Realistic reshade preset for 3.3

Thanks for sharing your opinion, luckily for me, I'm no longer used to how the game looks with reshade, since I haven't played it for a while. I think that helps my eyes to readjust to the default game and work from there.

Regarding the vibrancy setting, vibrance is used to boost already washed colors and does not saturate already vibrant colors. It's true, I like the game more colorful in certain areas but also less colorful in others.
It's quite difficult to balance this because of the constant changing in lighting and environments. Darker looking galaxy background is my top priority.

Preference isn't up for discussion I think, people have different tastes, that's the beauty of Reshade afterall, to give people more choice and control.
I personally like a more natural look over gloomy or desaturated ones. I also take lots of screenshots, if you mute the amazing colors of space, what's the point? ;)

Yeah, with the instagram filters added being quite heavy handed, its going to be tough. I remember that from other games where the lighting significantly changed per map and its really hard (not impossible) to find a setting for all. But here.. its really heavy.. the difference between a white star and a red star is very dramatic.

Subjectively to my eyes, saturation makes elite look unrealistic, like a cartoon. Where it occurs is now different in 3.3, and places like stations are now beautifully desaturated out of the box.. :) In the old version the blues and oranges were far too saturated when you saw them not as a star.. To my eyes the base game looked like a themed video game not real space. Its always been a fine line though. To my eyes vanilla sits close to the line just leaning into being a game. The saturation also makes a difference in gas giants and ring systems too.. it looks like paint.

https://imgur.com/a/AGn84wD
These are the worst screenshots ever, but looking at the details you can pick out straight away the differences in intent from the two different perspectives. Also most of them have sharpening and possibly bloom still on.

EDIT: Just noticed something hilarious about those screenshots.. you can see the instragram filter in action really pointedly.. the engine trails are white in all ships... lol.

EDIT2: The other memory would be good to solve is with sharpening.. op has provided some great examples of where it really looks better, i remember it doing so too.. yet station interiors look better without it.. but the real problem is certain types of gas giants.. they look like solid plastic ping pong balls with it on. Its distracting how solid they look with certain pattern types. Yeah if only there was a way to account for that.. without frontier adding more detail and effect to them i doubt its going to get any better.

Also the boundaries between stars and the fire fur type effect becomes really distinct.. its okay on some, and terrible on others. If you have a sharpening setup that doesn't do that id love to know what it is.
 
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With the sole exception of the very last one, I can't tell the difference, except maybe on the one with star. The reshade one seem muddy compared to the vanilla.
 
https://imgur.com/a/AGn84wD
These are the worst screenshots ever, but looking at the details you can pick out straight away the differences in intent from the two different perspectives. Also most of them have sharpening and possibly bloom still on.

EDIT: Just noticed something hilarious about those screenshots.. you can see the instragram filter in action really pointedly.. the engine trails are white in all ships... lol.

EDIT2: The other memory would be good to solve is with sharpening.. op has provided some great examples of where it really looks better, i remember it doing so too.. yet station interiors look better without it.. but the real problem is certain types of gas giants.. they look like solid plastic ping pong balls with it on. Its distracting how solid they look with certain pattern types. Yeah if only there was a way to account for that.. without frontier adding more detail and effect to them i doubt its going to get any better.

Also the boundaries between stars and the fire fur type effect becomes really distinct.. its okay on some, and terrible on others. If you have a sharpening setup that doesn't do that id love to know what it is.

To me the screenshots look kinda lifeless, I have to agree on the gas giants though. I think the issue is the planet design, they look like paint on a ball bearing.

The beauty of Elite is the lighting intensity of a star, without using bloom setting, you can achieve a "natural" bloom. You know in real life when there is a shaded area, but sunlight hits a certain spot and it looks like a glow, I really love that effect. You can achieve it in-game too using reshade. Real life graphics are intense :p When it's sunny, all things look brighter, when it's cloudy, everything is washed out.

I'm gonna show some screenshots to demonstrate this.
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Here, the dust/fog is so dense that it blocks sunlight and the srv is barely lit. It looks washed out, but it's realistic.
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Same thing on this one.
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Here's an example of that "natural" bloom I was talking about.
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And here's a colorful one, yes it's slightly more saturated than vanilla, but I think it looks alive. This was before 3.3, would love to see how it looks now.

Default reshade sharpening on elite is awful, I started configuring Surface Sharpen by Ioxa, to my eye it looks great. Now I didn't test it with gas giants yet. Will upload screens for comparison soon™. ;)
 

Nice one, good luck.

Well, it all depends on whether you prefer starburst or british / old style wine gums (which probably have the same amount of sugar in them but taste like they dont).

As a fan of desaturating things to get closer to photorealism i always found they were unpopular.. gamers like more saturation it seems. Like starbursts they kinda burn on my tongue and make me break out on my skin too much.
 
Nice one, good luck.

Well, it all depends on whether you prefer starburst or british / old style wine gums (which probably have the same amount of sugar in them but taste like they dont).

As a fan of desaturating things to get closer to photorealism i always found they were unpopular.. gamers like more saturation it seems. Like starbursts they kinda burn on my tongue and make me break out on my skin too much.

Hahahaha, yeah. I don't wonder why Samsung TVs sell so well, saturation is eyecandy for some people. Nowadays we are used to exaggerated things, if you take a photo of nature, you'll see that on phone screens or TVs it looks a lot more saturated than real life.

Anyways, I just downloaded the game and went to the first gas giant I found to take some screens.

https://flic.kr/p/23JpVEFhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/124337289@N05/https://flic.kr/p/QzAcBKhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/124337289@N05/
On right is Reshade.

I have to say, the game looks better than I remember. I used old graphics cfg from 3.2 on 3.3 and it must have messed something up. Game looks a lot better without reshade now, but still the galaxy background is too bright.
 
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Greetings commanders, as promised I made a tutorial and finished the reshade preset before January ended. First post updated. ^_^
 
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