I'm not sure, but I think something might be wrong with my game. Can anyone help?

More pictures:

Maybe I'm stupid, but I'm not seeing the issue.

Looks fine to me.

@EpicSteve: Mainly the horizon / distant water. It's really odd looking for some reason.

Its Morrowind

The water looks a bit too blue but apart from that it looks fine.

umm, have you tried updating you graphics card drivers? are you getting any weird artifacts on other graphics intensive games?

@Kyreo: Maybe I'm just fucking crazy then. Still looks really fucking awful though, I'm surprised that a game that is supposed to have grand vistas doesn't have very grand looking vistas.

That water certainly doesn't look right. Has your game looked like this all the time or did this happen just recently?

@onarum: The only other game where I get weird graphical shit like this was in Company of Heroes, specifically in the cutscenes. I remember when the Allied soldiers stormed Omaha Beach there was literally nothing rendered in front of them. I might still have that screenshot actually...

Found it:

But yeah, I will see if there are any drivers updates.

There is something about the stuff in the distance that doesn't look quite right. Could just be something in your graphics options, or possibly you need to update your drivers.

@Icemo: No actually it didn't always look like that. This problem started about six months after I got the game, and I've tried everything (reinstalling, deleting mods, updating drivers). Distant water and a few other things (wooden stumps in the game are rainbow colored now too) just went whack for no apparent reason. Skyrim and Company of Heroes (only the cutscenes) are the only games I own that I have these strange issues with.

I would say there is definitely something wrong, your playing an Argonian.

@SathingtonWaltz: I think that a new update to the game wasn't compatible with your graphics card driver and thus your water looks wrong. Just a guess but might be the case.

Looks like there's a mountain missing.

@SathingtonWaltz said:

@Kyreo: Maybe I'm just fucking crazy then. Still looks really fucking awful though, I'm surprised that a game that is supposed to have grand vistas doesn't have very grand looking vistas.

That vista is actual rendered geometry. It looks awful because it is scaled down. A more linear action game might use a pre-rendered skybox for such a vista, which would look better. However, this is not a linear action game. Skyrim is an open world, free roaming RPG that intends for the player to be able to go ANYWHERE they see. Since this game was made for seven year old tech, they have to cut corners to get huge open worlds like this.

@Schmollian: The game didn't always look like this though, from what I remember.

Check your launch settings and jack the draw distance sliders up if they're set on low for some reason.

Yea, it looks like your draw distance may be set too low.

It looks flat as shit, also on a body of water that big there should probably be waves.

@Ravenlight: @Laurentech: I checked that already, everything is maxed out.

Yeah, no that definitely looks wrong. This is the only - of like 80 :/ - screenshot I have that are slightly vista-y.

@SathingtonWaltz: Nope that's standard. If you want it to look better you need to change the uGrids setting in the Skyrim config file.

The game divides the map up into grids and only loads a certain number in high detail so to not run like shit. The default I believe is 5, I have mine set to 7 which is a bit better without having a ginormous FPS hit.

Add this line to the file in your Documents:

uGridsToLoad=7

Be warned! Do not put it above 13 or it will crash. Also make sure the number you choose is ODD. It won't fix it completely but distances will look a darn sight better.

@AlexW00d said:

Yeah, no that definitely looks wrong. This is the only - of like 80 :/ - screenshot I have that are slightly vista-y.

That shots not of water, it only happens when you look at the huge vistas which show water stretching all the way outside of Skyrim. Then it looks all sharp edges and flat and shit.

Yeah, it's normal. Distant geometry can look kind of bad in Skyrim. There's a fix for it, though, if you have a powerful computer. It's the "uGridsToLoad" setting in your skyrim.ini file. Here's some more info: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/473949-draw-distance-ugridstoload/

Edit: Hah, @Chavtheworld beat me to it. He explained it much better than I did.

@Mattalorian: I don't see a "uGridsToLoad" in my .ini

Edit: Just added it in because someone said that they aren't there all the time. Will report back.

@SathingtonWaltz said:

@Kyreo: Maybe I'm just fucking crazy then. Still looks really fucking awful though, I'm surprised that a game that is supposed to have grand vistas doesn't have very grand looking vistas.

Whatever man. If there is one thing I've come to realize about games it's that graphics are a luxury and gameplay is what matters. Fucking look at the hits like Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, Hotline Miami, and Limbo. Play the game and get over it if it can't be helped.

Though I know there are a ton of visual mods for Skyrim, so in this case, yer in luck.

@Kyreo said:

@SathingtonWaltz said:

@Kyreo: Maybe I'm just fucking crazy then. Still looks really fucking awful though, I'm surprised that a game that is supposed to have grand vistas doesn't have very grand looking vistas.

Whatever man. If there is one thing I've come to realize about games it's that graphics are a luxury and gameplay is what matters. Fucking look at the hits like Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, Hotline Miami, and Limbo. Play the game and get over it if it can't be helped.

Though I know there are a ton of visual mods for Skyrim, so in this case, yer in luck.

But those games do have good graphics. And I don't think Skyrim looks bad, I was just annoyed that the distant terrain looks really weird.

Back up your saves and nuke it from orbit. Chances are one of the mods overwrote some game files but the originals were't restored when the mod was uninstalled.

@Kyreo said:

@SathingtonWaltz said:

@Kyreo: Maybe I'm just fucking crazy then. Still looks really fucking awful though, I'm surprised that a game that is supposed to have grand vistas doesn't have very grand looking vistas.

Whatever man. If there is one thing I've come to realize about games it's that graphics are a luxury and gameplay is what matters. Fucking look at the hits like Super Meat Boy, VVVVVV, Hotline Miami, and Limbo. Play the game and get over it if it can't be helped.

Though I know there are a ton of visual mods for Skyrim, so in this case, yer in luck.

Normally I'd agree with you: get over it! But this sounds like a glitch if it didn't always look like this, which would definitely be off-putting, wondering what else is going to look weird in the game. It also probably looks even worse in-game than in just a screenshot where you have a fixed view.

@SathingtonWaltz: Did the uGrids fix do the trick?

Your draw distance looks really low, man