I tend not to cheat/use exploits in my first run of any game (except the GTA games, where I can't help myself), but after that it's all fair game.

I currently use Cheat Engine to give myself as much gold as I could possibly need and give endless amounts of materials, and a mod to add in all the armour and weapon schematics and materials. So I have good armour and weapons from the get-go, with whatever fade touched material bonuses I want. It makes everything very easy, so I play on nightmare to at least try to make it vaguely interesting.

I don't cheat to make combat easier per se, but instead so I don't have to spend time farming, which I find more tedious than I can say. The side effect is that it does make things easy, which is why I bump it up to nightmare. I'm level 13 in my current game, and I've switched down to random armour drops rather than my higher level crafted armour, and I'm still killing everything in one or two hits on nightmare. Obviously it'll get harder as the game goes on and enemies increase in level while my gear stays the same, and I'm looking forward to that.

Haven't played the game for ages. Of course now I've booted it back up first thing I want to do is take pictures of Sera

One more:

Dorian seems to suit the lighting in Crestwood really well. Looking forward to The Fallow Mire.

I really like these:

Some pictures for you lovely people:

She reminds me a bit of Brienne of Tarth (how I pictured her while reading the books) - which is a good thing, she is on of my favorite characters

That's real praise, thanks! (Not least because I have a ginormous crush on Gwendoline Christie.)

I had in mind Riley (hence the name) from Sense8 when I was making her -- not to emulate exactly but more in the spirit of her. But I can totally see how my Riley could be a cross between Sense8 Riley and Brienne!

How do you get such natural poses? 

I just made her turn around. The key is in pausing at the right time. 

For this, have them standing still, facing forwards. Then (I use keyboard) hit A or D (or maybe Q or E - I might have rebound strafe) gently, and immediately pause. This is what they look like when they start to turn.

More Riley, enjoying the pleasant Crestwood weather...

A few more (I've missed taking shots of DAI)

Oh, I meant to say, the latest DAI Cinematic Tools - I had a problem with the console window not appearing at first. Take note of what the ReadMe says. It uses a different VC++ Redist package from Microsoft to the previous versions. I only had 2013 installed on my (new) computer - it requires 2015 to be installed. You can download the correct one here: https://www.microsof...s.aspx?id=48145 (link also in the ReadMe, which you all read, right?)

As soon as I installed that the new Tools started working.

Haven't played the game for what seems like ages. I've missed my dorf.

Here's Riley Cadash, hating every minute of Crestwood.

I've missed my dorf.

Hello, long time no see...

Other games *gasp* have been keeping my attention, along with flu, and various other real life annoyances.

Anyway, fired the old beast back up again yesterday, decided it might help pass the time until No Man's Sky (omg so excited).

And omigosh one that isn't of Sera...

Here is a comparison of a 21:9 image at 1920x810 (same pixel density as 1080p) and 6144x2592 (same pixel density as 3072p, or 6K resolution).

Pay attention to the grasses and fern fronds. See how they separate, become less choppy and more distinct. The whole scene gains clarity, as well as depth.

When you're taking shots at lower resolutions, the game is trying to render a lot of information with a small amount of pixels, so some of that information gets lost. That's why you don't see gaps in between the fern fronds, or why grass looks like it has choppy bits missing all the way along each blade. When you go up in resolution, the game is rendering the same amount of information with a greater amount of pixels at its disposal, so those extra pixels can fill in the gaps.

That 6144x2592 picture is 16MP. Scenes with lots of foliage can really benefit from that kind of size. However, bloom doesn't scale well at all, so 8-12MP seems to be a sweet spot for most things. A standard aspect ratio of 16:9 at 4K resolution is 8.3MP. 5K is 14.7MP. 6K is 18.9MP. By comparison, 1080p is 2.1MP, and 1440p is 3.7MP.

You'll see shadows also get darker and tighter when the resolution increases. If you're using something like ReShade and intend to hotsample, you should account for that when adjusting your shadows.

I worked out why the screenshot comparison tool hated me, and have finally uploaded something that shows how resolution has a big impact on image quality.

Here is a comparison of a 21:9 image at 1920x810 (same pixel density as 1080p) and 6144x2592 (same pixel density as 3072p, or 6K resolution).

Pay attention to the grasses and fern fronds. See how they separate, become less choppy and more distinct. The whole scene gains clarity, as well as depth.

When you're taking shots at lower resolutions, the game is trying to render a lot of information in a small amount of pixels, so some of that information gets lost. That's why you don't see gaps in between the fern fronds, or why grass looks like it has choppy bits missing all the way along each blade. When you go up in resolution, the game is rendering the same amount of information with a greater amount of pixels at its disposal, so those extra pixels can fill in the gaps. 

That 6144x2592 picture is 16MP. Scenes with lots of foliage can really benefit from that kind of size. However, bloom doesn't scale well at all, so 8-12MP seems to be a sweet spot for most things. A standard aspect ratio of 16:9 at 4K resolution is 8.3MP. 5K is 14.7MP. 6K is 18.9MP. By comparison, 1080p is 2.1MP, and 1440p is 3.7MP.

You'll see shadows also get darker and tighter when the resolution increases. If you're using something like ReShade and intend to hotsample, you should account for that when adjusting your shadows.

Gosh, I'm really enjoying my new resolution capability.

