Spice up the graphics with: reShade, SweetFX & MasterEffect.h

[Adam Beckett]

https://youtu.be/rScreWmLDtM

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=518684503

https://youtu.be/9KBmzJfbsUQ

Ever since I first layed hands on Boris' ENB Series home-baked D3D9.dll's - and later on SweetFX came around - I am a firm believer in Post-Processing visual effects. Our modern graphic cards may still get to sweat when they have to do brute-force 3x3 SSAA or equal tasks, like rendering in 4K and preferably in >60FPS, but otherwise, there is plenty of power to do additional number crunching.

I like to look at nice things. Among video game players, we get called a dirty name, I won't repeat.

Railworks ... sorry, Dovetail's "Train Simulator" games are a two-headed snake, in that regard.

On one side, the base code is old - really old (look at those static water maps). The improvements in the last iterrations helped a lot on the rendering side of things. Yet there is only so much you can do with these 2D texture maps for trees, or the un-bump-mapped gravel on the ground, etc, etc.

https://youtu.be/p6EHkarBloQ

On the other side, there are moments of - may I say - beauty to be found!* When you get a pre-baked sunset to look at, starring at that evening sky, those non-volumetric clouds passing majestically and slowly by, while you are passing a red signal, or a train - with lights on - passes you, and you see some surprising shader effects by that lightsource, that flashed by you(r train), getting some passes too... rain drops, smearing the screen, etc...

https://youtu.be/pp9uTyDGh9k

In short - graphics are important, in my opinion.

One way, I like to play Train Simulator, is using Nvidia's 3D driver. Train Simulator works really well with stereoscopic 3D. You should try it out! (My old screenshots on the earlier forum pages are now gone forever. But for 3D you need either glasses or a 3D monitor anyway).

It has a great depth effect, making the trains look like the train models you all seem to still keep around (or even play with?!).

https://youtu.be/eT3gvfMj3Ts

Another way is to use the aforementioned post-processing graphic effects.

Now, I know, what some of you are thinking. "This looks ugly. Why should I use that?!"

The beauty of these home-baked shaders and libraries is ... you can adjust them to your liking! It takes only a little bit of editing and you can make the game look all kinds of ways.
From slightly enhancing existing graphic effects (Depth of Field, Ambient Occlusion?), to all sorts of crazy things (like Chromatic Aberration, old CRT monitor look and scanlines included!)

Here's a list:

SMAA Anti Aliasing
Sharpening
SSAO
RMAO
HBAO
SSGI
Complex Depth of Field
Bloom
Lens Flares
Anamorphic Flare
Godrays
Lensdirt
Color Lookup Table
Cartoon Shader
Levels Shader
Technicolor Simulation
Cineon DPX
Monochrome
Tonemap
Vibrance - intelligent saturation
Contrast Curves
Sepia
Skyrim Tonemapping
Mood Coloring
Cross Processing
Filmic Tonemapping
Reinhard Tonemapping
Colormod shader
Spherical Tonemapping (Watch Dogs)
Haarm Peter Duiker's Tonemapping
Filmic Curve Tonemapping
Watch Dogs Tonemapping
Sin City Shader
Color Hue FX (prod80)
Film Grain
Chromatic Abberation
Explosion Shader
Heat Haze
Vignette


https://youtu.be/BAC0qTE4fQI

You can "live-edit" for example the "MasterEffect.h" file (written in plain English) activate effects by simply turning a 0 into a 1 and change values of all the available effects to your liking.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=655571303

Some games and game engines won't work with certain adjustments. Some games - like TS - profit from different effects at different daytimes or maps. It is all up to you. But there is no "one-size-fits-all" setting. You could make one, for yourself though.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=654322552

Train Sim fans have a long history of tinkering with files - this, compared with what you do in the TS Editor, is really easy.


https://youtu.be/XYLtXonWetA

I was lazy, making these screenshots. I didn't show off more than one setting. The one I am using right now. If you googlebing you can find pictures and even videos of different use scenarios for different video games, if you are curious.


Where to get it:

http://reshade.me/

[Update] Version 3.1.2 was released on March 6th 2018

[Adam Beckett]

Could not find my own old 3D screenshots, but here are some examples on Nvidia's 3D photo gallery website (this also has color anaglyph 3D, as in red/cyan color plastic glasses for 1 buck will work!)

http://photos.3dvisionlive.com/JahPahZzZ/image/4ee113b937850184310000dc/

[Rededge]

Thanks, mate- so as well as struggling with nVidia Control Panel, and nVidia Inspector plus the in-game settings I have this to fiddle with as well- I may never get to play this game at all...

;-)

Seriously though, thanks for your post- it is actually quite intuitive and even I managed to tweak things a bit without getting in a mess in under 20 minutes!

All in the eye of the beholder I think, but to me the default graphics seem a little too saturated and a bit "cartooney" if that makes sense, but I dialed in a bit of de-saturation and activated one or two other shaders and it (for me) improved the image noticeably.

