When I played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for the first time in 2011, I became immediately pulled into the Nord’s land with its rugged landscape and varied characters offering a multitude of quests. I also reacted with a few chuckles and head-shakes, not even counting the bugs. Why do warriors sleep in armor? Nevermind that follower swimming in plate-male armor. No one suffers dressed in regular clothing out in a blizzard, or care about getting soaked in the rain. My biggest gripe in the first week of playing was all the dialogue about how cold and harsh Skyrim is, yet it isn’t. Bland scenery and lack of cold hold this chapter back.

Assuming the next chapter in The Elder Scrolls (TES) series is several years away as in “a long ways off” (PC Gamer), now is a fine time to bring new life to Skyrim. Add new quests, update visual details for modern hardware, or add new immersive features. Swimming in frigid water or wearing light clothing in the snow should be risky. Skyrim could be much prettier, too. Bethesda Game Studios offers a Creation Kit for creating mods, but in this post I’ll go over selecting existing mods created by the community. In future posts I’ll cover in more detail on improving immersion and making Skyrim prettier.

Normally I advise experiencing the plain game first, but I make an exception this time. If you’ve never played Skyrim before, I recommend adding two mods (a package, really) before you even begin your adventure. “Frostfall” with “Campfire” is a well-designed immersive update with at least some gameplay features that should have been part of the original game. I’ll go over “Frostfall” in more detail in my post on improving immersion. Read this post if you’ve never tried mods, or have never played Skyrim.

Also see “Skyrim Special Edition Released” for modding the 2016 edition.

This review covers the PC version updated in 2016.

Project CARS by Slightly Mad Studios is an immersive race-simulation game similar to Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo, but more race oriented. The most impressive part of Project CARS is the weather making racing feel more immersive and challenging. Endurance racing with real-time daylight progression is a great experience. The career mode is extensive with enough racing to keep players busy for a long time in addition to online racing series and hotlap competitions. Holding this simulator back, though, have been the bugs. Three months later, patch 3.0 is starting to look like what version 1.0 should have been. Overall, Project CARS is welcome for those who enjoy longer races and other race strategies such as pit stops, night driving, and changing weather.

I enjoyed Forza Motorsport until 4 when longer races went away along with the challenge. I also missed greater racing realism of older Papyrus titles. Upon hearing of Project CARS and World of Mass Development (WMD) back in late 2012, I became interested. The goal of the WMD project was to get input (and crowdfunding support) from fans on the direction of the title. Early suggestions including large number of cars, tracks, and racing styles such as off-road rally, but some features were set aside to focus on finishing the game. I became concerned after the second release delay was announced, and then a third, as the game likely still needed much polishing. My concern became reality upon trying the initial release to find many bugs, some amusing and others cringe-worthy, along with controls that didn’t feel right making some cars difficult to drive.

Previously, I went over force feedback and Fanatec controller setup making a big improvement with the driving experience.

post updated to consider Special Edition, recent Unofficial Skyrim Patch changes, and edited to be more concise

The “Unofficial Skyrim Patch” (USkP), or newer “Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch” (USLeEP) (USSEP for Special Edition), is a mod dedicated to fixing bugs and errors within The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (TES V) by Bethesda Game Studios. The TES chapters are known for amusing bugs, Daggerfall taking the top (bottom?) spot in teaching us to save the game often especially before opening a door. The USkP fixes content bugs never resolved by the official game patches, however the USkP also includes changes to gameplay and lore along with added content. Those primarily looking for just fixes may want to give the USkP some careful consideration first. Some players may wish to investigate to patch out undesirable changes.

According to team member, Arthmoor, “A bug is defined for our purposes as a defect in the game that can be factually proven to be broken.” This statement may not extend to deciphering original intent, but I’d like to think maintaining original gameplay should be a goal. As I’ll show in the examples below some changes lack solid evidence or can be directly disproven by TES game material. Arthmoor admits to making judgement calls, and USkP is their mod in the end. Like any mod, the player may patch override their own adjustments including reverting changes back to original.

One former USkP user (Setitimer) mentions on reddit that after v1.3, USkP started adding too many non-bug changes causing mod-compatibility issues and breaking the game. On forum.step-project.com, kryptopyr, Kuldebar, and others point out that adding content should be left to other mods. A few others share their complaints on forums.nexusmods including Writhes’s comment, “Things like fortify restoration, necromage, the added armor to the smithing menu, etc. These are all very disputable changes that should be obvious candidates for being separated.”

Project CARS by Slightly Mad Studios is the first simulator where I’ve spent nearly as much time tweaking controller-related settings as driving. I found some cars, such as Ruf RGT and MacLaren F1, lacking proper feedback making them difficult to drive. Adding to the problem, bugs and poor implementation of Fanatec 911 controller made things less clear. After some trial-and-error testing and research, I’ve found the solutions concerning game settings, controller settings, and a Windows setting.

The problem I found in Project CARS was that driving some cars felt good, but in other cars it felt as though most of the feedback was turned off. I would spin out in some cars, because I couldn’t feel the loss of grip.

Realistic wheel controller force feedback in a simulator is poor feedback since the player can’t feel shifting of the car body or accelerations. All feedback comes through the steering wheel. Visuals and sounds help with determining loss of grip, but without the feel, visuals and sounds are too little, too late. The goal is to feel bumps, wheel spin, and loss of grip in the corners along with forces normally exerted on the steering wheel without those forces becoming too strong while having some level of realism with the actual car. If a car loses grip, beginning to spin out, it should feel natural to save the car. The same for being able to control the car in a sliding drift, or cutting cookies on the dirt. Many games offer a nice balance of feedback for playability by sacrificing some realism. Simulators need to impart the right balance of feedback through the steering wheel to mimic the real forces exerted on the body. And the balance needs to be maintained across cars allowing for differences in car handling.

Spindle Master Scale & SoP (seat of pants) Scale

Early on I spent some time testing the same car in Assetto Corso, where force feedback feels about right, and back in Project CARS as I made changes to car settings. SoP and other force-feedback settings can be customized for each car and for each track. These aren’t car adjustments, but settings specifically for force feedback independent of the controller used. General force feedback settings for the controller can be found in the controller setup, but it turned out the car-specific settings was the problem. I found that a setting called, SoP Scale, was at 0 for many of the cars where changing values to between 20 - 50 made a big difference for the better. Research online confirmed this, and thankfully, some experienced sim racers have shared their settings as covered below in resources.

This year I attended the fourth annual TechFestNW at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon. Themes at the two-day event were virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, drones, and the future of technology. Other topics included the sharing economy, diversity in the tech industry, and tech body modification as in cyborg. Revolution Hall is the newest music venue in Portland residing within the former Washington High School building which includes office space. The Roof Deck lounge provides views of downtown Portland. Located near major bike routes and quiet streets, Revolution Hall turned out to be a pleasant location with easy access for Portland’s many bike commuters working in technology. I came most interested in augmented reality, but I left impressed by the presenters on the future with drones and robots. Below I review my two favorite sessions, John Markoff on robots and Jonathan Evans on drones. TechFestNW offered a wide range of topics, good food and drink, games, music, and plenty of opportunities to meet or squeeze in some work.

The entrance to Revolution Hall was one of several locations to park bikes around the building. Late arrivals locked their bikes to a nearby steel fence.