TES V: Skyrim

Seems armors even of the same type can have differing designs, so I'm on the fence when it comes to selling them. I'd like to save it all, ideally, but weight is going to be a problem until I can find a place to store it all. :(
 
Yeah, I'm in the same boat, trying to get enough money to buy a house where I can dump all the extra crap I'm carrying around.

Graphics are okay.. it's a console port, nothing to write home about. Performance is good. But graphical detail aside, the art design is incredible, that's what really makes this game stand out visually.

The level scaling is definitely improved. Bandits are easier than they were, while I still get my ass handed to me on some encounters, where I know I'll have to come back later (I'm only lv10).

I am loving the hell out of this game. :)
 
HOLY SHIT SHADOW FIX!

Go to the graphics options from the start splash screen, and set the shadows to Medium. I don't know why this is important, but it is, so do it.

Then edit your SkyrimPrefs.ini in your Users\Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder with notepad or something. Find all instances of iShadowMap (there will be three) and change it to 4096.

[Display]
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=4096
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=4096
...
iShadowMapResolution=4096

This is my own screenshot from my own machine after making this change. Look at the leaves, look at the roundness of the bucket shadows, LOOK NO BLOCKYNESS! And the performance is more than acceptable even on my Q9550 rig, so you guys with SB setups should be just fine. GO DO IT NAAOOOWWW! :D

ScreenShot25.jpg


Edit: D'oh, the free hosting I'm borrowing while my host is upgrading their control panel app resized my pic :( But as soon as my hosting interface is back up, I'll post the full-size shot which is every bit as good.
 
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One gameplay thing I want to whine about is that with the intensely nasty wintery weather I think some survivalist aspects should have been added to the game. Seeing half naked people in blizzards in the mountains is stupid.

Spent a few hours on the GTX 560 Ti. It seems to run the game practically as well as my 6950. I'm running on my 720p TV so I set up a downscale from 2720x1536 with 2X MSAA + 2X TAA. Unlike with my 6950, TAA works fine. I could not get forced SGSSAA or OGSSAA working right though.

Insofar as the graphics? This is worlds better than oblivion, there were quite a few mods to Oblivion that didn't look this good.
Every game seems to be judged against some mythical photorealistic potential game or some recent game that looks better in memories than reality. Or open world game gets compared to a corridor crawl.

The shadows here seem to me to be essentially what they wanted to have in Oblivion. Remember that preview vid? The default roughness of them reminds me of STALKER's dynamic shadows. That tweak above looks good though.
 
One gameplay thing I want to whine about is that with the intensely nasty wintery weather I think some survivalist aspects should have been added to the game. Seeing half naked people in blizzards in the mountains is stupid.
Nords have cold resistance. :)
 
Shadow res fix:

Lower shadow draw distance by changing fShadowDistance in SkyrimPrefs.ini:

At 4000
tesv2011-11-1400-45-0fguo4.png



At 400
tesv2011-11-1411-01-1n4ut1.png


You need to find the best balance with res and draw distance around 2000 is decent.
 
Ok, I can certainly agree with that. Shadows are certainly shit-tastic, and jarringly so. But everything else seems to be at least on par with any other sandbox you can name today, and worlds better (ha) than Oblivion.

Two Worlds 2 ! Why has nobody played this game? The graphics are fantastic, miles better than Skyrim.
 
HOLY SHIT SHADOW FIX!

Go to the graphics options from the start splash screen, and set the shadows to Medium. I don't know why this is important, but it is, so do it.

Then edit your SkyrimPrefs.ini in your Users\Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder with notepad or something. Find all instances of iShadowMap (there will be three) and change it to 4096.

[Display]
iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=4096
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=4096
...
iShadowMapResolution=4096

This is my own screenshot from my own machine after making this change. Look at the leaves, look at the roundness of the bucket shadows, LOOK NO BLOCKYNESS! And the performance is more than acceptable even on my Q9550 rig, so you guys with SB setups should be just fine. GO DO IT NAAOOOWWW! :D

ScreenShot25.jpg


Edit: D'oh, the free hosting I'm borrowing while my host is upgrading their control panel app resized my pic :( But as soon as my hosting interface is back up, I'll post the full-size shot which is every bit as good.

You sir, get a big kiss on your Nord check :D

While I was at it I also turned on those landshadow and treeshadows options and it seems performance actually has gone up!

Are there some good settings for improved lod already? I sometimes see details popping up while I'm reasonably close.
 
My settings already had shadows distance at 2000 (interior 3000) so I bumped the shadow resolution to 1024 and it is much better. Why won't the launcher do this?
 
Shadow res fix:

Lower shadow draw distance by changing fShadowDistance in SkyrimPrefs.ini:

At 4000
tesv2011-11-1400-45-0fguo4.png



At 400
tesv2011-11-1411-01-1n4ut1.png


You need to find the best balance with res and draw distance around 2000 is decent.

so lower is better? It just draw higher res shadow closer and not the shadow in distance? Anyway you can get higher res shadow close up and low res shadow in a distance?
 
Two Worlds 2 ! Why has nobody played this game? The graphics are fantastic, miles better than Skyrim.

I had never seen this before, so I went to look it up. Ground textures are certainly better than Skyrim, they're probably double the dimensions that Bethesda uses. Character and object detail look the same to me, but the foliage interaction on Two Worlds 2 also looks better -- it does the 'bend' like Crysis when the character walks through it. Shadows are also better in TW2 without having to tweak shit.

Miles better? I guess that's up for personal taste. But they are better.
 
They're in the display section of the INI file. If you don't see them, just add them.

the SkyrimPrefs?

added them, didnt work at all, and the shadow revert back to ultra in the graphic setting if I change iShadowMapResolution to 4096. I tried to tun the tev.exe without the launcher, it still doesn't work.
 
I didn't buy Two Worlds 2 because it got weak reviews and the original was horrible.
 
the SkyrimPrefs?

added them, didnt work at all, and the shadow revert back to ultra in the graphic setting if I change iShadowMapResolution to 4096. I tried to tun the tev.exe without the launcher, it still doesn't work.

I know that Shadows can NOT be on Ultra or it won't work. Set them to Medium, exit out of the launcher, and then edit the file. Do not go back into the launcher after saving the settings or it might jack them up again.
 
I had never seen this before, so I went to look it up. Ground textures are certainly better than Skyrim, they're probably double the dimensions that Bethesda uses. Character and object detail look the same to me, but the foliage interaction on Two Worlds 2 also looks better -- it does the 'bend' like Crysis when the character walks through it. Shadows are also better in TW2 without having to tweak shit.

Miles better? I guess that's up for personal taste. But they are better.

I shall post some screenies for you.













http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/8132/screendx100003.jpg

http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/4877/screendx100005.jpg

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/3034/screendx100002.jpg

Trust me brother, it looks a bazillion times better than Skyrim.
 
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