Skyrim Timelapse: World in Motion

By Richard Leadbetter Published 20 November, 2011

Digital Foundry's latest video epic.

An enormous world rich in adventure, The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is remarkable in that its entire game world - meshes, textures, characters, audio, logic - is all contained within a paltry 3.8GB on Xbox 360. In the age of the 50GB Blu-ray, it's amazing that what is arguably the deepest, richest adventure of the year could fit with on a single-layer DVD with space to spare. Even the PC version - with its higher-quality artwork and superior quality settings - still only weighs in at a 5.5GB download via Steam.

In this Digital Foundry World in Motion timelapse, we'll be taking you on an extended video tour of the beautiful world that Bethesda has crafted. In accelerated motion, you can see the vast array of improvements the developers have made to an engine that was clearly showing its age somewhat in Fallout: New Vegas. Cloud cover and lighting has enormously improved, and Bethesda has clearly paid a lot of attention to atmospheric rendering and other additional effects: wispy clouds hug the sheer mountains, visibility is affected by weather-dependent haze, while the Nordic feel of Skyrim itself is emphasised by the frequent Aurora Borealis dominating the night sky.

In creating this video, we've only just begun to scratch the surface of the immense world: we've visited the major capitals, scoped out a range of landmarks, but in truth the scale of the map and the number of locations for you to discover is simply vast. A fully populated map encompasses hundreds of landmarks while we've recorded just 44 scenes.

The enormous world of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim presented via the wonder of timelapse video, captured from the PC version running with every setting maxed and incorporating a couple of mods.

Any video game timelapse requires a great deal of effort, particularly with the volume of shots we have here. Bethesda provided us with an Xbox 360 version of the game ahead of launch, and while we got some nice footage, a single day-night cycle took a very long time to record, and there was no way to preview the effectiveness of the shots until they were complete.

In the event, we binned that work and went with the PC version at launch. The fact that we captured at 1FPS allowed us to ramp all settings up to Ultra, even though the game itself was borderline unplayable (even on an i7/GTX580 combo). We enabled screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) via an NVIDIA tweak and added an improved tree shadowing mod that improved the look of the game still further. As we were running on PC, we were able to ramp up the resolution and use console commands to tweak the passage of time (allowing for faster capture of shots and to preview shifting lighting conditions), turn off enemy combat AI and invoke noclip - meaning we could access shots from any angle we chose.

On this page you'll find hand-encoded video optimised for the best picture quality but for those looking for the best presentation available, there's a native 1080p version to download. It's encoded with the PS3 and Xbox 360 media players in mind, but it should also work just fine on computers with reasonable h.264 decoders too.

Updated: Upon our weekly purge of captured content on the main workstation, we discovered that our 25 hours of Xbox 360 timelapse video was sitting on a secondary drive and hadn't been deleted after all. In a spare moment, we put together this alternative presentation. As you can see, there's quite a lot of difference compared to the PC ultra experience - not just in terms of environmental detail, but also in the update rate of the shadows, and the inconsistent anti-aliasing, which seems to be wiped out by alpha effects. If anything it confirms that we were right to stop work on this version and move over to PC, but the results remain interesting nonetheless.

A montage of timelapse shots captured from the Xbox 360 version of Skyrim. We aborted work on this and concentrated on the PC version so we could enjoy higher resolution, higher quality shots, plus the PC console commands gave us better control over the passing of time. It seemed a shame to waste so much time and effort, so here's a bonus edit of our initial work when putting this article together.

Other games in the Digital Foundry timelapse collection include:

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (77) Latest comment 2 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Dodgeza #1 3 months ago

    Nice work. If you're struggling with that rig though sounds like somethings not right...

  • Whitewalker #2 3 months ago

    Beautiful!

  • Cobalt_Jackal #3 3 months ago

    "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is remarkable in that its entire game world - meshes, textures, characters, audio, logic - is all contained within a paltry 3.8GB on Xbox 360".

