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Skyrim. It's the complete game of the year right now for 2011, probably one of the most played and discussed games, and certainly is popular even among this forum. But, Skyrim didn't just come out of no where, it had a few older brothers, Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind was Bethesda's first jump into a fully-explorable, 3-D, free-roam RPG, and man was it awesome. It currently still has a huge fan-base, mods and such constantly being released to extend the life of the game, even though a sequel known as Oblivion was already released in 2006. Oblivion was a pretty big overhaul from Morrowind, offering, to date, the most amount of explorable land of all of Bethesda's games, even more space than Skyrim. Oblivion brought on things like a new combat system, which is pretty similar to skyrim, new updated graphics (quite amazing at the time, very large view distance), and of course, lots of new content. Oblivion was again game of the year, like most of Bethesdas games, and has a very large fan base at the moment. Skyrim went on to take Morrowind and Oblivion, mash together the good parts and then add even more of its own pure-awesomeness. You just cant compete with that Currently, Skyrim is probably the most played Elder Scrolls game, I would assume; in which I also know tons of people who are still playing Morrowind, but what about Oblivion? Today, I was playing Skyrim (of course), when my computer had an error and shut down from high temperatures. I got an error when I rebooted, in which I knew the best way to solve it was to leave the machine off for a while. Still wanting to play games, I went over and booted up my old Xbox 360. Obviously my taste for Skyrim had not even been touched in the least, and found the only way to calm it was to play Oblivion. I figured "It was my favorite game before Skyrim.. How bad could it be?" Boy, was I shocked. No curved swords!? So how different was it going back in time? Graphics were pretty on par with what i remembered, view distance being a bit mediocre. Combat was pretty good, I forgit how much I missed being able to cast a spell on the fly, even with my sword and shield still equipped. After about an hour and a half the realization of why Oblivion is not an honorable mention began to hit me. The terrain, just eh. Tree, rock, tree, rock, tall grass, bush, tree, tree, tree.. It was all pretty bland. I never found myself actually wanting to just stop and look at anything, even Morrowind had that effect. The enemies and such were decent at best, but had no real variety. It really just felt like everythin was a reskinned bandit, all just either hitting you with some sort of weapon or shooting some spell, in which you hit them with your sword and you hear that same sound over and over and over and over and over... Still, it had alot of perks. The beauty of Oblivion still existed, green valleys, huge towers and cities, pretty much everything you remembered about that. The thing that I really actually liked was the amount of content (note: content, not different content). I found that even though every single dungeon felt basically the same, there was alot to explore and alot of neat things to see. Going through sewers, sneaking up on bandits, killing some daedra in Oblivion itself, it was all pretty fun. There was nothing unique about alot of the things, but it felt true to the classic RPG filled with lots of content Basically: Oblivion is not Skyrim, but it is a true RPG that brought hundreds of hours of simple, quest based fun with the classic RPG elements. Skyrim just took this and added lots of more unique things and improved much of the "dull" parts, but at that sake of feeling less "hardcore" and probably 30% less real content. What do I see left in Oblivion? You know how sometimes, you'll see someone ask online or in real life, "Hey, I got this really old laptop, you want it?" Or, "I got this old laptop that I wanna put some old games on to mess around in, suggestions?" Well, I do, and that's where I see Oblivion headed, as a simple classic that isn't too taxing that anyone can enjoy. I know it seems as sort of a weird niche, but its true. I find Oblivion to truly be the perfect "laptop game". It's, again, not taxing and I'm sure by Ivy Bridge the Intel GPU's could handle it, loaded with content that can last for probably even a year played on and off, like on a laptop; and of course, it had a huge community that filled it with mods. Why I say this is more of a "laptop" game than just a classic or regular PC game is the taxing and older parts. Again, any future laptop, even the cheapest ones, should be able to handle its graphics just fine, and it will be pretty cheap to anyone that wishes to buy it. Then when you get home, you can go ahead and load up the beautiful Skyrim on your PC or xbox 360. And yeah, its pretty late and I'm hyped up so I can't sleep, but felt like writing something. So here's my abnormally long post, which most likely has lots of flaws or doesn't have a good concluding paragraph, but eh. You don't have to read if you don't want and feel free to correct me :S

