Noticed this a bit on reddit etc recently so wanted a topic where we could play with it. Reshade takes presets and injects them into a running game, allowing you to do all sorts of effects and improvements. It’s the sort of thing that makes games like GTA look like photos.
Here’s a link to an OpenVR Sharpener shader, to help with clarity.
So you just download the zip, and then unzip the contents in the game run location to try, so something like DCS World OpenBeta\binshould might work. Reshade uses the End key by default to toggle it on or off. The theory is it might be ok to go down in resolution (and get better performance in VR) but use something like this to make it clear again. The ReShadePreset.ini lets you play with brightness, color contrast, amount to sharpen etc as well. The algorithm is the well known AMD CAS (which is usually used with TAA) but I guess it’s all good. If there’s one thing we probably learnt from VR is that the proof is in the pudding and not the algorithm.
Ok, first pass results, changing nothing about ReShadePreset.ini and just plonking the files in to DCS/bin and leaping into a Hornet over the Legoland map.
Result:
Clearer, as can see the outside world better, and labels in cockpit easier to read.
No performance impact that I could find, maybe about 1ms per frame.
Slightly nicer contrast, and a good way to tell if it is active or not as you mash the End key to turn on or off.
Nice. Will play a bit more, and see if MP servers throw me off or not.
@fearlessfrog thanks for the tip (not that I couldn’t use more things to play with )
Just threw it in there as is. Can’t say I saw much improvement in reading text in MFDs – if you hadn’t told me it was there I’d likely not notice.
However, in the NTTR (about 1+00 after sunrise lighting conditions), I did notice the terrain was visually improved. At altitude more contrast? Ground undulations/nooks & crannies, etc stood out better; not as ‘mushy’.
At low level I felt a slightly higher sensation of speed. Reminded me of using a higher res detail or noise texture map (reshade is sharpening things I guess). I’ll take that improved sensation all day long in VR - a big deal and wish for more.
I think it might be a good candidate to use in combination with a lower DCS PD and a higher SteamVR super sample resolution. So basically use it to sharpen up a foggy SS value and reap the benefits of a higher FPS in VR.
I agree, it was very simple to just drag/drop it into DCS/bin and being IC passable is great too.
I tried ReshadeVR and prefer it toggled on, due to the mod making things on the ground a bit sharper, especially say below 6k AGL. Did not try it A2A, but I assume that ReshadeVR will help with that too. I never saw the banner or UI as mentioned in the ReadMe, but the Home key definitely was toggling it on/off. I detected no change in FPS.
I’m interested in turning up the contrast a bit more to find the point of diminishing returns, which we might be there already. Good stuff fearless
Edit: I also tried it with IL-2 Great Battles and it had a very similar effect as with DCS. A tiny bit sharper and the colors a tiny more saturated.
And now I have tried it.
It’s a subtle, but noticeable effect. And yes, it is clearer.
I like the fact that you can switch it on and off, to really see the difference.
Will be interesting to see where this will lead and what people will make of it…
Troll, did you see the banner or try to pull up the UI as mentioned in the ReadMe? I don’t see those in either DCS or IL2 GB, but do notice ReshadeVR’s, as you said, subtle but noticeable effect when toggling on/off.
I saw the banner and used Home to bring up the settings dialog just in 2D I think. All settings and values to fiddle with should just be in the two text .ini files I think. I’m going to try some different saturation values, as the settings it comes with are for the Index colours.
The complaint was that reshade was greatly increasing the 2d users range when it came to viewing objects at a distance. I have seen videos that support this assertion but I never did any testing to confirm it one way or another.
If you do not enable the restrict injectors difficulty setting when you set up your Dserver this mod is still useable. I think most online servers are blocking it though?
With a shader injector you can pretty much do anything. I can see people doing things like make the sky negative, so any enemy flights pop out to be seen clearly or even more complex stuff like put a green box around anything over a certain contrast/size. It could be used for cheating for sure.
This VR thing is just the CAS shader for clarity and colors, so to answer @Troll’s question, yes, this is the new thing because nothing like this worked in OpenVR before. CAS stands for ‘Contrast Adaptive Sharpening’ and was originally an AMD algorithm that is free to use and hardware independent.
MSFS VR already uses CAS under the hood, so really this is just something new for DCS, IL-2 in VR. I’ve heard this also works great in Elite Dangerous VR as well. It would be quite easy for DCS to add this ‘in-product’ and make it part of IC so we wouldn’t need reShade, but that might be one for our grandchildren.
Here’s the 2D settings page, allowing you to set up values and tune it to how you prefer it. As you can see, the saturation is bumped up, and I’m not sure we need that for the Reverb. All these values just write out to the text file ReShadePreset.ini and can be edited that way as well.
The settings page allows you to redefine keys, set up a screenshot and FPS view etc, so could be handy if you already want End and Home rebound. All these changes go into the text file ReShade.ini.
MSFS already has the CAS sharpening built in, but the color stuff would be nice. Access to a UWP app is more about permissions, as they sandbox those apps for security. You can alter the permissions using something like this How To Access WindowsApps Folder In Windows 10 but do be careful or at least have some alcohol on hand if it goes wrong.
MSFS VR uses OpenXR so I really can’t see this working as it explicitly says it’s a Steam/OpenVR hook. I am often wrong though, and I haven’t tried it.
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