Graphics Settings Beyond Ultra -- Shadows

[Neutronium]

This will be the biggest update to my shadow frustums in a while.

And the greatest looking imho.. Great Work Master Morbad!:

Default ultra:

Spoiler

Morbad's Ultra:

Spoiler

The image encoding/file format is not the issue. Evidently the point from which the frame is grabbed is before the filter is applied, at least with any software I've used to grab images. It's possible NVIDIA's GFE or Ansel could capture the effect, but I have no intention of installing GFE.

What image sharpening settings are you using in the NVIDIA's Manage 3D Settings for Elite Dangerous (elitedangerous64.exe)?
I am using the defaults i.e.: Sharpen 0.50 & ignore film grain 0.17. I am curious for your experimentation .

 

[Morbad]

Default ultra:

Spoiler

That's a pretty good example of peter panning shadows on the default ultra profile to the right.

What image sharpening settings are you using in the NVIDIA's Manage 3D Settings for Elite Dangerous (elitedangerous64.exe)?
I am using the defaults i.e.: Sharpen 0.50 & ignore film grain 0.17. I am curious for your experimentation .

Best settings will vary heavily based on how much smoothing it has to overcome from other settings. Since I'm using DSR, subsampling, and SMAA I need a fairly high sharpen of ~0.66 to overcome the blur this introduces to my satisfaction. I'm also using an ignore film grain of zero, but may turn it up slightly to take care of some minor artifacting in the FSS.

 

[Neutronium]

I am attaching my main GraphicsConfiguration.xml and GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml
The 1st is essentially the same as Morbad's one but I have substituted the default ultra shadow setting with Morbads one. The default high is now the default ultra. The default medium is the default high and the default low is the default medium. There is no actual default low. Obviously this is for people with moderately powerful machines. If you are running on low settings because of weak system better avoid this.
The 2nd is Morbads override the only difference being in the galaxybackground setting. I've kept mine at 4K, Morbad has his at around ~3.3K - again no big deal - the perceivable IQ difference is very small, almost indistinguishable. Maybe at 4K resolutions only if you are sitting next to the monitor..
I am really happy with this, combined with the image sharpening of the new NVIDIA's driver and the graphics of ED are really standing out now. I've also got rid off reshade completely - the only difference being somewhat less vibrant colors but I believe it is worth it because now coloration is more balanced, blends better with the rest of the image characteristics and there is no over-saturation with excess color and loss of detail.

 

[Morbad]

The 2nd is Morbads override the only difference being in the galaxybackground setting. I've kept mine at 4K, Morbad has his at around ~3.3K - again no big deal - the perceivable IQ difference is very small, almost indistinguishable. Maybe at 4K resolutions only if you are sitting next to the monitor.

The reason I reduced my galaxy background texture size is because much over 3328 on a 1080Ti results in significantly longer hyperspace load times when in the vicinity of nebulae. It crosses some threshold, probably related to how much L2 cache is available on the GPU vs. tile size needed to compostite the skybox for a given number of nebula samples at a given galaxy background resolution.

I can go up to 8k, maybe even 16k, within the bubble or other areas more than a few jumps from nebulae, but much past 3328 was enough to significantly hamper escape and evasion when trying to survive repeated attacks in Open near Colonia as well as make chain jumping more tedious.

Example of my old settings when being chased around Colonia:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKuVyKaodj0


After adjustment in the same area:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5MwnOng838


My current settings are a further refinement to get the best quality skybox possible without significantly impacting load times on reasonably modern hardware (I can knock out sub-45 second jumps from FSD charge to next FSD charge, essentially anywhere). I am not sure if Vega or newer AMD or NVIDIA's Turing parts can handle higher galaxy background texture sizes, or greater nebula sample counts, before taking a hit, but it's something to consider if one has these parts.

 

[Neutronium]

(I can knock out sub-45 second jumps from FSD charge to next FSD charge, essentially anywhere)

Well I don't mind higher jump times as long as fps remains within tolerable levels - for me >~30-35 fps during the jump. I also have a 1080ti.
I remember I was having serious issues with high galaxybackground and nebula samples count near and/or inside the pleades nebula. ATM I am near pencil sector which has a small nebula there but I am flying (mostly) in the whereabouts of it so I don't notice it much. I'll see if things get worse when I get close to larger nebulae and re-adjust accordingly.

I am not sure if Vega or newer AMD or NVIDIA's Turing parts can handle higher galaxy background texture sizes, or greater nebula sample counts, before taking a hit, but it's something to consider if one has these parts.

