This was my impression of Skyrim screenshots when they first came out. Honestly, when Oblivion came out, I remember being amazed at the graphics, I could swear at the time I thought it was near photo-realistic, but over time, the graphics just seemed to get uglier and uglier, now I can't look at Oblivion without thinking "eww." Then when Skyrim screenshots were released, it was like remembering playing Oblivion for the first time. However, when still into Oblivion, I couldn't take a look at Morrowind without thinking how ugly it is, but I did read a couple of reviews that said it looked gorgeous. I don't know, what are your thoughts about this.

I thought Oblivion was as good or nearly as good as Skyrim. Played it, and the whole world looked like a really bad painting.

It's just the natural progression of technology.

Shadow of the Colossus still has the best graphics of all time in my eyes, however games like Oblivion, Skyrim, etc will continue to decline because of their art style. While games like Wind Waker and Skyward Sword will hold up over time because of their art style.

I still think Oblivion graphics are good,there not as good as Skyrims,but still good.
For such an open world the graphics of both games are great.

Oblivion had good graphics, but characters' faces were just awful.

True, but this is more true for some game series than others. For example, Mass Effect, the graphics may have gotten better over the years, but you can still load ME1 and it won't look like something last decade like oblvion does

It depends on your metric. Compared to the most cutting edged graphics being run on the most state of the art gaming systems Skyrim isn't very impressive.

But to be honest, I've been amazed at how good Skyrim looks and performs given that it runs on the exact same hardware that Oblivion ran on. It looks amazing compared with Oblivion, is more stable and performs better for me than does Oblivion on the same machine. And to think before it came out I was worried that I might have to upgrade my hardware to play it.

Agreed.

I think that's a fair anology- both looked good. One looked good and played well; the other did not.

Well. Games released at or near the date of a new console tend to look outdated quickly because developers are not used to the new software

This is an insult to Skyrim or Oblivion?

when i first played oblivion i was awed by the graphics. now im awed by the graphics of skyrim. in another five years ill be awed by the next TES graphics. haha

With the texture packs available, I still think Oblivion looks great. Played two hours of Morrowind before I gave up. It just looked too awkward.

The strange thing is I have no issues with really old games like Dungeon Master (1987).

Like I said, some games age better than others. Cell shaded games tend to age really well.

Yeah Oblivion looks a bit dated now. Since it's still pretty recent, it'd be nice if an updated texture pack was available for console players. Probably won't happen though.

At the time of release I think Oblivion looked about as amazing as Skyrim does today. Unmodded Skyrim of course looks very much better than unmodded Oblivion, but for the time Oblivion was amazing and would chew up video cards at the time of release.

With mods Oblivion can look as good (or even better in places) than unmodded Skyrim, except for the NPCs.

And regarding Oblivion NPCs, of course they look lousy compared with Skyrim. But consider how much vastly better the NPCs looked compared with unmodded Morrowind NPCs.

I think because of the way our brians are tuned NPCs are the most difficult to get right. Human brains are tuned to notice small details on faces, which is why a lot of paper money have portraits printed on them -- because it is more obvious to detect counterfeits. So we are particularly sensitive to NPC faces in games.

Yeah Skyrims graphics are good, but i'n considering re-installing Oblivion and getting the graphic mods to put them on a par

I think it's how computers render 3d objects, and they tend to render some things better than others. Cars have looked photorealistic for years. I mean, take a look at this http://www.google.com/imgres?q=epic+games+graphics&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1280&bih=941&tbm=isch&tbnid=U71tGpzDp_oEnM:&imgrefurl=http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/eyes-on-epic%25E2%2580%2599s-vision-of-the-future-of-in-game-graphics/&docid=ZSASRJ9vOJHRmM&imgurl=http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/03/Unreal-Engine-3-man-smokes-moodily-2-627x352.jpg&w=627&h=352&ei=BINKT66zCKe-0QH4v7mWDg&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=100&sig=113912484493301775241&page=1&tbnh=105&tbnw=187&start=0&ndsp=27&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0&tx=85&ty=20
(Its blurry, but bare with me) This looks amazing, it has more detail in it than I see in most faces in real life, but it still looks computer generated

You say that, but I don't think Skyrim's graphics are as impressive as Oblivion's were at the time of release.

I played a heavily modded version even after Skyrim had been released and Skyrim didn't seem that much more impressive.

Oblivion's graphics look almost cartoonish compared to Skyrim's

I don't think that is the OP's point.

The point is at the time of release which pushed the limits more, or did they both have equally amazing graphics for the time.

Cartoonish? i disagree, maybe the orcs... But i think its just more colourfull.. doesn't mean its cartoonish - i think it makes a nice change from Skyrims harsh barren landscape.. a bit more life and colour never hurts.

The hard thing about this is that we can't pull up a screenshot of our first impressions of the graphics and do a side by side comparison.

Oblivion was famous for bringing otherwise decent PC's to their knees (remember Oldblivion?). Skyrim looks better yet isn't nearly so punishing. You can thank the consoles either way.

Once I came to the realization that my PCI video card wasn't going to cut it and I bought an AGP8x card, I was up and running. I remember being more impressed at the time by Oblivion than by Skyrim today but I fully acknowledge how far gfx have come in the meantime.

haha i remeber that, first time i played Oblivion my whole system froze... took me about 2 weeks to rebuild my computer to play it.. this time all i did was upgrade my Graphics card and it works a treat but as you say it doesn't mean it isn't as punishing... had Graphic cards still been at the same "development" stage in progression it could of been. but in the last 2-3 years GFX cards have come on leaps and bounds.