Graphics settings - Beyond Ultra

rhiz · Dec 17, 2018

Morbad said:
Edited my above post with a small adjustment to the bloom (removed the reduction to the wide bloom radius and reduced the narrow radius further) and smoothed out some shadows by increasing kernel filter sizes for critical frustums.

EDIT: Updated the above post again with further changes to shadows to reduce some issues I was having near planet surfaces.

Shadow changes should be most noticeable while approaching planet surfaces, using the vanity camera while landed on planets or driving the SRV, and when observing self shadowing of the ship from the cockpit.

If you encounter it again, try capping the "TexturePoolBudget" setting I mentioned above to between 40 and 60.

Thanks Morbad - I've not seen it since the update for some reason, but I'll keep that in mind.

It was only ever moderate.

EUS · Dec 17, 2018

Wow, good work Morbad.

rhiz · Dec 17, 2018

nanite2000 said:
Interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to see how it pans out.

A toned down colour filter from the new engine mixed with a toned down ambient light source from pre-3.3 sounds like a winning combination to me.

Yes, definitely - short of more user control provided officially. Thanks for investigating Morbad.

Viktor Dracul · Dec 17, 2018

Awesome work. Going to be playing with this later. Thank you Morbad

Neutronium · Dec 17, 2018

That is a very interesting discussion / thread.
I have also a similar setup: CPU i7-7820X (8cores/16Threads), 16GB DDR4 2.66GHz Kingston HyperX RAM, GTX 1080Ti Zotac Mini (slightly underclocked to Nvidia's defaults cause this card is small and I don;t want to stress it too much - I manually thermal throttled it to ~75 C by reducing its GPU clock and Power to 90% TDP), and OS (Win 10 x64) and ED installed on RAID0 (Stripe) Volume on two Kingston Sata3 SSDs (~894GB).
ED is running on 5760x1080p tripple LCD TVs, fps limiter @ 60fps from graphics settings, VSync Off, Graphics preset:Ultra.
Reshade 1.1 with 6 effects enabled and my GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml is this:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GraphicsConfig>
 <Planets>
    <Low>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_LOW;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>512</TextureSize>
      <AtmosphereSteps>4</AtmosphereSteps>
      <CloudsEnabled>true</CloudsEnabled>
      <WorkPerFrame>96</WorkPerFrame>
	  <TexturePoolBudget>12</TexturePoolBudget>
    </Low>
    <Medium>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_MEDIUM;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
      <AtmosphereSteps>5</AtmosphereSteps>
      <CloudsEnabled>true</CloudsEnabled>
      <WorkPerFrame>132</WorkPerFrame>
	  <TexturePoolBudget>32</TexturePoolBudget>
    </Medium>
    <High>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_HIGH;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>2048</TextureSize>
      <AtmosphereSteps>6</AtmosphereSteps>
      <CloudsEnabled>true</CloudsEnabled>
      <WorkPerFrame>264</WorkPerFrame>
	  <TexturePoolBudget>90</TexturePoolBudget>
    </High>
    <Ultra>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_ULTRA;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
      <AtmosphereSteps>6</AtmosphereSteps>
      <CloudsEnabled>true</CloudsEnabled>
      <WorkPerFrame>1024</WorkPerFrame>
	  <TexturePoolBudget>100</TexturePoolBudget>
    </Ultra>
  </Planets>
  <GalaxyBackground>
    <Low>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_LOW;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>512</TextureSize>
    </Low>
    <Medium>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_MEDIUM;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
    </Medium>
    <High>
