Hobbies And Interests
Instructions
Launch "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" from the launcher icon, placed on your desktop when you install the game. Click "Options" and locate "Vsync" under "mode." Disabling this will raise your in-game frame rate, but may produce image tearing, where parts of the image don't align perfectly for brief periods of time. After enabling or disabling Vsync, click "OK" and "Play" to launch the game.
Click "Options" once the game loads to the main menu. The "Resolution" setting determines how many pixels are on-screen at once, which changes the quality. Lower resolutions don't look as pretty, but the game runs faster. The "Texture Size" setting offers "Small," "Medium" and "Large." This determines the quality of all 2-D images in the game, including the "skins" draped over 3-D objects. "Large" offers the best image but demands the most from your computer.
Adjust the "Brightness" to your liking. This option has no negative impact on performance.
Adjust the sliders on the next six options, "Tree Fade," "Actor Fade," "Item Fade," "Object Fade," "Grass Distance" and "View Distance." These determine how many distant items appear for each category. For example, lowering the "Tree Fade" setting makes trees far away in the game world disappear. Lowering these settings reduces the strain "Oblivion's" rich graphics put on your system by giving your computer less things to load at once. While lowering them raises performance, it lowers graphic quality, so you'll see far-off objects appear out of thin air when you get closer to them.
Toggle "Distant Land," "Distant Buildings" and "Distant Trees" on or off. These options provide similar results to the slider options you just set, only you can't adjust them, you simply choose between them being visible or invisible. While turning them "off" improves performance, it makes finding important landmarks and buildings harder since you have to be so close to them to make them visible.
Adjust the "Int. Shadows" and "Ext. Shadows" sliders. These respectively determine the detail of shadows game characters cast while you're inside buildings and outside in the open game world. Lowering these settings reduces the detail and number of shadows but improves performance.
Choose a setting for the next three shadow options, called "Self Shadows," "Shadows on Grass" and "Tree Canopy Shadows." The first determines the detail of shadows cast on characters. The second turns shadows cast on grass on or off. The final option turns the shadows cast by tree canopies on or off. The lower the settings, the better performance will generally be. The final shadow option, "Shadow Filtering," determines the quality of all enabled shadows. Turning it on produces higher-quality shadows with smoother edges, but may drastically lower performance.
Adjust the "Specular Dist" slider to adjust how reflective and shiny far-away items are. When up close, things like shields and swords give off a reflective shine. With this slider to the far right, distant items remain shiny. Decreasing this option often improves frame rate.
Choose between "HDR Lighting" and "Bloom Lighting." High Dynamic Range lighting is the more realistic, but also the most graphic intensive. Alternately, turn them both off for the best performance but least realistic lighting effects.
Adjust the "Water Detail" setting to determine how realistic water looks. "Water Reflections" set to "On" lets the water's surface reflect objects and characters. The "Water Ripples" option determines the level of detail in ripples when you interact with the water, like when you throw something in a lake. None of the water options have a very large impact on performance.
Choose either "On" or "Off" for "Window Reflections." This option determines whether windows reflect their surrounding areas or not. While disabling may offer a slight performance boost, it's usually not necessary.
Set the detail of the blood splatters in the game using "Blood Decals." "High" lets blood appear on characters and other objects, while "low" has blood appear only on the ground and with less frequency. Turning it off removes all blood from the game. Turning it to "Low" or "Off" may improve performance in large battles where a lot of fighting takes place on the screen at once.
Click the left or right arrows beside "Antialiasing" to switch this setting. Antialiasing determines how smooth or jagged lines appear. Higher numbers mean better quality and more realistic graphics, but this setting has a large impact on performance; higher settings slow the game down unless you have a computer fast enough to handle it.
Click "Return" twice and, if you've changed your graphics settings, "Exit." Restart "Oblivion" to enable the changes you've made. Play the game to determine whether these settings work for you and adjust them accordingly.