Maybe you have a crappy video card or haven't updated your drivers properly?

Where the hell do you buy Game Informer? I got mine from Gamestop, but I haven't seen any Game Informers in Gamestops recently. Annoying because I like that magazine, and I missed out on the Battlefield 3 and Skyrim issues. Damn it!

Most discussed bug is the save game bloat on PS3, this is the really serious one, should be pretty easy to solve, I understand it's an PC mod who address a lot of problems who causes bloat, however as PC has a lot of memory the bloat is less of an problem.

Else it appears that Skyrim has around as many quest bugs as Oblivion.

This is what drives me crazy. People have hundreds of different video card brands, programs and possibly even hidden malware on their computers, but it's still Bethesda's fault for 'not testing enough'. There's literally no way in the world to find every brand and program interaction bug on a PC. No way. As far as the platforms go, it's the same problem. Different generations of the 360 and PS3 have different brands of chips in them, heck, I've seen videos were some of them are even wired and soldered differently. The test boxes they have in-house are not the ONLY make and model in the hands of customers.

So please, chill on the accusations that Bethesda lied, that they're lazy, that they're stupid. I know you're frustrated, but they did the best they could do before release and have been busting their tails to fix things afterward.

Oh no, I have tried everything.
From installing clean newest drivers, reinstalling the game, changing all kinds of ini settings, trying different forms of AA, etc etc.
I also contacted tech support about it. They couldnt help me. They said the shipped over the problem to the developers, and I truly hope they did so it can be fixed.

My video card is moderate but handles Skyrim well enough, but there are top new video cards that got the same mountain flicker problem as I, so it's not that.

There's really no known solution at all to the problem. I do know what it's called though: z-fighting.

I won't ever be able to enjoy the game properly if all mountains in the background flicker like crazy. It gives you a seizure just by looking at it.

Such things like this is very bugging. I can't even enjoy the game at all properly. Some people are also crashing every 5 minutes and some people on PS3 can't play after 80 hours or whatnot.
These are major game breaking things, in one way or another. A game doesn't deserve a GOTY if a lot of people can't even play it properly, without having to suffer from major issues.
It's Bethesda's job to make sure these things get fixed. Otherwise it just remains as a broken gem, not worthy of playing, which is just sad because it's otherwise such a great game.

I have this issue on my end. I tend to ignore it, but it is a real eye-catcher and a little annoying to me as well.

I'm hoping that a fix is in the works buy our awesome modding community (if one isn't already available).

Do you have an ATI card?
Do you run dual SLI video cards?

I hate to say it, but ATI card support has always svcked for games. I know there will be a nerd legion that compares the clocking of ATI cards, but seriously if you play games - don't buy ATI. Also, try disabling dual SLI if you have an Nvidia card. I used to have this problem in a few games and this corrected it for me until a driver update came out.

I got GTX 260. No SLI.
Latest drivers.

The problem is related to a specific LOD setting. When the LOD is higher detailed the mountains flicker. When the LOD is lower detailed the mountains don't flicker. So basically I can make the problem "go away" if I lower LOD detail a lot, but then all mountains look like 3 polygon triangles... so not really a good solution.


Never had this problem in Bethesda's games before.

When I asked smart Ethatron about this problem he said:
"There is nothing you can do about it. Moving vertices around is a futile approach. Z-fighting happens because the Z-buffer run's out of precision, it makes several thousand units of distance (in Oblivion the furthest value is 9450 units) to occupy the same Z-value. The only solution to this is to move the far-plane further away (like I allowed for OGBE LLOD). In Oblivion the setting was (at the time of development) fFarDistance, but the parameter has been deactivated in the shipping game.
Either you detect fFarDistance works in Skyrim and put that to a million units approx. or you wait until I or someone else took a look at it. In my case that can be half a year or so. Don't count on it."

Annual subscription and they send it to your house.

Never wrote that I turn a blind eye......

Yup. My wife has an original edition 360 with the old 60GB hard drive or however big it was. Haven't played it on hers, but I would imagine it would be different on my new slim that has a 250 GB hard drive and less wear and tear on it. Not to mention the fact that, and I haven't ever heard it discussed concerning consoles, hard drives on PC's in good maintenance are checked for stability and routinely defragged.

Anybody know anything about the PS3 or xbox hard drives and fragmented data???

Let me add that the problem exists even on the higher-end stuff. I'm on a GTX 560 Ti and the distant mountains still flicker (previously I was on an 8800 GT).

I think we can safely rule the Z-Fighting an engine issue, and not a GPU issue, since I went through the works installing my new card and it did not fix the flickering mountains.

Actually, I'd say GI got it about right. I've not encountered any serious problems personally--except game balance issues and even there, I'm managing to play the character I want to play so it's good for now and should be better as they patch and expand it. Still, making it GOTY without acknowledging its issues would be problematic, as would giving GOTY to a game that attempts less.

I dont even notice any bugs