Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Announced for release on 11/11/11.

[Amaze]

Well this is just great. I can't get passed the execution phase. Once again they just stand around after first prisoner is dead.

[esir]

Hey Jonas i use your configs some shadow parts but shadows looks same ugly..
Can you make a config just for high quality shadows please!
Thanks in advance.

[mitzi76]

Originally Posted by lehtv

A few hours into it, it seems pretty good. No issues with anything, framerate is good, controls and UI is good and intuitive, everything works. Waiting for smaller text UI mods though. Only annoyance are the dumb looking shadows... this game really needs some higher resolution shadows. And HBAO/SSAO.

Mitzi I think you could decrease object fade distance by a lot without affecting visuals noticeably, but framerate will definitely improve. Remember to also tweak the .ini, the single most important thing to change IMO is to set bTreesReceiveShadows=1 and increase fShadowDistance in skyrimprefs.ini. Makes the trees outside look a lot nicer and there's practically no fps hit.

i agree re the shadows. might turn them off and see if i miss them.

thanks for the tips might leave as it is have no real issues with the graphics apart from the poor shadows (are they poor? seem so to me).

[HonoredShadow]

Originally Posted by esir

Hey Jonas i use your configs some shadow parts but shadows looks same ugly..
Can you make a config just for high quality shadows please!
Thanks in advance.

Yes please do Jonas!

Also does anyone know how to limit the frame rate to 60fps? Now before you say well it should do already I am on a 120hz monitor and its running up to 120fps Vsync so I need to limit it in an ini somehow to only go up to 60fps.

Thanks.

[BlackZero]

Originally Posted by mitzi76

i agree re the shadows. might turn them off and see if i miss them.

thanks for the tips might leave as it is have no real issues with the graphics apart from the poor shadows (are they poor? seem so to me).

The shadows can be improved quite a bit by making a couple of changes in the skyrimprefs.ini file.


just change the 0 to 1 in the follwing entries

bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1

[mitzi76]

Originally Posted by HonoredShadow

Yes please do Jonas!

Also does anyone know how to limit the frame rate to 60fps? Now before you say well it should do already I am on a 120hz monitor and its running up to 120fps Vsync so I need to limit it in an ini somehow to only go up to 60fps.

Thanks.

tried d3d overidder? am using it and seems to work fine...

[Amaze]

Notice anything missing?



I think the priestess is somehow the reason my game bugs.

[CyberPaddy]

good news men, a freind told me ther is a item in game called "amulut of marmite" that u can buy and then u can marry someone by giving them sexy talk. we dont no where it is tho? so if anyone here knows how to get it please help

[mitzi76]

verified cache amaze?

p.s amulet of marmite? wtf is this ****....u been on the sauce again paddy?

[Uncle Dude]

Just a few hours in, and I don't really know what the hell I'm doing yet, but DAMN this game is amazing. Sure, you could nitpick individual graphical elements, but the overall look and feel of the game world is stunning. Runs pretty well too. I'm running max settings (4xAA) and staying in the 30-60 fps range, mostly 50-60. The best part is it feels smooth all the time.

Gonna take some time to get into the swing of the gameplay, but I'll be spending a LOT of time here. Just picked up my 42" Panasonic Viera IPS panel and it looks incredible...and I'm currently sitting WAY too close to it. Gotta figure out the best setup...

[CyberPaddy]

Originally Posted by mitzi76

verified cache amaze?

p.s amulet of marmite? wtf is this ****....u been on the sauce again paddy?

no someon i know has it on xbox and says its true but he forgot where to getit?

[mitzi76]

Originally Posted by CyberPaddy

no someon i know has it on xbox and says its true but he forgot where to getit?

i seriously doubt it! unless the game devs have a sense of humour...

[CyberPaddy]

Originally Posted by mitzi76

i seriously doubt it! unless the game devs have a sense of humour...

they might take it out of pc versions?? i dont no but i hope not

[Amaze]

Originally Posted by mitzi76

verified cache amaze?

Did it right now and I'm now receiving an update from steam. Hopefully this sorts it thanks.

[mitzi76]

Originally Posted by Amaze

Did it right now and I'm now receiving an update from steam. Hopefully this sorts it thanks.

fingers x!

p.s happy adventuring..

p.p.s if i spot it paddy you'll be the first 2 know

[CyberPaddy]

Originally Posted by mitzi76

fingers x!

p.s happy adventuring..

p.p.s if i spot it paddy you'll be the first 2 know

good men, i will updete here too when i find this treasure! and spraed its location to share

p.s. or we could keep it secrets betwen jus a few of us and have a secret brotherhoood of marmite? lol

[Straykatt]

Whats up Gents! I got a question for the masses. I purchased The witcher 2 a month ago and played it for a few hours. I've been busy so havent had time to play in weeks and when i do get the change to game I've been playing BF3. So, should I set The witcher 2 aside for a rainy day and purchase Skyrim? OR play The witcher 2 and purchase skyrim at a later date? I played oblivion almost as much as I played Zeldas in my life. So I will have to get sooner or later.

