Amazingly Realistic Immersion Mod

[Florenus]

First of all, thanks for sharing your work. I was using original CMDR AD's mod for some time and I greatly appreciate your additions. Especially the possibility to turn off cockpit lights got me excited.

But I wanted to ask about something else.
There's an option in your file to disable a shader and "Make Holographic Panels "transparent" by removing the background shadow."

I was wondering if it might be possible to do the opposite? To multiply that shader effect and make background shadow less transparent?

 

[Valorin]

First of all, thanks for sharing your work. I was using original CMDR AD's mod for some time and I greatly appreciate your additions. Especially the possibility to turn off cockpit lights got me excited.

But I wanted to ask about something else.
There's an option in your file to disable a shader and "Make Holographic Panels "transparent" by removing the background shadow."

I was wondering if it might be possible to do the opposite? To multiply that shader effect and make background shadow less transparent?

I guess that would include tweaking the shader, which this tool can't do I think.

On another note: starlight still significantly tints the milky way, even with active starlight tweak.

Spoiler: Pic

 

[Old Duck]

First of all, thanks for sharing your work. I was using original CMDR AD's mod for some time and I greatly appreciate your additions. Especially the possibility to turn off cockpit lights got me excited.

But I wanted to ask about something else.
There's an option in your file to disable a shader and "Make Holographic Panels "transparent" by removing the background shadow."

I was wondering if it might be possible to do the opposite? To multiply that shader effect and make background shadow less transparent?

It might be possible for the person who created 3DMigoto... All I know how to do is turn off shaders. To replace shaders with other shaders is way above my level of expertise. If it required editing the shader itself, I think that would be against Frontier's TOS, as that requires "reverse-engineering" their code. That's a line I don't want to cross.

 

[Florenus]

It might be possible for the person who created 3DMigoto... All I know how to do is turn off shaders. To replace shaders with other shaders is way above my level of expertise. If it required editing the shader itself, I think that would be against Frontier's TOS, as that requires "reverse-engineering" their code. That's a line I don't want to cross.

Ok, thanks for the answer.
I was quietly hoping for something more strightforward. Since there's "Handling=skip", I thought maybe there are other kinds of handling types, like "Handling=repeat" or something

 

[Old Duck]

I was quietly hoping for something more strightforward. Since there's "Handling=skip", I thought maybe there are other kinds of handling types, like "Handling=repeat" or something

The documentation is not very good IMO. I've been looking for a way to change intensity, for example. There are definitely ways to interact with data going to the shaders, but it's all magic chants and secret spells, nothing that clearly documents how the [ShaderOverride] feature works outside of the skip feature.

 

[Slowfiddler]

There are two hashes that turn off canopy HUD, 74a61bc54382d4d9 and e61a98e9d493cdea.

Yes, the second one works. It's a bit hardcore though. It disables the SRV materials scanner and you ahve to rely on eyeball and white cubes on the radar. It also breaks the FSS as it disables the targeting circles for bodies and you have to guess the position to zoom in. It looks great out of the cockpit window though.

 

[Old Duck]

Yes, the second one works. It's a bit hardcore though. It disables the SRV materials scanner and you ahve to rely on eyeball and white cubes on the radar. It also breaks the FSS as it disables the targeting circles for bodies and you have to guess the position to zoom in. It looks great out of the cockpit window though.

I usually use the first one because of the issues you mention. I'm really surprised that first hash doesn't work for you... Are you running a super-cold ship that has some ice on the canopy at all times?

 

[Slowfiddler]

I will try it again. I did notice the first time I installed this mod that when I ran ED the skybox galaxy and nebula were gone (expected) but the subsequent two jumps the galaxy reappeared. Next jump after that it was gone for good. Modern graphics programming is mostly voodoo to me.

ed. No, not super cold. I have never gone anywhere near an engineer. Wouldn't know how at the moment.

 

[Old Duck]

A couple of observations:

1) Black holes seem to override the Black Skies mod. I'm guessing it's the skybox warping that does this.
2) Default skybox is visible in FSS scan box. I actually like this, the FSS is amplifying the unseen spectrum.

 

[Valorin]

A couple of observations:

1) Black holes seem to override the Black Skies mod. I'm guessing it's the skybox warping that does this.
2) Default skybox is visible in FSS scan box. I actually like this, the FSS is amplifying the unseen spectrum.

But... the milky way still is in the visible spectrum.
Also, tried the hard shadow shader tweak the other day. I didn't toggle back and check on any side-effects this might have, and how much it actually changes, but shadows really look great now!
Killed the background for the holo UI as well, which also looks great. Much more... holographic? I'm not in VR, by the way.
The tweak that is supposed to help with skybox tinting doesn't do much though.

 

[Old Duck]

But... the milky way still is in the visible spectrum.
Also, tried the hard shadow shader tweak the other day. I didn't toggle back and check on any side-effects this might have, and how much it actually changes, but shadows really look great now!
Killed the background for the holo UI as well, which also looks great. Much more... holographic? I'm not in VR, by the way.

