You did not ask for that.
If you check you asteroid screenshots. Is it possible, that on higher settings more objects are being affected by the light?
Maybe, just maybe they change the in-game explanation in the course.
Advanced Questions on Graphic Settings
- Thread starter Exigeous
- Start date
When I was trying out the different settings I definitely remember seeing the terrain LOD “pop” as opposed to, um, “not-pop” at the lower levels
Regarding the frame rate difference, could it be esoterically linked into the Terrain slider setting?
Edit: I’ve just tried the landing & SRV tutorial mission - flying around in the Diamondback with Blending set to “off” shows noticeable “pop” and texture changes - when switched to “High” or “Ultra” I could definitely see the terrain morphing between LOD levels, which the ground “swelling” to its more detailed level.
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Aye, I’ve had that setting at 16x for so long I’d forgotten about it
The only slight downside is that space-dust streaks become more like a snow storm, but it’s totally worth it imo.
Digital Foundry did a pc vs ps4 vs ps4 pro on this topic for Elite Dangerous a few years ago I dont know how to add a link but you could check there site It might help you to know where or how to look for the changes I hope this helps and look forward to your video o7
What's the default? Would 8 be a good compromise?Aye, I’ve had that setting at 16x for so long I’d forgotten about it
8x is the game’s highest setting and leaves space-streaks as they are - putting it to 16x in the graphics card panel makes a big difference to terrain middle-distance when in the SRV but makes the streaks look like 2 or 3 individual smaller streaks instead. Personally, I thought it was like finding an extra Terrain texture level
Cheers for clarifying this without being condescending.
I guess my knowledge is from the distant past lol
Not that I see at all and given the number of times I've tested that and now the deep core "smoke" I'm 99% sure it has zero effect there.
Wouldn't that be fantastic.
Well I'll have to give that a go next time I work on this (need sleep now) as I haven't tried it using the training missions yet (but that was on my list for tonight)
Thanks, found that video before I even started. It was helpful in a few areas but since it focuses on the differences between each platform rather than each setting it certainly doesn't cover everything I'm covering.
Sorry if your feelings got hurt, people need to remember text can not convey emotion.
They should not be affected at all. Are you sure this is due to AF?Aye, I’ve had that setting at 16x for so long I’d forgotten about it
The default for driver enforced AF is off. It is not always comparable to in-game AF, as some games tend to "optimize" AF and trade quality for performance, as it leaves certain angles unattended. On driver level AF, with quality setting at "Quality" or higher on nVida cards, beats in-game AF for most games.
I wouldn't recommend GeForce Experience. It screwed my framerate up. Had to do a Display Driver Uninstall to fix it.
It did not recognize the game correctly (no steam)
It did not recognize the game correctly (no steam)
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The space-dust streaks change when the only setting changed is AF, so while I’m not 100% sure it’s the cause, I’d be willing to bet that it is
I never noticed the space-dust change though I actually look at them quite often for FA-off flying. I'll take a look next time.Aye, I’ve had that setting at 16x for so long I’d forgotten about it
But yeah, the terrain change is absolutely worth it. I recently built a new computer and when I fired up the game and landed, I wondered why the surface looked so muddy, when it hit me that I forgot to make the changes in the driver.
FX quality controls the existence of the light cones, and whether they then use volumetric effects (only on the highest setting), but the volumetrics quality should then control the degree of scattering and blending of those cones as they interact with fog. This is what can be inferred from only the GraphicsConfiguration.xml itself.
The effect is bound to be subtle, and it's even possible it's been depreciated (there sections of the config file that does nothing...most notably SSAO, which has been retired entirely in favor of HBAO), but I could have sworn there was a perceptible difference at some point. I'd (and I may later) double check to see how those cones terminate against object geometry when viewed from certain angles.
Have you tested with a strong and distinct light source? Volumetrics is about the light, not the cloud/dust/fog itself.
Texture resolution and filtering is generally extremely low cost on remotely modern hardware (one of the reasons I tend to force high quality 16x AF on everything through drivers), as long as there is enough memory available, so it's bound to be difficult to measure. Hell, even jacking up things like planet textures and shadow map resolution has negligble performance hit on most anything I've used ED with, even when the effect was readily apparent. I use 8k planets and 16k shadow slice/maps sizes and the performance impact vs. 2.5/2k is about 2-3% on a 1080Ti.
