I've got an nvidia g-force 9600 GT, updated with the latest drivers. The two games I play the most right now are Skyrim and Left 4 Dead 2. For the past few months I've been running into floating objects in Skyrim. Swords and shield's floating static in mid-air, food items, plates. I see this in game quite frequently; it's pretty annoying. For years I hadn't seen that type of glitch while playing Left 4 Dead 2, but just this morning I walked past a bottle of peelz, and lo and behold, it was floating a foot off the ground. I have had the same settings in L4D2 for years, and all of a sudden this is happening. Has anyone ever come across this before? Is there a fix?

Recently, I have come across dozens of floating objects in Skyrim.

If it happens in both games then it's either driver or hardware related. Update your drivers. Also, are you overclocking your GPU at all?

A http://www.somewelshguy.com/posts/how-to/post-a-dxdiag-report/ wouldn't hurt either.

Skyrim bug. You will see all kinds of things floating and/or falling. A few times I did see mammoths floating high in the sky and then falling. Turned up dead, so easy way to get a tusk
And no, no joke: that really happened

The floating objects that I see seem to be items left by enemies that I have killed. In some cases, things like bows or swords will be floating where the enemy was killed as soon as they are dead. Other times, I come across them all over the map.

Just spotted this recently in Windhelm market,swords,shields,meat and other stuff around the market stalls is floating.

If I see that, a quicksave and reload usually makes the item disappear.

I've been seeing this a lot as using two weapons that have a Paralyze effect. If an NPC dies paralyzed, they completely freeze. This includes any weapons or shields that they may have been in the process of dropping as they are still considered part of them.

I've had this very same thing happen to me just last night. Glad to know I'm not alone.

I've seen this happen with objects that have seemingly had no interaction with actors, such as a book floating in the air. Attempting to interact with the book by touching it or shooting it with an arrow has no effect. However, saving and reloading causes the book to fall to the ground. There are many bizarre effects that can be fixed by reloading the game. Sadly, living things still suffer the effects of landing after gravity is reapplied, so we're going to be stuck with raining mammoths until Bethesda fixes the root cause.

There's always been floating stuff. I think it got worse with the 1,4 patch though.