To the devs: Lords of the Fallen & UE5 improvements

[Mr. Gaiety]

Digital Foundry is a YT channel well known for making videos focused on the techincal aspects of videogames and they made a recent video touching on a few interesting tidbits about LotF:

- UE5 introduced a new lighting system called Lumen which leverages modern technology to introduce ray-trace (kinda) quality lighting without massive performance penalties
- LotF atm currently uses software Lumen which is of lower quality than hardware accelerated Lumen that takes real advantage of your GPU. Some notable issues is light leakage in areas of the game that looks like light sources are "bleeding" across solid walls and stuff
- UE5's Virtual Shadow Maps (VSM) is basically leverage tech to introduce really high quality shadows in videogames without a high performance penalty and without the various issues with shadows you can see in other games (ex. "striping", jagged edges, etc)
- If you use a third party tool like Unreal Engine Unlocker, you can enable VSM in LotF to great effect
- LotF apparently lacks a proper/good Global Illumination system to provide ambient shadowing
- LotF shader caching system is great and really helps keep stutters low, but unfortunately traversal stutter is still a problem

It would be cool if the devs considered a few ideas that could improve the game in the future:

- Introduce an option (if possible) to turn on hardware Lumen
- Introduce an option to turn on/off Nanite
- Introduce an option to turn on VSM, so people lack a reason to use thirdparty tools on the game
- Investigate if its worth implementing a good GI solution into the game to make ambient shadowing pop
- Investigate if traversal stutter can be improved
- Allow Steamdeck users to choose their preferred upscaling tech of FSR2/TAUU/FSR3/XESS in the future (this has nothing to do with the video i just wanted this lol)

Hopefully this information is interesting to LotF gamers and catches the eye of some devs. I'll provide sources below:

Digital Foundry's original video: https://youtu.be/SxpSCr8wPbc
Lords of the Fallen VSM ON/OFF comparison: https://imgur.com/a/lyzPaIl

[AILAD]

Do you know how to enable VSM in unreal engine unlocker?

[Blacksmith77K]

+1

[Blacksmith77K]

RevelationSpace eredeti hozzászólása:

Do you know how to enable VSM in unreal engine unlocker?

No, but you can simply edit your ini files!

Put the following in your engine.ini but dont cry about framerate ;o)

[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable=1
r.LumenScene.DirectLighting.VirtualShadowMap=1
r.Shadow.Virtual.Cache=1

And if you wish to burn-in your GPU, the add

sg.GlobalIlluminationQuality=4

to your GameUserSetting.ini

[◊ jaco ◊ de]

I have to absolutely agree. The lighting doesn't look good enough for the fact that lumen is involved here. But this is probably due to the fact that hardly any scene is illuminated by the real sun, but rather by artificially placed lights. The weather and light sometimes change significantly depending on the level section. I understand that to some extent, as you want a lot of variety in a small region.

But I can't shake the impression that the game wasn't developed with Lumen in mind from the start. Otherwise, the level layout could have been planned differently so that the natural light of the sun could shine better into the corresponding locations and thus lumen could be displayed better.
Scene lights are used everywhere, which do not produce such a good globe illumination effect and the associated ambient occlusion as one is otherwise used to from lumen.

I'm also a little disappointed with the implementation of Nanite. I was hoping that you would be able to clearly see distant levels. But no, these are still displayed, sometimes very clearly, in very low poly or sometimes disappear completely in the distance. Yes, the fortress at the top of the mountain is almost always very detailed. But if you look down from above towards the swamp, you wouldn't think that there is a level down there.
Only when you look up from below can you get an idea of where you are and then, with a lot of imagination, you can see where you were when you're back up on the mountain.

Every patch now also says “shadow-casting objects reduced, without loss of quality”. Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. They probably remove the setting that these objects cast real shadows and replace it with SSS screen space shadows. But now you see disocclusion artifacts all the time. It's really bad to see with large flags because they also move. If at all, you should only use SSS for static objects.
It's also a shame that VSM aren't included by default. With VSM activated, the ugly SSS become even more noticeable.

The image is also completely oversharpened. I had to deactivate that first using the UE's tonemapper. Unfortunately, the textures in the game also appear to be over-sharpened.

...

I like the game despite its flaws.
But I would have hoped for a little more from the presentation.

[Blacksmith77K]

With Hardware Lumen and VSM enabled, additional better GI noone is able to play with 60fps@1080p

[◊ jaco ◊ de]

The performance is not the problem. I play with VM and GI 4 = 3440x1440@120.
GI 4 doesn't make (that much) difference.
GI doesn't look as good as in other UE5 games like The Talos Principle II.
It's because how the developers use the lights.

[Blacksmith77K]

◊ jaco ◊ de eredeti hozzászólása:

The performance is not the problem. I play with VM and GI 4 = 3440x1440@120.

And DLSS performance, right?

[Handshoe]

Blacksmith77K eredeti hozzászólása:

RevelationSpace eredeti hozzászólása:

Do you know how to enable VSM in unreal engine unlocker?

No, but you can simply edit your ini files!

Put the following in your engine.ini but dont cry about framerate ;o)

[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable=1
r.LumenScene.DirectLighting.VirtualShadowMap=1
r.Shadow.Virtual.Cache=1

And if you wish to burn-in your GPU, the add

sg.GlobalIlluminationQuality=4

to your GameUserSetting.ini

No FPS drop with just:

[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.Shadow.Virtual.Enable=1
r.LumenScene.DirectLighting.VirtualShadowMap=1
r.Shadow.Virtual.Cache=1

sg.GlobalIlluminationQuality=4
That made my FPS drop from locked 100FPS to 56-60FPS lol