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Elder Scrolls Panorama Shots
Johnny wrote to mention new images up on the Panogames.com site, for the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Enjoy some late-night images of sprawling countrysides and dank dungeons. They also offer images of Half-Life 2 and Need for Speed : Most Wanted.
Just remember that Oblivion is built to scale with your capabilities. As graphics cards and computers keep improving, so will some of the graphics of Oblivion. Draw distance will get longer, texture blending will improve, and the shadows should scale, too.
Gamers on various forums are starting to explore the expansive INI settings available. You can easily crash your game, but there are some promising improvements out there already of things that make the game look even better if you have the equipment to support it.
In case you didn't know, the grass is generated by the game itself based on the climate and terrain type. The floor of a forest will be more sparse and rugged than open expansive plains where there is almost too much grass. When terrain gets too high/steep, the foliage thins.
After you murder a few people, make sure you don't go to sleep in a dungeon filled with traps... the Dark Brotherhood representative will come to you as you sleep, offer you a position with them, then leave the dungeon-- walking THROUGH all the traps and dying, making it impossible to join the Dark Brotherhood. Bastards!
Even in the most open-ended of games, and this is surely one, you can run into stuff the developers didn't plan for.
Comment of the year
Oblivion jumps into the game and quests much better than Morrowind did. At least for me, it grabbed my attention much better and puts you in the game, wanting to play. One thing to remember there are hundreds (thousands?) of side and mini quests int he game, the main story doesnt stretch all the game can do.
The Elder Scrolls games require a bit more investment from the player to make them work, but if you're willing to put in the effort they are massively rewarding. I started the series with Morrowind, and for the first few hours I thought I had made a mistake in purchasing it... it felt too open-ended, and I was too accustomed to being told what to do (even the BioWare games are more rigid than this). However, once I really started playing it became my favorite game ever. The only reason I'm here typing this right now instead of playing Oblivion is that I can't afford the necessary hardware upgrades.
Familiarity with Morrowind is not necessary for Oblivion. All of the Elder Scrolls games share a common world, but take place in different areas and have independent stories. If you've played the previous games you'll likely get a bit more from the story, but it's not required to enjoy it.
They're getting better. Daggerfall was essentially unplayable when it shipped. Morrowind was at least playable. Having said that, I loved Daggerfall but just couldn't get into Morrowind.
Make cheese not war 8:)
Go to My Documents\My Games\Oblivion and edit oblivion.ini. Search for [grass]. The first parameter (on mine) is grass density, defaults to 80. Knock that up a bit. The higher the number, the sparser the grass. You can find a nice balance between performance and looks that way, and the sparseness of it improves the visibility as you say. I like "160" myself.