      <LocalisationName>$QUALITY_HIGH;</LocalisationName>
      <TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
    </High>
  </GalaxyBackground>
  <GalaxyMap>
	<Low>
		<LocalisationName>$QUALITY_LOW;</LocalisationName>
		<NebulasCount>10</NebulasCount>
		<NebulasInBackgroundCount>40</NebulasInBackgroundCount>
		<LowResNebulasCount>16</LowResNebulasCount>
		<HighResNebulasCount>1</HighResNebulasCount>
		<LowResNebulaDimensions>64</LowResNebulaDimensions>
		<HighResNebulaDimensions>256</HighResNebulaDimensions>
		<LowResSamplesCount>25</LowResSamplesCount>
		<HighResSamplesCount>128</HighResSamplesCount>
		<MilkyWayInstancesCount>8000</MilkyWayInstancesCount>
		<LocalDustBrightness>0.13</LocalDustBrightness>
		<MilkywayInstancesBrightness>1.5</MilkywayInstancesBrightness>
		<MilkywayInstancesSize>1.3</MilkywayInstancesSize>
		<MilkyWayInstancesOffscreenRTEnabled>true</MilkyWayInstancesOffscreenRTEnabled>
		<StarInstanceCount>2000</StarInstanceCount>
	</Low>
	<Medium>
		<LocalisationName>$QUALITY_MEDIUM;</LocalisationName>
		<NebulasCount>20</NebulasCount>
		<NebulasInBackgroundCount>40</NebulasInBackgroundCount>
		<LowResNebulasCount>16</LowResNebulasCount>
		<HighResNebulasCount>1</HighResNebulasCount>
		<LowResNebulaDimensions>64</LowResNebulaDimensions>
		<HighResNebulaDimensions>256</HighResNebulaDimensions>
		<LowResSamplesCount>30</LowResSamplesCount>
		<HighResSamplesCount>110</HighResSamplesCount>
		<MilkyWayInstancesCount>12000</MilkyWayInstancesCount>
		<LocalDustBrightness>0.033</LocalDustBrightness>
		<MilkywayInstancesBrightness>1.3</MilkywayInstancesBrightness>
		<MilkywayInstancesSize>1.15</MilkywayInstancesSize>
		<MilkyWayInstancesOffscreenRTEnabled>false</MilkyWayInstancesOffscreenRTEnabled>
		<StarInstanceCount>2000</StarInstanceCount>
	</Medium>
	<High>
		<LocalisationName>$QUALITY_HIGH;</LocalisationName>
		<NebulasCount>30</NebulasCount>
		<NebulasInBackgroundCount>40</NebulasInBackgroundCount>
		<LowResNebulasCount>16</LowResNebulasCount>
		<HighResNebulasCount>8</HighResNebulasCount>
		<LowResNebulaDimensions>64</LowResNebulaDimensions>
		<HighResNebulaDimensions>256</HighResNebulaDimensions>
		<LowResSamplesCount>276</LowResSamplesCount>
		<HighResSamplesCount>552</HighResSamplesCount>
		<MilkyWayInstancesCount>16000</MilkyWayInstancesCount>
		<LocalDustBrightness>0.0</LocalDustBrightness>
		<MilkywayInstancesBrightness>1.0</MilkywayInstancesBrightness>
		<MilkywayInstancesSize>1.0</MilkywayInstancesSize>
		<MilkyWayInstancesOffscreenRTEnabled>false</MilkyWayInstancesOffscreenRTEnabled>
		<StarInstanceCount>4000</StarInstanceCount>
	</High>
  </GalaxyMap>
</GraphicsConfig>

Everything was running smoothly prior to 3.3 hitting the air. Now I get occasional freezes, sometimes up to a minute. I have to switch to desktop and back to game (which is running in border-less mode btw) to regain control. I am not using shadow modifications as it can be seen from above. Any advice / comment is highly welcomed.

Alec Turner · Dec 17, 2018

One thing to be wary off re: pushing those planet texture settings up ... you may notice that the textures on your avatar body and arms when you jump into a system start failing to load in anything other than very low res initially. I've tested this a few times over the years on my 1080 rig and the one definitely causes the other.

Straha Yeagar · Dec 17, 2018

neutronium said:
That is a very interesting discussion / thread.

...

Everything was running smoothly prior to 3.3 hitting the air. Now I get occasional freezes, sometimes up to a minute. I have to switch to desktop and back to game (which is running in border-less mode btw) to regain control. I am not using shadow modifications as it can be seen from above. Any advice / comment is highly welcomed.

