I came to know ReShade and qUINT Shaders from CMDR Flyinspaghetti in another thread related to tweaking in-game graphics.
I looked around and found no thread about qUINT shaders so I thought I'd open one.
For those of you who do not know what ReShade is, here is an explanation taken from their website.
SOURCE: reshade.me
And for those of you who do not know qUINT shaders, here is an explanation from the author Marty McFly.
SOURCE: www.github.com/martymcmodding/qUINT
Long story short:
ReShade is a software that injects "Shaders" (= elements that are able to change the look of your games) into a video game. I compared what the in-game "Ambient Occlusion", "Depth of Field", "Blur", "Bloom" and even "Raytraced Reflections" (the latter being something unavailable in-game by default) looked like.
Below are my latest comparison. Others might have tried it already, got better/worse/different results and opinions etc. I just thought it would be cool to document my tests and gather all the knowledge in a forum thread.
My system specs are as follows: NVIDIA 1060 3Gb in a Xeon W3520 Quad-Core 2.66Hz, 16GB Ram. 60GB SSD drive from.. forgot the brand
As you can see, not the best you can get today. Still decent for Elite Dangerous. I usually play in 2k (1440p) VSync ON @ 60Hz, NVIDIA 3d custom settings for 16x Anisotropic Filter and High Quality Textures. I also use Morbad's tweaks for GraphicsConfiguration.xml and GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml, making use of 4096 planet textures and the new shadows tweaks he released. I do keep everything at the highest settings, 1.00x Super-Sampling and MSAA alti-aliasing. When testing qUINT, I made sure that AO, DoF, Blur and Bloom were disabled in-game in order to not apply them twice. I did then turn them back on for the comparisons (and disabled qUINT, obviously).
More info here:
forums.frontier.co.uk
forums.frontier.co.uk
Screenshots:
(1440p DSR 1.00x SS 1.00x, no Anti Aliasing for these)
Vanilla ED (no AoF/Blur/AO/Bloom)
Vanilla ED (with AoF/Blur/AO/Bloom at highest settings)
qUINT (MXAO, SSR, ADOF, Bloom, Lightroom, custom preset)
qUINT (MXAO, SSR, ADOF, Bloom, Lightroom, custom preset 2 with less dramatic Bloom)
qUINT (MXAO, SSR, ADOF, Bloom, Lightroom, custom preset 2 with less dramatic Bloom + MSAA in-game)
Videos:
Side-by-side comparisons:
Vanity Camera
Docked on planet
Docked in-station
AO/DoF/Blur/Bloom comparisons:
"OFF" vs "ON (in-game)"
"OFF" vs "ON (qUINT)"
"OFF" vs "ON (ED for all but qUINT for Bloom)
"ON (in-game)" vs "ON (qUINT)"
"ON (in-game) vs "ON (ED for all but qUINT for Bloom)"
"ON (qUINT") vs "ON (ED for all but qUINT for Bloom)"
Blind test between two different blooms (one is qUINT the other is ED)... identical settings for the other parameters, only bloom is different.
Conclusions so far:
I don't want to bias your opinion but after some days I don't think qUINT is entirely compatible with ED and the in-game shaders do work better.
The only one I find to work well and like is the Bloom, which does not look exactly like ED's bloom (notice how the light sources get affected differently) but can be configured to your liking anyway (and could end up resembling what ED's bloom does). Regardless of how close it can get to the in-game bloom, I have to say it does a better - indirect - job at lessing the jagged lines issues that most people noticed. In a way it does help the in-game Anti-aliasing to smoothen things out and make it all a bit prettier. FPS-wise it does not impact more than in-game bloom, but it can give you a different feel that you might or not like (or you can tweak it to your liking, again).
Lightroom also works well but it's basically a color-grading app in itself. It can be used to bring the bloom back to the color values of standard in-game, or used to make something completely different (for those of you who like "colder" or "warmer" feels, more or less contrasted etc.
Let me know what you think and I hope you found this at least mildly interesting and appealing
o7
I looked around and found no thread about qUINT shaders so I thought I'd open one.
For those of you who do not know what ReShade is, here is an explanation taken from their website.
SOURCE: reshade.me
ReShade is a generic post-processing injector for games and video software developed by crosire. Imagine your favorite game with ambient occlusion, real depth of field effects, color correction and more ... ReShade exposes an automated and generic way to access both frame color and depth information (latter is automatically disabled during multiplayer to prevent exploitation) and all the tools to make it happen.
The possibilities are endless! Add advanced depth-edge-detection-driven SMAA antialiasing, screen space ambient occlusion, depth of field effects, chromatic aberration, dynamic film grain, automatic saturation and color correction, cross processing, multi-pass blurring ... you name it.
ReShade supports all of Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10, Direct3D 11 and OpenGL.
A computer with Windows 7 SP1 or higher (Windows 8, 8.1, 10) and the DirectX end-user runtime installed is required.
ReShade features its very own shading language and transcompiler, called ReShade FX. The syntax is based on HLSL, adding useful features designed for developing post-processing-effects: Define and use textures right from the shader code, render to them, change renderstates, retrieve color and depth data, request custom values like timers or key states, ...
And that's not it. Write your shaders just once, they'll work everywhere, regardless of your target being Direct3D or OpenGL: ReShade takes care of compiling them to the right shader model and language.
The possibilities are endless! Add advanced depth-edge-detection-driven SMAA antialiasing, screen space ambient occlusion, depth of field effects, chromatic aberration, dynamic film grain, automatic saturation and color correction, cross processing, multi-pass blurring ... you name it.
