Read the thread, I better understand the question after 3 pages.

Has anybody actually read the OP? He wasn't asking why the PC version is better looking than the console versions, and certainly wasn't asking why his choice of playing on console was a " bad idea "( ) and why he should be playing on PC.

He was asking why the graphics have been seemingly downgraded since patch 1.4.
I swear PC users take every opportunity to tell people how great their pc's are and how crap consoles are. He wasn't asking that.

I have no way to verify -- thus, I'm not asserting this is the cause -- but it is possible the problems you're experiencing weren't caused directly by Skyrim's 1.4 patch. Around the same time, MS released two significant system updates for the xbox, one of which was a firmware update for the gpu**. If nothing else, keeping in mind that the xbox version of the game (and its patches) is geared around the console's hardware and firmware, it's certainly under the realm of possibilities that this firmware (or other system update) changed the "playing field" unexpectedly in a manner that conflicts with the games coding.

Just for kicks, did you try going offline, deleting the 1.4 update and starting a new game to test whether the same problem also now exists with Skyrim 1.0? If so, the likely culprit is the xbox system update.

** One noted issue with this new firmware is a problem upscaling 720p to 1080p.

I can't for the life of me understand why:
a.) This thread hasn't been moved to the Xbox support forum
b.) This thread hasn't been locked
c.) OP hasn't been kick/banned.

OP, if the 1.4 patch reduced your textures there must be a reason why. Another post suggest streamlining and perhaps the goal was to improve stability. Personally, I think you answered your own question on page one. Your new TV makes the game look worse. I don't care what it's features are or how big of a cable you have plugged into it, that's the nature of the beast. Also, when you post on a free forum looking for answers, try being polite to the people who reply to your thread. No one here owes you anything.

I had a twitter conversation with Pete Hines once soon after the enhanced PC textures came out. The reason that the 360 tectures look like they do is because that is the best they can have with a good framerate. Because PCs grow in a gradual slope instead of jumping increments, they can enhance the graphics via DLC.

But my Skyrim, on the 360, does look good, especially for a game that size.

Thought I'd make an account to say this.

My PC is 3-4 years old, with one component that I got last year, the graphics card, prices for these components WHEN NEW where:

RAM: ￡50
CPU & Motherboard: ￡70
Hard Disk: ￡50
Graphics card: ￡120
I have no need for a disk tray, and the case is irrelevant, but if you must know mine is ￡60

That runs skyrim on max everything, with no noticeable lag until huge battle scenes, which never happen anyway so I'm golden.

￡350 got me hardware that will run skyrim on maximum settings, it is extremely easy to put the pc together, get someone you know to do it for you if you must.

This is a old machine, PC gaming is not expensive.

I got my PS3 for about the same price, and the PC is better in every single way.

You notice a huge difference between pc and consoles WITHOUT mods, with mods the difference is black and white.

This is in response to people saying that PC gamers are all people who spend ￡3000 on a Alienware (haha I swear no person who actually likes computers would buy one of those ripoffs) and think they deserve better because of that.

PC gamers are people who didn't fall into a console fan boy way of thinking when they where released and hyped, and are now benefiting.

If you want my opinion, sell your xbox, work for what? two days? put together a nice pc from the money and benefit from it.

More ontopic: It'll be what someone said, about how they gradually 'increase' the textures, so you'll load quicker, have a higher framerate but will have to deal with the lesser textures while it's loading, or atleast that's what it sounds like to me.

So, let me see if I get this ...

You play Skyrim on a PC you built that has no power supply, no cooling fans, no optical disk drive, no mouse, no keyboard, no audio card, no cables connecting any of the components, and no monitor?

Oh come on. How did you post this, with magic? If you have a PC then you have those parts, just buy what you need and take whatever you can from your old system. Key board, mouse, really?

