The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Technology Interview

Thanks.
hmm.... maybe the drivers weren't "optimized" But my first thought was just placeholder art + bug.

 

can someone give a link to the story?

 

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=223640

Will there be a 3dmax Importer/Exporter which will enable the modding community to continue to input their own mesh creations, and if not, will it be possible to input modder mesh work by any means or will there be some kind of support for this?

We are looking into releasing an exporter similar to the Morrowind tool. Specific plans will be announced when the details are ready.

Is the 3DMax flex modifier supported ?

No.

Is the clothing movement handled by the Havoc physic engine ? Can it be taken advantage of by modders ?
No, we do not use cloth physics for clothing. I don’t believe it would be possible to mod in.

 

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1011766&page=1&pp=20

The official forums are down right now but they were apparently imploding as the fans were coming unglued over this rumor(s).

 

Are we officially fanbois betrayed mode now, with all the emoting thereof? Or still Hoping for the Best?

 

Yes, and most people on the official forums are blaiming it on the Xbox360. As they're sure any PC is much more powerful than a cheap console.

 

Why is shadow performance bound by geometry anyway? Is Oblivion's shadow system stencil based?

 

[H] Forums are not changing much, I see.

Shadows making GPUs melt, no joke.

If they removed the shadows can only mean that they're shadowing system is too buggy and they don't want to bother with it. Nothing else.

 

I was thinking maybe they were getting rendering errors in the distance... possible

 

Wow, some of the comparrison shots really show a decrease in IQ. Someone tell me its all a hoax.

epic

 

There's a round-up thread posted by a mod on the Oblivion board that indicates the devs did so purely for performance reasons. They argued that they'd rather have dozens of objects you can interact with (say, books on a bookshelf, food and plates on a table) without shadows than static objects that cast shadows. And so apparently they won't maintain two shadowing code bases to allow for (future, I'm guessing) PC hardware to cast shadows on everything and its brother.

That thread also mentions that those comparison shots, specifically the ones grabbed from the new german video, aren't really valid b/c the build Bethesda previewed to the german site didn't have all the fancy bits on. So, textures likely won't take the dive we see in the shots, but shadows may.

 

holy shit they've turned oblivion from a fantastic looking game to, as someone in that thread said, slightly better than morrowind.
not only the shadows but the lighting got "optimized" also.
what a bunch of bullshit.

 

I can't beleive how gullable some of those [T]ard foru posters are... It couldn't be any clearer looking at those comparison shots that the no-shadows version is running at much reduced quality levels. The character polygons are much lower quality..

AND THE NORMAL MAPS.

Oh my freaking god...can't anyone see that whatever system that was taken on had the texture quality set down low?! The detail on the normal maps is just like CoD2 on lowest settings in dx7 mode. There's absolutely no damn doubt in my mind that that's a low-detail screenshot, either meant as a joke or just a mishandling of information, ie; noone got told about the reduced quality being used. (perhaps Beth-soft even thought it'd be a nice way to surprise the fans by releasing the game with a fully intact shading system. Or perhaps make an announcement prior to release).

Either way, you gotta be blind to think it's running the same settings devoid of shadows. That'd just be retarded

 

I'm kind of tired of shadows getting the short end of the rendering stick. Global/consistent shadowing is usually one of the least prevalent things outside of Doom 3. Can someone please make a dynamic and global shadowmap implementation that works in outside environments for all definable objects?

 

Yes.

 

I pinged Pete Hines regarding dual PEG support and he said that SLI is in and they're looking at Crossfire, though he sounded unsure if it'll work out of the box.

 

what does support for SLI or crossfire mean in the game's code

 

Pretty crappy of Bethsoft to do this. Maybe Gothic 3 will live up to the hype better...It seems this sort of behavior is becoming more common, which is unfortunate. Ah well nothing to do now, but wait unless you happened to rush out and buy that collectors edition just before this information came to light. Hmm what an interesting coincidence.

And yes I realize that the german video was on lower settings, but the developers still admit they left stuff out that it had in previously for performance reasons.