Look here...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/464347-Game-randomly-freezing

Neutronium · Dec 17, 2018

Straha Yeagar said:
Look here...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/464347-Game-randomly-freezing

Thanks! I hope it is network related as well.
In the meantime I combined Morbads GraphicsCongigurationOverride with mine and am going to check it now. If it blows my PC I will go and steal one of those:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/titan/titan-rtx/

Sierra_Hotel · Dec 17, 2018

Morbad said:
Edited my above post with a small adjustment to the bloom (removed the reduction to the wide bloom radius and reduced the narrow radius further) and smoothed out some shadows by increasing kernel filter sizes for critical frustums.

EDIT: Updated the above post again with further changes to shadows to reduce some issues I was having near planet surfaces.

Shadow changes should be most noticeable while approaching planet surfaces, using the vanity camera while landed on planets or driving the SRV, and when observing self shadowing of the ship from the cockpit.

If you encounter it again, try capping the "TexturePoolBudget" setting I mentioned above to between 40 and 60.

Really glad I found this thread, I think this is exactly what I need to tweak on my system.

VR Jay Le Chardon · Dec 17, 2018

andrak said:
I wouldn't change too much in the ini files. You will be RMA-ing that card pretty soon, unless you like to play space invaders permanently in all other games.

Tweaking the ini files won't directly affect the card and thus induce an RMA... Poorly executed overclocking would do both of those, but the i tweaks suggested here only affect the agmes settings not the gfx cards setup. The ini tweaks will however make the card work harder, and thus it will get hotter, but since the ten series Nvidia cards have thermal throttling where they throttle back their clocks when they get to their max temperature. So if his overclock settings are bad, the card will overheat and slow down to preserve itself when under load.

Mengy · Dec 17, 2018

Morbad said:
This might be possible, but probably not without changing the more general tone mapping curve.

Also, the global color filter introduced in 3.3 is still present, just slightly subdued with the new lighting balances disabled.

Okay, that is super promising. If it's possible to restore the background Milky Way to it's non-filter 3.3 colors, yet keep the dark side of planets dark, then I'd do it in a heartbeat. Here's hoping it's possible.

rhiz · Dec 17, 2018

Alec Turner said:
One thing to be wary off re: pushing those planet texture settings up ... you may notice that the textures on your avatar body and arms when you jump into a system start failing to load in anything other than very low res initially. I've tested this a few times over the years on my 1080 rig and the one definitely causes the other.

Yes, I also saw that initially when I changed the planet texture settings - but again, it seems to have vanished with the latest update.

Morbad · Dec 18, 2018

neutronium said:
Everything was running smoothly prior to 3.3 hitting the air. Now I get occasional freezes, sometimes up to a minute. I have to switch to desktop and back to game (which is running in border-less mode btw) to regain control. I am not using shadow modifications as it can be seen from above. Any advice / comment is highly welcomed.

The game freezing intermittently is a known issue with 3.3 that isn't likely to have a fix in the settings.

There are some provisional performance tweaks that may help general smoothness, but I haven't been able to completely eliminate all instances of ~20 second freezes in 3.3.

Alec Turner said:
One thing to be wary off re: pushing those planet texture settings up ... you may notice that the textures on your avatar body and arms when you jump into a system start failing to load in anything other than very low res initially. I've tested this a few times over the years on my 1080 rig and the one definitely causes the other.

Capping the planet texture pool budget to 40% largely prevents this. You may still get some delayed texture loading in witchspace during a jump, but I always had them fully load by the time the jump was completed.

As mentioned, 3.3 also improved things in this regard.

Mengy said:
Okay, that is super promising. If it's possible to restore the background Milky Way to it's non-filter 3.3 colors, yet keep the dark side of planets dark, then I'd do it in a heartbeat. Here's hoping it's possible.

Keeping the dark side of planets near universally dark is as easy as leaving the prototype lighting settings alone.

Getting rid of the global ambient color filter...I'll play with some settings that look semi-relevant, but it doesn't seem to have a simple on/off switch.

Morbad · Dec 18, 2018

nanite2000 said:
If so, is it possible to configure the intensity? I really liked the fact that the old system attempted to colour the dark side of planets with a diffuse lighting, but it was just too overdone. If it's possible to dial back the amount of light created by the skybox but still retain it's colour, that would be rad.