The game has no separate AF options itself, which suggests to me that the blending quality options available are likely bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic...with the related slider going up to 8x AF. Forcing 16x may completely override those in-game options.
AF usually doesn't come with a slider but in increments. I can imagine that Texture Quality is more likely to be AF in the ingame options. Low, medium and high could be 2x, 4x and 8x.
The in-game setting probably only applies to terrain, which is one of the reason why textures look like crap at oblique angles most places without using the driver option.
A slider is just a way of setting increments.
Thanks for the correction, I was going off memory.
The driver AF options are almost certainly overriding that.
Update - I've done the following tests to at least see the performance difference in both LOD Blending and Terrain Work, and I basically can't show any differences. I've done:
I've done each test twice for each setting, so a total of 18+ tests and here's what I'm getting as an average across all of those:
LOD Blending
Terrain Work
As you can see there is virtually no difference as I'd consider that within the margin of error. I am noticing the pop-in issue, specifically with LOD Blending, but that just doesn't seem to result in any real/big differences. I'm not sure if it's that my rig is just so strong it doesn't matter, but I'm running with all other settings at max, including supersampling at 2.0 to push things as hard as possible. Oh and I'm exiting to desktop between each test to make sure it's not something in the engine not loading the settings in real time. My machine details:
Core i9 10900k (overclocked to 5.2Ghz on all cores, liquid cooled)
RTX 2080Ti (overclocked to 2.1Ghz, liquid cooled)
32GB DDR4-3600 Mhz RAM
512GB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe
I'm just not sure what else I can test to show a difference. Still can't find anything that's demonstrates volumetric lighting or material quality. I'm looked at
Any other thoughts that I haven't tried/ruled out are appreciated.
~Exigeous
- SRV Challenge in Tutorials
- SRV Training in Tutorials
- Approaching, glide then flying over a huge crater (about 2 minutes of over planet flight)
I've done each test twice for each setting, so a total of 18+ tests and here's what I'm getting as an average across all of those:
LOD Blending
| Ultra | High | Off | |
| Average | 99.5 | 99.6 | 100.1 |
| Minimum | 14.8 | 81.5 | 43.9 |
| Maximum | 166.9 | 129.9 | 125.2 |
Terrain Work
| High | Medium | Low | |
| Average | 126.9 | 127 | 127.7 |
| Minimum | 65.9 | 57.6 | 60.6 |
| Maximum | 164.4 | 166.6 | 157.7 |
As you can see there is virtually no difference as I'd consider that within the margin of error. I am noticing the pop-in issue, specifically with LOD Blending, but that just doesn't seem to result in any real/big differences. I'm not sure if it's that my rig is just so strong it doesn't matter, but I'm running with all other settings at max, including supersampling at 2.0 to push things as hard as possible. Oh and I'm exiting to desktop between each test to make sure it's not something in the engine not loading the settings in real time. My machine details:
Core i9 10900k (overclocked to 5.2Ghz on all cores, liquid cooled)
RTX 2080Ti (overclocked to 2.1Ghz, liquid cooled)
32GB DDR4-3600 Mhz RAM
512GB Samsung 970 Pro NVMe
I'm just not sure what else I can test to show a difference. Still can't find anything that's demonstrates volumetric lighting or material quality. I'm looked at
- Objects on planets (brain trees, etc)
- Interiors
- Station exteriors (with good lighting to see reflection differences)
- Netron stars
- Asteroids
- Asteroid fields
Any other thoughts that I haven't tried/ruled out are appreciated.
~Exigeous
I'll check but my very strong assumption is that in the second shot when you spawned in your brakes were set and that's why they're so bright. You have to be really careful with small lighting changes like this as I've been wrong about things dozens of times when checking right after coming back from either settings or main menu. But hey, I will check but I sorta doubt it. Appreciate the screenshots though.
Volumetric still escapes me. I really don't want to have to say "I can't f'ing find this!" but I'm close to that.