This is in no way a complaint but I think Bethesda over did the view distance in the game. I was at a high peak at the rift and I could see the sea of ghosts from there. And if you don't know your geography well I just seen the far north part of skyrim from the southern most part... What do you think?

It might be unrealistic in terms of the actual size of Skyrim in "reality", but in terms of the game mechanics, Skyrim is only 16 square miles, so yeah, it's pretty realistic to be able to see the three or four miles to the coast if you're on a mountain.

I don't think I would ever complain about visibility being too good.

If anything they underdid it, at least as far as the PC is concerned. I should be able to sit and look out over the fields surrounding Whiterun and not see a mass of unrendered grasslands after 15 feet.

Well, they don't want your processor to melt through the computer chassis.

Personally I don't care for the long view distances. I prefer Morrowind's fog.

Realistic or not, I love the view distance because it makes for some spectacular views. It is definitely an improvement IMO.

You prefer it to be foggy all the time? Because that's what short draw distances do. They were a trick of some early FPS games to speed rendering, but it's unacceptable nowadays.

I'm with Pseron Wyrd here, I also prefer Morrowind's fog. It made Vvardenfell look bigger than it actually was.

realistically though even in a large continent if you looked down from a high enough place you probably would see the sea. a compromise wouldn't hurt though, the horizon looks nasty and jagged in skyrim.

the fog did make morrowind seem a lot bigger than it really was, it's why oblivion felt so tiny even though it was half again as big. with the MGE in morrowind i found reducing the number of visible cells down from the 13 to 7 kept a nice draw distance without making the world feel too small.

you could always just reduce the draw distance in the options if it really bothered you that much.

I'd like less view distance/more fog, or maybe distance-blur like in early versions of MGE.

Use the mods that increase view distance and a Levitate spell and Vvardenfell was a pretty small island all in all.


The difference between what you see from the top of a mountain and the grass is the LOD textures which look great from a distance, but have little detail. If you tried to render the individual blades of grass as far as you could see you would still be looking around at 2 FPS at that meadow. If you are on the PC, you can increase the fade distance and see more detail farther out.

Being able to see most Skyrim on a (rare) sunny day is nice. From a mountain peak, on windy days, seeing 200-300Km away it's normal and perfectly possible.

If anything, I regret that most of the time the weather in Skyrim is too harsh: fog, snow storms, frequent rains, etc...

Well, Skyrim is roughly 4 miles N to S. Standing on the earth, at sea level, the horizon is 3.9 miles. Standing at 100 ft above sea level, the horizon is 12.3 miles. Not sure how the horizon of Nirn compares to Earth but I'd say that was realistic.

Oblivion eventually god a tool/mod that gave you much finer control over this. If you had a monster computer you could have it render far, far more at a distance. The peformance drops were impressive. This did a good job highlighting one of the most curious things about the Shivering Isles: outside New Sheoth you normally can't see a single one of the buildings at a distance.


That did make Morrowind feel bigger; however, the other thing that made Morrowind feel huge was the layout. There usually wasn't a way to travel in straight lines between places. This wasn't the case in Oblivion, so it felt much smaller.

I do think the distance looks better and understand the map is 16 miles. Skyrim is like the size of france according to lore yet I can see most of the map from a mountain. However If possible they should of done it like this: Maybe reduce it so it feels bigger but try to pull of some ilusion where it seems you have a good view. Though I don't know that's possible.

Your eyes can basically see forever. You can see stars in real life, right? Is 2.5 million light years too much view distance for you? Assuming Earth and Nirn are the same diameter, view distance is the square root of your altitude times 1.225. From Skyrim's lofty peaks seeing Vardenfell isn't unreasonable. If you think the view distance is excessive, try clicking the blur distant textures button in the launcher options menu.

Indeed, the first time I ever did distant land from MGE and booted up a save I had in Ebonheart and looked out across the water, I was completely dumbfounded by just how close Vivec was to Ebonheart. Seriously, with the fog (and the general fact that one wouldn't really think to swim from the Ebonheart docks to Vivec) you would think they were miles away from each other but they're not. It was crazy.


Well I operate at max settings and its still just blech. I mean yeah it can't be uber detailed but it can't look like this either:

http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk173/huMAnity_dues/2012-02-01_00001.jpg