    Its not remarkable if your gonna fit a game of the size and scope of Skyrim into a measily 3.8GB then expect there too be huge tradeoffs/negative consequences for doing so. I mean IMO the fugly graphics, low quality weak audio, horrible extremely compressed look and sound of everything (on consoles 360 & esp PS3 =( ) are definately a negative reflection of that.

    Although i agree that yes.... that day-night cycle was very nice, even beautiful to view. Not the best one i've seen though (that goes to RDR) but Skyrim's is far from bad.

    So um great stuff ^_^.
    Edited by 2 at 20/11/11 @ 16:32

  • elvenscroll #4 3 months ago

    Enjoyed that! Superb video.

  • bdc #5 3 months ago

    That's one of the better more comprehensive timelapse videos I've seen from DF, great stuff :)

  • Wot_the_Melon #6 3 months ago

    You're not telling the whole story, Skyrim on ultra would run fine even with the tweaks you mentioned on a much cheaper rig than that... Are you perhaps using some of the tweaks DeadEndThrills uses as well? Or what did you do to make your rig struggle with Skyrim?

  • markyHD #7 3 months ago

    @Cobalt_jackal

    You're wrong about the audio there buddy, especially on the PS3 (DTS and LCM)

  • spekkeh #8 3 months ago

    Even the PC version - with its higher-quality artwork and superior quality settings - still only weighs in at a 5.5GB download via Steam.

    I thought DigitalFoundry's own side by side comparison stated that, apart from a few textures such as those of building rooftops, the textures were pretty much the same between the different versions. Better draw distance and higher resolution changes nothing about game size, so shouldn't that be "even the pc version - with its facilitation of lower-quality settings and artwork - still only weighs.."?

  • Jolly_Armadillo #9 3 months ago

    It's SO beautiful! Wish I could live there...

  • philreid #10 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:51:10 12-12-2011

  • Evil_Badger #11 3 months ago

    When are your videos gonna work within Firefox?
    I'm using 8.0.1, but they didn't work in 8.0.0 either, and I'm pretty sure 7 as well.

  • Gallilee #12 3 months ago

    Amazing video of an amazing game!

  • Ternon #13 3 months ago

    And to think that Rage in 2011 has a static low-res picture for a sky.
    Disgusting.

  • Whitewalker #14 3 months ago

    @Evil_Badger I'm running FF 8.0 & video is fine, maybe something else is the problem?

  • David_W #15 3 months ago

    @Evil_Badger FF 8.0 here, videos work just fine.

  • kimchibaka #16 3 months ago

    It looks fantastic, but it sounds like you had to work pretty hard to show us videos of a game in a state those of us with even average-to-high-end rigs won't be able to see it in for years, until we upgrade (and once we do is the gamecode even capable of it?)?

    Beautiful video, slightly misleading article in my opinion - just seems like an advert (due to the text and lack of disclaimers).

  • svenjl #17 3 months ago

    That was spectacular! I was trying to explain the scope of this game, the size of Skyrim and TES series to a non-gamer a couple of days ago. I failed miserably. I should show this vid to him. The worlds that gamer's imaginations can inhabit are mind-blowing in detail compared to 15-20 years ago (obviously). I don't think that can be appreciated unless you've been playing video games for that long.

  • Paul_cz #18 3 months ago

    Great timelapse, but you should have used ugridstoload 7 or 9 and FXAA too, to make those trees even smoother looking.

    Kimchibaka - actually the game looks even better ony my PC, runs at 40-60 fps (90% of the time 60). I have pretty good PC, but not extreme highend (gtx560ti, 2500K..).

  • Subquest #19 3 months ago

    It's an amazing game, the game world is very impressive and it's a wonderful place to spend time in.

    Graphically, however, it's as many steps down from the likes of Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3 as it is above the 5 year old Oblivion. I long for the lighting / shadowing of either of those games.

    I'm sure the modding community will improve things in time, but I doubt there's much they can do with engine fundamentals such as absence of DX11 lighting. Please Bethesda, an entirely new engine for the next one, if you don't mind.