As always, there are more on flickr and tumblr.

O_o

if only....

I feel your pain. I've been looking longingly at other people's hi-res shots, after being someone who used to pooh-pooh the idea of downsampling not so long ago. That was before I started doing it. I often take comparison shots, so I can see the difference. And it does make a huge amount of difference, especially to small details like foliage, fences, that kind of thing. 

I took comparison shots of this, at 1080p, 1440p (my native), 4k, and 5k. It's not a good shot for comparisons though, because the only thing to compare is the aliasing around his face and maybe his eyelashes. I'll do more comparisons if anyone is interested. I do them for myself anyway, just out of curiosity.

Anyway, here is 1920x1080 vs 5120x2880. (mouse over for 5k). Like I say, not much difference there. The bloom reduces, which is typical bloom behaviour. Shadows get darker and crisper, giving the impression of more depth (look around the ear). His eyelashes become more distinct, and obviously it gets rid of almost all aliasing.

This was hotsampling via WBG. My native is 1440 and the game seems to run fine at that. I'm sure I could play in 4k with some slow downs here and there, but I have no desire to. I expect I could push the hotsampling higher than 5k but I don't think this game would benefit from it, because of the losses to bloom. As it was, I had to reduce dof because the colours started banding really badly.

Nothing special, just my first ever screenshot with my new PC:

No ReShade (no anti-aliasing of any kind either), just the Cinematic Tools and WBG for hotsampling. Took it to 5k, I'm sure I could go higher but I didn't have the balls for it on my first attempt. I've not had nvidia before, and my laptop was limited in what control it could give me, so I'm not sure how this new card works yet. It'll take some time to learn how to optimise it.

Anyway, fun fun!

Broke my gaming mouse right before DAI finished installing. I'm lucky like that.

I ordered the Pip-Boy edition, and GAME have sent me my Vault 111 t-shirt and bobblehead already. I'll be wearing the t-shirt and the pip-boy while I play Until it starts to annoy me, at least.

Have you seen the latest release trailer? Courtenay Taylor gets the opening and closing lines and the most iconic line of the series. This makes me beyond happy

I should have my new PC set up tomorrow. I'll try to get DAI installed on it to see how I can push it. But I won't be getting too invested because ermahgerd Fallout 4.

Yeah, I think if you're serious about Skyrim modding you learn very quickly to think of 25fps as super smooth manna from heaven

I haven't played Skyrim in absolutely ages. I don't expect I shall install it for a while after getting my new system, because I'll be getting lost in Fallout 4, but it'll be nice to have the option of going back to it without having to make compromises on what textures I use. It'll be great to use some of those newer grass mods - that was one area I always had to cut back on a bit. Still, there are lots of ways to optimise your Skyrim experience, since especially at higher resolutions some textures look just as good at 1024 or 2048 as they do at 4096 or above. 

My new keyboard arrived today in preparation for my PC. Honestly, I think it's better than the fancy ergonomic one I use for transcribing. It's a bit clacky, but I'll get used to that. I'm so used to using laptop keyboards (ergonomic keyboard aside) it's nice to have more space to spread my fingers. I'm getting excited!!

I know! When I was framing the shot I was like "Oh well!" You can't exactly tell the dragon which way to go, lol. 

 

Upgrading to the 980Ti was one of the best moves for me. I'm pulling down 60+fps on DA:I with everything on max, even in combat!

 

The ferns in your first shot are amazing!

Thank you

I'm putting together a new system, and am going for the EVGA 980 Ti Classified. I've been gaming on a laptop for a long time now, but my living space has changed so that I can sort out a bit of an office and still make it comfortable enough that it will accommodate my derpy hands and arms, so building a desktop means I have a lot more options. I can run DAI on ultra already on my laptop (with some compromises), and I've never been one to care that much about fps (I used to happily play Skyrim at 15fps), but with games making use of the added new gen console power it's going to get harder and harder for me to continue to play newer games and take screenshots of them. So it was time to upgrade!

I should have it all set up in the next couple of weeks, just in time for F4 I hope!

Human or elven rift mage, or human templar - those are the ones that make the most sense to me if you really want to have the 'perfect' playthrough, but really I don't care all that much - I can come up with a reasonable reason why any of the background/class combinations would be at the conclave (or rather, I am happy with extending the pre-written reasons we're given for their presence for it to make absolute sense). 

The whole point of all of these games is people being thrown into impossible situations and having to step up and lead, whether they want to or not. Automatically going with someone who is a traditional born leader is all well and good, but I find it interesting to play characters who aren't like that too.

That face sticking out of the water in the bottom picture looks absolutely horrifying, Melissa

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I'm putting together a new PC. Very excited. I can just about run DAI on ultra with a performance-hungry reshade config, but there are going to be some games now I'll start to struggle a lot more with, and I can't downsample/hotsample as much as I'd like. With the advent of Fallout 4, I figured it was time to build something new. I should have it all together in a week or so. It'll be a nice step up from my laptop, that's for sure.

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I've not been in the game too often recently, too busy researching PC parts... so I'm still moseying around on The Storm Coast:

And these from back in Haven because I don't think I ever posted them here:

I'd really, really like to see a human who isn't a noble, and who has an English accent that isn't posh. Sera proved that not all of us sound like mummy and daddy own a country estate, but try telling the protagonists that.