Any tips for settings to get best photos/screengrabs? (My GFX settings are "Ultra" but still don't look so good)

[Archvillain]

Any tips for settings to get best photos/screengrabs? (My GFX settings are "Ultra" but still don't look so good)

I figure the exploration forum is where the fellow space photographers are

My screenshots look like they're taken at lower graphics settings than other people's, even though my settings are on ultra and I use the high-res screenshot function. (Eg like everything else I have planetary surfaces set to ultra (good framerate etc) but when my ship is landed on a planet, the surface generally looks like an unconvincing height map, while I see screenshots where the same kind of surface often just look much more... planetary?)

Is there something I'm missing? Do different graphics cards / brands have noticeably different shaders or something? Different directX? I'm using a GeForce GTX 660

(The reflections in the glass of the Orca also look better in other people's screenshots, though I haven't specifically checked if all reflection settings are maxed like I have for planet surfaces. Elite auto-selects "Ultra" as the overall default and I haven't messed with it.)

I'm aware there are some third-party FX mods that some people use, but I can spot those and that's not what I'm talking about. Other people's stock-graphics screenshots just seem to work better than what I'm getting. I guess I should try to find examples so I can show a reasonably close side-by-side comparison, but I want to find out if anyone else has this experience or knows what I mean.

Any ideas? :-/

 

[varonica]

Any ideas? :-/

Hmm, can you post a sample?

This is one of mine from in game with ultra settings but no hi-res. Are we talking ground level shots or from height?

 

[Archvillain]

Here are some examples... no-matter where I go, the ground just looks... bad. The camera is further away from the ground than in your shot, so your nice foreground detail doesn't count, but even your mid-range detail looks less like... I don't know... 1990's heightmapped gouraud shading than mine :/

I was wondering if the surface rendering gets further enhanced when you're in an SRV, but even other people's picture from their ships have better planet surfaces (and reflections, etc), and my SRV shots have the same bland look as my ship pics.

Just to confound things further, I just realized that only the middle picture is super-recent (ie after 2.2) There were some graphics improvements in 2.1 and I don't recall if the top and bottom picture were taken before or after that, but it's still representative of the difficulty I get finding land that looks like land.

Spoiler

 

[Jon flint]

Just to be doubly sure, run through your settings one at a time and make sure everything is on and as high as it'll go. If you feel the need you can also force some features like 16x anisotropic filtering via the nvidia control panel.

A lot of the awesome pics people take just come down to good composition. Avoid shots where the sun is directly overhead as everything will look flat, I usually fly close to the terminator between day and night where the sun is right on the horizon you'll get some great dramatic shots and a lot more shadow definition on the terrain.

One of the things I noticed in your pics, the antialiasing looks a bit rough, make sure it's on (SMAA preferably) and if you're running at a lower resolution like 1080p then make sure to use the high-res shot option (alt-f10 default) to take a 4x resolution shot, even if you then scale that shot back down to 1080, it will still look better than a native 1080 pic.

There are mods like reshade, but I'm not sure about those, I'm sure somebody more knowledgeable will chip in.

Oh and make sure your gfx drivers are up to date too

Happy snapping cmdr

 

[varonica]

Is there something I'm missing? Do different graphics cards / brands have noticeably different shaders or something? Different directX? I'm using a GeForce GTX 660

I am running a GTX 970m at 1920x1080, no mods or filters, I have some higher shots, let me post some.

Long icy canyon;

High view looking down from a cliff;

This is from a few kilometers up;

Do your screenshots match what you are seeing in the game?

Here' some distance vista;

Your card was released in mid 2012, a lot can change in nearly five years graphics card wise, I would need to take some time to look in detail to see what has changed between that card and mine and what effect it might have on the graphics in ED.

 

[Lightspeed]

I find a lot of my screen grabs are too dark for detail, shadows especially of course. So I usually run mine through Photoshop Elements and use "Quick Fix" to lighten them up a bit. Brings out the detail too.

Any photo editing software will do the job.