    EDIT @Kimchibaka - this is not a particularly demanding game, especially when compared with the games I mention. Don't know why they were struggling with that setup, it should have monstered it.
    Edited by 2 at 20/11/11 @ 22:41

  • GamesConnoisseur #20 3 months ago

    Sigh.. 3.8 gb, shocking dumbing down due to consoles processing limitations/wastes of BD vast capacity.."

    All that talk JUST discount that to multiplies by ten the gamesworld would literally multiples by ten the budget, manpower needed and even so, lengthen the time needed to work on game before releasing it.

    What about Killzone 3, Uncharted 3 etc, mostly uncompressed audio and FMV taking up data space, the actual game data still far less than that.

    I look forward to the day we get full quality gamesworld on same standard of Skyrim 3.8 gb filling 50 gb BD disk.

    Quality not Quantity. That's the main thing.

  • Shakey_Jake33 #21 3 months ago

    It seems unlikely that the game has been intentionally 'simplified' to fit on a DVD. After all, the game only uses 3.8GB of space, nowhere near the maximum capacity of a 360 dual-layer DVD.

  • prettyboytim #22 3 months ago

    Beautiful, gorgeous video.

    Re: the on-disk size: It's worth remembering that more highly-detailed assets would result in longer loading times. It's also worth remembering that the increase in sales from supporting console platforms will have increased the budget available to make the game. I doubt they could have made a PC-only game of that size.

    Regarding the graphics, the only thing I don't like is the water, it's too blue, especially when viewed down at an angle - you'd expect to be able to see through the water to an extent, which would look a lot more natural. I wonder if it would be possible to mod the water shader...

  • mingster #23 3 months ago

    @Evil_Badger i use firefox works fine

  • Lucodeath #24 3 months ago

    Makes me want to play it so thats what Im about to do.
    Firefox fine with me.
    Edited by 1 at 20/11/11 @ 23:38

  • Zerobob #25 3 months ago

    I downloaded the timelapse video and tried to play it on my 360 from a USB stick, but it fails around 20 secs in

  • superdelphinus #26 3 months ago

    It is an extremely pretty game at times. It's not about visual fidelity (I play on 360), just the art of the thing is fantastic.

  • Jolly_Armadillo #27 3 months ago

    @redbarony

    Maybe if I was rich, but I'm not so poo!

  • Astro-Creature #28 3 months ago

    Just imagine what they could do if they were allowed to take up the Blu-Ray space, without having to conform to DVD sizes.

  • polaris70 #29 3 months ago

    That was amazing to chill out to. Really nice vid. Thanks.

  • BurntFaceMan101 #30 3 months ago

    Sweet video! I loved those two spiders freaking out at 2.02 :cool:

  • AaronTurner #31 3 months ago

    Nice video although it's kind of weird that the land doesn't seem to draw shadows on itself. I only noticed it in this vid and not during the 50 hours of playing so far so maybe the trade off was worth it.

  • Collymilad #32 3 months ago

    @Astro-Creature So why is the game 3.8Gb when the new format 360 discs hold ~7.8gb?

    That question goes to all the people going on about it being dumbed down to fit on a DVD. Maybe if it was 7Gb or something close to that you might (probably wrongly) make that assumption, but to say that when they weren't anywhere near the limit is just stupid.

  • FortysixterUK #33 3 months ago

    Impressive video.
    Impressive music.
    Impressive game.

  • theirongiant #34 3 months ago

    This is going to be terrible for business

  • Turrican_Freak #35 3 months ago

    This piece of music reminds me so much of Fripp's soundscapes. Which is a good thing.

  • Pac #36 3 months ago

    @Collymilad

    I think the 3.8GB size means that it can fit on a single layer of a DVD disk. Not sure if there is a problem using dual layer DVDs as they have been used before. Could be that they are slower to stream data from or might just be because of the extra cost.

