Widescreen Gaming Forum

If you didn't like the combat in Morrowind (which seems to be the major complaint for most people) then fear not, it feels infinitely more fluid and involving this time around. I usually never play as a mage-type character in RPG's mostly because they aren't fun. However, I'm a Battlemage-like character in Oblivion mostly for the fact that it's so damn fun to play around with all the different types of spells.

I was a HUGE Morrowind fan, so I went into this game expecting the sun and the moon ,and boy did I get it.

I've had the game two days and I've racked up over 16 hours of playtime, something I haven't done in a long time.

I just shut my first Oblivion gate last night, and I must say, the plane of Oblivion is scary, atmospheric, and tough!!! Every fight felt like a fight to the death, not like Morrowind where 90% of the fights you would just cream your enemy.

This is probably one of the top 5 games of all time.

Unfortunately I wasted my entire day yesterday curing myself of vamprism...the quest literally took me 8 hours to complete.

I've spent the past 3 nights playing Oblivion, and have now logged over 20 hours. I would say that using the default settings it is tougher than Morrowind was. My first battle outside of the tutorial dungeon was against a Highwayman who jumped me (2 levels higher) and I nearly died several times... only through management of healing spells and potions did I manage to survive long enough to put him down. I've found that repairing your weapons and armor comes into play a lot more than it did in Morrowind as well. You had to do it there, but you'll notice the degradation more quickly in Oblivion. And that first Oblivion plane you go to... is scary as hell. Actually that's a pretty good comparison. I tried to get a screenshot before I went in but that was before I found out about the screenshot hack. Anyway, this is THE game to own so far in 2006!

I'm honestly dissapointed by Oblivion's graphics engine. It looks nice, but it's not as amazing as I thought it would be. Considering how crap the framerates are, I really don't recommend buying it for the PC unless you've got a dual 7900s or dual 1900s. Mouse-look and the mouse cursor also doesn't seem to be hardware accellerated, which makes looking around seem particularly laggy.

I've got a AMD64 3700, 2GB of good quality RAM, and a GeForce 6800GT. If you're used to playing games at 40-60 frames per second, Oblivion will seem extremely slow. There are a lot of settings you can turn down, but but the game just looks really dull if you turn 'em down so far that you get consitently high framerates.

I played D&D: Stormwind at high settings at 1680*1050 and the framerates in that game are damn good. So I'm not really sure why the hell Oblivion, which doesn't really look much better than Stormwind, runs like shit. I guess that's what happens when developers try to make an engine look good on the XBox 360...

I'm honestly dissapointed by Oblivion's graphics engine. It looks nice, but it's not as amazing as I thought it would be. Considering how crap the framerates are, I really don't recommend buying it for the PC unless you've got a dual 7900s or dual 1900s. Mouse-look and the mouse cursor also doesn't seem to be hardware accellerated, which makes looking around seem particularly laggy.

I've got a AMD64 3700, 2GB of good quality RAM, and a GeForce 6800GT. If you're used to playing games at 40-60 frames per second, Oblivion will seem extremely slow. There are a lot of settings you can turn down, but but the game just looks really dull if you turn 'em down so far that you get consitently high framerates.

I played D&D: Stormwind at high settings at 1680*1050 and the framerates in that game are damn good. So I'm not really sure why the hell Oblivion, which doesn't really look much better than Stormwind, runs like shit. I guess that's what happens when developers try to make an engine look good on the XBox 360...

No offense, but your graphics card is a bit outdated now. Hell, even my new rig is outdated, and I am running two 7800GTX's in SLI. If you want to keep running the newest games at the highest settings at insane resolutions you really have to go cutting edge. The new engines may not look different to you, but with all the new lighting and texture effects they are using- they are becoming resource hogs.

I am excited about getting Oblivion. I am not a big RPG fan (but I was back in the day of the original Bard's Tale on C64), so after all the smashing reviews I am going to give it a shot. Even if I have to cut back a litle on the graphics, I'm sure the gameplay will make up for the slight degredation on the graphics I may have to do. I have been afraid to play World of Warcraft due to the fact that I would get so pulled into it (my sister and brother are absolutely HOOKED on it...like crack!) so this is a big step. All I can do is cross my fingers and pray that I have the self control to limit my gaming with this one. I am bad enough having to have my 'fix' of BF2 all the time.

