Cyan's *Must-Have* Skyrim Mod Recommendation Super-Gush Thread - daily updates

Got the PS3 version and am very pleased with it! Great performance once the initial opening concludes.

Is it true the stuttering in the opening it's caused to the automatic installation in the hdd during this session? I have read this meme on neogaf, I want to know how much faiithfull is it...
 
I got the PS3 version too. I did notice it pausing and stuttering right at the beginning before your character selection etc. After that it has been as smooth as butter. In places I have noticed some very lores textures and at one point, though I guess it was supposed to be snow, it was so lacking in texture detail as to look almost cel shaded.

Overall the frame rate is solid, very little texture pop in, and the draw distance is as magnificent as ever. Though it is apparent that the world is smaller this time. The whole thing feels slicker and that slightly blurred imagery that oblivion had has gone. In it's place there are a few more stark lines that are so defining for games of this generation.

Haven't got anywhere near far enough to comment on the radiant AI etc, though all the battles I have had so far seem to follow the same play as oblivion.
 
The shadows in this game are hideous and this is after playing the PC version with "ultra" shadow details....meh. Other than that the game looks quite good due due to the lighting, and the textures are actually quite decent when compared to Fallout 3.
 
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a great-looking game, but the Xbox 360 version is having some issues. According to Bethesda, the game has trouble scaling textures on the Xbox 360 and may not perform properly when installed to the system's hard drive.

"Skyrim uses a lot of dynamic streaming systems, including textures. We've seen a few reports of certain textures temporarily scaling down on the Xbox 360, and not scaling back up," Bethesda said on its official forums. "We have verified that this issue does not occur when playing off the disk and when the game is fully cached (not installed)."

I don't know whether smile or cry about this PR claims... Bethesda finally admits it, maybe because it's the 360 version... it's incredible how completely ignore ps3 even in this perspective :/
 
How many times are people going to post the same quote from Bethesda? There's an issue. We get it. Geezus.
 
Is it true the stuttering in the opening it's caused to the automatic installation in the hdd during this session? I have read this meme on neogaf, I want to know how much faiithfull is it...

The opening didn't stutter for me at all. Overall I'm very pleased. It's addicting as hell, much better thought out than Oblivion was in terms of character progression, and whatever they did to get rid of the aliasing works like a charm. Very clean looking game. Very solid performance as well. You can even make a fairly attractive looking character, both male and female, in a matter of minutes. The only thing that's bugging me a bit is some truly awful texture repetition. Seeing a hill from a slight distance that's been covered in 20 identical texture tiles looks rather cheap. I guess that's just the price you have to pay when a game as huge as Skyrim that also sports a tv season worth of voice overs barely fills out a dvd.
 
One wonders how these bugs get through on fixed hardware, but then I remember Naughty Dog's last-minute bug hunting for Uncharted, where one of the team happened to take it home and play it on an original PS3 and encounter streaming nightmares. I guess HDD performance is a variable in supposed fixed-function hardware that's throwing console devs. Is the XB360's cache locked to the faster sectors of the HDD? And when playing an installed game, is the cache used? Cause if it is, and it would make sense to as you use the same IO system, then the head will be thrashing slowing down the cache access. Running off disk, the HDD head can be kept in the cache sector. On PS3, the install could end up all over the HDD depending on how fragmented it is (we have no idea what PS3's OS is like for managing fragmentation), so there could be serious disk thrashing there too.

This is one more why next-gen should have some flash cache. Read/write from that will be constant whether data is coming from discs or HDD.
 
man, why are magician always underpowered? (or is it just me playing bad?) - already encountered a quest which was way to difficult, I'll save it for later!

as a battle mage, solely with destruction spells...how do you guys play? which spells do you use and combine??

I am playing as a dark elf...game is phantastic so far, doing the mage gilde quest..cool!
 
...On PS3, the install could end up all over the HDD depending on how fragmented it is (we have no idea what PS3's OS is like for managing fragmentation), so there could be serious disk thrashing there too...

