Out of the Ground, Into the Sky

Now that we have sturdy, gnarled trunks standing tall, and the dense shroud of a forest canopy shading our virtual avatar – our artist eyes wander once again to the ground. As one can imagine, Cyrodiil isn’t a golf course, and the inhabitants certainly don’t mow their lawns, at least not without the aid of their sheep. Indeed, just stepping foot off of the Imperial highways, one will find themselves waist deep in all manner of vegetation and landscape clutter. From wild grasses, to seed bearing herbs jutting out amongst fields of haphazardly strewn rocks left ages ago by long forgotten glaciers, resting upon folds in the hills, like wounded soldiers waiting for their loved ones to carry them home.

How does it all get there? Sure we can say the glaciers are responsible, and claim that the mushrooms just magically sprung up where they are, but in reality, the artists must place all of this content and detail…somehow. Ok, so what are we talking about, hundreds of thousands of references? Sure! No problem…we’ll be finished, oh, sometime in the next 10 years or so. I’m sure everyone patiently waiting would be thrilled about this notion, but surely we’d go collectively mad trying to micromanage detail on that scale. What we need is a way to place thousands of references in our world and have them be arranged in such a way as to look like they’ve always been there.

Thanks again to our programmers and to expanded Construction Set functionality, an immensely intricate and dense landscape overflowing with detail is now within our grasp. With the addition of the Region Editor toolset, world artists are able to select a worldspace (in this case Cyrodiil) and define an abstract 2D region shape, which encompasses a smaller portion of the overall landscape. These region shapes are drawn with as much, or as little complexity as the user desires and will appropriately shade whichever areas are within range of the region boundary.

Each region type contains a large list of parameters that help define what goes into a region – from rocks to trees to landscape textures – as well as how the items are distributed. For example, the user has control over object density, size, scale, orientation, clustering, etc. and just about anything listed as a reference in the editor could be generated on the landscape given this system. If one were so inclined, a city of barrels settled within a vast forest of gigantic crates is just a few button presses away. Time To Crate = 0

Here is a sampling of the many landscape items one might encounter during their adventures in TESIV: Oblivion

35,544 shrubs and bushes

67,730 Plants and Mushrooms

94,013 Trees and Fallen Logs

395,696 Rocks

The region editor is an invaluable asset when populating the surface of Tamriel. Through it we can recreate entire ecosystems, from the scale of an entire forest, all the way down to a ring of mushrooms around the base of a tree, and set up all manner of life and vegetation that the player might encounter on their own unique adventure through the countryside of Cyrodiil.

At this point, Cyrodiil is more tactile to the senses than ever before. The player is nearly enwombed on all sides by lush visuals and ever changing scenery – all sides save one. As we look around our world, our gaze turns once again to the only remaining space to fill…the sky.

In more ancient times, it was common for people to turn to the heavens in times of spiritual need. The thinking being, that there above lies the answers otherwise unobtainable here on the ground. I believe it’s fair to say the general populace of Tamriel collectively thinks along similar pathways – for good reason. It is well known there, that special powers are derived from the synergistic energies related to celestial gatherings and patterns. Even the mysterious, ancestral denizens of Tamriel, the Dwarves, were all too aware of the impact of the night sky on their daily lives and went to great lengths to study and understand their place in it all.

For the skies and heavenly bodies above Cyrodiil, the Oblivion developers made some technical improvements on several fronts. Gazing upwards, one might initially notice that there are now dual cloud layers placed in tandem, which naturally parallax from their different rates of travel. The resulting effect affords a skyward view much more depth and a greater sense of spaciousness.

There are also subtle lighting changes to be had based upon where the player is in relation to the immediate environment. In order to better simulate the generally more intense luminance of the sky, High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting and shader effects were meticulously incorporated into Oblivion’s renderer, to better give a more photorealistic flair to the atmosphere visuals.

Lastly, as the sun drifts gently downward in the westward sky, and the evening kaleidoscope of pastels fades and diffuses into the deepest of blues, distant stars and galaxies begin to scintillate into view. Here, for the first time, all of the 13 major Elder Scrolls constellations are visible to the player. In order to realistically display the star arrangements properly, a new, fully 3D spherical night sky dome was created. Through the in-game passage of time, the player should be able to track the stars above, as they lazily spiral about the ocular curve of the night sky.

With our world complete, and Cyrodiil fully realized, the player is free to roam this vast and varied landscape to their hearts content. As with our world, Cyrodiil is in constant motion. The trees and grasses sway with the ever-changing wind. Clouds drift hazily overhead and storms amass and fade into the quiet of the morning. Even the very curtain of stars, celestial objects that are worlds away, are never at rest. Even they are always churning and spiraling, deep within the cosmos, forever burning bright until they sigh their last solar wind, giving eventual rise to a new star.

The developers of TES IV: Oblivion wish to bestow upon you the player, a thoroughly enjoyable journey during your visit to heart of the Imperial Empire, and the surrounding lands and countryside. On our never-ending quest for greater immersion, visual fidelity, detail, complexity and fun, we sincerely hope that we’ve brought a unique and wonderful experience to your computers and consoles. An experience so deep and rife with possibilities that perhaps it could even inspire one to contemplate the nature of Tamriel and their own avatar’s existence.