Topic-Free Mega Thread - v 1.11.2020

General
#1555

There’s a glare thing on the screen if you use the phone without some SpecialK UI/HUD shader toggles or a mod to hide it though the last thing I don’t know.

I used a few of those to hit the tone mapping and other buffers for some nifty effects but that was a long time ago now.

EDIT: There’s also a bunch of scratches and some other effects.

EDIT:

(Thought it was modular though.)

EDIT: This stuff.

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EDIT: I should replay the games at some point.

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EDIT: There’s also this white buffer shader effect doing, something.
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(Shadows or normals, been some years now.)

#1556

I can potentially do something about this to post-process the gamma, but … that undoes the entire benefit of flip model in the first place.

If you add an extra step in getting an image out of the swapchain’s buffer to apply color correction before the GPU can scanout a signal, we’re back to doing something that’s not technically buffer flipping.

I hate all engines that use swapchain color processing. They need to do gamma themselves the lazy bastards :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously, leaving the images in the swapchain in a state where gamma correction hasn’t yet been applied has no conceivable benefit. It just adds extra latency, which is fantastic when you’re building a game (!!)

#1557

It’s weird though because only the in-game camera experiences this issue from what I can tell. Steam’s screenshots seems to turn out fine, so I’ll just use that one instead.

But… hmm… the in-game camera is a fun thing to spend time with in this game. NPC’s various reactions are fun! :smiley:

#1558

Yeah, it’s probably that “scratches layer” that have glitched out there and used another texture entirely or something…

I wonder if this was caused by Special K’s texture cache… I can’t actually reproduce it though, as it’s just the regular scratches layer now after a game restart.

1 Like
#1559

I can add some additional monitoring of Render Target Views on the swapchain backbuffer when I apply the flip model sRGB-off hack. D3D11 can create an sRGB view of a non-sRGB buffer, which is the appropriate behavior.

Most engines that use an sRGB swapchain are smart enough to be creating sRGB views, which means the change in gamma doesn’t matter. It’s only the dumb ones that are creating views without asking for any format. When no format is asked, Windows picks the closest match.

#1560

There’s an off chance this will fix-up Watch_Dogs 2,

SpecialK64.7z (7.6 MB)

It certainly didn’t fix the problem in Path of Exile, but to be honest Path of Exile’s problem is reverse. Normally disabling sRGB for flip model causes a game to go much brighter than it should be.

This version includes the new HDR presets and support for VLC, BTW.

So i've been trying to get Path of exile to work with flip mode but
#1561

Yeah, working for me, i had to use my controller to prompt the control panel, perhaps VLC hotkeys are interfering here?

Looks really great, i just think shadows need to be a touch higher since some stuff is hard to see. I messed around with Nvidia and VLC’s colour settings, but it’s specifically the shadows that need to be brought up just a touch, rather than the entire image’s contrast being reduced. That being said, i don’t know if dark shadows are actually a good thing in my case, since it helps make the HDR more pronounced on this 350-400 nit panel.

Edit: I have an endless amount of footage to test, lol. The more i’m testing, the more i’m split on whether the shadows are handled correctly or not. It’s still a tad dark for some footage (which are colour corrected properly), but for other footage it actually works right, and there’s also a good distinction between shadows and highlights. Hope i don’t sound confusing XD

Assuming you still have the original SK trailer file, you can check for yourself and see if the shadows are a bit too dark for you too, it’s definitely dark for me in some areas, particularly the beginning.

#1562

I just realized I’m a dumbass :slight_smile:

I’ve been approaching this framerate limiter thing all wrong, in the sense that I was going to release it open source and hope someone builds a tool like RTSS to make applying my limiter easier.

I still will release an open source standalone implementation, but the far simpler solution is just to hand it over to Crosire for integration into ReShade.

People with intermediate technical skills perhaps only marginally more demanding than running RTSS use ReShade all the time, distributing as part of ReShade would be an easy way to get the world’s most advanced framerate limiter into the hands of everyone :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve had a change of mind after looking at the performance of my limiter in OpenGL. It still smashes the competition without all of the intricate swapchain tuning that can be done in DXGI graphics APIs, so I have an idiot proof product already and it’s time to just start getting it in the hands of users.

#1563

ReShade with a framerate limiter, well it already has a number of additional overrides so it seems like a good addition if that works out. :slight_smile:

#1564

… wow… A reason for me to actually use ReShade for once…

#1565

To be honest, ReShade has a lot of uses :slight_smile:

I’ve seen a lot of people build proof of concept tools using it, since it’s a pretty simple injection base that covers a bunch of graphics APIs. That’s what I see as being the primary benefit here, I can experiment with integration into other products and find any loose ends.

Because ultimately I want this thing to be available to both end-users and something that port developers might license rather than roll their own abomination of a framerate limiter that I may very well have to patch their game to remove :stuck_out_tongue:

#1566

This article is stupid…

My RTX 2080 Ti KINGPIN runs the game at about 50 FPS in Can it Run Crysis Mode at 4K. The game looks terrible frankly, I expected for the performance cost it’d be wowing me a little more, but they just went out of their way to make a game that’s difficult to run for the sake of continuing a meme.

