Have about 170 hours logged on Skyrim and can't tell if this is a recent issue or not - seems to have been present for several weeks now though. My weapons - bows, swords, whatever - seem to cast weird, excessively dark shadow spots on the ground. I tried uninstalling all of my mods and they still appear. Anyone know the cause of this?

See the shadow spots under and beside the weapons. Is there a setting causing this? Something I can change in the ini file, or is this just a weird quality inherent in Skyrim?

[img]http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj305/Uruk-hai_Torch-bearer/Other/2011-12-12_00001.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj305/Uruk-hai_Torch-bearer/Other/2011-12-12_00002.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj305/Uruk-hai_Torch-bearer/Other/2011-12-12_00003.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj305/Uruk-hai_Torch-bearer/Other/2011-12-12_00004.jpg[/img]

Looks a little bit like SSAO gone haywire. Have you turned on SSAO in the NVidia Inspector/Controll Center?

This is just a guess, though, most likely has nothing to do with it...

Don't see a control for SSAO in my Nvidia Control Panel. Anyone else have any idea what is causing this?

Should only be there with the newest 290 beta drivers.

I have the newest nvidia drivers and don't have any SSAO options. However this did start happening to me after installing the drivers and enabling ambient occlusion - I assumed this was the reason why. Will test in a moment.

Edit: Apparently SSAO is the same as ambient occlusion (?)

Yes, sort of. SSAO stands for "Screen Space Ambient Occlusion" and is a common way of implementing the AO effect (which dims things that appear to have something "occluding" the ambient light that would otherwise reach them).

Gotcha.

Well, I just tried the game without Ambient Occlusion enabled and there wasn't any shadow from my bow. Game looks a lot better overall with it on though.

It's because the shadows are crap quality in Skyrim.

The ambient occlusion...I will try that. That makes sense...

CONFIRMED! Killing Ambient Occlusion in your nvidia settings makes plants look a little awkward but eliminates the stupid weapon shadows. I'll take it!