OpenMW Setup Guide

1. Install Morrowind and expansions, as in the Vanilla Setup Guide

These are required in order to play OpenMW.

2. Install OpenMW

3. Configure OpenMW

Launcher

Run openmw-launcher.exe to configure OpenMW.

The first time this is run, it should launch a wizard where you can select your Morrowind installation. From the launcher, you can also change the graphics settings (including the screen resolution), and the advanced game settings.

In-game

Graphics settings can be further customised in-game from the Options menu. In particular, I recommend enabling the OpenMW water shader and, if necessary, tweaking the field of view.

4. Advanced Configuration

Some settings can only be tweaked by editing OpenMW's settings.cfg.

Font Size

On high resolutions, the default font size can be very hard to read. This will increase it.

[GUI]
font size = 20

Menu Resolution

On widescreen resolutions, menu backgrounds will use a 4:3 aspect ratio by default, which is undesirable if any widescreen replacers are installed. This will cause them to fill the screen.

[GUI]
stretch menu background = true

Shaders

As suggested here, tweaking these settings allows mods to easily add normal and specular maps to textures.

[Shaders]
auto use object normal maps = true
auto use object specular maps = true
auto use terrain normal maps = true
auto use terrain specular maps = true
clamp lighting = false