Improve broken Anti-Aliasing with this ReShade preset (Elite Roots Enhanced)

rootsrat · Nov 25, 2022

As we all know, anti aliasing in Cobra engine is not that great. I have finally managed to create a ReShade preset that somewhat combats that and improves on things.

Welcome to ELITE ROOTS ENHANCED!

1. INTRO

First of all, it is 100% safe to use ReShade in Elite Dangerous. It was approved to use by Frontier back in a day, when EDFX app was released about 7 years ago. I have been using my own ReShade preset since the very beginning of Elite Dangerous and I never had any issues from FDEV side.

This preset aims to achieve 2 things:

Slightly enhance the game's visuals and (tee-hee) atmosphere, while not deviating from the FDEV's vision for how the game should look.
Improve anti-aliasing, which has been broken in Elite since the dawn of Guardians.

Please note that this will not FIX the broken anti-aliasing. This needs to be done inside the game's engine. But this ReShade preset improves on the little details and a few annoying "features" of Elite's AA. It also reduces the dreaded shimmering of things' edges, but again it does not FIX it. As for the visual look, I have spent a lot of hours making sure that this preset works in all of Elite's lighting types (star types etc.)

Please have a look at the before and after screenshots. Best thing is to click "Open in new Tab" on each and then flick between the before and after and look at the highlighted areas to see some examples of how this preset improves the broken AA. It will inevitably means that the game is a bit more blurry, but this is the compromise sadly.

GALLERY LINK

The gallery below for some reason shows a forum page for me, rather than Imgur preview... there is a direct link above in case. I recommend opening each image in new tab in full size and then flicking between them to see the difference.

https://imgur.com/a/0Y3IZmk

Source: https://imgur.com/a/0Y3IZmk

IMPORTANT! Remember that Elite's lighting is still broken, especially when it comes to the image contrast in-game. This preset may potentially look weird on your setup, depending on your GAMMA settings in game.

2. INSTALLATION

Note the below installation steps will need to be done for every installed version of Elite (Live and Legacy etc.).

Navigate to https://reshade.me/ and download the latest version of ReShade. Get the standard version. Do NOT use the one with full addon support!
Download my preset file: Google Drive Link and unzip it to somewhere where you want to keep it. The file is called Elite_Roots_Enhanced_4.3.ini. I recommend keeping the preset file in a folder separate to your game's installation, as this way it will be safe. Elite will actually delete all of the alien files upon each game update, so it's also good to keep the backup of the whole ReShade somewhere, so that you can copy and paste it into the game's folder after an update.
Run the ReShade program. It will display a list of apps installed on your computer. Either select Elite or - if it's not there - click Browse and locate the game client's exe. Note this where the actual CLIENT exe lives, and NOT the Launcher! For Live Odyssey it would be ...\EDLaunch\Products\elite-dangerous-odyssey-64\EliteDangerous64.exe.
Select the game's exe file and click Next.
Select Dirext X 10/11/12 and click Next.
Click Browse and locate the Elite_Roots_Enhanced_4.3.ini preset file, then click Next.
Shader packages selection will be displayed. It should automatically select the required shaders, from the preset file. You can tick all of them if you want to experiment with different ones later on. The whole thing only takes 50 MB, so if you like to tinker I'd recommend getting all of them.
Wait until the shaders are downloaded and click on Finish, then launch Elite. The first time you run the game it will take some time for the shaders to compile, but after that it should just load up normally.
Press the Home key on your keyboard and run the tutorial if you want.
Open "Settings" tab and set the keys for Overlay (the one you're using right now), Screenshots and Effect Toggle - the latter will allow you to turn the preset on and off in the game, if you want to compare how it looks. I also untick the Show Screenshot Message, as it annoys me, but its up to you.

Important to note that the screenshots taken with the usual Elite hotkey will NOT have the ReShade post processing on them! You need to take the screenshots with the designated hotkey in ReShade settings. They are saved in the game's folder by default.
Go back to Home page and explore the Shaders, feel free to create your own preset and experiment!

It's great fun to create different moods for your game by visual overlay. I have a very grim, bleak and low-saturated preset for my criminal Commander gameplay and a one designed specifically to take nicer screenhots etc. There are lots of things you can do with this.
Just below the Shaders I've used is a SMAA shader. You can try turning this one too for even more anti aliasing improvement, but it will make the text a lot less readable.
As an optional, I have also added a Depth of Field effect, you can turn it ON and OFF with the Pause/Break key. It's recommended for foot play only AND it messes up the HUD, but sometimes it's nice for just wandering around, as it adds a nice film-like effect.
Press your designated Overlay key and have fun, Commander!

3. FINAL NOTE

I tried to make this preset look good in all of Elite's lighting conditions. Elite has so many different light types, this preset will work well with many other games. Sometimes it will need some adjustments or some shaders turning off completely, to cater to the visual style of a specific game, but in most cases it should nicely enhance most games just out of the box.

