Graphics settings - Beyond Ultra

Morbad · Nov 2, 2018

Reducing shadow slice size to 3072 and environment map texture size back to to 1024 (with 10 mip levels) seems to give me the best mix of results in the limited testing I've done with them. Texture pop-in is almost completely absent (saw one instance of it around the letter box, as in the first video I posted, but nothing else and even that seems uncommon), while there is still a noticeable improvement in shadows.

Current GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml looks like this:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
	<Shadows_Ultra>
		<Profile_General>
			<SliceSize>3072</SliceSize>
		</Profile_General>
		<Profile_PlanetApproach>
			<SliceSize>3072</SliceSize>
		</Profile_PlanetApproach>
		<Profile_PlanetSurface>
			<SliceSize>3072</SliceSize>
		</Profile_PlanetSurface>
		<Profile_StationInterior>
			<SliceSize>3072</SliceSize>
		</Profile_StationInterior>
		<Profile_AsteroidField>
			<SliceSize>3072</SliceSize>
		</Profile_AsteroidField>
	</Shadows_Ultra>
	<Planets>
		<Ultra>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
			<WorkPerFrame>512</WorkPerFrame>
		</Ultra>
	</Planets>
	<GalaxyBackground>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
		</High>
	</GalaxyBackground>
	<Envmap>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
			<NumMips>10</NumMips>
		</High>
	</Envmap>
</GraphicsConfig>

Morbad · Nov 8, 2018

Been doing some testing over the past week and I think I've solved the texture pop-in issue.

There is a setting called "TexturePoolBudget" related to the planet textures that defaults to "100". Back in the pre-release beta when I started messing with tweaking planet textures I wasn't certain whether this value was an absolute figure or a percentage and didn't notice any difference in altering it, so I've been leaving it as is. Upon revisiting things, and testing a spread of values, I've discovered that this value is the percentage of the total texture pool that planet textures are allotted. The issue with 100% is that planet textures beyond a certain size appear to start eating in to textures elsewhere, causing assets to be evicted and then need to be swapped or streamed back in, causing apparently LOD issues and texture pop-in.

Anyway, reducing this value (I've been testing "50") seems to have completely eliminated the texture issues I've been seeing, even with 4k shadow slice sizes and 8k planet textures.

This is my new GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
	<Shadows_Ultra>
		<Profile_General>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
		</Profile_General>
		<Profile_PlanetApproach>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
		</Profile_PlanetApproach>
		<Profile_PlanetSurface>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
		</Profile_PlanetSurface>
		<Profile_StationInterior>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
		</Profile_StationInterior>
		<Profile_AsteroidField>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
		</Profile_AsteroidField>
	</Shadows_Ultra>
	<Planets>
		<Ultra>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
			<WorkPerFrame>768</WorkPerFrame>
			<TexturePoolBudget>50</TexturePoolBudget>
		</Ultra>
	</Planets>
	<GalaxyBackground>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
		</High>
	</GalaxyBackground>
	<Envmap>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
			<NumMips>10</NumMips>
		</High>
	</Envmap>
</GraphicsConfig>

Morbad · Dec 15, 2018

EDIT 16/12/18: Pulling the shadow tweaks until I work out some issues, after which I will attach the updated xml in a new post.

Alright, I've had enough time with 3.3 (mostly while my CMDR was counting down the seven notoriety he gathered in a bugged CZ and hiding from the ATR), to have tested and tuned a workable draft of my new GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml changes that should noticeably improve the overall ultra quality preset.

Relative to the stock ultra quality settings, this will:

- Increase planet and galaxy background texture resolutions from 2.5/2k to 8k, making them considerably sharper and more distinct.
- Cap texture pool budget to 40% of available memory to mitigate texture LOD errors and pop-in.
- Increase environment map resolution four fold, making reflections more detailed and less pixelated.
- Increase shadow slice size from 2k to 4k, making shadows slightly cleaner.
- ~~Tweak some shadow frustum distances, depth biases/slopes, filter kernel sizes, etc in order to clean up some excessive and ugly artifacting in certain scenes.~~ -- pulled, needs fixes
- Significantly reduce the intensity of bloom so if you fly a Krait or Courier the stupid cockpit lights don't incinerate your retina. Also prevents brightly lit areas from resembling a discotheque viewed while having an ocular migraine.