Quoting and replying to this again because it just dawned on me that this may be as simple as reducing the power/saturation in the IBL section of the config.

Will test tomorrow. Right now I'm seeing an undue frame rate hit around foggy sites on the surface of planets and I think I can improve the volumetrics performance slightly without harming IQ.

Morbad · Dec 18, 2018

Found another case of settings not being applied from the override. None of the HDRNode settings appear to be working when placed here, and like some of the shadow tweaks I've been working on, have to be placed in the actual GraphicsConfig.xml.

I'm also not entirely sure if PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled is behaving as I initially suspected, or if my test location is an outlier, so I need to go back and retest that.

However, I definitely found out how to disable the global tone map filter, I just need to see what else my method breaks, if anything.

Went to the closest/bluest star I could find in game (Regulus) and flew out ~2k ls for this comparison.

Default HDRNode_Reference settings:

With "PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled" = 0 and "ToneMapType" = 0, in the main GraphicsConfig.xml:

Now, I'm not sure yet if this is only removing the new filter, or if it's totally destroying the entire filmic tone map, making everything linear...the latter would probably be considerably worse in most situations than leaving it alone.

Again, more testing needed.

Morbad · Dec 18, 2018

Alright, I've been mixing up the effects of PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled and ToneMapType.

'PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled' appears to be the overwhelming bulk new lighting system. Turning it off in the core GraphicsConfig.xml removes the color filter and restores the old planet dark side brightness.

'ToneMapType' should be left alone, as it controls the filmic ACES tone map. Turning it off makes the image linear, which is not what it should look like (though I'm sure some will like the effect).

Right now I'm seeing if I can leave the prototype lighting disabled and sufficiently darken the dark side of planets via IBL tweaks.

Edit: IBL tweaks weren't having the hoped for effect, or any effect at all really. Doesn't look good for being able to find a way to get rid of the color filter without brightening the dark sides of planets, or vice versa.

nanite2000 · Dec 18, 2018

Morbad said:
Alright, I've been mixing up the effects of PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled and ToneMapType.

'PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled' appears to be the overwhelming bulk new lighting system. Turning it off in the core GraphicsConfig.xml removes the color filter and restores the old planet dark side brightness.

'ToneMapType' should be left alone, as it controls the filmic ACES tone map. Turning it off makes the image linear, which is not what it should look like (though I'm sure some will like the effect).

Right now I'm seeing if I can leave the prototype lighting disabled and sufficiently darken the dark side of planets via IBL tweaks.

Edit: IBL tweaks weren't having the hoped for effect, or any effect at all really. Doesn't look good for being able to find a way to get rid of the color filter without brightening the dark sides of planets, or vice versa.

Thanks for the updates Morbad. You're doing God's work.

Neutronium · Dec 18, 2018

nanite2000 said:
Thanks for the updates Morbad. You're doing God's work.

Yap. This thread should be stickied by a mod..

Morbad · Dec 18, 2018

EDIT 20/12/2018: Some adjustments to depth biases to virtually eliminate cockpit shadow acne (aka 'elephant butt leather').

At this point, I feel I've explored most relevant options that haven't been detailed extensively elsewhere by others (see Dr. Kaii's thread for stuff regarding the skybox stuff, beyond a resolution bump and the like), except for a complete shadow cascade overhaul.

I'm going to post two override files. The first will have only texture/reflection improvements (8k textures on planets and galaxy background + 1k envmaps, as well as the pool budget cap and extra mip levels to fully enable them) and very conservative shadow changes that can be reliably enabled via the overrides; a bump to slice size/map resolution for the general profile (which is flight in SC, as well as in normal space away from rings and not over planets) only, as there is plenty of performance to spare here on any high-end system, plus some small tweaks to the biases of the cockpit shadows to reduce some minor artifacting. The second set will have all of the changes of the first, plus my personal bloom preferences, which I think go well with the old light balances, but can also help with the new lighting, if one finds bloom excessive.

These tweaks should be compatible with most others, but keep in mind that I've used tab stops, not spaces, in my indents, if you want to start combining things.

