What are the graphic differences between Fallout3 and Oblivion?
I’m assuming Fallout3 is better, but how much?
The pictures I’ve seen are not twice as better, maybe 1.5.
I’ve also not seen any pictures of F3 characters with long hair, does the long hair still cut through the characters body like in Oblivion or did they make it (havoc) free flowing?
For instance; these pics look good but I can still see a noticeable neck line.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/ima...-1227622842.jpg
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/ima...-1227620405.jpg

I know the games are different time periods (planets) and all that but please compare Fallout3 graphics to Oblivion's.
Any info would be much appreciated.

Fallout 3 is really no different from Oblivion at all. The only major change is that they restricted more of the facegen options so that faces are more uniform to the average facial norms. People look slightly more attractive, less ugly or distorted rubbery faces. The hairstyles are still simple meshes. No long hairstyles. Many hairstyles still clip on clothing, masks, hats, goggles, etc.

Graphics quality is basically exactly the same as Oblivion, sometimes worse in texture resolution actually. There are also far less graphic options and whatever dynamic shadows there were in Oblivion have been cut back so much that there might as well not be any shadows at all in Fallout 3.

The biggest change is probably view distance and LOD is more efficient and less abrupt but still noticible but the LOD loading is improved and the visible objects in the distance is increased.

Thanks for replying, so I guess the system requirements are the same then or will I need an upgrade (assuming Oblivion runs great).

Someone also forgot to mention that the vanilla FO3 females look like males, or it could just be my own 'standards', who knows really.(I've just never seen a woman looking that BAD in a game that tries to resemble 'real life', even if post-apocalyptic at that. Not claiming there couldn't be people looking like that, or worse for the matter. I fully admit that looks matter and everyone who claims they don't is a liar, what matters is can a person look past it. Real life, I can, in-game, I could, but why should I when I have the option to be a 'god' within this limited space.)

In some weird RP sense I could understand the butt-ugly females, but with the lack of depth in the customizing features, lack of SDK and the too-ugly-to-be-in-a-game face models & textures for females, without any 'prettier' alternatives provided.(ESPECIALLY since the main character came from a vault and is NOT a dweller of the wasteland which could explain the 'slightly less pretty' looks, even it is genes that define the outcome.[The women look like 6th or 7th generation inbreds, not that I've met any, before FO3 that is.]) I've played mostly all male characters until WoW hit the stores, after that Oblivion and now FO3, and basically it was Oblivion that took me to the wonderful world where heroines could triumph and look damn good at the same time. There are far too many faults with the FO3 game to even make a list, but the outlook of females is pretty high on my priority list that hasn't been fully adressed yet.[#1 SDK, #2 Playing enabled after finishing MQ, #3 Better looking female textures and meshes.(HGEC anyone?)]

DLOD is far improved from what it was in Oblivion, but there are also tons of graphical glitches in the game that once triggered will require you to reboot the game.(A big surprise eh? Loading a savegame doesn't fix these, it WILL require a game reboot.) Alt+Tabbing is still a small taboo, did I mention the females yet?

Basically most of the textures that you'll be paying a lot of attention to are decent with some exceptions, female characters look horrible, but with a few hours of tweaking can be gotten to a 'decent' level. There are low quality door textures, weapons not looking all that great etc. But all of it is being worked on and I'd say the first good graphics enhancers came earlier than they did on Oblivion, even if we are still missing a few of the core pieces. Hopefully we'll get all the tools needed for serious modding in the next few months or I'll be shelving this product until I see the skilled hex editors etc. have won the battle over this bug riddled, severely unbalanced weapon filled, decent looking game and turned into the magnificent looking and gameplay balanced game it should've been originally.

~Elraine

P.S. If my statement about beauty on the very first paragraph insulted anyone, it's their own business, it has however been proven to be true.

