Advanced Questions on Graphic Settings

[Exigeous]

I'm currently working on an extremely in depth and detailed analysis of all graphic settings in Elite. The goal is to show visually the difference in each and every setting and their performance impact so players can fully understand how everything works so they can make better decisions based on their hardware.

The problem is there are a few settings that I just absolutely can't find what they do. I've been in damn near every location I can think of - the list is far too long to put here. I've recorded over 500 individually clips with framerate but can't work out the following settings. If you have any idea where these could be I'd greatly appreciate it.

Depth of Field
I've tried having a friend's ship right at my nose with a station behind him close then far, nothing. I've tried the same on a planet, with my ship landed near a base with me right near the ship with the station in the background and still nada.

Material Quality
This one seems so straight forward but I can't find it. Not the ship, station, SRV, planetary bases, Thargoid structures and on and on. A friend did have the idea to check Thargoid Sensors/Probes (with the "effect" around them) but I'm pretty sure that's based on the FX setting (so much is)

Volumetric Lighting
I saw an old post that indicated this was used for the fog at Thargoid bases and after 2 hours at 2 bases and the barnacle forest again nada. No different visually that I can find nor in framerate. It's not the mailslot, station interiors, any ship/station lights, etc.

Then I'm struggling with how to test the following
Terrain LOD Blending
Terrain Work

For most of these tests I get an average framerate over 2 minutes across 2 or more tests, averaged out (then some have multiple locations all averaged out). I'm already at well over 40 hours work in this and the video is already 15 minutes long and I have 6 settings I haven't covered yet (so I'm guessing 20-22 minutes when done). Any input you guys would have on this would be super helpful.

Thanks,

~Exigeous

 

[Alec Turner]

Paging @Old Duck ... you're pretty knowledgeable about this stuff aren't you?

 

[Arioch]

Then I'm struggling with how to test the following
Terrain LOD Blending
Terrain Work

Would it be worth doing planetary Glide approaches at a set angle? Perhaps onto a known planetary feature or installation?

When I last tested Terrain Work (after a graphics card upgrade) I did some SLF high speed stuff around a large mountain with the Oculus monitor software running for the various timings / dropped frames etc, though visibly it was either smooth flying or slightly wobbly using ASW.

 

[Exigeous]

Would it be worth doing planetary Glide approaches at a set angle? Perhaps onto a known planetary feature or installation?

When I last tested Terrain Work (after a graphics card upgrade) I did some SLF high speed stuff around a large mountain with the Oculus monitor software running for the various timings / dropped frames etc, though visibly it was either smooth flying or slightly wobbly using ASW.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea, I'll give that a try next. I've been trying to keep what I'm capturing as identical as possible to not only show the visual differences more easily but to make sure other factors aren't affecting the performance. That's why I've had to do some many hundreds of tests and average them to get anything even approaching reality. I certainly won't claim my data is 100% absolutely the end-all-be-all, just trying to understand what does what and the impact of it.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Craith]

Volumetric Lighting is most visible in the planetary rings. It is responsible for the fog and shadows in it. It also eats quite a bit of performance on Ultra.

 

[Alec Turner]

I would have thought you'd see a difference with terrain work and lod blending with a high speed low altitude cruise over a rugged landscape (or maybe over somewhere with lots of rocks) essentially forcing the game to pull in as much new terrain detail as fast as possible. Also, isn't terrain work some sort of cpu trade-off, perhaps your rig is too good to notice the difference?

 

[Exigeous]

I would have thought you'd see a difference with terrain work and lod blending with a high speed low altitude cruise over a rugged landscape (or maybe over somewhere with lots of rocks) essentially forcing the game to pull in as much new terrain detail as fast as possible. Also, isn't terrain work some sort of cpu trade-off, perhaps your rig is too good to notice the difference?

Yeah, and that's likely what I'll have to do but the issue is making a consistent pass for each test to remove as many variables as possible, and it's basically impossible to show the visual differences in a pass like that given the variations. I may just have to do this but I was hoping for something better. If only we had a real benchmark mode..

Volumetric Lighting is most visible in the planetary rings. It is responsible for the fog and shadows in it. It also eats quite a bit of performance on Ultra.

99% sure this is absolutely incorrect as I've spent hours in the rings going through each setting and there is zero difference here when changing it. If you're seeing otherwise i'd love to see screenshots showing it.

Oh and sadly looks like you'll have to change that footer when Odyssey drops, sadly...

 

[thistle]

There was a recent MalicVR broadcast where he explained how in VR the terrain settings didn't work properly, when they were set to their highest the subtle rock textures would be lost while giving better far distance detail, lowering them gave the best close detail but lowered the distance. He might have info on how the terrain settings work, he was doing before/after tests for 10 mins I recall.

 

[Craith]

snip

99% sure this is absolutely incorrect as I've spent hours in the rings going through each setting and there is zero difference here when changing it. If you're seeing otherwise i'd love to see screenshots showing it.

