Could the surprise Bethesda is talking about for the Creation Kit release tomorrow be high res textures? Linky for the source of the rumor.

Kinda makes sense, high res textures to help with mods for Creation Kit creations.

Edit: confirmed

Is it going to be 4096x4096? Cause that's what I'm using for the most part from user mods. I guess I could still use it for the parts of my skyrim that are not up to snuff. Right now it's really an uncanny valley. Some shit looks crystal clear other stuff looks like Doom 2.

Horse Armor should be the surprise.

Unclear if it can be installed into the game or if this is just for modders to use to create high res mods with the official art assets as a base.

I'd love me some high res textures. I'm not using any right now because I don't want to break that "vanilla feeling" (I know, dumb reason, but I'm special like that), but if Bethesda gave us the same textures that are in the game right now, only with higher res, that'd be sweet.

Horse underwear is a viable alternative, though.

@Marz: Your sticking to that aren't you?

@JoeyRavn: You should look around. There are a fair amount of pretty good textures that keep very close to vanilla, or just add detail to vanilla textures. Some good examples are this armor and shield sets being made by a pretty awesome dude; the Skyrim Flora Overhaul makes all the vegetation look much much much nice but sticks mostly to vanilla or practically vanilla textures (except some of the tree stuff, which I honestly think is mostly optional as it looks more different than better); Hectrol retextured the FUCKING AWFUL Dwarven Shield, which is such a shitty fucking DISGRACE of a texture that any update would have to be at least a little liberty taking, but it keeps to the framework of vanilla and looks great; same guy made much better spiderwebs that have a shimmery quality to them that makes em a little harder to see and less like the Return of the King ropy strands/torn fibers that the vanilla is, and it looks REALLY great when you move around in game and see em; Snow and Rocks HDis a pretty good very high resolution texture pack that sticks very close to vanilla stuff and makes the cave environments in particular look great. Immersive Water looks, IMO, a lot better than the Vanilla water because it is more flowing and sweeping, I always thought the water in Skyrim didn't really look like it should, too noisy.

I felt the same way as you, I love the vanilla look for the most part and don't really want to see a bunch of textures that weren't given the time or professional touch that the vanilla ones have, but a lot of people have done pretty good work making the game look better without really looking different. I would NOT suggest the 2K Skyrim thing, because a lot of the textures in that, while certainly clear and crisp, look kind of janky in places and often are very different from vanilla.

Guys - high res textures DLC (free) is now on steam!

Edit: 3 gigs in size

@mosdl: Wha-wha-wha?! For everybody playing the game currently or potential modders who will use the Creation Kit?

@bonorbitz said:

@mosdl: Wha-wha-wha?! For everybody playing the game currently or potential modders who will use the Creation Kit?

For everyone playing the game, its free DLC.

Game is also on sale for 33% off

Can someone post comparison shots?

Hmm.. This will be good, downloading noaw!

Also, Skyrim SDK with Steam Workshop integration is awesome.

System requirements from Bethesda:

Windows Vista or Windows 7, a minimum of 4GB of system RAM and a DirectX 9.0c compatible NVIDIA or AMD ATI video card with at least 1 GB of RAM and the latest drivers.

@SmasheControllers said:

Can someone post comparison shots?

We have to download it first. I was getting 7.3 MB/s but lots of people seems to be downloading it now so I only get 1.0 MB/s. Thankfully it's almost downloaded.

So is it weird that they release this same day as Reckoning?

@gike987: Did the download just go up? I just woke up, so I just started the download as well.

@gike987 said:

@SmasheControllers said:

Can someone post comparison shots?

We have to download it first. I was getting 7.3 MB/s but lots of people seems to be downloading it now so I only get 1.0 MB/s. Thankfully it's almost downloaded.

Heh, I was getting 3 MB/s at first but bow at 500 kb/s. Skyrim is popular

Clever Bethesda. Given that I'm still teetering on the fence with Amalur Reckoning, I think I give the Creation Kit a whirl.

High res screenshot (no mods):

@mosdl: You should try to find a farmer/commoner NPC their clothes looked horrible before. My download speed is down to 74 KB/s so I still haven't downloaded.

@gike987 said:

@mosdl: You should try to find a farmer/commoner NPC their clothes looked horrible before. My download speed is down to 74 KB/s so I still haven't downloaded.

These guys?

@mosdl: Yeah, NPC clothes were the most obvious low res textures before. It seems like they look much better now.

The new textures look great. Ill have to get them asap.

@mosdl said:

System requirements from Bethesda:

...video card with at least 1 GB of RAM and the latest drivers.

:(

The time has come...

To upgrade.

Does the map also use a higher resolution texture? That thing got pretty muddy.
 
edit:@AndrewB: I made sure to get a 2GB card for this type of thing a couple months ago when I had to upgrade for BF3. Just now starting to pay off.

People are already getting a few little things done with the Creation Kit + these fancy new textures.

http://www.giantbomb.com/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/61-33394/the-creation-kit-thread/35-534359

Wow, looks as good as the Skyrim HD mod I've been using. Can't wait for this to finish downloading!

@AndrewB said:

@mosdl said:

System requirements from Bethesda:

...video card with at least 1 GB of RAM and the latest drivers.

:(

The time has come...

To upgrade.

Yeah, I think it has been time for a while if you're playing with <1gb, but the good news is there are plenty of options at different pricepoints now, so go upgrade

can't wait to try this. shame im at work for another 8 hours

Looks like the "surprise" is that I have to reinstall Skyrim, because the game crashes right to desktop when I try to load a save (or lets me play for a few minutes before crashing) and no amount of disabling esps/mods helps.

@SaturdayNightSpecials said:

Looks like the "surprise" is that I have to reinstall Skyrim, because the game crashes right to desktop when I try to load a save (or lets me play for a few minutes before crashing) and no amount of disabling esps/mods helps.

Try loading a previous save? I found that crashing will often corrupt saves.

Downloaded the texture packs but... seems it gives me a horrible frame rate AND interferes with my other texture mods. So, nothankyou.jpg

@Demoskinos said:

Downloaded the texture packs but... seems it gives me a horrible frame rate AND interferes with my other texture mods. So, nothankyou.jpg

Same experience for me. Especially the performance...

@mosdl said:

@SaturdayNightSpecials said:

Looks like the "surprise" is that I have to reinstall Skyrim, because the game crashes right to desktop when I try to load a save (or lets me play for a few minutes before crashing) and no amount of disabling esps/mods helps.

Try loading a previous save? I found that crashing will often corrupt saves.

All of my saves came up as corrupt when loading from the menu.

I also tried to start a new game, but again it crashed after a few minutes.

I reinstalled, but I just hope at least one of my saves is okay.