It doesn't take much money to build a PC if you already have your basic components (case, PSU, KB/M, etc). Most people think it's super expensive because they look at pre made PCs like alienware which charge insane amounts of money and take advantage of people's lack of PC knowledge.

If you want a gaming PC, read up on it, look at some guides, and buy the parts you need.

It isn't difficult.

If I had to guess, some bug-fixes put more burden on hardware so performance-improving measures had to be taken. I play 1.4 on my PC and after many hours have passed, the game started to be unstable while it did not turn like that with un-patched version... well, bought 2GB of RAM (had to buy it anyway) so that should fix that problem but it does looks like something in patches puts more burden on the hardware.

Additionally, the reason for downgrade might be for incoming new free features or/and DLC which would put more burden on hardware as well.

And it is possible that both are the reason. skyrim already seems to be taking console hardware to its limits so fixes and DLC's creating problems would not be so far-fetched I think.

Skyrim looks like crap on consoles? Personally I dont see it. Its looks better than Oblivion in my opinion. The graphics are certainly not crappy to me. Sure they are not PC quality graphics, but consoles will never be PC quality untill they make consoles as good and high powered as PCs.

Aha, but that's the point another post made. When Oblivion came out it ran fine on the Xbox yet PC owners all over planet Earth couldn't get past the opening cutscene. Oblivion had a reputation for being very hard on PC's. PC's tend to improve incrementally though, while consoles come out in generations. Thus, it's not the same crop of PC's playing Skyrim but it's exactly the same Xbox. No doubt the next console generation will turn that dynamic completely on it's head again. For now, consoles are limited by their technology, not software as the OP seems to believe. This is one of the hurdles game developers have to contend with. Customers expect graphics to get better every year so the trick is optimization, not increased texture density or lighting effects.

No audio card, I explained that I have no optical disk drive, no need with steam.

Keyboard + mouse probably come to 99p, HP is the best obviously, PSU is about 10 years old and was pretty good back then in all honesty, maybe add ￡50 onto the price, my bad.

Cooling fans came with case, Which as said was ￡60, but any case pretty much nowadays comes with fans.

You are not crazy. Skyrim, while I love playing it on my PS3, should not have been a console game. Their limitations detract from it's epic scale. It would be pushing the limit on the consoles if they improved them just slightly

I agree with what many posters have already said: the original Skyrim is at the maxmimum of the current console's possibilities. I enjoy it on PC.

----------------------------------------PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING ANOTHER CLONED MESSAGE-------------------------------

After reading yet another almost full page of posts... I come yet again to the same conclusion, it seems like most of you read the OP and maybe a few lines... then went straight to the reply button. All of this has already been covered in the last 4 pages. This is not an intentional graphics decrease to add performance... I want you all to visualize a beautiful house in whiterun... you can see the grain in the wood... when a guard walks by, you can see the stich of the fabric in the clothing bits of his armor... now, imagine that right beside that beautiful house... was another house... except this one looked like it was ported right out of oblivion, this is what I actually see... one house looks beautiful, while the other looks like pudding? I can see the stich in one guards armor... but the other looks like muddy yellow color? THIS IS NOT a full blown graphics downgrade all over the game, this is a bug that occurs randomly on any given object. I have seen the game run beautifully and WITHOUT LAG, before 1.4, now I've had frame-rate and graphics problems.

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Now, to everyone that is having this problem, after a chat with a user named Coby, who honest to God may be the only person who actually tryed to use his intellect to help with the problem. Last night, and this is very important..... I cleared the system cache, I then proceeded to uninstall skyrim. after that I went into the hard drive, and deleted the 10mb patch 1.4.... from there, I cleared the cache once again. Re-installed the game, then redownloaded the patches.. This for some reason, has seemed to fix alot of the texture issues, I still see random problems here and there... but nothing nearly as bad as what was happening. I haven't seen any more lag yet either, we'll wait to see if that comes back or not. As of right now, I've had minimal problems.