  • elephant_stone #37 3 months ago

    Love the dancing spider at 2:09

  • Jamiesan #38 3 months ago

    I hope the people who posted Skyrim was constrained by DVD are trolling. For their own sake.

    If not, then stop taking fanboy BS as fact and form your own opinions. Learning a bit about how games work will teach you why the above is incorrect.

  • Batfink #39 3 months ago

    I would dearly love TES 6 to be made in an all-new engine, but I just don't think Bethesda have got the chops for it. And their entire design team has been working with the Gamebryo tools for over ten years now. Re-training those people on a completely new system and expecting good results in a standard development cycle - not likely. I suspect TES 6 to brute-force contiguous interior-exterior spaces by loading everything at once; no fancy streaming or clever LOD tricks, just a jazillion polygons all in the scene at one time.

  • kangarootoo #40 3 months ago

    Super pretty game, even thought some of the pop-up and so on is noticeable when you look for it. Pretty in the sense that all the parts fit together is what I really mean I guess.

    Was wandering about one of the more snowy areas of the map the other night, with a misty snowstorm blowing about the place. Could barely see my virtual hand in front of my pixellated face. Amazing atmosphere.

  • Sodding_Gamer #41 3 months ago

    I play on consoles, mainly because I can't afford a nice rig until now... And a GTX580i and an overclocked i7 is what I was going to get. I'm confused as to how they are struggling to run the game with this combo?! How is that possible? Is it because of the mods? From what people have told me they have been able to run the game on ultra with pc specs much lower than that :S

  • kangarootoo #42 3 months ago

    @Cobalt_Jackal

    "the fugly graphics, low quality weak audio, horrible extremely compressed look and sound of everything"

    So lets get this clear. You don't like the graphics, or the sound, or the graphics, or the sound?

    I see where you are coming from. A couple of issues might be tolerable, but four?!? Deal breaker.

  • kangarootoo #43 3 months ago

    @Evil_Badger

    I think a Flash player install issue might be responsible. Mine works fine, but I have previously had problems with flash not installing into Firefox properly (leaving a bunch of sites that would only work in IE). Can't recall what I did to solve it - maybe just re-installing flash within FF would be a place to start.

  • bigjimbeef #44 3 months ago

    Is it just using pre-baked AO maps at the minute? I'll admit, I hadn't look into it, but I'd rather assumed it was doing real-time SSAO already. Well, shows what I know :p I'll go search out that Nvidia tweak then.. see if I can't get my graphics card to set on fire.

  • barkertron #45 3 months ago

    The video is ace, nice one!

    But... the multiupload site you're using to host the 1080p download is a horrible piece of intentionally misleading click-baiting adware crap that doesn't deserve anyone's traffic. Would yousendit not have worked? Sorry, don't want to moan, it's just that sites like that MAKE ME SO ANGRY RRRRRARRRRRRRRR

  • drhickman1983 #46 3 months ago

    Nice timelapse video. The Skyrim world has quickly become the most awesome game world I've ever set virtual feet in. True,i t's not the most technically advanced game out there but I honestly can't think of a game where the landscape has impressed me so much, the overall shape and flow of the mountains and valleys is something is something I've never seen achieved before.

  • ChrisTop #47 3 months ago

    The most beautiful timelapse video on Eurogamer so far, though RDR and GTA IV's worlds were more realistic this was by far the most pleasing for the eye...
    Can anyone tell me what's the name of this song?

  • magicpocket #48 3 months ago

    Great video DF, thanks a lot.

    Time lapse videos are great at showing off what goes on at ground level, but to think that you get all this AND the vast, cavernous dungeons that exist below Skyrim's surface is incredible. It's almost as if you could take the Skyrim map and then add another 25% to cater for all the underground exploration possible. Perhaps more.

  • magicpocket #49 3 months ago

    @ChrisTop It's the Elder Scrolls in-game tune

  • Noble6 #50 3 months ago

    Amazing. Love it.