P.P.S. Excuse me for the single-track mind, but in-game I want everything to look 'pretty' and 'realistic', I can live with 'ugly with a few things pretty' and 'realistic', but not with plain 'ugly' and 'realistic'. Relatively speaking of the characters here, too limited choices, too much clipping(Males mainly, try putting a rifle to your back, you'll see.) and FAR too ugly women.(I don't want all to be super models, just my character.) Nuclear war isn't the justification for an attempt to kill all beaty in a game, which the world might still have left in it afterwards. And I started ranting again... better stop now before I bring up the females again for the 783rd time... now, I.. must.. get.. sleep...zzZZZzzZZzzz

Heck, FO3 runs faster than Oblivion on the same hardware. It's a bit more optimized, Bethseda seems to have learned some tricks. It loads almost instantly (Oblivion took a long time to load new cells). Also the wasteland has very little grass and the trees have no leaves, they are all dead so there is much less visual complexity in the open world. I get much smoother framerates in FO3 than Oblivion.

I wouldn't say the female NPC's look THAT bad. Much better than oblivion anyway. Lets see your face.

Care to clarify that last sentence?

Stampede
Moderator

I have to agree on your point about vanilla faces. Vanilla FO3 female faces(And males by about a 1000 miles better.) did look better than vanilla Oblivion in most cases.(Dark Elfs didn't look all that ugly, but even they could use improvement which was later provided by IFT[Improved Facial Textures] mod.) But you also have to take note on the fact that TES IV is in a high fantasy setup, which allows the characters to look a bit 'cartoonish' if you will. The normal female faces of FO3 do look they were made for males though.(After discussing with 6 of my friends, everyone came to the same conclusion, we can't all be wrong can we? Even if we can, it won't change the fact that we aren't the only ones who are not happy with how they look in vanilla.)

I have to say I'm happy that there are people working on improving the female textures though.

Now about that comment "Let's see your face.' is something I don't really know how to react to. There are a few persons here who have seen my face(Herolegend for one.) and also anyone that has talked with me knows that my webcame snapshot quality offers about at the same level of service as this; http://ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20081121

Now with that said, the people in the nexus will see my face sometime I actually bother to buy a digital camera, but I've got a few other purchases on the list higher than this.(Custom casing for my PC, new display etc.) Or until I bother to borrow my brother's cam, but until then all you can do is hope that my photo will appear in topic in the off-topic section.

~Elraine

P.S. Slightly less sleep deprived right now, fortunately.

Wow, and all this time I hadnt got the game because I assumed my pc wouldnt be able to run it well (which seems to be an increasingly common problem these days), when actually I can run it on max settings?

lol, well, I look forward to playing Fallout 3 in the near future then

what's all this talk about f3 running better than oblivion? to play F3 smoothly on highest settings, I have to run it in the gamers OS. Where as oblivion can run smoothly on highest setting in the xp pro.

The difference is with graphic enhancing mods, if you need gamers OS to run FO3 at max, highly modded Oblivion would likely buttrape your pc. Will have to see how long it takes for FO3 to get major graphic overhauls like QTP3 was for Oblivion.

You really think so? i'm using 2 different graphic enchantment mods with oblivion and i'm running the game at max settings in xp pro, and it runs very smoothly (amazingly considering my bad grahpics card). I'm guessing that it has more trouble running F3 because it probably requires more clock speed from the graphics card. I'm only using a cheap 9400 GT 1GB

Can't say with 100% certainty as I'm not too familiar with the exact specs of that card, could be with the actual drivers of the card aswell.(Have you checked for updated ones on the Nvidia site lately? Changing to new drivers can offer enormous fps boosts.[On some games over 50% increase.])

same engine different way of gameplay graphics are slightly larger then oblivion because its modern world basiclly oblivion focus on outdoor so less building its gonna load the only make oblivion so beautiful is intro of the game i just love the graphics from the very beginning it looks almost real . well fallout uses alot of pyshics on the game itself VATS and other explosion effect .... same engine big difference

i think that they are almost the same. Although npc's in oblivion look far far better. In fo3, they are all the same, and they have no detail. Overall, i prefer oblivion.

I'm not impressed by FO3 graphics. No that there not good, but there not that good for what's required to run them. The game overall is really blah. Gray, grays, and gray. Not enough ammo so I'm constantly struggling to to get it. Just a really depressing game. I would think after 200+ years trees would grow back. Not all the world would have gotten bombed!
Oblivion is such a better game. But thats just my opinion.