Again, the "GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml" goes in the "%AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics" directory, by default. There will be a "[n].n[/i]" appended to the file names before the .xml extension, so I can put both overrides in one post without mixing them up. This needs to be removed for the file to be parsed.

GraphicsConfigurationOverride.1.xml contents (IQ only):

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
	<Shadows_Ultra>
		<Profile_General>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
				<DepthSlopeBias>2.0</DepthSlopeBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_General>
		<Profile_PlanetApproach>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_PlanetApproach>
		<Profile_StationInterior>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
				<DepthSlopeBias>2.0</DepthSlopeBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_StationInterior>
		<Profile_AsteroidField>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
				<DepthSlopeBias>2.0</DepthSlopeBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_AsteroidField>
	</Shadows_Ultra>
	<Planets>
		<Ultra>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
			<WorkPerFrame>512</WorkPerFrame>
			<TexturePoolBudget>40</TexturePoolBudget>
		</Ultra>
	</Planets>
	<GalaxyBackground>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
		</High>
	</GalaxyBackground>
	<Envmap>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
			<NumMips>10</NumMips>
		</High>
	</Envmap>
</GraphicsConfig>

GraphicsConfigurationOverride.2.xml contents (IQ improvements + bloom reduction):

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<GraphicsConfig>
	<Shadows_Ultra>
		<Profile_General>
			<SliceSize>4096</SliceSize>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
				<DepthSlopeBias>2.0</DepthSlopeBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_General>
		<Profile_PlanetApproach>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_PlanetApproach>
		<Profile_StationInterior>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
				<DepthSlopeBias>2.0</DepthSlopeBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_StationInterior>
		<Profile_AsteroidField>
			<FrustumCockpit>
				<DepthBias>0.0002</DepthBias>
				<DepthSlopeBias>2.0</DepthSlopeBias>
			</FrustumCockpit>
		</Profile_AsteroidField>
	</Shadows_Ultra>
	<Planets>
		<Ultra>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
			<WorkPerFrame>512</WorkPerFrame>
			<TexturePoolBudget>40</TexturePoolBudget>
		</Ultra>
	</Planets>
	<GalaxyBackground>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>8192</TextureSize>
		</High>
	</GalaxyBackground>
	<Bloom>
		<Ultra>
			<GlareScale>0.02</GlareScale>
			<FilterRadius>0.5</FilterRadius>
		</Ultra>
	</Bloom>
	<Envmap>
		<High>
			<TextureSize>1024</TextureSize>
			<NumMips>10</NumMips>
		</High>
	</Envmap>
</GraphicsConfig>

Now, if you want to disable the new lighting balances, which will remove the new global color filter as well as restore nigh-side planet brightness to roughly what it was in 3.2, you only need to edit (with any text editor, I prefer Notepad++, but essentially anything will do) the main "GraphicsConfiguration.xml" in the main game directory. This will normally end in "Frontier\EDLaunch\Products\elite-dangerous-64", the first part will be whereever you, the installer, or Steam, put it. Same location as "EliteDangerous64.exe".

In this file, simply change the "1" in the variable "<PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled>1</PrototypeLightingBalancesEnabled>" (under the 'HDRNode_Reference' settings) to "0" and save. If you want to revert the change, just change it back to "1", or have the installer verify the game's files (this will revert all files in the main game directory to their defaults, but will not touch you settings/overrides in those folders in your user profile.

With regards to a more comprehensive shadow overhaul, I'm going to wait to see what Frontier does in the next patch, then work on my own rewrite if there are not significant improvements. This will take some time and I have holiday plans, so I'm not expecting to have anything worth releasing until around new year's.

As always, constructive comments and criticism are appreciated.

EDIT: Updated the second file to further reduce bloom intensity, as without the new lighting balances I find the defaults extremely overpowering.

WR3ND · Dec 18, 2018

Could use a higher resolution skybox and for distant world surface textures, especially for 16K screenshots.

Hoping these options get added to the in game menu settings though. With the pictures I share of it, I want to accurately represent what the game has to offer.