Misc Wagnum's Graphics Mod Final (I promise! ;)

[WagnumPI]

Ive put off my update as have ended up doing a lot more work than first thought. Ive been trying to get the cloud colour to be cooler as in light cloud weather it was just too red which we all know in normal conditions clouds dont have a slight red/brown tint. The only thing that affects the clouds colour however is the colour temperature in the filter so have had to cool this down to more like what the natural graphics mod is like and then rework everything else as to me at least that mod just makes everything look too blue/cold and I prefer it to look like its warmer weathers. Hoping to have a release by the end of the weekend. Almost finished clear weather see below...

 

[WagnumPI]

WagnumPI updated Wagnum's Graphics Mod with a new update entry:

Major udpate...

Right, so because ive been having loads of issues with the colour of the clouds, especially in light cloud weather, the only way to fix this and give them a slight blue tint is to have a cooler coloured filter and going the way the NGM does. Doing this however to my eyes at least gives everything a blue tint which is how I feel about the natural graphics mod. Great though it is my biggest issue I had with it was that it just looks overly blue... Obviously not everyone would agree with me as...

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[WagnumPI]

Working on the sky colours as finally getting some clear weather so can take photos with my SLR and get true representation of sky colours without some nasty software bumping the colour vibrancy up or the like. Surprisingly to me at least I was aiming originally at far too light coloured skies.

Almost getting close to what I would call the definitive light cloud weather but changing so much from the standard weather its taking some time to nail down perfectly and get it all working correctly. Dont want to release until im happy with it all as know ive been annoying in the past and released too often...

 

[WagnumPI]

WagnumPI updated Wagnum's Graphics Mod with a new update entry:

Think I may finally be happy!

As ive been fortunate enough to have some clear blue sky grace me with its presence I got the SLR out and took some photo's of the sky to get some real true colour representation. Having done this ive been able to make vast improvements to Clear, Mid Clear and Light Cloud weather.
Ive also gone about making light cloud weather somewhere in between Mid Clear and Mid Cloud since as vanilla it looks very similar to Mid Cloud but just has the Sun light source included.

Ive also used fog to give...

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[Lily Starfox]

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[Lily Starfox]

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[WagnumPI]

Hmmm this is not the same time of the day, and it's highly possible the camera shows a darker image than the real thing, but this video can give us some good hints about what to do to get a more realistic look =>

The problem we have trying to replicate that however is that we have a very limited graphics engine. You may be fairly close to the brighter areas of the footage but there's some really dark shadows in there as well which I imagine your not achieving. What we need is a graphics engine with lighting like in Assassin's Creed Unity as that dealt fantastically with high dynamic lighting. It also however ran at just over 30fps in HD on my system while I can achieve 60fps in 4k with AC so there comes a point where we have to make sacrifices to realism with this engine just to make it look good as some things are just not possible, especially with an engine that only allows one light source

 

[Lily Starfox]

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[WagnumPI]

WagnumPI updated Wagnum's Graphics Mod with a new update entry:

Spent my time looking over previous installments....

When you've spent so much time trying to perfect things you can often push it too far and ruin it. Therefore I went over all my previous installments checking them over and mashed together all the best bits in my opinion to make this version. Hope you like! P.s. Brought vignette back again which i know some dont like especially if have a triple screen so if causes you problems it can be switched off in the filter...

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[Axel_Cooper]

Can I maybe use it with default weather or is it advised to use it with your weather to fully enjoy the graphic "fine tunings and improvements" you made?

 

[WagnumPI]

Can I maybe use it with default weather or is it advised to use it with your weather to fully enjoy the graphic "fine tunings and improvements" you made?

Might be fine, honestly havent tried it. I would advise using the weather as well though as sky colours especially are vastly improved as they are way too psychedelic in vanilla form. The files are pretty easy to manipulate so perhaps play around with them and find what suits your taste as everyone will have a slightly different opinion

 

[Axel_Cooper]

Might be fine, honestly havent tried it. I would advise using the weather as well though as sky colours especially are vastly improved as they are way too psychedelic in vanilla form. The files are pretty easy to manipulate so perhaps play around with them and find what suits your taste as everyone will have a slightly different opinion

Well I tried all - ppfilter, weather and clouds -, first time I use custom files of these last two and though the slight flare kind of puzzled me at first, I must say now that's a pretty good package! Lights look much better now, not to mention RPM leds, they're just amazing. The whole thing looks a tad warmer-coloured compared to the filter I used so far (Natural_Mod), expecially under heavy clouds and it's a right choice, imho.
Speaking of heavy clouds, I noticed a smooth glare effect when glancing back and forth, is it possibile to disable it maybe?

 

[WagnumPI]

Well I tried all - ppfilter, weather and clouds -, first time I use custom files of these last two and though the slight flare kind of puzzled me at first, I must say now that's a pretty good package! Lights look much better now, not to mention RPM leds, they're just amazing. The whole thing looks a tad warmer-coloured compared to the filter I used so far (Natural_Mod), expecially under heavy clouds and it's a right choice, imho.
Speaking of heavy clouds, I noticed a smooth glare effect when glancing back and forth, is it possibile to disable it maybe?

