Skyrim Special Edition: Your Thoughts and Impressions?

[TechAngel85]

Got the game (not played yet). ...now just waiting for the CK to be released.

[Kesta]

CK is going to take roughly a week before being available publicly.

 

As for the game :

 

1) Shadows --> Gud gud, though you can still see the "close HD shadows" being drawn as you walk in certain area. Not as obvious as SKGE though.

 

2) No mountain flickering. Just the best thing ever, quite a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

 

3) Water flow/shaders -> Flow is cool. Aside from that, we're seriously under the usual modded quality.

 

4) More grass and shrubs -> Well... it's rather well done, but still somehow look like an additional layer of paint to a pre-existing wall to me. Maybe because I was so used to the original.

 

5) x64 / new bsa -> Super cool load time. My HDD is by far the bottleneck of my system, and load times have always been a nightmare with Skyrim. Even a vanilla setup could take several seconds, enough to switch to a second text. Now it's super fast =D

 

6) Colors : Better than vanilla. Now if you're used to high-quality weather/enb setup, don't expect miracles.

 

7) Antialiasing -> I really liked FO4's TAA, and they put the same in SSE.

 

8) For some reason, all of the NPCs look slightly different... I know they changed something about facegen, but I'm not sure what yet, but I really didn't expect this to be perceivable.

 

9) Lip sync bugfix... cool, but they really went the cheap way with this.

 

 

The only real complaint I got is the total lack of enhancements for in-doors... lighting is still ridiculous.

[TechAngel85]

I did a run around for about an hour. I let Geforce Experience set recommended settings and loaded it up. Installed the unofficial patch from within the game to test that out. Worked.

1. Water flows are amazing! Just watch the small creeks and rivers flowing around the bends as they should! I caught myself smiling several times while looking at this.
2. The water itself needs overhauled. The water mods have much better textures and for some reason underwater seemed to be brown for me.
3. The DoF is too much. It mainly operates as you are moving, blurring and softening the textures. Not my fancy so I turned it all the way down.
4. The fog is "reflective". It will reflect and soften the light much more noticeably. Just follow a guard around that is holding a torch in the fog to see what I mean.
5. Speaking of torches, they got the lighting all wrong. Torch light seems to be somehow connected to the camera position. Go into third person and fly the camera around. This is especially seen on a snow surface. This connection makes torches nearly useless (only tested outdoors).
6. Speaking of snow... it's terrible. Looks like plastic at night, especially in torch light, though some added effects will benefit modders. .
7. The lighting is hit and miss. The nights are far too bright. The fog reflective properties in the morning can make it look like it's glowing. The sky is blue! We're definitely still going to need weather mods to handle the lighting and atmosphere's outdoors.
8. The godrays seem to be more static than dynamic. They're present regardless of lighting, cloudiness, or time of day. They're even seen on a cloudy, dark night. They are also not lined up with the moon's position so where exactly is the light source producing these rays? It's a bit odd to see the moon in one direction and the rays in the direction of the moon.
9. No more z-fighting mountains! Now Bethesda has given use z-fighting LODs! Yay! Seriously, when I walked up to Whiterun, Dragonsreach was flickering worse than anything I've ever seen in Skyrim. Had a few other LOD object flickering as well. DynDOLOD to the rescue!
10. Clutter! Lots and lots more clutter. Mainly in the form of flora, but it's a very noticeable difference.
11. The density of the grass looks and feels great! I had Verdant installed in my last playthrough so this was refreshing to see. I think they've done a great job here. It looks a little more "wild and untamed".
12. I don't know if was the unofficial patch, but several animals had difficulty attacking me. Wolves would just run around me in a circle. I should note I COC'ed into the game.

[hishutup]

I completely agree with kesta, water is still terrible, shadows now update in real-time and is better than skge implementation, in my opinion.

The snow safer is just sparkles.

