[NGTM-1R]

Holy **** that's pretty. Seriously, that's outstanding.

This is the first decent-looking forest I have ever seen in a videogame.

[General Battuta]

May I remind the court that Oblivion also looked gorgeous before release

[Zacam]

May I remind the court that Oblivion also looked gorgeous before release

* Zacam gives a +1 for Epic Justice

[NGTM-1R]

May I remind the court that Oblivion also looked gorgeous before release

Yes.

But the forests looked **** as ever.

[iamzack]

Here's hoping Skyrim won't be more graphics intensive than Oblivion was with Better Cities and Unique Landscapes and such installed.. :\

[PsychoLandlord]

IIRC Bethesda said they were going to scale down the playing area and pack it with more crap and prettier graphics, in order to keep the game relatively run-able on older machines. Then again, this info came out of a Game Informer, so take that with a grain of salt.

[Ransom]

I don't think the overall size of the world relates much to performance. The world's streamed in as you roam it.

[PsychoLandlord]

Hence Why I said be wary of that info. GI tends to throw out random interpretations of things developers say during interviews and they often don't make a lot of sense.

[Nemesis6]

Yeah the whole free-roaming thing that Oblivion had going was a double-edged sword, because not all areas were equally impressive. Still, I found the wilderness more appealing than the roads, cities, and so on.

[Flipside]

I sense a degree of Bullshot with that picture, which concerns me.

I suspect Skyrim will be a physically smaller realm, but with more in it, so decreasing the size won't decrease the amount of content , it just means you won't have to run as far between items I would guess

[Ransom]

I sense a degree of Bullshot with that picture, which concerns me.

There isn't... really anything I can see there that's particularly technically impressive. There's visible polygons everywhere and the texture resolution doesn't seem that great. It's just nice artistry.

[Flipside]

That's just it, it looks more like a colour-adjusted picture from Oblivion itself, the character is terribly low-poly, but the grass/vegetation looks touched up to me. Maybe with the advances in procedural content it is from ingame, but it just sets a few alarm bells ringing for me.

[Ransom]

How do you mean? The vegetation just looks like grass textures bunched together on top of flat terrain, like what they did in Oblivion. It's the art and use of colour that makes this look nice more than anything else.

man, defending bethesda is making me feel funny

[Flipside]

One good example is the trunks of the trees, there are no two identical models in that picture that I can see, and whilst that's not impossible, it's still something rare to see. As I said before, it's nothing I can definitely place my finger on and say 'This is why', but it doesn't look 'right' in some way, I can't put it any clearer than that.

[Topgun]

That's just it, it looks more like a colour-adjusted picture from Oblivion itself, the character is terribly low-poly, but the grass/vegetation looks touched up to me. Maybe with the advances in procedural content it is from ingame, but it just sets a few alarm bells ringing for me.

supposedly, all screenshots are from the xbox360 version of the game. The PC version will probably look better.

[General Battuta]

One good example is the trunks of the trees, there are no two identical models in that picture that I can see, and whilst that's not impossible, it's still something rare to see. As I said before, it's nothing I can definitely place my finger on and say 'This is why', but it doesn't look 'right' in some way, I can't put it any clearer than that.

Trees can be procedurally generated, there's even software to do it.

[Flipside]

Yes, which was why I said in my initial post that I suppose it's possible with procedural generation, but I'll still wait and see

[BloodEagle]

People need to start using Dwarf Fortress to generate 3D game worlds.

[iamzack]

i see two pairs of trees that look almost the same

[Mefustae]

Has someone posted this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eGtyqz4gY

If not, someone really should have. Pretty much expresses the collective comments of everyone in the thread.

And it has more views than the announcement trailer.