Apologies if this is a duplicate thread or a known issue.

Similar to red light green light, many interactive objects will only animate when looked at, as if they are paused when offscreen. Doors and puzzle pillars, for example. I can make a dragon talon puzzle door take forever to open by simply facing the other way.

I don't know when the issue started, if it was the result of a patch or graphics driver update, or something in my save game, but it wasn't always like this.

it's probably a performance optimisation, just like trees don't sway when the frame-rate drops too low. I've seen this in Deus EX Human Revolution as well, smoke shots out than then stops when you look away.

What's your average framerate?

*must resist urge to crack joke about the Stone Angels of Doctor Who*...

Man that's an odd thing to find out though, not sure if there'd be any real way around it either. I'll have to remember to confirm that the next time I find a claw-door.

Don't know exactly, but around 40. I'm not in any frame loss situation, it seems to happen any time.
I realized it can happen with chests too. I can press use to open, and quickly turn away, the inventory screen won't pop until I face it.

I haven't heard of this before, but it sounds similar to the CPU issue when too many actors are present (AI turns off until you directly engage a particular actor).

Are you using Skyboost or TESVAL? I'd recommend giving either (especially Skyboost) a try if you're not. If you are, compare the effect of having it off against having it on.

Have you had this issue through the whole game, or did it start recently?

I'm not sure when it started.

I forgot that I am running the Acceleration Layer, I'll try the game without that.
Will check out Skyboost or TESVAL at some point, thanks.
edit2: tesval is the acceleration layer, har.

Skyboost does better than TESVAL, and is more likely to continue being updated, AFAIK, plus it's a decent comparison to see if it's an issue of being CPU-bound (though I don't see why you would be in the areas you listed, but you never know).

Another experiment, if you're patient, is to temporarily reduce shadow quality, anti-aliasing, and fxaa--if you've tweaked those. You might be able to narrow down to what's causing the problem, and then at least have a choice of whether you want to tolerate it.

So I found a simple scene with a chest, and did this test multiple times, just in case it's not actually related.
No skse/tesval, i could open the chest, and swing the camera away with no issue.
skse/tesval, i could open the chest, swing the camera away (even walk across the room), and it wouldn't open until i looked at it.
skse/no tesval, i could open the chest, and swing the camera away with no issue.

I will try Skyboost shortly. TESVAL may have felt smoother, what increase I may have had wasn't very noticable.

Annnd using Skyboost I don't have issues. Now I'll need to play with it on for a while.

Nice! Bummer about TESVAL, but Skyboost is probably more viable long-term, anyway.