Skyrim PC tweaks

Well that didn’t take long.

Skyrim has barely been out for a day and already finicky PC gamers across the world are digging around the .ini files fixing and tweaking the things that Bethesda probably should have.

These tweaks range from the standard “changing an option not available in the menu” fare such as disabling mouth smoothing, to more pertinent things such as fixing a common crash problem.

And of course, this is the PC crowd we’re talking about, so there are already some graphics tweaks which allow you to make Skyrim look even prettier than it already is.

PC Gamer have kindly compiled a list of all the tweaks going around the internet, so you can tinker to your heart’s content. As always, it’s a good idea to prevent headaches by backing up your files before doing any major DIY on them.

Disable mouse smoothing

-Go to your Steam Directory, then steamapps, common, skyrim and select Skyrim again.
-Create a backup of the SkyrimPrefs.ini file.
-Open the file, then scroll down to where it says [Controls] and find bMouseAcceleration=1.
-Change to bMouseAcceleration=0.
-Save, exit, and play.

Change field of view

This fix and the two below are from Skyrim Reddit, and are credited to “Dead man posting” on the Something Awful Forums.

-Head to My Documents, select My Games, select Skyrim and then Skyrim again, then create a backup of the skyrim.ini file.
-Scroll down to [General] in the file and add fdefaultfov=XX (where XX is the field of view you want).
-Then save and exit.

Fix common crash to desktop problem

-Access the Sound menu from the Control panel.
-In the playback tab, right click on speakers and select properties.
-Select the advanced tab on the new screen and select 24 bit, 44100Hz (Studio Quality) from the drop down menu.

Disable Vsync

Access the SkyrimPrefs.ini again and add iPresentInterval=0 to the bottom of the [Display] section.

This can improve a sluggish framerate and eliminate instances of mouse lag.

Thanks to Tweak Guides for this one.

Graphical tweaks

Curate on the Bethesda forums has highlighted a number of interesting variables in the SkyrimPrefs.ini file.

Change the digit at the end of each line to 1 to turn the feature on, 0 to turn it off. Don’t forget to create a backup of the SkyrimPrefs.ini file just in case.

Interesting variables are as follows, in order of appearance in the .ini and showing their default settings.

bDoDepthOfField=1
bTreesReceiveShadows=0
bDrawLandShadows=0
bShowFloatingQuestMarkers=1
bShowQuestMarkers=1
bShowCompass=1
bMouseAcceleration=1
fAutosaveEveryXMins=15.0000
Redditor Ryz also suggests changing iWaterReflectHeight=512 and iWaterReflectWidth=512 to 1024 and adding the following text to the SkyrimPrefs.ini to improve the quality of water reflections.
bUseWaterReflectionBlur=1
bReflectExplosions=1
iWaterBlurAmount=4
bAutoWaterSilhouetteReflections=0
bForceHighDetailReflections=1
Ryz also includes two screenshots to serve as a “before and after” of what these tweaks can do. Note the extra depth of the trees as a result of the shadowing.