Can you perhaps post a pic of the issue as not sure what you mean and then I can point you in the right direction to rectify or sort it if need sorting

 

[Axel_Cooper]

Okay... errr I hope the low gfx settings of my poor vga don't affect your judgement in these pics...

When glancing back, view is like this:

which after an instant becomes like this

When coming back to see forward, I have the opposite..
This one

is followed by this:

Tried playing with exposure commands (page up/down) but doesn't seem to work, happens only in certain areas of the track, I guess the ones directly exposed to the light source.
This session I played was at 12:00, temp 22° C, heavy clouds (the latter apparently doesn't have anything to do with it, since it may be related to simulated light's reflection).
If can be of help, here's my ppfilter settings:
overall effect quality: normal; glare quality: high; depth of field quality: normal; colour saturation: 100%; motion blur: off; crepuscolar rays: off; heat shimmering effects: off; fast approximate anti-aliasing: on.

 

[Skyclown]

 

[WagnumPI]

Okay... errr I hope the low gfx settings of my poor vga don't affect your judgement in these pics...

When glancing back, view is like this:

View attachment 134079

which after an instant becomes like this

View attachment 134080
When coming back to see forward, I have the opposite..
This one

View attachment 134081

is followed by this:

View attachment 134082
Tried playing with exposure commands (page up/down) but doesn't seem to work, happens only in certain areas of the track, I guess the ones directly exposed to the light source.
This session I played was at 12:00, temp 22° C, heavy clouds (the latter apparently doesn't have anything to do with it, since it may be related to simulated light's reflection).
If can be of help, here's my ppfilter settings:
overall effect quality: normal; glare quality: high; depth of field quality: normal; colour saturation: 100%; motion blur: off; crepuscolar rays: off; heat shimmering effects: off; fast approximate anti-aliasing: on.

Right okay, that's to do with the exposure settings. The auto exposure in this game isnt great to be honest and quite often leaves the image either over or under exposed. I put up with it just because i do like the effect even if it doesnt work that well. What you can do to prevent that from happening is turn auto exposure off and just have a set exposure level.
To do this open the PPfilter in notepad, locate the AUTO EXPOSURE section and change the enabled line to 0. Then under TONEMAPPING there is an exposure setting which if you adjust that until your happy then you wont get that effect any longer.

Hope that helps

 

[Axel_Cooper]

Right okay, that's to do with the exposure settings. The auto exposure in this game isnt great to be honest and quite often leaves the image either over or under exposed. I put up with it just because i do like the effect even if it doesnt work that well. What you can do to prevent that from happening is turn auto exposure off and just have a set exposure level.
To do this open the PPfilter in notepad, locate the AUTO EXPOSURE section and change the enabled line to 0. Then under TONEMAPPING there is an exposure setting which if you adjust that until your happy then you wont get that effect any longer.

Hope that helps

OK, I'm stupid; how could I forget such a basic thing to do... thanks.
I didn't notice the issue anymore, tried some sessions and exposure seems to be fine to me for now; does editing those lines you talk about in the .ini file have the same effect of setting exposure in-game through the page up/down buttons?

 

[WagnumPI]

OK, I'm stupid; how could I forget such a basic thing to do... thanks.
I didn't notice the issue anymore, tried some sessions and exposure seems to be fine to me for now; does editing those lines you talk about in the .ini file have the same effect of setting exposure in-game through the page up/down buttons?

Basically with the "Auto Exposure" settings the target aims for what you want the camera wants to achieve and the Min and Max settings control the level of adjustment it can expose. If you try one of the vanilla PPfilters, most of their min and max settings are quite different and so this effect is far more noticeable than it is with mine and when you use the page up and down buttons you can make large adjustments to the exposure which on mine is not the case. This gets in the way when trying to take a perfect snapshot but works better when gaming.
On my filter, I want the effect there but it causes too many issues if left to auto expose on a large scale and so bringing the min and max settings closer means the movement in exposure is not massive and so it causes less of an issue when it decides to under or over expose. Natural Graphics Mod does the same and I know some others get rid of the Autoexposure all together as its not that advanced.

If it worked better I would have the scale far larger but alas like i said before, causes too many issues and I want people to play the game and enjoy my mod rather than having to tweak the settings depending on what camera settings they use.

 

[Axel_Cooper]

That's understandable, after all we should spend more time actually playing than tuning and tweaking (unfortunately reality is different... )
I wanted to ask you already... what exactly do you mean by 'vanilla ppfilter'?

 

[WagnumPI]

That's understandable, after all we should spend more time actually playing than tuning and tweaking (unfortunately reality is different... )
I wanted to ask you already... what exactly do you mean by 'vanilla ppfilter'?

"vanilla" is the term people use for the "standard" game as it were. Say for example you had a screenshot comparison of Skyrim with and without mods, you would title the graphics mod whatever its called and then the original graphics screenshot would be labelled vanilla. Here's an example;

Therefore vanilla ppfilter is just one of the ones that comes with the game that hasnt been tampered with by one of us folk!