Hello , I am first of all a huge fun of the Elder scrolls game and I love the series , the first Morrowind game is what made me interested inmodding andlearning 3d , but from the latest screens of the gameplay video released for Skyrim , altough I am really excited about it and I like the graphics , I can see that there is a huge step between the Tech and graphic look of this game and the other contemporary games , even older like Red dead redemption ( rage engine ) , Battlefield 3 ( Frostbite) , Gears of war 3 ( UDK) , Crysis 2 ( Cryengine ) etc..... so what is wrong wwith this game somehow ? What doesn't make it look at the same level or better than the others ? Is a Artist level fault ? Is an Creation Engine bottleneck or what ?What do you think?

You Tube

Especially many people have complained about the water showed in the rapids images of the video , I personally like them but I guess they could be made better , but how and with what techniques?

gamebryo!

edit:
Okay, on a serious note:

This is the first time bethesda has scaled up their production, and while fallout3 had a bigger team than oblivion, oblivion was quite a small scale production much like morrowind.

epic, crytek and rockstar has all years of experience working with these things already, they've built up some fantastic engines being able to push some extremely heavy stuff, this is bethesdas first time with their own inhouse rendering engine.

Scope: in the elderscrolls games you go almost anywhere, see everything from every direction, and then have massive draw ranges going on top of that, with most objects being dynamic in the world, there's not as much room for visual cheating that the other can take, like having backdrop scenery and selected angles, there's no lightmap baking going on, there's no massive built setpieces that can be sent in one go.

It's their rendering engine and it's doing exactly what they want it to do, and it does it faster than gamebryo did on the exact same hardware oblivion ran on.

And on the water, the rapid currents are most likely going to be improved, since it's nothing technical, just an artistic mis-step, and if you look at 1:35 in the video you'll see some quite beautiful cave streams.

And most important, people are really good at comparing apples with oranges, it's more than texture resolutions, it's more than what special effects you throw at things.

Originally Posted by eld

gamebryo!

yeah, gamebryo cant do shadows

Who's been complaining about the graphics? That demo looks awesome.

I guess you do not know that Bethesda is not using gamebryo anymore but has their own propietary engine called Creation Engine I think .....

The people who complain about the graphics are those who don't understand anything about making games. They fail to realize that making a huge, open-world game takes up much, much more resources than a small, cramped, corridor shooter.

Of course but I brought to comparison red dead redemption and crysis , they both have huge world spaces to explore , lot od dynamic interactive elements and physics pluses ... whats the plus in those games that the Bethesda new engine doesn't have ? and especially on the water topic what's the state of the art best way to make a rapid stream? that is not sliding texture on a bumpy model?

Originally Posted by r_fletch_r

yeah, gamebryo cant do shadows

Who's been complaining about the graphics? That demo looks awesome.

Yeah it can, but it's implementation is really limited and slow. In Oblivion for example, the church in Kvatch where you first meet Martin actually has shadows in it. If you're holding a torch, you'll actually see shadows being casted by the people inside.

It's pretty much what eld was talking about though. It's an open world game with a lot going on and a lot of interact with. Priority #1 is to make your environment feel real and have a lot to interact with. Any sort of graphical gloss takes a backseat to that goal. I'm sure if Bethesda wanted, they could make something really visually impressive, but they'd have to start ditching the open world elements.

streams and waterfalls are tricky, for all it's visual beauty RDR had some pretty terrible waterfalls and so-so water.

Originally Posted by Arcanox

Yeah it can, but it's implementation is really limited and slow. In Oblivion for example, the church in Kvatch where you first meet Martin actually has shadows in it. If you're holding a torch, you'll actually see shadows being casted by the people inside.

That was intended to be a tongue in cheek comment. Its a common comment about gamebryo amoung the 'experts' who bitch about beths games.

It looks like Gamebryo to me. It doesnt look really that great though. Although I hate graphics and what they've done to games....

What you should really worry about is the animation, or the persuasion game. Or the UI, the hacked in IPAD UI which breaks immersion, looks stupid and reduces speed and functionality of use.

my biggest gripe is that all the metal looks like rocks. the dragons skin seems to look like rocks. the trees look like rocks ffs.

texture wise i mean. obviously the geometry is tree shaped (in the case of trees).

