The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | VR (Vive/PSVR)

[Insanecyclone]

Minimum PC Specs:
Operating System: Win XP/7/Vista (32 or 64 bit)
CPU: Dual Core 2GB
Memory: 2GB RAM
Video Card: DirectX9c video card w/ 512MB RAM


Recommended PC Specs:
Operating System: Win XP/7
CPU: Quad-Core Intel/AMD CPU
Memory: 4GB RAM, 6GB Hard Drive Space
Sound: DirectX compatible sound card
Video Card: DirectX9 video card with 1GB memory. GTX 260/Radeon 4890 or higher

[Yuri-G]

finally. looks like I have nothing to worry about, except onboard sound, but I'm not too concerned.

[Correction]

DirectX 9 in Recommended Specs, huh...

[Ohemgee]

Anyone want to go in to the science why 9 10 and 11 are different? I remember seeing a texture video before 11 was released

[Correction]

Different game, but:

http://www.abload.de/img/crysis2buildingaj8b.png

It will vary on how each developer uses the tools available to them, but Bethesda either went the Console -> PC Port route or they plan on releasing a DX11 patch later like Crytek did. I'm mostly scratching my head that the min reqs didn't really rise by much past Oblivion's.

[Cephius]

From what I've read, the specs are low because the baseline settings are console-friendly. If you have a monster PC it looks like there will be plenty of stuff to crank up.

[Ohemgee]

Again, nothing a few texture mods can't fix. But at the same time the game looks decent on the 360. Which says a lot for a 360

[Correction]

From what I've read, the specs are low because the baseline settings are console-friendly. If you have a monster PC it looks like there will be plenty of stuff to crank up.

This fails to explain why DX9 is in 'recommended.'

[Cephius]

This fails to explain why DX9 is in 'recommended.'

Recommending DX9 and recommending a DX9 card are two different things. Didn't we go over this like, back in April? At its core Skyrim is a DX9 game, and the PC version is going to get some features of DX11 - like Tessellation - but they didn't plan on taking full advantage of it at launch. They're supporting mods though, and who knows what will be implemented later on in DLC and such.

[Kaelan?]

Anyone want to go in to the science why 9 10 and 11 are different? I remember seeing a texture video before 11 was released

I can't really speak for Skyrim since, well, I don't work at Bethesda, but I can give a more general answer.

Some of the major changes they made involve completely doing away with fixed-function pipeline rendering and just fully supporting shaders. Before, with DX9, you could actually just not use shaders at all, which meant they basically had to support 2 completely different paradigms of drawing things on the screen, which means dividing their focus on development support and what not.

With DX10 and 11 there's only the shader model. That allowed them to focus entirely on making that better: where before you used to just have effects made by a vertex shader (making effects that operate on vertex colors) and a pixel shader (operating on pixel colors), now you also have things like compute shaders (which are basically shaders made entirely for the purpose of doing math directly on the graphics card, because it's way faster and more optimized than your CPU for certain kinds of math), which in turn allows developers to both make things they used to do before faster and more accurate, as well as allowing new interesting things that just used to be computationally impossible.

The newer shader models also allow for things like more shader variables and data in general, so you can create more complicated (and thus, ideally, better-looking) shader code.

Another big thing they add is dynamic Tessellation (which in turn works because of the new possibility of creating Hull and Domain shaders), which is essentially the ability to take a polygon mesh and make it more detailed by increasing the amount of polygons that define it. The point of this is to add more detail to models, so they look closer to the real thing since, obviously, in the real world even things like boxes have indents and grooves and raised bits on them that aren't really well represented by a simple cube with a texture painted on it - which is what we used to have to do - especially when you look at them up close.