Yes, yes, I know about the Milky Way

But in VR, I personally find the black sky way more realistic (relative to my experience of night skies here on earth) than the "cloudy" sky full of colorful nebula and a massive, overly bright and orange galactic core. When the filter turned off the other day, the skybox looked like what my sky IRL looks like on a partly cloudy night. In fact, down on a planet I could imagine having an atmosphere, because of those bright clouds in the sky! Having gotten used to the black sky mod, I have a hard time going back to cloudy skies with the giant glowing pancake default. Remember, all these things are amplified in VR, especially HMDs using backlit LCDs.

But to each their own. I'm glad you like the shadows. I really like this particular mod myself the more I use it. I think it works well in conjunction with black skies, but if it looks good with cloudy pancake sky, that's good too

 

[Old Duck]

I think black shadows make the sunlit sections of objects to appear brighter, thanks to the contrast. This is what I would expect in the vacuum of space. What's missing is the illumination due to light reflected off of the structures, but this requires raytracing to do correctly. Someday, perhaps!

 

[Valorin]

Yes, yes, I know about the Milky Way

But in VR, I personally find the black sky way more realistic (relative to my experience of night skies here on earth) than the "cloudy" sky full of colorful nebula and a massive, overly bright and orange galactic core. When the filter turned off the other day, the skybox looked like what my sky IRL looks like on a partly cloudy night. In fact, down on a planet I could imagine having an atmosphere, because of those bright clouds in the sky! Having gotten used to the black sky mod, I have a hard time going back to cloudy skies with the giant glowing pancake default. Remember, all these things are amplified in VR, especially HMDs using backlit LCDs.

But to each their own. I'm glad you like the shadows. I really like this particular mod myself the more I use it. I think it works well in conjunction with black skies, but if it looks good with cloudy pancake sky, that's good too

Hm. Maybe your gamma is to high? My sky isn't that cloudy. There are nebulas, sure, and yeah, the milky way is too orange (AND TINTED!!!), but it's pretty black mostly. Reshade with curves or levels shader helps with that as well, by the way.
But well, if the shader fix would only remove the dust, I'd gladly activate it.

 

[Kemo]

View attachment 159775

I think black shadows make the sunlit sections of objects to appear brighter, thanks to the contrast. This is what I would expect in the vacuum of space. What's missing is the illumination due to light reflected off of the structures, but this requires raytracing to do correctly. Someday, perhaps!

Loving this mod - the inky blackness of space now looks so much better on my Rift S now that all the brown murk has gone.

The black shadows now makes the lit areas really pop with vibrancy (as shown in the image above) but the best bit is that the night vision and headlamp function seems to actually make more sense, skimming around an outpost with the headlamps on feels like something out of Aliens.

oh, and the holographic sidepanels, now with the background shadow gone, do look great in VR.

Well done Old Duck, +1 from me and thanks for the all effort put in. This actually drew me back to ED after several months on hiatus.

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

View attachment 159775

I think black shadows make the sunlit sections of objects to appear brighter, thanks to the contrast. This is what I would expect in the vacuum of space. What's missing is the illumination due to light reflected off of the structures, but this requires raytracing to do correctly. Someday, perhaps!

Meh. They just need to fix the skybox IMO. I dont even dare to think about raytracing in VR in Cobra engine. Elite : Powerpoint.

 

[Crank Larson]

Ah, nice one. I tried ReShade ages ago to get rid of the the speed bars, but all it did was crash E: D. I'll give this one a go. All I want to get rid of is the fake speed HUD elements. They irritate me.

I should point out that some of these elements (e.g. circles round planets) can be toggled on and off in-game.

 

[Old Duck]

Is there a shader that does reflections? I'd like to turn them off for better performance, but I suppose that's probably done in opengl/directx.

I tried, but no luck. Now that I own a Mamba, I can see why you would want to turn these off. Changing the paint helped some, but there are still reflections on some parts of the pylons. I also noticed a small performance hit, though this might have to do with the Mamba's very detailed cockpit.

 

[Slowfiddler]

Which one is the black shadows option?

 

[Old Duck]

Which one is the black shadows option?

[ShaderOverrideAmbientLight]

You're turning off ambient light, which there would be little of in the Bubble anyway if you're in the vacuum of space. The exception to this is planet and moon shine, so the black shadows aren't as realistic if you visit a station in a close orbit on the light side of a planet, but I find that such places are pretty rare, and even then the shadows would be relatively high contrast to our eyes since the bright sunlight of space should make it much harder to see any reflected light off of the planet.

 

[ifthisworks]

I tried, but no luck. Now that I own a Mamba, I can see why you would want to turn these off. Changing the paint helped some, but there are still reflections on some parts of the pylons. I also noticed a small performance hit, though this might have to do with the Mamba's very detailed cockpit.

Thanks very much for trying though. Yeah, I've got a dark-blue paintjob, but still too reflective.

I tried both no-hud options and the "e61a98e9d493cdea" one makes the FSS much,much,much more difficult to use so might be an idea to update the d3dx file to reflect that. So far I've had no problems with the other one - most useful hud stuff seems to be there (planet height/gravity etc).