#1567

The original game had great visual quality when it was released but the selective updating and what appears to be a more stylized or filmic look over the more natural though in comparison perhaps a bit duller looking visuals also clash a bit.

I think some of the comments I’ve read put it well it’s a 2007 game with updated lighting and shadows but the selective updating of assets and textures plus the performance problems are dragging it down.

The excess of some of the highest PC settings could have been better balanced too but maybe the preset a step down already does a good job with that without 8192x8192 shadow resolution and a near removal of LOD levels.

Plus the 8192x8192 texture resolution for the nanosuit which barely shows up at all after the lads all disperse past the first map leaving the player to look at his 8k arms for the remainder of the game. :stuck_out_tongue:

EDIT: Well at least the MP outfits kinda resemble uniforms I suppose.

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EDIT: The engine itself is still really impressive however, shame Kingdom Come couldn’t get the newer Cry Engine V code base but maybe the sequel can since it’d be a huge undertaking remaking much of the data.

Beta version still holds up with it’s usage of light and shadows and the woods in particular though said beta is very crash prone but the full game also holds up well even if scaled back somewhat. :slight_smile:

Crytek and their own work with Hunt Showdown probably as a even bigger tech showcase for the engine itself.

Wonder if Crysis 1 Switch was the primary target here and then updates and releasing that version (Based on the already somewhat updated version on X360 earlier.) became a bit of a extra though delayed slightly due to criticism.

But as probably could be expected a month or two isn’t enough time for a more thorough overhaul.
Hopefully some code fixing and optimization can be done at least.

#1568

tenor (3)

In all seriousness though, the game really needed a few more months in development, but ig next-gen consoles releasing would’ve stolen the spotlight. I think this looks great for a remaster, outside of some non-updated textures, but it’s definitely held back by not being a remake. Worth noting they somehow pulled off RTX alternatives in real-time and API-agonist([ish) - you have SVOGI which is similar to Metro Exodus’s raytraced GI, raytraced reflections, and then there’s the shadow coverage which is similar to Modern Warfare’s raytraced shadows. Of course, none of these looks as clean as the RTX versions, but it’s impressive they can all run in real-time on consoles.

I think that was part of the goal though, to just get Nvidia’s RTX features running in real-time all at the same time somehow, that’s the impressive feat of this remaster. But outside of that, some of the 8k textures are good, but there’s still a ton of super low res textures. I feel hypocritical pointing this out, considering my current texture packs still have some textures left to cover, lol.

Plus why did they go with basic lightrays that we got from PS2 games? I’m guessing full volumetrics was too difficult to pull off appropriately on a per area basis. I think if they sorted that out, updated some more textures, redid the meshes of weapons, increased the polycount of your fps hands you see all the time, and updated their few character models (even if just their body and textures), then it would’ve looked fine.

That being said, i’m convinced that if they had the funds to make a Crysis 4, it would’ve looked seriously mindblowing, because the assets and fundamental art design wouldn’t hold it back.

#1569

I’m probably the only person that’s disappointed by the remaster because of the AI, not the graphics. The original game was always held back by the enemy AI for me, they just have eyes on the back of their heads as soon as cloak mode runs out, and can track you crawling through grass from half a mile away. And then sometimes they don’t even shoot at you when you’re right in front of them, it’s really awkward.

#1570

Well, technically a lot more are saddened by the AI — if only because it seems they didn’t properly fix the multithreaded issue with the original design of the game, so AI and a few other CPU heavy workloads are still seemingly only limited to three threads or so…? :expressionless:

#1571

That’s what Fortnite just did I think, takes a big bit of performance to run the shadows (+AO), reflections and GI but it looks pretty nice though until more users have 3070’s and above the performance hit is pretty noticeable even with also adding DLSS support.
(UE4 has it’s own TAA upscaling algorithm in 4.19+ but it’s pretty rough in motion albeit better than regular methods but still not something I’d recommend.)

Probably going to be a tech demonstration for the Ampere and on NVIDIA cards or maybe that’s Unreal Engine itself going forward particularly the new 5.0 version.

EDIT: Plus that’s just the start similar to Rainbow Six Vegas or Roboblitz as the earlier UE3 titles.

Daylight as the earliest proto-UE4 game.

EDIT: For Fortnite the reflective eyes is a nifty little touch too.

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EDIT: Though maybe not worth halving the framerate over. :smiley:

#1572

I struggled to see any improvements besides reflections in the trailer, i don’t know if it’s just the art design of the game that stops it from really benefiting from raytraced effects, at least in my eyes.

Going by the UE5 demo on PS5, i’m staying well away from that. 1440p upscaled to 4k according to DF, and the artifacts are horrible in motion.

1 Like
#1573

Reflections are what I expect to see as the focus in particular, GI’s secondary lighting pass is nice but very subtle unless you compare.

Shadows actually get softer though the grounded ambient occlusion is a step up even over voxel methods like NVIDIA’s attempts with VXGI or Crytek with SVOTI/SVOGI :slight_smile:

EDIT: Just need to get the developers to get materials a bit more tuned in not make everything 100% mirror or chrome shine.

Plus some of the Fortnite comparisons seem to mix ray-tracing with cube mapping as well.

#1574

Wonder if the extra drawcalls make the remaster even more demanding on the CPU than the original game, in that case.