Ultra + is a disgusting downgrade

[NM 14]

I find this planet interesting to show various good aspect, and bad ones IMO.

Taken in ultra+, and I went at minimum speed for entry, with a relatively shallow angle. Textures and LOD had enough time to load and unload.

From orbit, it's rather average. It's OK. Nothing fancy. A bit blurry especially toward the edge of the screen (something I noticed a lot)
View attachment 255635
The next one is interesting for the 2 mountains. The one on the upper left is quite poorly made. The bottom half of it is smooth like ice cream, while the upper part is very noisy, for no reason. Looks like the mountain have hair.
Also note the crater in the flank of said mountain, which just followed the slope, like a sticker.

Meanwhile on the upper right, we have a mountain which isn't smooth at all and as such have a natural look to it. That one is consistent. The other isn't.
View attachment 255636
Finally, closer yet, overall it is rather good, but the upper left corner is a stain of very low resolution stuff. Blurry, no details.... It's really poor.
View attachment 255637


Eventually, I think the core issue is still there : LOD are a problem. The game can look quite good, but often the LOD just goes "nope" and you get low detail blurry stuff.
Also, the details are very random. Craters are "painted" over by the colors with no apparent logic. Textures are stretched at times on hill side, crater impact are "painted" on a mountain flank without taking into account the fact it's a mountain flank. Either the mountain appeared after the crater, and it should have been changed (or even made invisible), or it would have fallen on a mountain, and the crater shape would have been changed accordingly.

I noticed that even "noise" texture is applied randomly :
View attachment 255638
This noise texture, the "rough" one, is pretty much on every planet I've been. Color change but overall it's the same. It's placed randomly it feels, over the hill, on the side, whatever. The only place it makes sense is on the small mountain on the right, but other than that it's very random.

Some planets, such as yours, look much better after entering OC, although they still don't have the original details.
But above OC, all are the same, and the quality is very low. I think the mosaic is not so obvious because of green and gray.
As for terrain rationality, it's another matter. I'm trying to modify another file similar to fxcfg to see if it has been improved.

 

[Morbad]

Note that without recording the FPS are significantly higher

If recording is hitting your frame rate significantly, something is probably wrong with your recording settings.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Looks like you're right about that. Either that, or MSI Afterburner is no good as a video recorder. I just did a test with the recording function of GeForce Experience, and lo and behold: not only no FPS loss anymore (tested with fast VSync, normally, if I don't have to "prove" anything, I play with standard VSync which throttles the FPS to 60 because of my 60 Hz monitor) but also a much smaller file size! Amazing...
If you watch this, it's probably still HD processing on YouTube:

Oh wait, crap, that's only in 1080p.
So all back to start again...

GeForce Experience uses the built-in hardware encoder (NVENC) of Nvidia graphics cards, whereas MSI Afterburner uses a rather dated set of software encoders, which can be CPU intensive. MSI Afterburner is a great program for monitoring hardware and managing overclocks and fan profiles, but it is not a good choice for recording video.

Other recording apps, such as OBS, also offer NVENC as an encoding option.

 

[Morbad]

MSI AB/RTSS can use NVENC, but it has generally performed worse than GFE or OBS because of the way it grabs frames.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Good to know. I used OBS once, but that was years ago and the results were mediocre at best.

But now I see that the 1080 p from my example above (recorded with Nvidia) was only temporary before HD processing took place. It is now as it should be in 1440 p. So that's all I need. Or maybe there is another reason why I should use OBS? I have no intention of becoming a content creator. I just want to show a short clip or an example now and then, beyond that I have no ambitions.

I personally use GeForce Experience because it's good enough for my needs, very easy to set up and has virtually no impact on my framerate.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

MSI AB/RTSS can use NVENC, but it has generally performed worse than GFE or OBS because of the way it grabs frames.

Yes, I've just realised you can select NVENC in MSI AB via the external plugin setting!

 

[zombieapocalypse]

No, it's at the bottom of the "video format" dropdown menu. Select external plugin and then click the icon to the right with the three dots to choose and configure. You also have to switch the container format to mkv or you will get a message telling you the container format isn't compatible.

 

[MishaTX]

Looks like you're right about that. Either that, or MSI Afterburner is no good as a video recorder. I just did a test with the recording function of GeForce Experience, and lo and behold: not only no FPS loss anymore (tested with fast VSync, normally, if I don't have to "prove" anything, I play with standard VSync which throttles the FPS to 60 because of my 60 Hz monitor) but also a much smaller file size! Amazing...

For pity's sakes, Frillop. Listen to your boy! Vsync is the Devil!

Seriously, though, if you must use it, use nVidia's, which was developed to work on your specific card.

Anyway, as the now proud owner of a 3070 myself, I very much appreciate your test runs. At least I have a good feeling about what it's going to look like once I get ODY installed, so thanks!

 

[GJ51]

... So what Morbad said above still seems to apply.

That is always the case...

 

[Andro]

Apologies for the necro. Anyone know of a way to get the old "ultraforcapture" quality back? I liked that we had the option, and things were so much sharper from space.

 

[quackinthebush]

I don't believe there is, but if anyone knew it would be @Morbad

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Sadly I cant use the amd tech as a hard requirement. The 2 accounts I use are not near the galactic core, so create a new problem in odyssey.

if you pick any old patch of sky in the bubble, take a screenshot from amd upscaling, then normal upscaling odysee, then horizons, each time you see the number of stars in the skybox significantly increase.

The amd options push the star reduction too far and it doesn’t support the fantasy of being in space anymore to my mind.

 

[Morbad]

I did try replacing the reference to the UltraPlus LOD table with UltraForCapture (as it was previously called) on the off chance this LOD table was still in the game. It didn't work.

Attempted this again, just to see if the old LOD table was present...it causes the game to crash to desktop.

 

[Andro]

Damn. I hope we get this option back.