Originally Posted by almighty_gir

my biggest gripe is that all the metal looks like rocks. the dragons skin seems to look like rocks. the trees look like rocks ffs.

texture wise i mean. obviously the geometry is tree shaped (in the case of trees).

...what?

You hardly even see the dragon's skin. At all. If you're looking at the dragon on the stone wall, then yeah, that's pretty normal.

This looks like rock? O_o

They might be aiming at lower specced PC's? Crysis looks shit hot, but how many systems can run it on high settings?

Quite simply put, if Beth made everything perfect, visually, then there would be less for modders to do.

Modding Elder Scrolls games is a big part of the draw, for me at least. I am sure modders will figure out a way to make whatever lack luster more visually appealing, given time. Modders aren't held back by performance restrictions, or at least I never let it concern me much. ;)

Crysis 2 does look good. But. The difference is, it's not quite as large as Skyrim is.

Am I the only one who noticed how AWESOME the tree animation is at the very end of the trailer? Look at how those branches move. It's amazing. The water will need some tweaking for sure. But I was incredibly impressed by the clouds in the mountains and such. It's an amazingly beautiful game.

I think what bothers me is the light and shadows. Highlights are often pure white and shadows are often pure black. That's not natural.

same as OP here. Love the morrowind games. And just starting the maya learning process. It's workin alright. I'm only so so as of now. 3 days in.

It definitely doesnt look bad, especially for an rpg. I think the biggest problems I saw was the lack of some of the more subtle effects like fake SSS for foliage and the no so good looking water.

As far as different engines "having better graphics" than others, all modern game engines use pixel shaders and triangles so its not like one engine can magically look so much better than another. Its really just about the skill and number of artists and how much time they have to work on something. Sure one engine might have super good lightmapping or realtime shadows or post processing but all that is achievable in any engine with a little work.

Originally Posted by Prophecies

Crysis 2 does look good. But. The difference is, it's not quite as large as Skyrim is.

Am I the only one who noticed how AWESOME the tree animation is at the very end of the trailer? Look at how those branches move. It's amazing. The water will need some tweaking for sure. But I was incredibly impressed by the clouds in the mountains and such. It's an amazingly beautiful game.

I must correct you on this ,



Crysis island is 16 x 16 kms (256 sq km 98 sq ml ) and Red dead Redemption map is 9 x 8 km (72 sq kms , ca 27 sq ml )...
Oblivion map was 40 sq km (10 sq ml ) and the Skyrim map is stated to be about the same size ...

Yeah but, Crysis was hardly full of stuff to do, quests, people, interactive stuff and underground areas all over the place.

Crysis was sandbox, sure, but there wasn't anything in it... One of the biggest crits it had was that it was empty. Sure it was pretty, but compared to what you could do in Oblivion or any GTA? Not even close.

^^
Just cause 2 is even worse, the maps is huge, but there is almost nothing todo there xD

Back on topic tough, i think the graphics for skyrim looks sweet and so they did for oblivion, fallout 3 or new vegas not so much, i actualy get suprised sometimes on how bad the graphics is(Textures mostly) :P

I loved Fallout 3 I disliked a lot Fallout New Vegas , Boring , bad graphics , proliss and boring quests... apart the huge load of bugs....

I willsurely love Skyrim hoping they wont have it supersimplified like Fallout and go back tothe style of Morrowind like multiple pauldrons etc...
Anyway back on topic Crysis has a lot of interactive elements considering that you can destroy most of the plants and collide with almoust all of them , pick up stuff and destroy buidlings, the enemies alsohave an exceptional AI , ok you can't talk to them but they are really good ....

Plsus seems that Creation engine inskyrim does not have SSAO or am I wrong?

Just cause too was visually pretty good though. Well I was impresed anyway. The graphics in the video above looks ok to me too. Sure it could eb improved am little, but I can't see it detracting form the gameplay

My main beef with Skyrim is that the tree leaves and branches look too flat.

Originally Posted by Xendance

My main beef with Skyrim is that the tree leaves and branches look too flat.

looks like Speed Tree to me.