[mitzi76]

Originally Posted by Straykatt

Whats up Gents! I got a question for the masses. I purchased The witcher 2 a month ago and played it for a few hours. I've been busy so havent had time to play in weeks and when i do get the change to game I've been playing BF3. So, should I set The witcher 2 aside for a rainy day and purchase Skyrim? OR play The witcher 2 and purchase skyrim at a later date? I played oblivion almost as much as I played Zeldas in my life. So I will have to get sooner or later.

skryim for me over witcher2...

[JonasBeckman]

I can't do much about the shadows unfortunately, it seems there's different shadows just as with Oblivion so you have tree shadows, world shadows, item shadows and character shadows.

Unfortunately despite resolution adjustment, tweaks and other commands some of these will be a bit split apart and very jaggy, overly softened or what to describe them as.

Especially item shadows.
(Not all items appear to cast shadows though, this could also mean that more advanced behavior is controlled either via ESM code - mod potential - or unfortunately via the NIF file itself - as how it worked in earlier titles - and checking thousands of NIF files would be quite a task but maybe it's possible to improve the situation.)


Currently re-adjusting the configuration I've been toying with, since there's already LOD low-detail landscape it's not necessary to render certain things all the way to the horizon (I probably got even further with those values though.) so I've scaled back certain things again, it goes a bit back and forth but I get a better understanding of how things work as I toy around with it, much more stable also which is the same problem highly tweaked Oblivion or Fallout 3 / NV setups faced.
(The part about the game using 1.2 - 1.7 GB of VRAM already will also hit third party retextures hard but we'll see how that goes I guess.)



EDIT: Skyrim.ini

uExterior Cell Buffer=72 - I figured a doubled buffer would be OK, it might not actually do much but it doesn't seem to have any negative effects either.

fShadowLODMaxStartFade=5000.0
fSpecularLODMaxStartFade=5000.0
fLightLODMaxStartFade=5000.0

Increase these to the same value for more uniform cut of lines for shadows, specular highlights and light effects, above max but not too much of a increase, you won't really see those tiny distant objects much differently so I halved these from what I had earlier.

And that's it for Skyrim.ini which only holds a few settings.


SkyrimPrefs.ini

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=6

This one needs testing but I assume it adds more steps to the effect and thus smooths it out, doubled as to begin with.
(At worst it's a 1 - 3 value with low, medium and high with 0 for off.)

fInteriorShadowDistance=6000.0000
fShadowDistance=16000.0000

Double shadow draw distance, unsure what the unit is but as I said earlier I notice nearly no performance effect (CPU limited?) so I tend to go for better image quality where possible.

iShadowMapResolutionSecondary=2048
iShadowMapResolutionPrimary=4096

Higher seemed redundant as shadows don't really change as much as expected but it can certainly be set to double this if needed.

iShadowSplitCount=4

Similar to the above about shadows, was hoping this split them up better but maybe that's a issue instead of a improvement if so?
(Still it increases as image quality does as can be seen when comparing the preset ini files in the game folder.)

fDecalLOD2=5000.0000
fDecalLOD1=2500.0000

More decals further away, blood effects and what not.
(Not exactly doubled but I rounded it out to this.)

fSpecularLODStartFade=5000.0000
fShadowLODStartFade=1000.0000
fLightLODStartFade=5000.0000

Similar to the ones in Skyrim.ini but shadow LOD was shorter so I kept that.
(But still made a bit increase from the default 200)

iWaterMultiSamples=4
iMultiSample=0

Ultra/V.High ini preset has that at 4 instead of 0 and it should smooth out water edges a bit but the soft water effect isn't used everywhere (Mostly only on larger masses of water.) so it might not be that noticeable.

MSAA caused a transparency glitch on some objects so it got disabled, goes from 0 to 16 albeit capped at what the GPU card supports of course, usually 8

bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1

Trees can have shadows on them (Bit more demanding but pretty.) and I don't really know about that last one, was hoping for shadow effects near raised terrain or dug out terrain but it might be something else, still it was worth enabling.

fMeshLODLevel2FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeTreeDistance=10000000.0000
fMeshLODLevel2FadeDist=10000000.0000
fMeshLODLevel1FadeDist=10000000.0000

These cap at this value (V.High preset ini is a bunch of 9's but it gets rounded of to this when you start the game, tree distance was set same as the rest instead of being significantly shorter, mostly only covers the LOD low-detail trees anyhow and those don't affect framerate at all here.)

iMaxSkinDecalsPerFrame=50
iMaxDecalsPerFrame=250

More splatter when slashing stuff basically but also goes for other effects.

sD3DDevice="AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series"

Your GPU model here, resets to auto-detect if incorrect so copy over what your file uses to avoid that.

bFXAAEnabled=1
iShadowMapResolution=4096

I use FXAA as to get a form of AA at all but it adds some subtle blur instead, unsure if the .dll hack method is better but this works fine.
(Also a bump in shadow resolution can be done but I think 8192 is a tad too high so I kept it at default, can go as high as the card supports for these of course but don't expect much of a difference.)