Things to keep in mind:

- Changes only apply to the highest quality presets of the respective settings.
- Eats a lot of VRAM and, to a lesser extent, system memory. Do not use if you have less than 6GiB of VRAM (preferably 8+) and 8GiB of system memory.
- Modest performance hit, but still a performance hit. Expect to lose 5-10% of your frame rate, depending on card. Do not use if you cannot maintain solid frame rates with ultra quality settings.
- Easy to install and remove. File goes in your "%AppData%\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics" folder, replacing the empty one that's there by default (it's ok to overwrite it). Removal is as simple as deleting or renaming the file.
- Still a work in progress; feel free to play with it and/or point out any issues.
- Completely unsupported by Frontier. If you have issues while using it, stop using it and confirm the issue persists before pestering Frontier about something being broken.
- This doesn't directly do anything to change the way the new lighting system tints things...it only modifies the bloom, the shadows, and various textures.

dognosh · Dec 15, 2018

Thank you for your time +1

dognosh · Dec 15, 2018

And as a note, for some of us it is in %AppData%\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics

rhiz · Dec 15, 2018

777Driver said:
Never seen it on my system. Running 32gig ram, 1080TI overclocked, I7 7700K at 5.1 ghz combined with a bunch or system tweaks. Should be the GPU and System ram doing all the work. Been running at 8192 for a very long time now, back way before Obsidian posted his guide.

If you don't mind, could you PM your graphics XML to me, would like to compare. Perhaps my settings are not actually applied properly, although I can definitely tell planets and galaxy background are higher res then default

Thanks

I've only recently started experimenting with these settings, but I've also noticed a bit of texture popping on occasion since I've increased the texture sizes. It seems better since the update. My system is quite similar to yours : i7 7700K (stock clock) with an RTX 2080 but only 16gb of ram, playing on a Rift. I'm too new to the process to say anything useful

- it's something that I need to investigate more (I was on a GTX 1060 6gb previously) - but I'll be following this thread.

Burke · Dec 15, 2018

777Driver said:
I keep it simple and use Dr Kaii's app. Personally use it for VR but I'm sure it is fine for normal screens. Crank it all up With a 1080TI in VR everything is butter smooth with things above ultra, so I 2070 should be fine. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...er-Robust-Settings-Profiler-Switcher-Detector!

wow. What a fantastic little app and i never even knew it existed.

Morbad · Dec 16, 2018

Edited my above post with a small adjustment to the bloom (removed the reduction to the wide bloom radius and reduced the narrow radius further) and smoothed out some shadows by increasing kernel filter sizes for critical frustums.

EDIT: Updated the above post again with further changes to shadows to reduce some issues I was having near planet surfaces.

Shadow changes should be most noticeable while approaching planet surfaces, using the vanity camera while landed on planets or driving the SRV, and when observing self shadowing of the ship from the cockpit.

rhiz said:
I've only recently started experimenting with these settings, but I've also noticed a bit of texture popping on occasion since I've increased the texture sizes. It seems better since the update.

If you encounter it again, try capping the "TexturePoolBudget" setting I mentioned above to between 40 and 60.

Morbad · Dec 16, 2018

Current progress, as far as a sub 1MB jpeg can show you. Chrome will make the image too dark, so use Firefox or IE, if possible.

sgurr · Dec 16, 2018

Really appreciate the time you've spent on this Morbad o7

Morbad · Dec 16, 2018

Shadows are a pain...

I've pulled the shadow tweaks until I can work out a few issues.

Originally, my goal was to fix the following kinds of artifacting I note in this bug report: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...uring-surface-approach-w-ultra-shadow-quality

I did mostly fix those issues, but the shadow changes I posted above resulted in a new problem:
[video=youtube;bbJTrcjh2p4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbJTrcjh2p4[/video]

Through some research and a lot of trial and error, I believe I've narrowed down most problems with the 'PlanetApproach' shadows to altitude scaling and will disable this, then rework the frustum distances.

Additionally, some of the surface shadow artifacts are likely unfixable via configuration changes as they are fundamental to the game's geometry, which I have zero control over.

krautbernd · Dec 16, 2018

I really wish FDev would work on improving the base settings instead of adding instagram-filters. Increasing the planet and background textures adds so much more to the game than tinting the screen green or red, and as far as i can tell it actually breaks less stuff than the new lighting system.

Bunkerkind Anni · Dec 16, 2018

has anyone playing around the config files eventually found a way to deactivate the post processing filter?

Morbad · Dec 17, 2018

EDIT: The HDRNode_Reference settings cannot be modified via the override and, like additional shadow cascades, must be played with from the GraphicsConfig.xml proper, which means the first line of this override file does nothing.

