EDHM Odyssey Skybox Tool
============================
Hi CMDRs,
There is a fair bit of debate raging with regards to the new skybox in Odyssey. There's arguments for and against, and a lot of it comes down to personal preference.
However, regardless of our position, I think most of us would like a galactic core / nebulae with adequate brightness, and I think they're set a bit low at present (for my tastes).
I developed the Odyssey Skybox Tool so you can experiment with different levels of Odyssey fog / core / nebulae brightness and red levels. There's also an option to restore the Horizons look, but please note the game code has changed the fog (looks like low level fog has been deleted), and also the star clusters appear to have been removed from the galactic core.
Please remember this is only Alpha so FDev might have turned things off to simplify troubleshooting.
Here's some examples from the EDHM Odyssey Skybox Tool
Mode 1: Default Odyssey
Mode 2: Odyssey with suppression removed
Mode 3: Odyssey boost with fog
Mode 4: Odyssey boost with less fog
Mode 0: Horizons (well, as close as I could get)
To install,
download the zip, make sure Elite isn't running, and unzip into the
PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_64 folder (not the Elite Dangerous folder)
The default Steam location is
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous\Products\PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_64
The default Epic location:
C:\Program Files\Epic Games\EliteDangerous\Products\PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_64
The default Frontier locations:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Frontier\Products\PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_64\
or
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Frontier_Developments\Products\PUBLIC_TEST_SERVER_64\
Please note (very common query): The modding software (3Dmigoto) will disable the functions of Steam overlay. There's nothing I can do about that as I didn't create 3Dmigoto, sorry.
To uninstall, make sure Elite isn't running, double-click the file
EDHM-Odyssey-Skybox-Tool-Uninstall.bat
In each mode you can control the brightness and red levels (each key press increases / decreases by 0.1)
• Press F1 to increase brightness
• Press F2 to decrease brightness
• Press F3 to increase red levels
• Press F4 to decrease red levels
• Press F5 to cycle through the different modes
• Press CTRL F5 to return to default in Mode 1
Start-up Values
When you find a mode / brightness / red level you like, you can set these as start-up values (when Odyssey loads)
Open
d3dx.ini in a text editor (highly recommend
Notepad++, as it shows the code and comments in different colours)
You can set your start-up values in this section:
INI:
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Start-up Values
; You can change these start-up values, and then press F11 to load these values in-game
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Mode (0 = Horizons, 1 = Odyssey, 2 = Odyssey without suppression, 3 = Odyssey boost with fog, 4 = Odyssey boost with less fog)
; Note: set brightness x200 = 0.2 if selecting Horizons manually
; Press F5 to cycle through the modes
y200 = 1
; Startup brightness (0.2 is close to default when in Horizons mode)
; F1 to increase brightness, F2 to decrease brightness
x200 = 1.0
; Red levels (default = 1.0)
; F3 to increase red levels, F4 to decrease red levels
z200 = 1.0
For example, if you'd like to start in mode 4, set
y200 = 4
Unfortunately, the modding software (3Dmigoto) doesn't have an easy way of displaying the current value of a variable on-screen, so to set your brightness / red levels you'll need to count your keypresses and adjust the start-up values accordingly.
For example, four presses of F1 to 'increase brightness', set
x200 = 1.4
However, 3Dmigoto does have a great in-game reload function (F11) .. so you can change your brightness or red levels and then press F11 to see the change in-game.
My recommended start-up settings are:
INI:
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Start-up Values
; You can change these start-up values, and then press F11 to load these values in-game
;------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; Mode (0 = Horizons, 1 = Odyssey, 2 = Odyssey without suppression, 3 = Odyssey boost with fog, 4 = Odyssey boost with less fog)
; Note: set brightness x200 = 0.2 if selecting Horizons manually
; Press F5 to cycle through the modes
y200 = 4
; Start-up brightness (0.2 is close to default when in Horizons mode)
; F1 to increase brightness, F2 to decrease brightness
x200 = 0.5
; Red levels (default = 1.0)
; F3 to increase red levels, F4 to decrease red levels
z200 = 0.8
Keybinds
No doubt these keybinds might conflict with something you're already using, but you can change them pretty easily, also in
d3dx.ini
All you need to do is change the key designation for a particular function. For example,
INI:
[key-IncreaseSpaceFog]
Key = no_modifiers F1
run = CommandListFogIncrease
To change the key that increases brightness to NUMPAD1
INI:
[key-IncreaseSpaceFog]
Key = no_modifiers NUMPAD1
run = CommandListFogIncrease
Then press F11 to reload in-game, and now each press of NUMPAD1 will increase brightness by 0.1
As indicated in
d3dx.ini, when you've finished setting your start-up values, you can delete all the keybind code to free-up your keys.
Please note: This is an early release version of the Skybox mod that will be included in the EDHM v2 (Odyssey Update).
It was coded in shader assembly as 3Dmigoto couldn't extract the shader correctly in HLSL, and to be honest, shader assembly isn't my strong suit

(I don't think it's many people's strong suit). I don't have a coding background so if anyone with assembly knowledge can improve my code it would be much appreciated, thank you!
Also, please report any bugs, thanks CMDRs
o7