Yea that would be great.. I can't afford turing and probably never will with my current finance condition and NVidia$ pricing policy..

 

[Morbad]

Recalling one of the major complaints about the pre-3.3 lighting system, I've been doing some comparisons of the dark sides of planets with the prototype lighting balances disabled. I can confirm that it's the brightness skybox that is responsible for the apparent brightness of the dark side of planets. With the settings I'm currently using nights aren't as dark as with the default 3.3 lighting system, but they are noticeably darker than they were from about 2.2 to 3.2, or if I had simply turned off the prototype lighting balances without making any changes to the galaxy map, bloom, or glare settings.

I just compared driving in a canyon on Pleione 11 A to a video I had of the same canyon from back in 2.0, shortly after Horizons was first released (and my benchmark for how things should look). It's not exactly the same, but it's pretty damn close, and what difference there is in illumination is almost enirely due to having more of the nebula visible in the sky.

Also, back on the topic of shadow related changes, I've been playing with ambient occlusion settings, with the intent of making objects that aren't directly lit, or that are already in shadow, appear more grounded by making AO more prominent.

This is what I've got so far, if anyone would care to try it and post some feedback:

    <HBAO>
        <High>
            <RadiusInMeters>12.0</RadiusInMeters>
            <NearRadiusInMeters>4.0</NearRadiusInMeters>
            <NearDistance>180.0</NearDistance>
            <PowExponent>2.4</PowExponent>
            <Bias>0.45</Bias>
            <BlurSharpness>1.5</BlurSharpness>
        </High>
    </HBAO>

This can be dropped into the GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml and replaces some of the 'High' quality Ambient Occlusion settings.

 

[DM_Violator]

Newbie here, sorry if this has already been covered.

I'm trying to use these tweaked GraphicsConfig and Override files. The override seems to work OK, but whenever I change anything in the GraphicsConfig it seems to reset my display to 1280x720 window default (should be 2560x1440) and then overwrites the GraphicsConfig file back to the default.

Is the file meant to be read-only?

 

[Morbad]

Newbie here, sorry if this has already been covered.

I'm trying to use these tweaked GraphicsConfig and Override files. The override seems to work OK, but whenever I change anything in the GraphicsConfig it seems to reset my display to 1280x720 window default (should be 2560x1440) and then overwrites the GraphicsConfig file back to the default.

Is the file meant to be read-only?

The file should not need to be read only. Sounds like something is automatically checking the integrity of the game install and replacing modified files. Frontier's launcher does not do this until you tell it to, nor does it reset the display resolution.

Are you using Steam? It might be the cause. If there is away to stop it from automatically updating/verifying stuff you may need to set that. Can't say for certain, I don't use it.

 

[Friedenreich Xante]

Bookmarking, will have to test this. Looks awesome.

 

[Neutronium]

Since I'm using DSR, subsampling, and SMAA

From where are you tweaking this settings? Is it from the graph.sets of the game itself or from the NVidia driver settings? Or a 3rd party app?

Recalling one of the major complaints about the pre-3.3 lighting system, I've been doing some comparisons of the dark sides of planets with the prototype lighting balances disabled. I can confirm that it's the brightness skybox that is responsible for the apparent brightness of the dark side of planets. With the settings I'm currently using nights aren't as dark as with the default 3.3 lighting system, but they are noticeably darker than they were from about 2.2 to 3.2, or if I had simply turned off the prototype lighting balances without making any changes to the galaxy map, bloom, or glare settings.

I just compared driving in a canyon on Pleione 11 A to a video I had of the same canyon from back in 2.0, shortly after Horizons was first released (and my benchmark for how things should look). It's not exactly the same, but it's pretty damn close, and what difference there is in illumination is almost enirely due to having more of the nebula visible in the sky.

I remember at some point between 2.* something and 3.* something, illumination of dark side of planets had indeed become excessive. But what we have now is neither helpful nor practical from a gameplay perspective. Yes we have night vision, yes it may look more scientifically accurate but all this darkness hurts my poor eyes..
Good job you have kept videos from back then..

Also, back on the topic of shadow related changes, I've been playing with ambient occlusion settings, with the intent of making objects that aren't directly lit, or that are already in shadow, appear more grounded by making AO more prominent.

This is what I've got so far, if anyone would care to try it and post some feedback:

Will check and report as soon as I get back home from work.

 

[DM_Violator]

The file should not need to be read only. Sounds like something is automatically checking the integrity of the game install and replacing modified files. Frontier's launcher does not do this until you tell it to, nor does it reset the display resolution.

