Considering that the Construction Kit still is not out, the .ini fix offered above is quite exemplary in regards to resolving the minor annoyances in vanilla Skyrim archery. For those of you wondering about the velocity changes, it does seem to decrease the arrow speed to a slight degree, but, at least in my opinion, is in no way slow enough to become unrealsitic or a hindrance; it may take a few moments to become accustomed to aiming once again after applying the tweak, but it does seem to be much more realistic with it on, as the arrows follow an identifiable curve and no longer seem to simply hit a wall of uncanniness beyond 80 yards which makes distant shots impossible.

Cheers to whoever figured it out, and happy hunting.

There is so much misinformation in this thread it's unbearable.

Bethesda made archery mechanics use REAL LIFE FIREARM mechanics in order to make it easier for players to hit targets at moderate distances. What they did is zeroed the bow range to around what appears to be 10 meters. What this means is the crosshair actually hits about 10 meters away not by manipulating the parabolic trajectory, but by rotating the launch point of the arrow by tilting it x degrees (i.e. F1Ptilt....). This is no way manipulates the timeuntilprojectiledeath which makes long range shots impossible. This also does not manipulate the trajectory or velocity of the projectiles.

If you need to hit a target CLOSER than 10 meters, aim underneath it. If you need to hit a target FARTHER than 10 meters, aim above it. It's not auto-aim, and anybody with rudimentary knowledge of ballistics would understand that. Here's a diagram:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a8/TargetShooting3.gif

I have been extremely active in modding oblivion archery and melee combat over the last 4 plus years. (I did the Duke Patrick Combat Archery mod).
I have 30 years of real life medieval Combat Archery experience (including crossbows).

The archery as it is now does not feel like real archery, not for medieval combat anyway.
Remember there are no "iron sites" on a period crossbow nor on a bow.

The way it is now (like firing a gun) I suspected was to please the call of duty crowd. Or it may have been a left over from fall out that they forgot to remove.

Try this in your Skyrim.ini file:

[Combat]
fMagnetismStrafeHeadingMult=0.0
fMagnetismLookingMult=0.0
f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.7
f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.7

The Arrow fires intuitively thru the cross hair now and then falls (as in Oblivion and most other games) and not up over it anymore!

This was the primary thing that was killing my enjoyment with archery in skyrim. And I was girding my teeth waiting for the construction set so I could fix this.
But this INI tweak will do nicely until the Kit is released.

Once the kit is out then location hits will be possible (at least for head shots) as it only requires some triangulation math and very simple get pos commands to do a crude version. If it is possible to get the arrow's ref then a better version is also possible (the way I do it in my Oblivion mod).
And then after that some other needed tweaks.

If you fire into some of the building, I noticed in white run, sometimes it'll get svck in an invisible membrane around the building where the building has recesses. Arrow just appears to float a few inches from the building.

I got an off topic question, but I may ask it here instead of making a new thread: is it possible to completely get the crosshair disabled? I disable it in the menu options but in sneak, there's a crosshair anyway, so that's quite stupid. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

@Oco:
Try this - http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=279 by Casiotone

Cipscis

The crosshair should represent what orientation you are aiming the arrow from the launch point, not the orientation of your desired contact point with the target. A bow is not a gun.

Interesting, but so far, demonstrably false (the last part of your post at least). Not sure whether you've tried firing arrows a large target (like a mammoth) for any period of time yet? Many of the arrows, while clearly contacting the target do not actually cause it any damage.

Gittin' darn faaarin' range and unloading a few rounds into a black & white picture of a German soldier c1940, won't help us understand the problem sadly.

Glad to See spooky is on the case though, Duke Patricks mods are top notch!

Although this mod does add more realism when shooting bows, unfortunately it doesn't increase the distance at which arrows hit a target.
In other words they still fly straight through anything that's like (estimated) 100 meters away or more.

This is an awesome find. Have you tried playing with the Gravity settings in the INI file?

It seems that the way Skyrim handles arrow trajectory is far more realistic than Oblivion. In real life arrows actually travel upwards for quite a few yards before beginning to fall. In Oblivion they didn't have that upwards arc, they just went in a curve downwards. I don't know about this auto-aiming thing though, it seems those .ini tweaks remove the upwards arc from arrows, and don't have anything to do with auto-correcting trajectory.