[torminater]

Considering Z-fighting, shadow striping:

I have tried the Skyrim Special Edition, and there seems to be no more z-fighting or shadow striping for me. As if that is linked to the fixes towards the shadow processing or has something to do with the new 64bit engine, I cannot say for sure. If you have further insight, please share below.

 

For now, STEP doesn't need to include the links to the z-fighting fix in the next version for the guide that uses Special Edition as a base.

 

 

Today, is a good day.

[TechAngel85]

Considering Z-fighting, shadow striping:

I have tried the Skyrim Special Edition, and there seems to be no more z-fighting or shadow striping for me. As if that is linked to the fixes towards the shadow processing or has something to do with the new 64bit engine, I cannot say for sure. If you have further insight, please share below.

 

For now, STEP doesn't need to include the links to the z-fighting fix in the next version for the guide that uses Special Edition as a base.

 

 

Today, is a good day.

Well, it only took a new TES release to raise you from the dead! Nice to see you!

 

The only z-fighting I had was on some LOD objects. Dragonsreach was really, really bad. This was with only the new UP installed which could have been causing some of the issues that I saw considering it was pretty much a straight port from USLEEP and can't have had much testing done.

 

Edit:

No mod manager either. Just downloaded WB.

[torminater]

Back from the dead indeed. It's nice to be back and see most of you are still there! At least now I can lay this z-fighting topic to the dead after 5 years of burning in my eyes

 

Yeah, they'll have to refix most of their clutter mesh/texture fixes.

Edit: Without UP (or any mods) there is no flickering clutter for me, so I guess it is safe to say that things like SMIM will make problems as well.

[akeley]

Glad to that opinions here are rather positive. Will try it tomorrow, but can`t wait to ask:

 

-how`s the performance?

-any chance old saves will work?

[DanimalTwo]

If you have vanilla saves they will work.  If modded no.

[TehKaoZ]

Standing back before more mods become available for this.

 

But no Z-fighting you say? TAA from Fallout 4 you say?

 

Also... does it have rain occlusion now? No need for a Real Shelter?

 

Frak! I don't care about stuff mods can fix. All I want is to be rid of the stuff that plagued me in the original engine. The above stuff of being particular interest. That and of course, that pesky memory limitation!

Edited October 28, 2016 by TehKaoZ

[GSDFan]

I had terrible stuttering until I set iVSyncPresentInterval to 0 and added both game executables to the original Skyrim profile in Nvidia Inspector. I then set the FPS limit to 60. I could not find a profile in the current Nvidia control panel the special edition.

 

Edit: The new Nvidia drivers, 375.70 now has a profile.

[Kesta]

Standing back before more mods become available for this.

 

But no Z-fighting you say? TAA from Fallout 4 you say?

 

Also... does it have rain occlusion now? No need for a Real Shelter?

 

Frak! I don't care about stuff mods can fix. All I want is to be rid of the stuff that plagued me in the original engine. The above stuff of being particular interest. That and of course, that pesky memory limitation!

My thought exactly. Now, landscapes textures packs won't work out of the box because they now have specular, so you're stuck with vanilla landscapes textures, which is very bad imo. That's the main drawback with the shitty interface. (seriously, 6 hours played... I can't stand it anymore. Bartering is now one of the hardest thing is the game. At least BetterMessageBoxControls work out of the box).

 

And yes, there is rain occlusion, for free :) 

 

Other drawbacks :

 - Sounds quality got reduced (they recompressed everything. Cheaply).

 - The change in the color palette make some dark textures (typically amidianborn's armors) look way too dark, completely out of place.

[TechAngel85]

I wonder if that color palette would also affect Gamwich's Rustic Clothing because he went darker with his mod as well.

[GrantSP]

Sadly I cannot bring myself to spend any more time in the game with that atrocious UI.

[TechAngel85]

I thought SkyUI was ported over? It's lacking a lot of functions due to no SKSE, but the layout is at least better.