Worth experimenting with, certainly a lot of potential with this and I didn't notice any performance hit- depends what you activate perhaps.

[Rededge]

Well, I just tweaked a bit more and I must say I'm VERY impressed with this! Started a scenario on GEML route set in the early evening and the lighting was amazing, the sunshine filling the cab and the light actually looking like it was filtering through the trees, with dark contrasty shadows trackside. Then it started spitting with rain, just wonderful.

Nearly a no-stop at Manningtree I was too busy admiring the scenery...

For those dubious, you don't have to exit the game either- you can press the windows key on your keyboard and leave the Framework Mediator running in the background, activate your changes and dive back in game to see.

I was aware of SweetFX before, it's been around some time but this app goes a long way to making all this easier to implement.

Thanks again!

I have activated (in EffectOrdering)
Deband
AmbientOcclusion
ToneMap (adjustments made within to saturation and bleach)
Vibrance
Ambient Light (GemFX)
Lumasharpen

[Some of the stuff may not be doing a lot (I'm certainly no expert with this stuff) and the menus look washed out but the game looks better to me so :-) ]

Back to it!

[Furiey]

I will have to bookmark this for when I get a better graphics card.

[ohn]

I have a gtx 780, i like the graphics as they are, looks awesome i think.

[Adam Beckett]

Videos!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475525499

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475549613

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475515444

"Crepuscular rays" (in-depth look):

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475525503

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475515446

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475515443

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475525500

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475549614

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=475574100

So, I recorded some examples of different post-processing settings using reShade & Co.

These show often several different effects at the same time. The "before" and "after" images are not 100% accurate, because the effects sometimes demand for me to adjust the graphic settings inside the game itself. The original TS looks 'different' itself.

This is by no means to say "this looks better". I love the original game. And - as I said before - the game itself often looks very good. Look at this comparison video more as an opportunity for you to adjust your visuals to your personal liking, or just as an invitation to play around with the settings, giving you more tools and more freedom, to enjoy Train Simulator even more.

Some effects are quite dramatic, though, like the "god-rays", or rather "Crepuscular rays" ("Overcode" mentions this. It is real! Example 6 shows it in detail). These 'sun' rays stream through gaps in clouds or objects, like trees and signals. An effect that is not in the game, but the game code allows for this kind of manipulation.

Others, like "heat-haze" get old pretty quickly, but for recording videos of a hot summer railroad, it is neat to have?

You can choose between different color settings, all the way to actual black & white. Intensity of shadows or light sources {=Depth of Field & Bokeh! at night, makes it look almost Unreal (Engine) like!}

The lens dirt effect is very colorful by default. You can change the colors or intensity of the map inside the MasterEffect folder. I am still working on my "perfect" Depth of Field range, combining it with a Bokeh effect for distant objects. There is no video of that yet.



HOW TO DO THIS [using ReShade Core]:

(Or, you can use the ReShade Framework version. Has a GUI interface, for clicking & creating your custom dll-files)

Download the reshade files and folders (incl. D3D9.dll) and simply put them inside the folder of your game executable.

That's it.


What happens is the local D3D9.dll library will be detected by the game exe and used instead the default D3D9.dll which is usually in the Windows system32 folder.

Some games though crash in this scenario. Thankfully Train Simulator 2015 accepts the manipulation.

While the game is running, you can alt-tab to the MasterEffect.h file, which is a ini-like text file, that has a list of effects written in it, with default values, you could manipulate. At the top of the file, all effects are listed and you switch them on and off by changing the number from 0 (=disabled) to 1 (=enabled).

Further below in that file are the actual values which you can change to your liking. When you are done, simply ctrl+s to save your changes ... and alt-tab back into the game! A second later, you see the text message inside the game which tells you the effects were "compiled successfully".

That's really it.

Btw, some videos don't use Anti-Aliasing. Brightness is all over the place. Many effects are too strong or too weak. I did not fine-tune. I wanted to quickly upload some examples. Not highest quality videos (no 4K/60FPS) - wasn't sure about the framerate & I/O hit while recording on a non-SSD.

[paweuek]

Do I need to have hardcore ultra hi-end machine to use this effects? I can't decide if I like the effect:-P Sometimes it looks like there is very dirty lens on the camera.Overall this quite outdated graphics of TS looks little bit more realistic in my opinion.

[Bekns]

I had mucked around with sweetfx once before but found it a steep learning curve. The mediator GUI attatched to reshade maeks it so easy to change things and see those changes easily but there is still so many different things to change you can get lost really easily.

Does anyone have any suggestions for good settings for the god rays, cos sometimes the roof of the loco is just that... looks like its coming from god, lol.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes to tinker with settings, some of these effects are unreal.

Cheers to the OP for bringing to our attention.

Regards
Bekns

[Leigh]

I'm not a tinkerer either but if someone launched a clean .exe install with the most popular presets I would give it a go, something you could turn off and on easily in game or uninstall if it was'nt to your taste. I too love good gfx, If this is all that good, why wouldn't DTG patch the game to make it look better?