Normally this would take an obnoxious amount of memory to do for your entire game, which is why artists try to use as few polygons in a mesh as possible. If you can use software to do Tessellation dynamically at runtime though, you could do something smart like, say, do a lot of tessellation on detailed objects close to the camera and keep it simple on things farther away or outside of the player's view. So in general everything you see is highly detailed, but the memory cost of doing it is actually not that high because your total "polygon budget" is actually fairly constant throughout most scenes in the game. Visual example: (notice the tessellation dynamically changing based on the distance to the camera)


DX11 in particular also allows multi-threaded rendering, which back in the days of DX9 was actually completely impossible - you actually had to render everything on the main thread of your program, regardless of how many threads your program actually has or what computer you're running on. If you run an older DX9 game on a quad-core or a hex-core today, it won't actually render any faster than a single-core PC with the same clock speed. The newer versions of DX11 also have direct support for stereoscopic 3D rendering, since that's become more popular lately.

Bonus video:

[Cayos]

2 new videos from G4.

First one confirms

Spoiler: show

Dragons that you can call to help you fight

[Kuishen]

Aside from the most /retarded/ commentary in any game video I've ever seen on that second video, it really hit me how fucking massive this game is. Sweet jesus I'm going to put so much damn time into this game.

[Greatguardian]

Aside from the most /retarded/ commentary in any game video I've ever seen on that second video, it really hit me how fucking massive this game is. Sweet jesus I'm going to put so much damn time into this game.

Adam Sessler is the same fucking retard that gave FFXI a 1/5 because he tried to take on bunnies in La Theine Plateau at level 8 and died. Half of the segment was on the "uber bunnies" and how "the fact that they could kill him is ridiculous".

Edit: Oh god I muted the second video because I figured that was him too. This is terrible.

[Headspace]

Yeah, that was bad. Most of the video footage was recycled from other shit and repeats sometimes in the video while they talk. But the landscape footage was awesome.

[Insanecyclone]

Adam Sessler is the same fucking retard that gave FFXI a 1/5 because he tried to take on bunnies in La Theine Plateau at level 8 and died. Half of the segment was on the "uber bunnies" and how "the fact that they could kill him is ridiculous".

Edit: Oh god I muted the second video because I figured that was him too. This is terrible.

I remember watching this when it aired. They were on the Fairy server too, recognized some people that went passing by.

[Kuishen]

Adam Sessler is the same fucking retard that gave FFXI a 1/5 because he tried to take on bunnies in La Theine Plateau at level 8 and died. Half of the segment was on the "uber bunnies" and how "the fact that they could kill him is ridiculous".

Edit: Oh god I muted the second video because I figured that was him too. This is terrible.

I did laugh at the FFXI review on Xplay but other than that I kinda like Adam Sessler. I feel bad for the guy for being one of the only people who hasn't entirely "sold out" on that shitty network. Surprised he still works there.

But yeah no, the second video wasn't him and it was absolutely godawful.

"You can use ice arrows like Link."

Have never facepalmed so hard in my life.

[Azull]

I watched it after i just woke up earlier today.. but did they speculate about the story saying your mom might be a dragon or am i insane.

I am pretty sure.. just from random stuff ive seen... that the idea is that your were born with the soul of a dragon due to you being some kind of royal bloodline... right? Shouldnt game journalist know a bit about the game they are reporting on?

[Kuishen]

I watched it after i just woke up earlier today.. but did they speculate about the story saying your mom might be a dragon or am i insane.

I am pretty sure.. just from random stuff ive seen... that the idea is that your were born with the soul of a dragon due to you being some kind of royal bloodline... right? Shouldnt game journalist know a bit about the game they are reporting on?

I hope that that was jesting because I want to believe that nobody could be that stupid.

[Odin'sLaw]

anyone from england buying this game? really want my free cloth game mat to never use but just have for nerdy moments like my FFXIV colth map

[Kaylia]

Adam Sessler is the same fucking retard that gave FFXI a 1/5 because he tried to take on bunnies in La Theine Plateau at level 8 and died. Half of the segment was on the "uber bunnies" and how "the fact that they could kill him is ridiculous".

In his defense, I also wondered how the fuck bunnies where killing me when I managed to save Vanadiel more time than I can count.

Vorpal bunnies are no joke I guess.