ReShade supports all of Direct3D 9, Direct3D 10, Direct3D 11 and OpenGL.
A computer with Windows 7 SP1 or higher (Windows 8, 8.1, 10) and the DirectX end-user runtime installed is required.
ReShade features its very own shading language and transcompiler, called ReShade FX. The syntax is based on HLSL, adding useful features designed for developing post-processing-effects: Define and use textures right from the shader code, render to them, change renderstates, retrieve color and depth data, request custom values like timers or key states, ...
And that's not it. Write your shaders just once, they'll work everywhere, regardless of your target being Direct3D or OpenGL: ReShade takes care of compiling them to the right shader model and language.
And for those of you who do not know qUINT shaders, here is an explanation from the author Marty McFly.
SOURCE: www.github.com/martymcmodding/qUINT
qUINT is a shader framework for ReShade 4, written in its proprietary ReShade FX language. It aims to deliver effects to cover most of ReShade's common use cases in a small and easy package. Notable properties:
- Next-gen effects abstracted behind intuitive controls
- Highly polished code for best quality and performance, taking care of many artifacts similar implementations suffer from
- Full use of ReShade FX so it can serve as a reference implementation of everything RSFX has to offer
- Fully compatible to the official ReShade shader repository
- Modular setup for faster compile times if only a part of qUINT is required
Long story short:
ReShade is a software that injects "Shaders" (= elements that are able to change the look of your games) into a video game. I compared what the in-game "Ambient Occlusion", "Depth of Field", "Blur", "Bloom" and even "Raytraced Reflections" (the latter being something unavailable in-game by default) looked like.
Below are my latest comparison. Others might have tried it already, got better/worse/different results and opinions etc. I just thought it would be cool to document my tests and gather all the knowledge in a forum thread.
My system specs are as follows: NVIDIA 1060 3Gb in a Xeon W3520 Quad-Core 2.66Hz, 16GB Ram. 60GB SSD drive from.. forgot the brand
As you can see, not the best you can get today. Still decent for Elite Dangerous. I usually play in 2k (1440p) VSync ON @ 60Hz, NVIDIA 3d custom settings for 16x Anisotropic Filter and High Quality Textures. I also use Morbad's tweaks for GraphicsConfiguration.xml and GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml, making use of 4096 planet textures and the new shadows tweaks he released. I do keep everything at the highest settings, 1.00x Super-Sampling and MSAA alti-aliasing. When testing qUINT, I made sure that AO, DoF, Blur and Bloom were disabled in-game in order to not apply them twice. I did then turn them back on for the comparisons (and disabled qUINT, obviously).More info here:
Graphics settings - Beyond Ultra
So, I picked up a new GeForce 2070. It runs Elite on my PC (i5 4670 3.4GHz / 16GB RAM) at a solid 60FPS at 4k and Ultra settings. I love it. I've heard tale of secret graphics settings, via editing ini files or some much, that'll push beyond Ultra. Where should I start tweaking?
Graphics Settings Beyond Ultra -- Shadows
NOTE: This thread applies to the Legacy 3.8 version of the game. I have a separate thread for 4.0 Live. Update Check post #14 #18 #23 #28 #32 #82 #99 #137 #165 #209 #240 #262 for most recent iteration of the file. Unless otherwise noted in the referenced post, the rest of this post still...
Screenshots:
(1440p DSR 1.00x SS 1.00x, no Anti Aliasing for these)
Vanilla ED (no AoF/Blur/AO/Bloom)
Vanilla ED (with AoF/Blur/AO/Bloom at highest settings)
qUINT (MXAO, SSR, ADOF, Bloom, Lightroom, custom preset)
qUINT (MXAO, SSR, ADOF, Bloom, Lightroom, custom preset 2 with less dramatic Bloom)
qUINT (MXAO, SSR, ADOF, Bloom, Lightroom, custom preset 2 with less dramatic Bloom + MSAA in-game)
Videos:
Side-by-side comparisons:
Vanity Camera
Docked on planet
Docked in-station
AO/DoF/Blur/Bloom comparisons:
"OFF" vs "ON (in-game)"
"OFF" vs "ON (qUINT)"
"OFF" vs "ON (ED for all but qUINT for Bloom)
"ON (in-game)" vs "ON (qUINT)"
"ON (in-game) vs "ON (ED for all but qUINT for Bloom)"
"ON (qUINT") vs "ON (ED for all but qUINT for Bloom)"
Blind test between two different blooms (one is qUINT the other is ED)... identical settings for the other parameters, only bloom is different.
Conclusions so far:
I don't want to bias your opinion but after some days I don't think qUINT is entirely compatible with ED and the in-game shaders do work better.
The only one I find to work well and like is the Bloom, which does not look exactly like ED's bloom (notice how the light sources get affected differently) but can be configured to your liking anyway (and could end up resembling what ED's bloom does). Regardless of how close it can get to the in-game bloom, I have to say it does a better - indirect - job at lessing the jagged lines issues that most people noticed. In a way it does help the in-game Anti-aliasing to smoothen things out and make it all a bit prettier. FPS-wise it does not impact more than in-game bloom, but it can give you a different feel that you might or not like (or you can tweak it to your liking, again).
Lightroom also works well but it's basically a color-grading app in itself. It can be used to bring the bloom back to the color values of standard in-game, or used to make something completely different (for those of you who like "colder" or "warmer" feels, more or less contrasted etc.
Let me know what you think and I hope you found this at least mildly interesting and appealing
o7
Last edited:
