I don’t understand what you’re trying to describe with “perspective distortion”—that distant objects appear too small yet mountains appear too high? Isn’t that contradictory?

That mountains appear so tall is just the result of them being actually quite close. The lack of a true horizon that mountains might disappear over could be a factor, except that I dont think the distances are not actually large enough in the game world for that to be relevant.

I also have to disagree with your thesis about fast travel reducing perceived distances. I made a point of playing Skyrim without fast travel (having used it extensively in Oblivion and Fallout 3). The experience of actually walking between two cities, and the very small amount of real-world time it takes ends up making them feel to me much closer together than when I used fast travel over a similar distance. Fast travel introduces a discontinuity in time/space that I automatically interpret as longish; this is similar in feel to a * * * break in a book, I think.

The lie of Skyrim’s land also adds to the illusion, because there is almost always from rocky outcrop or craggy hill obscuring the transition between vibrant and washed-out colours. For example, look at your second to last screenshot: the colours of the distant mountain look very washed out, almost like it is twenty miles away, giving the impression of a large expanse of land between it and the nearer mountain. The illusion is less impressive in your second and third screenshots even though the mountains are probably a similar distance away, because there is nothing to break the line of sight between the player and the mountain’s base. The impression given by the second screenshot is that of a slightly hazy day, while the impression of the other is a clear day and a distant mountain.

Adding to the sense of scale, is the exaggeration of altitude when scaling mountains. Weather and vegetation transition from lush woodland to barren mountainside quite rapidly and, with the accelerated day-night cycle, reinforce the sense of travelling large distances.

I find this, in newer more “realistic” games a common source of minor angst. My expectations for how things ought to be, reinforced by the realistic graphics, constantly rub against my discovery that the game is built around abstract, unrealistic systems that constantly need to be adjusted for. A world of Skyrim’s size with realistic geography would appeal to me far more, and I wonder why it has not been attempted yet.