killerkittykat

I messed around with brightness settings in game and with my monitor (and contrast on my monitor). It didn't change the problem at all. Here's an updated screen shot. All mods are off.http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0809-39-52-46.png I think I mentioned before that my friend is having the same issue and he hasn't installed any mods at all. I'm pretty sure I've always had this problem because I remember the smoke screen always looking like that. I will uninstall Skyrim again (completely this time), but I really don't think that's gonna solve it. :( I also messed around with the gamma settings and that didn't help. EDIT: I went into my monitors advanced settings and I changed 32 bit color to 16 bit, which was a very noticeable change on my desktop and everywhere. Then I loaded Skyrim and it looks exactly the same. I'm convinced that skyrim is running in 16 bit color.

I do not have this problem with any other games, no. I have messed around with brightness a bit.. It looks like a color depth problem.. I found a link on google that compares 32 bit color to 16, and it really seems to match up with the problems with color banding I'm getting in game. Here's the link http://img452.imageshack.us/img452/8343/gradient32bit3ze.png I do have d3d9.dll in steam/steam maps/common/skyrim. Should I delete it? What is this? Thanks edit: I moved the file to a different location temporally and booted the game. No change. By the way, a friend of mine has the exact same issue on his computer, and I believe his laptop as well. Does the smoke in the first pic I posted look how it looks for you guys? Or can you guys tell it is not right? Thanks.

Hi machuidel, thanks so much for the tips. I uninstalled and removed the game completely (copied my save files elsewhere of course) and now I'm redownloading it. Steam says it will be finished in 5 minutes. If the reinstall doesn't work, which I don't think it will, I am going to look into what you just said. I'll keep you updated. Thanks again for your time. :smile: EDIT: So the reinstall didn't work. I went into the nvidia settings and set anisotropic filtering to 16x and that didn't fix it. The only thing I saw for LOD bias was "texture filtering- negative LOD bias" which by default was set to "allow," but I changed it to the only other option which was "clamped".. I combined that with AF at 16x and still no luck. I opened up skyrim.ini in notepad but there is nothing that says gamma in there. I did ctrl F and nothing came up. :( EDIT2: I went into skyrimprefs.ini and there I found fgamma which was set to 1.000. Not sure exactly how to find out if I have a custom nvdia profile for skyrim.. Is that something I would have had to download? EDIT3: I found the option to "select a program to customize" and Skyrim was in there and I guess nvidia had presets or something. I clicked on that one, but I am still having the same problem. Also I opened up skyrimprefs.ini after applying that customization and it still says 1.000 (not sure if I should expect that to change).. Is there a custom value you would suggest typing in there? Also, I just now noticed that it wasn't a clean uninstall and reinstall. I copied my old saves to a different location and before I moved them over to my new skyrim install the game already gave me the option to load the old files.. Do you think that I should uninstall, delete everything (except for the moved save files) and try again? ugh...

I don't think it's my monitor because I can look at screen shots of people who get better color depth and I can see everything fine. Also, I don't have this problem in other games. I'm installing the drivers now. Thanks for the tip about frame rate. I've been using fraps recently while running mods (to make sure nothing was slowed down significantly) so I have a good idea of where it should be. I'll take note if it drops. I just reformatted a few days ago, but it doesn't seem any different to me and I don't see why a clean reformat would make things worse xD On that note, I have made sure that all drivers are up to date.. Speaking of drivers, I need to reboot and test the game :) Edit: No change. Just double checked to make sure and I am now definitely running the nvidia beta drivers (290.53)... The color depth problem is still exactly the same. Also, there has been no change in frame rate.

Hi thanks so much for the reply! I actually just downloaded the 290.53 drivers right before reading your post. I haven't installed them yet, but it sure is nice to know it worked for you. Did you test to see how the game looked with the new drivers before you reinstalled? or did the new drivers only help after the reinstall? Also, did your smoke on the loading screens look like how mine looks now and after you installed the new drivers now does it looks cleaner? Thanks again, I'll let you know how the install goes for me.

bump :(

Hi guys, I'm having some trouble in game with color depth.. The bit depth seems too low, but I checked in my nvidia driver settings and it is set to 32 bit color. I'm pretty sure I've always had these problems, but it wasn't until I downloaded a mod that they really stood out. This first pic is with all mods turned off. It shows how the smoke is distorted in the loading menu. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/Smoke1.png The second image also has mods turned off. I think the clouds have a similar look as the smoke from the start menu and her clothes seem to look distorted... However, this is how the game has always looked for me so I'm not sure if it's normal or not. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0620-57-25-77.png All of the following pictures were taken with the mod "Realistic Lighting Without Post-Processing" turn on. I love this mod, but in darker areas it made the problem (that I believe I've had all along) much more intense. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0621-11-21-70.png http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0621-12-13-84.png http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y39/jerseygrl33458/TESV2012-01-0621-10-58-36.png In the second to last picture you can see distortion around the chat menu. Thanks for those who took the time to read through my post. Let me know if there is more information you'd like me to post. I'm just hoping to get some help on fixing my problem. I know it's a minor one, but it's still annoying :P