Along with Tuesday's hype-heralded Steam release of the SCK (which I hear Bethesda is already releasing patches for) Bethesda also released the "free bonus gift" of a Skyrim high-res texture pack weighing in at over 3 GB. Not one to pass up any free gifts, I decided I should check it out.
Below are a few before-and-after screenshots all taken at 1600x900 resolution. I had a few settings switched off (like FXAA effects, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, water reflections, et cetera) but all the images were taken at the same resolution with the same settings and at the highest texture detail setting so they should still serve as accurate comparisons as far as the textures themselves are concerned.
BEFORE
AFTER
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AFTER
If you ask me (which nobody did of course), there's really not much difference to be seen here. I've also read reports that the only real differences are reduced framerates and increased loading times. In my opinion, this is just Bethesda releasing as a DLC something that should have been in the game to begin with and trying to make themselves look generous by calling it a "free bonus gift".
What do you think?
Oh... and before anyone asks... yes, I checked to be certain that the thing installed itself correctly. I even made sure that the BSAs were both registered in both my .ini files:
[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack01.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack02.bsa
...so, if this is a case of the textures for some reason not showing up in my game, we can give Bethesda another gold star for their fine craftsmanship, excellent customer service and their wise decision to distribute all their products through Steam...
The only real good news here is that the textures are in fact all contained in two tidy BSA files, so if it turns out that they don't work well for anyone, they can easily be deleted...
Below are a few before-and-after screenshots all taken at 1600x900 resolution. I had a few settings switched off (like FXAA effects, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, water reflections, et cetera) but all the images were taken at the same resolution with the same settings and at the highest texture detail setting so they should still serve as accurate comparisons as far as the textures themselves are concerned.
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
If you ask me (which nobody did of course), there's really not much difference to be seen here. I've also read reports that the only real differences are reduced framerates and increased loading times. In my opinion, this is just Bethesda releasing as a DLC something that should have been in the game to begin with and trying to make themselves look generous by calling it a "free bonus gift".
What do you think?
Oh... and before anyone asks... yes, I checked to be certain that the thing installed itself correctly. I even made sure that the BSAs were both registered in both my .ini files:
[Archive]
sResourceArchiveList=Skyrim - Misc.bsa, Skyrim - Shaders.bsa, Skyrim - Textures.bsa, Skyrim - Interface.bsa, Skyrim - Animations.bsa, Skyrim - Meshes.bsa, Skyrim - Sounds.bsa
sResourceArchiveList2=Skyrim - Voices.bsa, Skyrim - VoicesExtra.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack01.bsa, Skyrim - HighResTexturePack02.bsa
...so, if this is a case of the textures for some reason not showing up in my game, we can give Bethesda another gold star for their fine craftsmanship, excellent customer service and their wise decision to distribute all their products through Steam...
The only real good news here is that the textures are in fact all contained in two tidy BSA files, so if it turns out that they don't work well for anyone, they can easily be deleted...
Methinks you wasted some bandwidth for nothing my dear. I flipped back and forth between the same image pairs several times looking for differences, and found none (I can't see a difference? Can you see a difference?) I don't know about you, but if I am installing high resolution textures for a game, I expect to see a difference like I did after installing NMCs Texture Packs for FO3. I can tell the difference between magazines and newspapers in the ground clutter now for crying out loud! Bethesda wins another "Razzy" award!
ReplyDeleteAccording to the analysis of the texture pack on the official forums, they've missed out a few of the most prominent poor quality textures.
ReplyDelete@Druuler: Ta for reminding me to get NMCs textures for New Vegas for next time :)
No problem Kirtai. I haven't used them for my NV game yet myself, nor have I, come to think of it, installed all the texture packs I have for Oblivion yet. I'm so bloody lazy...
ReplyDelete@Druuler:
ReplyDeleteFortunately the billing for my internet service is a flat monthly rate... which explains why I'm almost constantly downloading or uploading something to be certain I'm getting my money's worth.
@Kirtai:
I still have this nagging feeling that I'm going to have "egg on my face" for this post because I'll eventually discover that it's still installed wrong somehow. But I've tried using all my knowledge of the workings of Bethesda games and mods to get it to work (and even a few suggestions from the Nexus Forums) and I've yet to see any HR textures. I just don't get it...
@Herculine:
ReplyDeleteApparently, the BSAs have an extremely weird loading order. See here for the gory details.
@Druuler:
Talking of laziness, I've spent the last three months procrastinating on setting up my modded games >_<
@Kirtai:
ReplyDeleteThanks, but at the moment I'm not using any loose files or modded BSAs so that shouldn't have any bearing on the contents of these registered BSAs appearing in the game. (I've been following similar info on the Nexus Forums.)
Flat rate fee or not Herculine, I still think this was a waste of bandwidth that could have been used to acquire something useful or entertaining at least >.<
ReplyDeleteThree months of procrastination Kirtai? Is it that much of a pain to get those games going for you?
@Druuler:
ReplyDeleteNah, setting up the games is no problem. The Wrye Bash family of tools are wondrous things after all.
It's just a bad case of mod paralysis, combined with laziness and being easily distrac... oh, shiny!
Lol! Copy that!
ReplyDelete