If you want to keep running the newest games at the highest settings at insane resolutions you really have to go cutting edge.

I agree ... and it's the high/insane resolutions that many of us widescreen users use that cause the need for cutting edge ... running 1280x1024 would probebly be fine with max settings and a GeForce 6800GT.

I'm honestly dissapointed by Oblivion's graphics engine. It looks nice, but it's not as amazing as I thought it would be. Considering how crap the framerates are, I really don't recommend buying it for the PC unless you've got a dual 7900s or dual 1900s. Mouse-look and the mouse cursor also doesn't seem to be hardware accellerated, which makes looking around seem particularly laggy.

I've got a AMD64 3700, 2GB of good quality RAM, and a GeForce 6800GT. If you're used to playing games at 40-60 frames per second, Oblivion will seem extremely slow. There are a lot of settings you can turn down, but but the game just looks really dull if you turn 'em down so far that you get consitently high framerates.

I played D&D: Stormwind at high settings at 1680*1050 and the framerates in that game are damn good. So I'm not really sure why the hell Oblivion, which doesn't really look much better than Stormwind, runs like shit. I guess that's what happens when developers try to make an engine look good on the XBox 360...

I would try a few of the tweaks below and experiment with the ingame settings. I hear Vsync is a must to aid mouse lag

hope to get 1680x1050 out of my X800 XT PE !

I will have the game tomorrow and give tweak results on monday. (note I have just grabbed all the tweaks arround a few forums not tested so backup your inis before you try)

In the folder unique to your character (It's somewhere in My Documents My Games for me), edit the Oblivion.ini file in the following ways:

bUseWaterReflectionsMisc=1
bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=1
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=1
bUseWaterReflectionsActors=1

Set uGridsToLoad = 10 (5 by default)
Change the fLandTexturingTilingMult = 0.5000 (2 or 2.5 by default)

(Note: This does increase load times.)

iFPSClamp=60 "this lock FPS to stope cases of suttering"

buseharddrivecache=0 changed to 1

buseshader30=0 changed to 1. Just in case this means SM 3.0

bdsoundacceleration=1 changed to 0 This made a HUGE difference with onboard sound. (Sigmatel)

bbackgroundloadlipfiles=0 changed to 1
bloadbackgroundfacegen=0 changed to 1
busemultithreadedfacegen=1 left at 1. I'm using a dual core so I would assume this is part of that
bbackgroundcellloads=0 changed to 1
busemultithreadedtrees=1 left at 1. Same reason as before.
busebackgroundfileloader=0 changed to 1

To somewhat fix the water, change this:
uNumDepthGrids = 1 (it's 3 by default).

fGrassEndDistance=3000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=2000.0000

[quote]If you want to keep running the newest games at the highest settings at insane resolutions you really have to go cutting edge.

I agree ... and it's the high/insane resolutions that many of us widescreen users use that cause the need for cutting edge ... running 1280x1024 would probebly be fine with max settings and a GeForce 6800GT.

Yes, this is an expensive hobby. I think my wife wants me to go back to golfing...as it was much cheaper overall. :D

Yeah, you guys here at WSGF are really the most taxing people, using those super resolutions. A super rig like some of you have would be just fine for this game as 1024x768 or 1280x1024, which are proabbly the two most used resolutions out there, it's just that I find upping the resolution to be one of the most taxing things on your system.

Either way, I got it on xbox 360 and it runs really well. It lags here and there, and the save/load menu is a bit slow, but other than that it is fully playable and looks great. The controls are actually very good on 360 as well, I'm very surprised and pleased.

Widescreen gaming is definitely far more expensive than merely gaming - lower res gamers can get away with a 6800, but for 1920x1200, 7800's or X1900's are really needed for newer games...

I wouldn't stop gaming in widescreen for anything, though. :D