Edit: Actually I just went and tested this and there might be some truth to that auto-aiming thing...... They do behave a little oddly. That's what I get for making statements based on only a few minutes of actually trying out bows in Skyrim

(Correct me if I'm wrong since it's been many years since I handled a bow IRL, but) The reason an arrow "travels upwards" when released from a bow is because the archer is aiming above the target, knowing full well that gravity will cause the arrow's trajectory to be a downward-curving parabola rather than a straight line. If you've never used a bow in real life, it might help to think about throwing a ball; you don't throw it straight out in front of you unless you're throwing very close (or extremely fast). You throw upward, compensating for gravity's downward pull. It's a bit of complex trigonometry that the human brain happens to be excellent at calculating automatically.

Anywho, I'm on board with those who were totally frustrated with how terribly unrealistic archery felt, until I applied those .ini tweaks*. Now it feel right; my brain's auto-trigonometry is able to calculate the right angles to fire my arrows, and I can actually hit stuff, like I could in Oblivion.

*edit: see two posts down

Actually that upwards arc happens with balls too. If you play dodgeball with particularly light foam balls (we used these in high school), when you throw them VERY fast they actually go upwards just a tad, it's nothing dramatic, but it's definitely there. Not that I'm saying you would aim downwards when throwing a ball to compensate for it, like I said, it's barely even there.

Heh, Raok, as I think about it now, I'm sure you're right. I'm also sure that balls aren't arrows, but only as sure as I am that I'm not a physicist. I do stand by my "it may help you to think about..." though.

In any case, I should mention the tweak I've been playing with is the one from the second post:


I haven't had a chance to try out spookyfx's version yet. I'm pretty sure at this point I understand exactly what the setting I've changed is doing. What are the "magnetism" ones, though?

i find that the arrow goes higher than the crosshair shows, i think this was meant to be so you can aim directly at the person and hit him, but i always go over their heads cause i know the gravity will pull the arrow down, and skyrim has definetely changed that.

+1

The cross-hair is just a point of reference, it's up to you to judge the distance and move the cross-hairs ABOVE your target accordingly so that the arrow flies in the correct arc to hit your target at a certain distance.

Why do you think you see in the Movies and at exhibitions, where the Longbow archers aim 30 degrees or higher towards the sky instead of directly at their target?
You can't expect to stand at one end of a football field with a bow, and directly aim at the bulls-eye on a target at the opposite end of the field and expect to hit it,
the arrow wouldn't even make it to the target actually.

Just like with the cross-hair in some sniper rifles, there's gradations in fine increments so the sniper can adjust for things such as distance and wind, this is no different.

So, the cross-hairs is in no way misleading, as the cross-hairs, DO NOT indicate where the arrow is going to hit.

I'm not sure why there's confusion about this, but it's just basic physics and gravity at work here, with some practice you'll get good at it.
Try practicing with some of the target dummies placed outside, (and use the %100 arrow return mod ) and move farther and farther away each time, you'll begin to notice that you have to aim higher and higher ABOVE the bulls-eye in order to hit it.
I can hit a bandit in the middle of the back from pretty far away if I aim the cross-hair at his head, if I aimed the cross-hair OVER his head that same distance, I'd get a headshot,
but with a 3x sneak bonus, it's usually not necessary.

Here is a ini tweak to remove the rangelimit on archery and magic:)

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1279548-archery-magic-range-limit-fix/

Thx to saeb for spreading the word! And one up for Azula ll for the fix:)

When I edited Skyrim.ini to add the ArrowTiltUpAngle lines, the [Combat] section in the file looked like this:

[Combat]
fMagnetismStrafeHeadingMult=0.0
fMagnetismLookingMult=0.0

So I think those lines have nothing to do with arrows, and spooky included them in his post by mistake. Spooky, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Not a mistake, it was to show you you were editing the correct file and the correct subgroup.

I dislike it when people post ini change and do NOT give you a "landmark" to find your way by.

So do those Magnetism lines have anything to do with arrows?

Hard question to answer at this time.

I believe magnetism is in this game just like in Oblivion (the higher level your archery the more the arrow would be "svcked" onto the center line of your target.)

But what effect these INI setting have on that I am not sure yet. These could possibly be only for Melee combat. Or even have no effect at all as there are some ini settings that are legacy only (left over and not used by the game).

Also, now that I think about it I should have made it clear the magnetism settings were just "landmarks" and would NOT need to be set in anyway. Sorry for that.

OK. Thanks, by the way, for doing the research to come up with those 0.7 values, I'm going to start using them.

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess what had me confused was that I initially had no [Combat] section in my Skyrim.ini and had to create it. Looking now, I see the category and the magnetism settings in Skyrimdefault.ini, which I have not edited.

Thanks spookyfx for this information, the 0.7 values are perfect. Made my archery experience a whole lot better!

I was going for headshots all the time, even that the damage is the same (just an habit) and couldn't figure out why the arrows swooshed over their heads every time