99% sure it is this. I saw a definite rise in FPS when I went from Ultra to High in VR, and there was a lot of shimmering at the edges of the asteroids when I went to Low. Not sure if this shimmering would even be visible in a screenshot (and VR screenshots are generally a bit worse), but I can try to take some.

Oh and sadly looks like you'll have to change that footer when Odyssey drops, sadly...

Why? I bought a game that was made for VR, I will play the game that was made for VR. Odyssey is not an update for that game as it looks right now, but I still hope that will change in the future. I am naive like that at times.

 

[Bottom Hat]

Having hope is not naivety

 

[Riverside]

This seems like a PC platform specific thing, maybe it would be better to post it there?

I play the game unmodified so this has no interest for me but there are several pretty knowledgeable contributors in that forum section who many be able to help you.

Having hope is not naivety

Random, but I agree

 

[Ian Skippy]

I'm currently working on an extremely in depth and detailed analysis of all graphic settings in Elite. The goal is to show visually the difference in each and every setting and their performance impact so players can fully understand how everything works so they can make better decisions based on their hardware.

The problem is there are a few settings that I just absolutely can't find what they do. I've been in damn near every location I can think of - the list is far too long to put here. I've recorded over 500 individually clips with framerate but can't work out the following settings. If you have any idea where these could be I'd greatly appreciate it.

Depth of Field
I've tried having a friend's ship right at my nose with a station behind him close then far, nothing. I've tried the same on a planet, with my ship landed near a base with me right near the ship with the station in the background and still nada.

Material Quality
This one seems so straight forward but I can't find it. Not the ship, station, SRV, planetary bases, Thargoid structures and on and on. A friend did have the idea to check Thargoid Sensors/Probes (with the "effect" around them) but I'm pretty sure that's based on the FX setting (so much is)

Volumetric Lighting
I saw an old post that indicated this was used for the fog at Thargoid bases and after 2 hours at 2 bases and the barnacle forest again nada. No different visually that I can find nor in framerate. It's not the mailslot, station interiors, any ship/station lights, etc.

Then I'm struggling with how to test the following
Terrain LOD Blending
Terrain Work

For most of these tests I get an average framerate over 2 minutes across 2 or more tests, averaged out (then some have multiple locations all averaged out). I'm already at well over 40 hours work in this and the video is already 15 minutes long and I have 6 settings I haven't covered yet (so I'm guessing 20-22 minutes when done). Any input you guys would have on this would be super helpful.

Thanks,

~Exigeous

Top of my head:

DOF is for the camera suite where you can focus on objects and have the background become fuzzy as with a real camere.
Material Quality is for the planetary surfaces.
Volumetric Lightning is mostly in rings, depending on composition, place and angle towards the light source.
Terrain LOD Blending is about how smoothly you go from the furthest LOD to the closest. It takes computational power but makes the transitions considerably less jarrring. The slower you approach, the more notable the effect.
Terrain work (IIRC) offloads part of the computational work to the GPU instead of only CPU. This means planet generation is smoother/faster, but FPS can be lower if it starts to bottleneck the GPU.

 

[CMDR X]

My experience is the following:

Volumetric Lighting - To see an example of this, go to Meredith City in LFT 926 and watch the "Hollywood" lights illuminate the interior fog.

Terrain Work Slider - This setting uses spare GPU cycles, if you have them, to pre-render planet textures as you are approaching, to avoid them popping into view.

Depth of Field - I believe this only works with the free camera when taking pictures. You can have your foreground ship be sharp and planets/ports behind it blurry.
Like using a wide aperture on a real camera taking a close-up portrait of someone. They are sharp but the trees, etc. are nicely blurred out behind them.

Material Quality - Never tested in ED but in shooting games it makes explosions more detailed and in racing games makes kicked up dirt and smoke more realistic.

Terrain LOD Blending - Games use different textures depending on how far away you are from the object. Far objects get low res textures, because you can't tell the difference, close up gets hi-res textures for the obvious. There are a bunch of resolutions in between, depending on the game. Level Of Detail blending makes the transition of these different resolution textures either smooth from one to the next or it may jump some in order to increase speed. Some games have a fixed setting depending on low/med/high and some can adjust it dynamically depending on the processing load of a given scene.

But then again I'm a madman and could be just making all this stuff up..
X.

 

[Ian Skippy]

There was a recent MalicVR broadcast where he explained how in VR the terrain settings didn't work properly, when they were set to their highest the subtle rock textures would be lost while giving better far distance detail, lowering them gave the best close detail but lowered the distance. He might have info on how the terrain settings work, he was doing before/after tests for 10 mins I recall.

