics").

And trolls casting fireballs aint that hard.

Sperm?

Sperm:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5XGAn7H1M4

Not sperm:
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10383

Um yeah...I though it was just me reading that. If your erm...special stuff looks a lot like Skyrim's snow please go see a doctor.

Edit-okay got it from the vids but still...sperm?!

You have high level graphics for Skyrim and you are still wanting something to be done better? That's odd in my eyes. I'm greatly enjoying the game even my laptop allows me to use only the lowest graphic options. (That's all about the video card...)

There is no point to threads like these except as a pitiful cry for attention.

Don't feed it.

What have you run out of other threads to reply to?
You need to start another one?

And since when did you become a graphics expert, ARE you a graphics expert?

Pfft, graphics? Honestly I don't spend my time looking at shadows.

When I got eyes.


I'm fairly confident that your entire time spent playing Skyrim you have been looking at shadows (because I'm pretty sure there is no place in the game were there are not a single shadow to be seen). Unless you play skyrim with your monitor turned off.

Awesome.

Basically you've just written yet another complaining thread dressed up as some kind of technical breakdown.
But you're still just complaining.

Well, the type of problems you pointed out tend to be very common with large scale games like skyrim. Which is why I am completely understanding to the games "faults".

Know that your complaints aren't going to be of any effect. Your going to be stuck with what you perceive as 'problems' until a next gem console is released.

Luckily I don't consider myself an authority on graphics, and as such I think Skyrim's graphics are rather beautiful.

Really? Man, some people really love to bash. And this is coming from a Morrowind fanatic.

Even though I think textures in some areas aren't as good as the Morrowind Overhaul textures aesthetically graphics is the one aspect where Skyrim really shines. Why not bash the marriage system? At least that actually svcks, the graphics are brilliant.

Give the guy a break guys, his sperm looks like snow apparantly. It would make me angry too.

Hmm like which problems are common in games like skyrim? Gothic and Risen are both open world, Smooth water edges have been FO3 (an open world game made by Bethesda), Oblivion had had nice looking actor shadows (an open world game made by Bethesda).

And performance is an issue in every game (there was a fix called skyboost that fixed skyrims bad cpu performance but it's no longer updated).

I don't want to click on that first link

EDIT: Okay, I didn't have to clear my internet history like I thought I was going to have to. I don't think my sperm looks like that, I certainly hope yours doesn't.

illuknisaa, hi there.


I'm confused. I thought SKyrim ended up not having Dynamic snow. I, for one, can't seem to spot it , after playing for hundreds of hours. By the way, sperm must be the most tasteless acronym known to Mankind, and maybe even Humankind.

I love the graphics most of the game is handmade drawings and it shows ...I can appreciate the art. Nothing is going to be perfect.

Sometimes I wonder if people just look for problems.

I'm not either - especially when I read this guys nick backwards.
It's "Aasinkulli" which means in English "Donkeysdike".

Geez

The things with dynamic snow is that it only "spaws" on predeterminated areas but it's effects can easily been seen. It's kinda hard to explain but if skyrim seasons this would happen(1:45): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGIgXeGC6Dg

The snow is placed on 3d objects as if snow had fallen on it.

I stopped reading when you said graphics are composed of artstyle and the technology that drives it which is incorrect. You're one of the many people who think aesthetics and graphics are the same thing.

HI JagarTharn12. How have you been since our recent encounter?


Why on Earth would you attribute the OP to an uncontrolled desire to bash? I happen to think SKyrim's graphics are quite good. But I can see why sme would fault them, for there is a lot of room for improvement. Textures are problematic but there is one issue I seldom see mentioned: pop ups. I have a high end PC and things, bridges, textures, trees, grass details, just keep poping out of nowhere in a quite blunt fashion. Lighting, while adequate, is somewhat subpar. All in all, Art direction is where the game shines and graphics wise Skyrim is quite good, not quite great.