Have been experimenting further and the planet approach shadows are going to be harder to fix than I originally anticipated. With the default number of shadow frustums, there is very obtrusive shadow acne while the sun is at an oblique angle, or equally bad self shadowing, at higher altitudes without positively extreme bias settings.

The best workaround for this seems to be to increase the fade level of each cascade and significantly increase the number of cascades, while disabling altitude compensation. However, this cannot be done in the override (which only overrides settings and cannot add frustums that don't exist in the base file) so must be done in the GraphicsConfiguration.xml proper.

At this point, I feel it's best to separate the shadow tweaks from everything else. So, here is my current GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml, which has the texture, reflection, and lighting/bloom adjustments, but no shadow tweaks.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
	<HDRNode_Reference>
		<PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled>0</PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled>
	</HDRNode_Reference>
	<Planets>
		<Ultra>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
			<WorkPerFrame>512</WorkPerFrame>
			<TexturePoolBudget>40</TexturePoolBudget>
		</Ultra>
	</Planets>
	<GalaxyBackground>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
		</High>
	</GalaxyBackground>
	<Bloom>
		<Ultra>
			<GlareScale>0.03</GlareScale>
			<FilterRadius>0.75</FilterRadius>
		</Ultra>
	</Bloom>
	<Envmap>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
			<NumMips>10</NumMips>
		</High>
	</Envmap>
</GraphicsConfig>

I'll post my shadow settings separately, once I've refined them a bit more.

Bunkerkind Anni said:
has anyone playing around the config files eventually found a way to deactivate the post processing filter?

I'm not sure it's completely possible to do this, but there is a setting in the "HDRNode_Reference" section of the graphics config called "PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled" and setting it to "0" seems to make the filter's effects rather less prominent.

I've included this change in the override xml in this post.

uliando · Dec 17, 2018

Why buy overpriced RTX2070, when you can get cheaper GTX1080 that have same peformance?
RTX2080 is the worst, less RAM than 1080Ti and way higher cost.

Morbad · Dec 17, 2018

Just realized what the "prototype lighting balances" argument actually does...when disabled it restores the previous brightness to the dark side of worlds illuminated by the skybox.

Actual, in-game image, no post processing (just some quality degradation from converting a 4k/10MB png into a 1MB jpeg):

nanite2000 · Dec 17, 2018

Morbad said:
Just realized what the "prototype lighting balances" argument actually does...when disabled it restores the previous brightness to the dark side of worlds illuminated by the skybox.

Actual, in-game image, no post processing (just some quality degradation from converting a 4k/10MB png into a 1MB jpeg):

Wow! What a find!

Does this mean it restores the ability for the skybox to act as an ambient light source?

If so, is it possible to configure the intensity? I really liked the fact that the old system attempted to colour the dark side of planets with a diffuse lighting, but it was just too overdone. If it's possible to dial back the amount of light created by the skybox but still retain it's colour, that would be rad.

Morbad · Dec 17, 2018

nanite2000 said:
Does this mean it restores the ability for the skybox to act as an ambient light source?

I believe this is what it's doing, but more testing is needed.

nanite2000 said:
If so, is it possible to configure the intensity? I really liked the fact that the old system attempted to colour the dark side of planets with a diffuse lighting, but it was just too overdone. If it's possible to dial back the amount of light created by the skybox but still retain it's colour, that would be rad.

This might be possible, but probably not without changing the more general tone mapping curve.

Also, the global color filter introduced in 3.3 is still present, just slightly subdued with the new lighting balances disabled.

rhiz · Dec 17, 2018

uliando said:
Why buy overpriced RTX2070, when you can get cheaper GTX1080 that have same peformance?
RTX2080 is the worst, less RAM than 1080Ti and way higher cost.

My Gigabyte RTX 2080 was actually slightly cheaper in the UK than most of the 1080tis that I would have considered at the time - unless I'd bought second-hand. Performance-wise, it's more or less equivalent to a 1080ti.

nanite2000 · Dec 17, 2018

Morbad said:
I believe this is what it's doing, but more testing is needed.

Morbad said:
This might be possible, but probably not without changing the more general tone mapping curve.

Also, the global color filter introduced in 3.3 is still present, just slightly subdued with the new lighting balances disabled.

Interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see how it pans out.

A toned down colour filter from the new engine mixed with a toned down ambient light source from pre-3.3 sounds like a winning combination to me.