  • jonbwfc #51 3 months ago

    @Jolly_Armadollo - yes it looks very nice, but you'd have to live with people coming in your house every day, putting a bucket on your head and then stealing all your stuff.

  • badoli #52 3 months ago

    @Batfink Well, maybe the takeover of ID was too early for Skyrim...

  • uknortherner2000 #53 3 months ago

    I'll echo some of the other comments on here about Eurogamer's PC performance. I'm running an i3, GTS 250 and 8GB RAM, and the game's silky smooth on ultra settings, even with additional .ini tweaks for tree shadows, etc. What on earth are Eurogamer doing with their somewhat more high-spec PC if the game's borderline unplayable?

  • Darren #54 3 months ago

    "The fact that we captured at 1FPS allowed us to ramp all settings up to Ultra, even though the game itself was borderline unplayable (even on an i7/GTX580 combo). We enabled screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) via an NVIDIA tweak and added an improved tree shadowing mod that improved the look of the game still further."

    Sorry but what???

    I have the same i7-920 (@ 3.2 GHz) and a single GTX 580 and play the game at 1920x1200 with Ultra settings, 8xAA/16xAF/FXAA on and Object Detail Fade off using the latest v285.79 beta drivers. I've enabled the very same tweaks in the INI for land and tree shadows plus improved water rendering as well as forcing SSAO on Performance in the game profile.

    At those settings the game runs between 45-60 fps for 98% of the time, depending on the time of day, weather and whether I'm outdoors or not. The remaining 2% is where I can experience drops to around 30 fps usually in specific places though where there's lots of shadows (they're rendered on the CPU apparently) or where the draw distance is huge, such as looking down onto Whiterun from Dragonreach for example. I've noticed that the game runs a more consistent 60 fps from the first-person mode rather than my preferred third-person as it doesn't have to render the character shadow (which is cast on other people and objects as you'd expect). The game has never once been 'unplayable' and I've played it in excess of 60 hours.

    You didn't make it clear but perhaps you need to elaborate more on the cause if it is the capture process that renders the game unplayable.
    Edited by 2 at 21/11/11 @ 12:40

  • Sodding_Gamer #55 3 months ago

    @uknortherner2000

    Thanks for re-iterating this mate. I'm really confused as to why they have said this. The spec is more than ample to run this game. Maybe even run the game twice! I thought an i7 with a GTX 580i is quite the monster.

  • jonfon #56 3 months ago

    I expected a David Attenborough narrative to kick in over that. Maybe something where he talks in hushed tones about the onset of Spring in Skyrim and the Greater Spotted Giant Spider doing its twitching mating dance, at around the 2 minute mark.

  • peori #57 3 months ago

    Borderline unplayable? I've all that jazz and more enabled, including ugrids at 7, land shadowing, better bodies/faces and it's smooth.

    Game is looking decent now apart from up close, still can't wait for a high res texture overhaul and proper better bodies.

    Back to stealing everything ;)

  • 3william56 #58 3 months ago

    It's a nice video, but even at max settings timelapse shows up the limitations of current tech: it's well into the Uncanny Valley. Repetitive clouds and birds (and spiders!), grass moving but static tree leaves, the moon(s) look(s) terrible, and the water edges look painted on (no reflected ripples). We still have a long way to go, and need a whole lot more processing power until it becomes truly realistic.

    Very pretty though.

  • CHAZBIGPOTATO #59 3 months ago

    Think it would have gone better with Jean Michel Jarre but hey, I'm nitpicking! Superb stuff.

  • septimus #60 3 months ago

    Very nice.

    Odd you aren't getting 60+ fps on ultra. I get that on a lesser gpu (ATI 6970) @ 2560x1440.