Are you using Steam? It might be the cause. If there is away to stop it from automatically updating/verifying stuff you may need to set that. Can't say for certain, I don't use it.

Thanks for the reply. I am using Steam.

If I make the adjustments and leave the file open during play it seems ok. If the file is closed ED updates it back to default seemingly if the original is modified in any way.

 

[Morbad]

From where are you tweaking this settings? Is it from the graph.sets of the game itself or from the NVidia driver settings? Or a 3rd party app?

I'm using DSR from the NVIDIA control panel (currently 2.25x with 33% smoothing, to run the game at 4k on my 1440p display), in-game supersampling of 0.85 (though nonstandard supersampling values can be set in the Custom.fxcfg) and SMAA to reduce the internal resolution slightly while cleaning up some more jaggies. Finally NVIDIA's sharpening to recoup some of the detail lost from all these layers and get as close to native 4k IQ as possible with a bit less of a performance hit.

I remember at some point between 2.* something and 3.* something, illumination of dark side of planets had indeed become excessive. But what we have now is neither helpful nor practical from a gameplay perspective. Yes we have night vision, yes it may look more scientifically accurate but all this darkness hurts my poor eyes..

The problem I have with the new illumination system is that it's equally inaccurate in many circumstances. The skybox should be illuminating the dark side of planets. It's also tied to a bizarre global tint that just looks strange.

So, I've been tinkering with the older system (what we get with PrototypeLightingBlances=0) to reduce the illumination of the skybox to more plausible levels, with the goal of restoring what we saw when Horizons first dropped, which was about as good a balance as possible without the game being able to have multiple global point lights or using ray casting.

If I make the adjustments and leave the file open during play it seems ok. If the file is closed ED updates it back to default seemingly if the original is modified in any way.

ED itself isn't doing this, it has to be Steam's cache verification.

If there isn't away to stop Steam from verifying these files, you may have to make it read only and possibly remove Steam's permission to overwrite it. This shouldn't cause any issues as the game never writes to GraphicsConfiguration.xml. You'll just have to remember to revert it or delete it when a patch comes out.

 

[Morbad]

Getting some annoying halo artifacts with the more pronouced AO settings, so I may revert them if I can't find a good way to mitigate them.

Edit: Reducing the bias and increasing the blursharpness helps a bit. Will probably leave it as the only place I notice the halos are around the CMDR holo-me in the vanity camera, which is rarely an issue.

Edit #2: My current HBAO settings...

    <HBAO>
        <High>
            <RadiusInMeters>10.5</RadiusInMeters>
            <NearRadiusInMeters>4.2</NearRadiusInMeters>
            <NearDistance>180.0</NearDistance>
            <PowExponent>2.4</PowExponent>
            <Bias>0.3</Bias>
            <BlurSharpness>2.5</BlurSharpness>
        </High>
    </HBAO>

 

[Neutronium]

I'm using DSR from the NVIDIA control panel

Excuse my unforgivable ignorance but I can't seem to find that setting from NVIDIA's CP..

Edit #2: My current HBAO settings...

Updating and checking.

 

[Morbad]

Excuse my unforgivable ignorance but I can't seem to find that setting from NVIDIA's CP.

It can only be adjusted in the global settings, not on a per-game basis. It adds additional supersampled resolutions that you can select in game.

 

[DM_Violator]

ED itself isn't doing this, it has to be Steam's cache verification.

If there isn't away to stop Steam from verifying these files, you may have to make it read only and possibly remove Steam's permission to overwrite it. This shouldn't cause any issues as the game never writes to GraphicsConfiguration.xml. You'll just have to remember to revert it or delete it when a patch comes out.

Thanks for the clarification. I've uninstalled and reinstalled ED and testing now with modded xmls, so far seems OK

 

[Neutronium]

It adds additional supersampled resolutions that you can select in game.

Ah I think I know what you mean. I am using tripple display (NVIDIA surround) so native resolution for me is 5760x1080p@60Hz. I've got no intention to change this. It is the recommended resolution for my setup.

 

[Morbad]

It is the recommended resolution for my setup.

Supersampling generally implies running a higher resolution than native for the display and then scaling it down to the display's native res.

 

[Morbad]

Regarding the prototype light balances, I've found a rather annoying side effect of disabling it. Certain effects that are supposed to glow do not, namely I went to "Radioactive Green" and the dark side of the gas giant was totaly black. Reenabling prototype lighting balances corrected this.

 

[DM_Violator]

I'd like to thank Morbad for the excellent mods and other advice given. Sterling job sir