[Mavadelo]

Like paweuek I am on the fence. At moments I am in aww, other moments I am trying to clean my monitor lol. Looks promising though and as long as it doesn't collide or change the original game files I might give this a try.

Very good article though :)

[Adam Beckett]

Again, thanks for reading this at all. To answer a few questions:

@paweuek No. You don't need an ultra-high end machine, nor any particularly new graphics card. I would recommend at least a Nvidia GTS 450 (3-4 years old?) or an equally old ATI/AMD card. Basically anything that can do DirectX9 or higher. It works with Windows Vista & upwards (see the ReShade website). Your CPU does no extra work at all. Any half-way modern GPU can handle this. Mobile chips (= Notebooks too). I would recommend a DirectX11 chip card, though.
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@Mavadelo This post-processing 'thing' absolutely does not overwrite ANY Railworks/TrainSimulator files. You simply drop in the couple files and folders into your Railworks.exe folder - and equally delete them, if you don`t like them.

All it does is "inject" those effects. It "knows" certain values, like color or the z-buffer and changes those, altering the already rendered original game image in video memory before it comes to your screens. (I hope, I am right about this - not a graphics programmer).

No harm is done to the original game files or the trains themselves. They stay clean!. ;)

I only showed a fraction of what you yourselves can do with this. And, I am afraid, I showed the same colorful lensdirt effect too many times. You can keep "lens flares" and "god rays" without having "lens dirt" enabled. My fault. I just love it too much.

Every effect can be made subtle. Colors can be changed by changing RBG values.
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@Fuse I am not involved in the creation of any of these tools, but to my understanding, this is a rather novel and collaborative approach by different individuals. This means, there still is no 'one' easy solution or UI/UX experience to make it easier to use.

I cannot see this ever becoming a "one-size-fits-all" tool, which one could just click or install once and be done with it. There is such an attempt by a now famous user named "Durante", who made a tool called "GeDoSaTo" - offering post-processing effects for many (other) games.

But even his tool demands of you to decide, which effect you want to use. There are simply too many possibilities - and also different asthetic tastes. And all toolsets could collide with different video games and game code and can have the same effect looking disasterous in one game, while it fits perfectly, with the same values, in another.

The "ReShade Framework" tool is the closest to an "easy"(easier) way of doing this. You simply click on some options and find out if you like them. As I said above, even the same effect in a different daytime might leave a bad taste in your mouth.

....

As for the game developers. They have to decide at some point in the process of developing a game, what they can and want to offer. What is the lowest denominator hardware wise. On which PCs can their game run. On which ones MUST they run. They have to consider all kinds of problems, we - as consumers - cannot even think of.

Besides the framerate issues and supporting a wide range of hardware, as a game designer and graphics programmer, you also want "consistency" in your game. A certain key "look", a certain art style. And the game must look "the same" on different hardware, to avoid confusion. I think they absolutely delivered that!

In many ways the success story of the Train Simulator series is the reason why it keeps getting iterrations.

And these games always looked good! It is one of their "key features", I am certain.

The graphic/code upgrade from (I think it was...) 2013 to 2014 was big. I would bet 99,9999% of players don't feel the need to tinker with the graphics at all. Not even in the games own graphic settings. This is just a thing I stumbled upon and wanted to share with the few, who might care.

[Mavadelo]

Thanks for the answer Adam, I agree many players will not really feel the need for this however there should be enough players here left that do appreciate playing around :) I can see this come in very usefull for TS video creation. Running a BigBoy on Sherman in a grainy Filem Noir or "8 mm" would definately something to do on my personal list once I found out how it works.

Since you use it during your recordings, what is the added cpu load? running TS and OBS now needs me to close all BG so if it would put a high load on my cpu or gpu (GeForce GT640) I still might be out of luck lol. I do have the added bonus of 2gig shared on top of my 2 gig GT640 so if it only calls gpu power I might be in good shape

[Adam Beckett]

Yep. Only GPU. Your GT640 is perfectly fine.

Most effects leave just a laughably low fingerprint on the overall rendering. Video cards to that point did already all the really demanding things the game itself needs.

The few effects that COULD have an impact are related to Anti-Aliasing and Ambient Occlusion (SMAA/SSAA can potentially be a frame-killer in any game. As old Railworks fans know, the higher the resolution, the more demanding the workload on the GPU becomes, with Anti-Aliasing enabled). Equally Ambient Occlusion, like SSAO (less HBAO), if they are 'really' calculated and not just 'fake' effects, by just enhancing contrast of the shadow maps or equal tricks.

[Mavadelo]

Thank you, downloading for "testdriving" as I type. Your screenshots and video.... you run on a dual screen? Didn't know this was possible, Since it is another topic I will not hijack this topic for info, If I send you a friend request, could you message me a how too? (or a link to a how too :) )

[Furiey]

I don't think my 5 year old ATI 5800 series card will be up to it.