fShadowBiasScale=0.1000

This bugged shadows on very low values but decreased as options were set higher and higher so I tried a bit lower than the default of 0.150 for some improvements to shadow detail.

iShadowMaskQuarter=8

Again one of those more unknown shadow settings but as it increased on V.high and that I added a bit extra here too.

iPresentInterval=0

No vsync also improves menu responsiveness and some say general mouse movement, especially in first person specifically but I just use it as I prefer it disabled and don't really notice screen tearing much at all.

bTransparencyMultisampling=1

I don't use MSAA but I kept this enabled anyway, might improve visuals without using FXAA when MSAA is enabled as to cover vegetation and similar.

iActorShadowCountInt=8
iActorShadowCountExt=8

These were in the preset files but not added, added it back (Bottom of [display] ) and doubled them, shadows from all eight basic directions sort-of, or so I had in mind.

b30GrassVS=1

If it's already using 3.0 pixel shader why not 3.0 vertex shader as well, no reason to keep it disabled I imagine.

fGrassStartFadeDistance=15000.0000
fGrassMaxStartFadeDistance=15000.0000

A little more than doubled but sets grass to render further out, looks better and the grass is pretty low-detail so it doesn't do much for performance either.
(Grass really hit Oblivion in terms of performance though.)

bGamepadEnable=0

Don't use one so this system got disabled.

bCrosshairEnabled=1
fHUDOpacity=1.0000

Untouched and you can set crosshair in the game options but here you can also set menu transparency, I guess 0.0000 is fully solid.

bSaveOnPause=0
bSaveOnTravel=0
bSaveOnWait=0
bSaveOnRest=0

I save manually using the console command "Save Savename" and "Load Savename" so I disabled all of this.

bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1
bShowQuestMarkers=1
iDifficulty=4

Mostly untouched but I play on master level difficulty, might want to lower it.

bDialogueSubtitles=1
bGeneralSubtitles=1
bShowCompass=1

I like the subtitles for clarity and you can disable the compass here if you would want to but finding your way to the quest location might be very difficult without clear descriptions.

bMouseAcceleration=0

This shouldn't even exist so away with mouse acceleration, more precise now.

iMaxDesired=2500

More particle effects (Spells and such?) please so I increased this. :p

fTreeLoadDistance=100000.0000
fBlockMaximumDistance=500000.0000
fBlockLevel1Distance=100000.0000
fBlockLevel0Distance=50000.0000
fSplitDistanceMult=3.0000

The defaults I used earlier caused stability problems so I kind of doubled existing values here, fully stable so far and better draw distance for objects.

uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=50

I don't quite know what it does since it's name UI unless "u" is a typo, more fully detailed trees I guess, default was 20 so I boosted it up.

uMaxDecals=1000

More decals if possible, can hit performance a bit.

uMaxSkinDecals=250
uMaxSkinDecalsPerActor=100

As above but for characters.

fLODFadeOutMultObjects=50.0000
fLODFadeOutMultItems=50.0000
fLODFadeOutMultActors=50.0000

Objects, items and character draw distance got a bit of a improvement from this, pretty hefty but very effective.

iWaterReflectHeight=2048
iWaterReflectWidth=2048

Better water reflections, not that they reflect much of anything due to their appearance but still.

And that's that.

[Mkilbride]

Next Elder Scrolls game:

Elder Scrolls VI : Edge of The Abyss

[JBCool]

HaHa, Wes Johnson DID do some VO work for the game! Always loved his voice.

[The Chubu]

Originally Posted by JonasBeckman

Especially item shadows.
(Not all items appear to cast shadows though, this could also mean that more advanced behavior is controlled either via ESM code - mod potential - or unfortunately via the NIF file itself - as how it worked in earlier titles - and checking thousands of NIF files would be quite a task but maybe it's possible to improve the situation.)

It could be two things. I dunno if you modded Oblivion or FO3 but Beth had objects that were lights. Not in the sense of a torch or a lamb, but an invisible object that was just light.

So, if you wanted a torch placed somewhere, you'd have to put the torch model and then the "light object" on top of it.

So, about the two things. One could be what you said. A per model "flag" that says "this casts a shadow" or "this doesnt casts a shadow".

The other thing could be that only certain light objects (if they still use those) can cast shadows while others cant.

Or maybe a combination of both. Anyway, those two posibilities can be modded so we could maybe someday get full shadowing on everything. If its something more hardcoded, then we're fckd.

[BlackZero]

Hardocp review





http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/...nce_iq_preview

[Darren Hodgson]

Question: Outside Whiterun there are some cat-like people, one of whom sells things and another is a Sneak trainer. On my system two of them appear to have semi-transparent heads that gives that a ghost-like appearance as I can see the background scenery through them. Is that normal or is it a graphical bug? I ask because I'm forcing transparency multisampling and ambient occlusion but even with them off they still appear ghost-like. Can someone please confirm that this is how they are meant to be please? Thanks.

[Darren Hodgson]

Here's what I mean... hopefully you can see the background through her head!