For better screenshots in Skyrim, you should first turn off the HUD. This removes the compass, the cross-hair, destination markers, and other screen objects. Just open the developer console by pressing tilde (~), then type in tm and hit enter. The HUD will disappear, including the developer console itself. The game will still be frozen, but don't worry it hasn't crashed. It's because the dev console is still up. Hit tilde again to leave the dev console and resume play.

Once you're done taking screenshots, you can bring the HUD and everything back by going through the same process. Though this time you'll have to do it blind. Hit tilde and the game should freeze, though you won't see the develop console. Type in tm just like before and hit enter. If you did it right, everything should pop back up. If it doesn't, hit tilde again to exit the dev console, and then try again.

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-- After patch 1.3, this is no longer needed. If you haven't yet, turn off V-Sync to reduce mouse lag! --

Prior to patch 1.2, Skyrim had an odd issue with the vertical mouse movement being synced to the frame rate. After patch 1.2, you should now experience consistent mouse movement regardless of frame rate (now you may want to disable v-sync), but your vertical and horizontal movement may still be out of sync. If they are, you can try adjusting the fMouseHeadingYScale and fMouseHeadingXScale variables, which can be found in the [Controls] section in Skyrim.ini:



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Turning off V-Sync in Skyrim will improve mouse responsiveness, particularly in the menu, and may also increase frame rate. To turn V-Sync off, you need only add iPresentInterval=0 to the [Display] section of Skyrim.ini. Skyrim.ini can be found here:


If the [Display] section or iPresentInterval variable don't already exist, create them as needed. For example:

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-- After patch 1.3, this is no longer an issue. If you haven't yet, turn off V-Sync to reduce mouse lag! --

Skyrim has an odd "feature" that causes vertical mouse acceleration to be tied to the current frame rate. This means that in areas of low frame rate (busy city areas), the vertical mouse movement will be lower and out of sync with the horizontal mouse movement. In areas of high frame rate (and with V-Sync off), it will be the opposite.

V-sync should keep the horizontal and vertical movements in sync as long as your frame rate stays not too far below 60. If your frame rate does drop below 60 by enough, you may experience slower vertical mouse movement. If you turn V-Sync off, you'll probably notice in caves and other confined areas that vertical mouse movement feels much more sensitive. Staring at a wall exacerbates this.


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Disabling the Bethesda Logo movie that plays at the start of the game is very easy and will reduce the time it takes to get into the game. To do this, simply rename, move, or delete the BGS_Logo.bik file. Depending on where you have Steam installed, that file may reside here:



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Anisotropic Filtering affects how sharp textures look at a distance, especially textures that are at extreme viewing angles. Skyrim allows you to choose from 2, 4, 8, 12, or 16 anisotropic samples, or to leave anisotropic filtering off.

See the below screenshot comparison of each setting (except for 12, which didn't look any different than 16). Note that these were taken on Ultra settings with anti-aliasing off (anti-aliasing didn't affect the blurriness or graphical anomalies shown in the screenshots at all).

Off	2 Samples	4 Samples	8 Samples	16 Samples

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Here is a table of the PC version of Skyrim's Low, Medium, High, and Ultra quality presets that you can select in the Skyrim launcher. At the bottom are screenshots showing each setting, with both an indoor and an outdoor environment comparison.

To easily compare the screenshots, download this zip file (5,236kB) containing the screenshots in organized folders. Use the next and previous buttons of your image viewer to move between quality levels and easily see the difference. Another easy way is to open each screenshot in its own tab in your browser, and then cycle through them.

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You can adjust the field of view in-game by bringing up the developer console (press tilde "~") and typing in fov XX, where XX is the desired numerical value. Try values ranging from 80 to 110 to see what works best for you. Skyrim appears to save the FOV setting in the save file. Once you change it using the developer console and save the game, it should "stick" for that save file and any created after it.



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