Granted some of the pictures you could see posted by me could and have been found on the net. I had a gallery web page up for many years and 80% of my images were stolen and claimed by other people. Anyone wanting to use images from me or other posters please ask for the use as some of these could have copyrights to them. If I personally post an image its free to use for personal use. I do spacescapes, tattoos, portraits and images that look hand drawn but are done with a mouse. Oh and most of my space images have backgrounds used from images taken by NASA telescopes and I got permission to use them in my art. Hope you enjoy.

http://youtu.be/wDpuNrA55-A oh my these guys almost blew up! note i had like 10 awesome videos added to post and since auto signed out before post was done its all gone so here is the last one i added its all i could recover epic "Fus Ro Dah" effect on goats lol

And this is why we are suppose to know the equipment we are working with.....LMFAO ROFL Added after 3 minutes: Guess the movie was boring???? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Wky5MRfJBU8

I can see an oblivion port making it to smartphones at some point. The graphics are on par with what you see with current games and as long as they cut down the view distance, it would sell like crazy. Whether Bethesda does that is another matter entirely but it is one avenue of keeping an old game like Oblivion going.

Lets see Poser, Photoshop, currently Bryce 7.1 I use this to create the planets I use in my of my pictures, Illustrator, had some awesome app that created space scapes but can't remember what it was called or who made it and really want it back plus it was free. I also use ACDSee to manage my images. I had about 30 filters for Photoshop to help create effects but lost all those too. There was a few more apps but I can't remember what they were right now. I know I will do a few hours of googling to find new apps to help create the images that come to me plus I have 3 tattoos people want me to design right now. I have also sold some of my works and plan to turn some of my images into prints for sale. working on making my scapes large enough to make large posters. I am also going to start making laptop skins and plan to create an alienware line with the hole for the head on the lid. This laptop will be the most powerful system I have owned but its the second machine I have had that can handle some of the renders I do without taking days. I had a planet render in Bryce that took 8.5 days, no fun not being able to use a system for a week. I hope with the higher end components and 8GB ram I shouldn't have that type of issue any more. When I get around to organizing my 1000+ image folder (came from an old back-up) I will post more images. I just have to be careful which ones I post in public as some are works people bought and they own the rights to them now even though I have the right to use them for my portfolio I don't have the right to display them in public. Its funny the only job I have had that didn't involve computers was the army. So look for more images in the near future.

Some more x-mas songs (from my favorite xmas-songs album "We wish you a metal x-mas and a headbanging new year" ) Santa Claws is coming to Town - Alice cooper, Vinnie Appice, Billy Sheehan God rest ye merry Gentlemen - Ronnie James Dio (r.i.p.), Tony Iommi, Simon Wright, Rudy Sarzo Silent Night - (pretty heavy version ) - Chuck Billy, Scott Ian, John Tempesta, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4G8hCXnvwQ

Well now that you mentioned it with the following settings and a slight OC @870/1100 I get an average of 50 FPS enabling FXAA (and going near the tree after Brian K's request)

Man Skyrim runs GREAT with 580M SLi. I got the details cranked to the max + FXAA + 2xAA and it usually gets 42-100+ fps. Here's what it looks like-

Evergrey (@StevenX I hope you enjoy them)

:Banane06:Just got my new m14x today and am having a ton of fun on it!! For those of you that know staff sargent Im his wife, he is the one that talked me into getting an alien to begin with. LOL! His is due in tomorrow so I know he is stoked! I play City of Heroes under the same name as here. Im also going to be starting Americas Army and maybe Call of Duty not sure yet on that one...its one of Sarg's gifts so he has first play on it HEHE. Anyways just wanted to share a little about me and also share the excitement of finally owning an alien!!!!

SVL7 that video was interesting as said to put it lightly lol. Nice Nightwish video.... Five Finger Death Punch - Under and Over IT