    Noticed lots of snow in the game. Though only ever seen it rain. :-/

  • tossum #61 3 months ago

    Thats lovely Rich, I was hoping you would do this

  • Darren #62 3 months ago

    @Septimus - It does snow in the game, especially if you go up into the mountains or where there's already lots of snow on the ground. I've encountered snow, rain and thunderstorms (complete with lightning)! Great game, very atmospheric and immersive even with the low-res texturing and lack of photo-realism. The art work throughout is beautiful IMO though I do wish that the extra disc space had been used to add more texture and dungeon variety as the longer you play the more you do spot the same old layouts in some of the towns and especially the dungeons/caves.

  • Shakey_Jake33 #63 3 months ago

    I have to echo other people's comments here - this is not a very demanding game. I run this game on my laptop, which is a lowly Core2 T6600 2.2GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM and GeForce GT240m 1GB, and still manage to run this game at Mid-High settings with 4x MSAA with a framerate generally ~35fps - higher than the console versions. I can't imagine how a fairly powerful machine would struggle with Ultra settings.

  • Obli #64 3 months ago

    How about a GT5 timelapse? :)

  • fisherpot #65 3 months ago

    Beautiful game and its so bloody good! My game of the year!

  • Dop #66 3 months ago

    Very nice, almost tempted to buy the game now.

    We've come a heck of a long way since "You are standing at the end of a road outside a small brick building", haven't we.

  • cloudskipa #67 3 months ago

    Gorgeous, just shows us how far gaming has come. I own this on 360 and it is so impressive visually that I've been showing it off to my non-gamer friends and family. It's a great showcase for current gen graphics, maybe the best I've seen on a home console yet.

    I can only imagine what a next gen Elder Scrolls game could look like, hopefully we won't have to wait too long for that.

  • dr_zoidthrob #68 3 months ago

    It's like 'cloud porn'

  • mansmov #69 3 months ago

    Could someone upload the 1080p version to another place please.The one here (multiupload.com) is filtered in my country. Among the good ones, mediafire is not filtered. I would be very great full if someone cares to spend the time. Thanks.

  • JohnnyIsTruant #70 3 months ago

    See what you've done! Now I can't hold myself back from jumping into another massive session! No complaints there!

  • tena #71 3 months ago

    Just to let PC users know, there are already better textures done by the mod community which are a big improvement. I'd recommend the Landscape Texture Pack and Night Sky Pack as worth trying. I'm not sure I'f you're allowed to link to other sites from here but they can be found on the obvious modding forum for Skyrim, easily found on a web search.

  • WrenTheReaper #72 3 months ago

    Very nice!! I love time lapse videos. I made one myself of Skyrim actually, and it to was released yesterday. Different styles, but still both are cool tributes to the game. I used most of the same mods and and graphics tweaks you did too.

    [youtube]

  • WrenTheReaper #73 3 months ago

    @WrenTheReaper Since the video link seemed to not work, here it is. http://youtu.be/pIQLZsB5n fU

  • Oskool #74 3 months ago

    Cool time-laps video. I enjoyed watching it. The Northern Lights look very cool!

  • panathatube #75 3 months ago

    Well no mention whatsoever that the dated graphics engine only uses two cores -even if you have a 6 core processor-, just 2 gigbytes of memory, and basically relies on the cpu to do all the dirty work not the gpu! DX 11 graphics eye candy you said? You must be joking!

  • Canyarion #76 3 months ago

    Gorgeous. The only unpretty thing of Skyrim appears to be the water (in rivers and pools... waterfalls are good). The flow is wrong, so it looks fake. There's also something about the reflection/color that looks weird.

  • BonzoBanana #77 2 months ago

    Its only been 35 years since the gaming industry started with single colour sprites etc and already we are upto a complex virtual world that successfully simulates most of the physics we have in the real world. Makes you wonder what another 35 years will achieve and if our real world is actually a virtual world. Perhaps when we die we'll just wake up sitting in an arcade cabinet and move on to the next arcade machine. Perhaps all our personalities on this thread are stored on the same high density storage device with billions of other minds on this planet. Whatever, the pace of change is quite amazing and I'm one of those people who just stops playing sometimes just to look around at the virtual world I'm in. I used to do this all the time in Fallout 3.