I've had my slim with an upgraded WD Scorpion black 500GB since launch and it's undergone a very heavy usage, installed games, removed games, demos, lot's of video and music installed and then removed to a NAS. And so far I've not noticed any degradation in access times, or any hard drive thrashing in normal use. The one area that does seem to have been adversely affected is boot up time. It does take a long time now to get to the XMB.
 
man, why are magician always underpowered? (or is it just me playing bad?) - already encountered a quest which was way to difficult, I'll save it for later!

as a battle mage, solely with destruction spells...how do you guys play? which spells do you use and combine??

I am playing as a dark elf...game is phantastic so far, doing the mage gilde quest..cool!

I stuck with the Norse option, concentrating on building up health and magika. I've concentrated perks on single weapon usage and blocking. I've also de-enchanted a shield and put the enchantment on a silver ring. That you can do this right from the off is a huge game changer from oblivion. I'm up to level five now and have only encountered one situation where I got my butt handed to me on a plate.
 
Is the XB360's cache locked to the faster sectors of the HDD?

hm... don't know if it's the faster sector per se, but I can see them fixing it to some location (as well as the Xbox 1 BC files) as separate partitions. The game cache gets fragmented very easily if you play lots of games, but it never seems to be an issue for the DLC or game installations (in my experience).

And when playing an installed game, is the cache used? Cause if it is, and it would make sense to as you use the same IO system, then the head will be thrashing slowing down the cache access.
Halo 3 seemed to be the prime example of simultaneously attempting to access the cache and the installation thus slowing down the loading in-game. I have no idea if earlier games were as proficient at using both disc and cache for streaming in data, but it seemed to be a big enough deal for Bungie to talk/present about it.

This is one more why next-gen should have some flash cache. Read/write from that will be constant whether data is coming from discs or HDD.
I always got the feeling that the 4GB 360 SKU was headed that direction, but clearly 4GB isn't enough to satisfy the game cache or even Xbox 1 BC, but they treat it as a memory card replacement anyway.

Kinda interesting that the 4GB flash is on a separate PCB that attaches to the motherboard: one mobo production line, two SKU lines that insert either the PCB or an HDD into the system. There are two spots for flash, but it looks like they only use one 4GB chip. They need to have enough flash so that installing is an option otherwise we're still stuck with devs trying to cater for full installation ala PC versus partial installation/game caching.

I gather the main issue for disc streaming is really the seek/access times, which for flash would be instantaneous, relatively. The write can be crap (depending on how much they want to spend), but that should only affect installation times. hm...
 
There is a thing I never understood about the triple buffering on the ps3... why the developers are unable to disengaged that during the combat/shooter session to decrease the lag in the input player controls? I don't know whether it's clear what I tries to say, why not to pass to triple buffer on double buffer, when the player controls stuttering too much? Isn't it possible?
 
There is a thing I never understood about the triple buffering on the ps3... why the developers are unable to disengaged that during the combat/shooter session to decrease the lag in the input player controls? I don't know whether it's clear what I tries to say, why not to pass to triple buffer on double buffer, when the player controls stuttering too much? Isn't it possible?

hm... you mean drop triple buffer and v-sync if the framerate goes really bad?
 
man, why are magician always underpowered? (or is it just me playing bad?) - already encountered a quest which was way to difficult, I'll save it for later!

Did you find the staff of paralysis? I just found that and its definitely made some situations far easier.
 
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ive bet that framerate will be same disaster for PS3

I hope you didn't bet too much. The frame rate is anything but a disaster, I have yet (apart from the initial scenes) to see any frame rate hitches. It's been as smooth as butter.
 
Fraud not. Running very nicely indeed. Maybe you should try instead of speculating all the time?

i tried all Bethesda games on PS3 and all were very poor in performance most Fallout NV... i am just waitng till price drop or for christmas :) ...
 
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It does do the usual Elder Scrolls thing though (or at least it did it yesterday for me): the longer you play it, the more choppy it gets (the hdd is struggling like crazy). A restart remedies this. Not a PS3 exclusive issue though. That's been an Elder Scrolls trope since Morrowind on PC.
 
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