Copy all of the files you've backed up into any game's directory, where the EXE is located and it should just work.

I hope you guys enjoy this and find it useful! It definitely makes playing Elite a nicer experience for me personally.

zimms · Nov 25, 2022

I personally don't use reshaders like that, but I appreciate all the work people put into this for the community.

The timing might be a bit unlucky, right before a major update. Fingers crossed.

rootsrat · Nov 25, 2022

zimms said:
I personally don't use reshaders like that, but I appreciate all the work people put into this for the community.

The timing might be a bit unlucky, right before a major update. Fingers crossed.

Tru dat, we'll see what the patch notes bring.

I worked on this for absolute ages, so was just excited to finally release it. Didn't really think of timing. I don't presume it U14 will break it, unless there will be some major visual changes.

CMDR Sheehy · Nov 26, 2022

Hmm. Looking at the examples, I can see the differences, but the improvement seems so light, is it worth the extra work the PC has to do to achieve it? Would it not be better to increase the supersampling?

rootsrat · Nov 26, 2022

CMDR Sheehy said:
Hmm. Looking at the examples, I can see the differences, but the improvement seems so light, is it worth the extra work the PC has to do to achieve it? Would it not be better to increase the supersampling?

I lose about 5-7 FPS on my rig, it's not that demanding. Also, you can turn off the visual shaders and just leave the AA on.

For me it improves the overall picture enough to sacrifice these few FPS. The amount of shimmering reduced is definitely worth it too. Hard to show that on screenshots really, it needs to be in motion.

Condor · Dec 29, 2022

It it possible to reduce the blurring effect somehow? It is just like the inscriptions even are unclear

Janeway · Dec 29, 2022

Many thanks for all the time you have spent on this. Just tried it. WOW. Horrid Orbital lines before, so had to use SS 1.5. Turned SS back to 1 and used reshader and its a massive improvement on the old setting. Pity about the text softening but small price to pay for the visual improvements.

rootsrat · Dec 29, 2022

Condor said:
It it possible to reduce the blurring effect somehow? It is just like the inscriptions even are unclear

Try to play with the sliders on the Anti Aliasing shader. It's all a matter of compromise sadly.

Janeway said:
Many thanks for all the time you have spent on this. Just tried it. WOW. Horrid Orbital lines before, so had to use SS 1.5. Turned SS back to 1 and used reshader and its a massive improvement on the old setting. Pity about the text softening but small price to pay for the visual improvements.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's all a matter of preference really and which parts of graphics you want to sacrifice.

As a side note, I have an update almost ready to go, with minor improvements to clarity and hotkey fix, as currently the Pause key turns off 2 shaders instead of just one. Coming soon TM

lotusexcelle · Dec 29, 2022

This thread has me imagining if Frontier and Bethesda made a game together....

Genar-Hofoen · Jan 1, 2023

What screen resolution are you running all this from, @rootsrat ?

Until I decide to replace my perfectly good monitors, I'm "stuck" on 1080p; On 1080p the shimmering effect (the jaggies) are still very much present. I do run at a super-resolution and this does help a little bit, but even this reShader magic doesn't help much, hence the reason I'm asking, because if you're basing all this on runningg/viewing the game at a much higher resolution then apart from the other shader stuff with the lighting etc. it won't help us folks on 1080p to reduce the jaggies

I really wish FDEV would sort out the AA once and for all; this shoddy AA problem has been ongoing for years now.

rootsrat · Jan 1, 2023

Genar-Hofoen said:
What screen resolution are you running all this from, @rootsrat ?

Until I decide to replace my perfectly good monitors, I'm "stuck" on 1080p; On 1080p the shimmering effect (the jaggies) are still very much present. I do run at a super-resolution and this does help a little bit, but even this reShader magic doesn't help much, hence the reason I'm asking, because if you're basing all this on runningg/viewing the game at a much higher resolution then apart from the other shader stuff with the lighting etc. it won't help us folks on 1080p to reduce the jaggies

I really wish FDEV would sort out the AA once and for all; this shoddy AA problem has been ongoing for years now.

I run ED natively at 2560x1440. The screenshots in the gallery are at that res as well.

V'larr · Jan 27, 2023

Finally stumbled across this thread, would anyone happen to be able to get a quick video demonstration of the effects of this in the on-foot tutorial where it's so easy to observe the AA problems?

Shockbot · Feb 8, 2023

I will try this out soon because Anti-Aliasing is horrible in the game nearly game breaking.

rootsrat · Feb 8, 2023

Shockbot said:
I will try this out soon because Anti-Aliasing is horrible in the game nearly game breaking.

Don't expect miracles. But as you can see on the screens, it is an improvement somewhat.

Shockbot · Feb 8, 2023

rootsrat said:
Don't expect miracles. But as you can see on the screens, it is an improvement somewhat.

I use reshade in every game and since I tried Elite again after 1 Year I thought I would test a few settings with reshade because the FSR and CAS are not very well helping with that.