Many things are odd in VR, depending on platform. On WMR volumetric lights don't show and certain aspects are mis-aligned between the two displays. :/

 

[Alec Turner]

I must say I'm really looking forward to this video. I am a bit of a tinkerer when it comes to graphics settings, always going back to things like anti-aliasing and supersampling to adjust the balance and see if I can get a slight improvement. I recently upgraded from a 1080p screen to a 1440p and did have to drop my supersampling a tad to keep over 60fps everywhere. Having all these settings and not really understanding what effect they actually have is quite annoying so hopefully you'll be able to provide some much needed clarity (even if it's to say "this setting doesn't do a damn thing so forget about it for now").

P.S. you do realise you'll have to make a sequel to this video in about 6 months time!

 

[Alec Turner]

My experience is the following:

Volumetric Lighting - To see an example of this, go to Meredith City in LFT 926 and watch the "Hollywood" lights illuminate the interior fog.

Terrain Work Slider - This setting uses spare GPU cycles, if you have them, to pre-render planet textures as you are approaching, to avoid them popping into view.

Depth of Field - I believe this only works with the free camera when taking pictures. You can have your foreground ship be sharp and planets/ports behind it blurry.
Like using a wide aperture on a real camera taking a close-up portrait of someone. They are sharp but the trees, etc. are nicely blurred out behind them.

Material Quality - Never tested in ED but in shooting games it makes explosions more detailed and in racing games makes kicked up dirt and smoke more realistic.

Terrain LOD Blending - Games use different textures depending on how far away you are from the object. Far objects get low res textures, because you can't tell the difference, close up gets hi-res textures for the obvious. There are a bunch of resolutions in between, depending on the game. Level Of Detail blending makes the transition of these different resolution textures either smooth from one to the next or it may jump some in order to increase speed. Some games have a fixed setting depending on low/med/high and some can adjust it dynamically depending on the processing load of a given scene.

But then again I'm a madman and could be just making all this stuff up..
X.

All sounds good to me, the only one that doesn't make sense is depth of field. You've correctly explained what depth of field is and how you can use it in the camera suite but that doesn't explain what the setting does in the graphics quality settings. Surely our default dof out of camera suite is infinity? I'm not aware of near or far things being out of focus unless I exlicitly use that effect in the camera.

One other thought @Exigeous, does Dr Kai's ED profiler (which makes all these settings, and others, available thriugh its own UI) offer any help text? I'm not at my PC right now and can't remember.

 

[CMDR X]

All sounds good to me, the only one that doesn't make sense is depth of field. You've correctly explained what depth of field is and how you can use it in the camera suite but that doesn't explain what the setting does in the graphics quality settings. Surely our default dof out of camera suite is infinity? I'm not aware of near or far things being out of focus unless I exlicitly use that effect in the camera.

Good point Alec. Well, the setting can be one of two things. Either the quality of the blur effect or the amount of the depth-blur itself (aperture setting).
The former would make sense living in the graphics settings while the latter would be more useful inside the camera suite itself, where you are taking the pictures.
Isn't there a keybind for DOF somewhere? I almost recall seeing one, next to Zoom and the others. I don't take too many pictures and I'm away from cockpit ATM.
Maybe someone can check. Should help clear this up.
X.

 

[kevino333]

In material quality the only difference I noticed, is in the panels of the hud. When set to medium or higher theres like a "fog" effect. At high or ultra, the highlited buttons seem to glow more, and there's some chromatic aberration. At low they look completly flat.

Also, there's a bug in bloom settings, when set to ultra, the bloom effects that should appear when using FSD or near a star is not there.

Bloom set to ultra

Bloom set to high

 

[Alec Turner]

Either the quality of the blur effect or the amount of the depth-blur itself (aperture setting).

Well the latter you have direct manual control of within the camera suite itself ... so maybe it affects the quality of the blur effect (although quite what "quality of blur" actually means is anybody's guess).

From another thread ...

Suteksio has already answered this but for my part ... I did a fair bit of trial and error (despite sort of understanding the principles). Basically I ended up increasing the blur practically to its maximum (which basically gives you a very small, precise depth of field, thus maximising the blur effect - in other words, only a very small part of the scene will be in focus). Then you use the focus control to set the distance to be the distance from the camera to the thing you want to be sharply in focus (in practice you don't really know this distance so it's largely trial and error, increasing and decreasing it until the thing you're interested in comes into focus). When I first did this the effect was fairly subtle but then I remembered that someone has said that increasing the zoom helped to exaggerate the effect. Not being a photographer I don't really understand this but it certainly works. So rather than moving the camera until the the thing you want to photograph is nicely framed, if you move the camera further back and then zoom in to frame the subject, the blur effect seems to be more dramatic. One other thing, once you've got the depth of field and point of focus set the way you want, if you start moving the camera around you'll notice your point of focus moves with you. I guess this isn't surprising but it is cool. For example, if you get everything set up so the nose of your your ship is in sharp focus and everything else is blurred, if you want to take a similar shot of the tail of the ship, rather than repeating the entire process again from the back, leave the blur/zoom/focus settings alone and just reposition the camera.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Could be down to the equipment you use. Some stuff probably cannot improveed further on a good system. And some stuff meant for low end systems doesn't matter on a high end system.