I would like to take this opportunity, to say, I told you so... to any and all those people, that told me this was caused by my xbox not being able to handle the graphics even though I'd seen my xbox handle them just fine.... to say this with all due respect.... your idiots. ///// Thank you btw Coby, I profess my undying love for you.

Right back at you, Peaches.

Youre crazy lol

Consoles cannot produce the same quality of visuals as a PC can. Why simply because the PC is far more powerful. I play on the 360 for now and I know this, the PC has the high res texture pack released by Bethesda then there are mods that make it look even better. Graphics so not make a game great its just fluff, the texture bug that was on the 360 version still persist but I think they should fix more serious bugs like ky non respawning enemies and ingredients, nirnroot glow stacking, and weapons, shields, arrows, and bound arrows not cleaning up properly.

I have tried the steps in the video suggested. Multiple times, that video SAVED my game before 1.4 and made it look ASTONISHING! No lie.

I have also tried to do all mentioned, and running off older patches. Does nothing to help at all.
I have tried formatting the HDD a couple times now, as well as deleting the patch, reinstalling, blah blah BLAH! getting sick of it..

Trust me I've tried it all and have searched everywhere for tips/tricks to help. Nothing, I repeat NOTHING remedies the texture bug re-created because of 1.4.

Try all you want, I did.. for 10+ hours TRYING to fix my game. Which I could've spent actually.. ya know.. PLAYING the game?

That is why I'm getting sickened by the deafening silence from BGS about 1.5. Seriously now.. why can't we get the change log details? Is it that hard to just type it up?

I think that's your problem...

@Jack: Your welcome, I hope the problem doesn't return...

@Hippnotic: Without seeing what your seeing, I can only guess what your issue is. A few second pop in issues is perfectly normal on a console, however anything that last more than a few seconds is not and because I can't see what your seeing, I have no idea if what your seeing is normal in which your just wanting the Xbox to be better than what is is or if you have an actual issue. There could be numerous things causing this...

1. System overheating (which system do you have Slim or older? As newer systems can remove heat from the GPU better)
2. Hardware Starting to Fail or Cable related issue.
3. Something is in your save game is taking all the console system resources making the game to lag/load slow.
4. You not properly following how to clear cache/ installing game and part of the bug from 1.2 is being left over.
5. There is an legitimate issue with 1.4 that needs to be addressed that not everyone is experiencing or seeing.

As I said, I haven't noticed any textures issues other than whats normal for a console... but I haven't played a lot on my console since 1.4. Perhaps I do some test on this tomorrow as I am curious about it. I'm not saying that your not having a legitimate problem, but It is hard for anyone to help you if only a few are experiencing it and if there really is a legitimate problem only BS can help you.

ummm... UI? PC doesn't have it ALL the best you know

I'm going with #5. And like I've said before I wish I COULD show you what is going on.. I tried with my webcam but it has terrribad quality..

Maybe I can with my phone.. lol I might try that. I follow the recache/install/all that to the teeth dude. Never messed it up.

My game, on 1.3.5.0 running off the HDD looked incredible. System never had problems with the game freezing/frame rate dropping/lower texture scaling until after 1.4.

And I never experienced any issues recaching and trying to repair textures before. Only after this recent patch..

I did what Jack of Diamonds said about re-caching, then uninstalling, then deleting the patch. then clearing cache again.. then dling patch again. then reinstalling.

It did help to SOME extent.. I don't have to wait for things to pop-in.. but it's STILL not what I saw the game like before this patch. VERY VERY close.. but not cutting the cake.

If you think you're crazy then it's true. If someone thinks you're crazy then you're not.

You've got that ass backwards dude... crazy people never wander if they are crazy, they have much better things to do.



Yea like I said, the thing I did seemed to help a majority of the graphics/textures problems, but I'm still noticing small things here and there... am glad it helped you a little bit if nothing else. Just cross your fingers and have faith in Bethesda and 1.5 mate.