My Analysis & Solutions for Rendering Issues

[Ryan]

I won't write a review here, but suffice it to say that I am very impressed with the gameplay, story, music, sound design (oh my), and visual design of the game. It feels a lot like REmake and RE4 combined.

However, I keep having to pop into the options and reengineer a solution for to find the best mix of compromises for the various rendering problems this engine has. There is no right set of options that just "works", but merely different systems of compromise. I should not have to do this as a PC gamer. This is garbage, and really taking me out of the experience.

My PC is more than capable of maxing the game at 1440p, but the problem is that this new RE Engine clearly has numerous factual rendering issues. I know why the game defaults to FXAA + TAA, chromatic aberation and generally high amounts of blur: It is to hide the variety of rendering issues under heavy blur.

My honest impression is that they realized the game has numerous aliasing, shader and pixel mess issues, and pushed TAA hard to cover them up because there wasn't enough time to fix the renderer.

1. Pixel crawl / white pixel shimmering / pixel mess. Even while standing still, but especially in motion. Number of people have this problem, and I bet that everyone does. Anyone who hasn't noticed it hasn't run it with SMAA or high enough resolutions to remove most of the blur in order to see it. It is most notable on certain textures, such as in the wrecked ship stairwell. This is similar, but not the same issue as the reflections shimmering issue. These textures, no matter what options are set (and believe me I have tried every possibility under the sun), have white dot pixel messes all over them. Even when hidden by TAA (which is the only thing that really hides them), it can still be seen when looking for it, but it somewhat easy to ignore with TAA on. Thanks, CAPCOM.

2. The reflections shimmering pixel mess issue. This one is separate from #1, but perhaps related. It is separate because it is specific to the "enhanced reflections" on certain surfaces and goes away when the reflections are set to "Variable". These enhanced reflections are so enhanced that they cover tables and floors in pixel messes. Thanks, CAPCOM.

3. Green shimmer / ghosting in dark scenes: This is another one that I assure you is in your game, but you may not have noticed. If you are in a dark area and slowly turn the camera, and watch the edges of objects, you will see that they have these horrible green blur trails following them. This is not a function of my TV. This is not a function of the motion blur setting in the game. Even with every option turned off, this still occurs. It is especially noticable in the swamps area, where you can see the dark trees and dark bushes literally shimmer green when you move the camera. It was so distracting that I spent yet another hour engineering a solution for this (and it's still a best compromise where the issue is just less perceptible). These green highlights are very jarring and make me feel like I'm "not really there" in dark scenes. Thanks, CAPCOM.

EDIT: The ghosting is actually occuring on my screen. If I take a screenshot, the ghosting is not captured, but is is captured by phone camera shot of my screen in motion. Oddly, though, no other game, even dark ones, produces so much ghosting on my setup. It is what it is, then. Time for a new TV, down the line, then.

4. SMAA does not work very well: Turn it on, and go up close to a dark object against a bright background. Look at a straight edge. It's a jaggy mess. The SMAA as implemented doesn't really do much for jaggies at all. In fact, with SMAA on, paying attention to edges in the scene reveals that they pixel crawl and jaggy-dance just like with the FXAA option. The only improvement the SMAA option has is sharpness, but it is useless because of the pixel mess / shimmering that occurs if TAA is not on. Thanks, CAPCOM.

5. TAA is the only real option to deal with the issues. but causes extreme blur: The only real "solution" for the above rendering issues is TAA to cover them up. I'm dead serious. Take a screenshot in the position with a different antialising mode in each shot. Then go zoom in on them and compare areas. The only option that really does anything to get rid of the jaggies is TAA. TAA is also the only option that minimizes pixel crawl along edges, and pixel spasm / shimmering. It also mimimizes details. Go look at flies buzzing around in the kitchen with SMAA on (i.e. effectively no AA on, because SMAA doesn't do anything in this engine). The flies are large and visible. Now turn TAA on. Bam. The flies basically dissapear. Go look at textures. The definition is more or less gone. Thanks, CAPCOM.

6. TAA + FXAA just adds even more blur, and still I can see through it and see the white pixel mess shimmering, green highlighting haze, etcetera, but it's just less perceptible. The extreme blur is very perceptible, though. Thanks, CAPCOM.

Conclusion: The only real way to even make this game playable for me is TAA on. I am not exxagerating. Without TAA on, there are so many areas in the game that just shimmer and pixel mess. I am 100% certain that I have no hardware issues.

I have discovered a fairly decent compromise solution that minimizes all problems in a balanced way. It was difficult because each change potentially worsens the other issues. This may be useful to some others:

1. Get Reflections to "Variable". In my experience, this simply turns them off everywhere. Thanks, CAPCOM. It does remove a large amount of pixel messes from the game, though, so it is a must first-step.

2. Get Chromatic Abberation off. I'll be happy when developers stop whacking in cheap shaders from Walmart. This garbage effect belongs only in 2 places: Cheap cameras sold at Walmart, and high end photography equipment in the hands of experts who actually know what they're doing. It has no place in a video game where the camera is being used to convey me looking with human eyes. It also adds blur and distorts the image overall--sharpness is already at a premium in this engine, so get that garbage off.

3. In general, you need TAA on. If you don't have TAA on, you will encounter pixel mess areas that will distract you from the immersion. TAA is the only way to be able to avoid the majority of the pixel mess effects.

4. TAA causes extreme blur, and so your next priority is to minimize blur. You can do this by scaling the internal resolution up. 1.3 begins to show improvement. Of course, you need to be at (or above with downsampling) monitor resolution of you will have a blurry mess anyways.

Let's talk about downsampling before the next point: Downsampling can be useful, but in general it adds a bit more blur than internal engine scaling does. It actually does a variety of things for the image. You can see for yourself. It smooths the entire image out, cleans up jaggies and pixel messes, but you do lose some texture clarity, a very tiny amount. In general it cleans the whole image up, makes it more smooth and solid. However, in this case for this game, there is simply too little sharpness with TAA on, and so I opt for 1080p and 1.3 internal scaling, which adds some sharpness back.

5. Getting more sharpness with TAA on: Reshade Lumasharpen, default settings for it. This will add a "soft amount of sharpness" back in, which is just enough to improve textures, but not too much to cause other bad effects to come back. Want to know what will? Reshade Adaptive Sharpness. This will actually increase the green shimmer / ghosting issue by a noticeable amount.

The issue is present without Reshade installed, by the way, you just need to be in the right scenes, and pay attention, to see it. My eyes see everything. A blessing I would not willingly part with, but I see a lot of hot garbage in this game's rendering (and the world and art design is otherwise so gorgeous and immersive, a shame that it's held back by rendering issues).

EDIT: I have removed Reshade. Bothers me to not have the game default. Mods bother me. I no longer reccomend this as it changes the design of the game subtly. Things can appear oversharp.

5. Now your next priority is to tackle the green shimmer / ghosting itself. I have determined that bumping the brightness up 1 tick from default lessens the majority of this effect. I believe this is due to messed up gamma settings in the game, but cannot confirm this. With the brightness bumped one tick, it provides some "breathing room", enough to enable Lumasharpen and gain some sharpness back that the TAA took away.

Edit: Ghosting was TV. This did help, though.

Lumasharpen increases the green ghosting a tiny amount, but very little, and with the brightness bumped 1 tick, it is acceptable and overall a good comrpomise for the TAA blurring.

At this point, if your eyes and mind are like mine, you will still see little pixel mess garbage all over the game, but it's minimized, and enough sharpness has been injected back in such that you don't feel like you've just been slugged in the face by Rampage Jackson. Green ghosting in dark scenes should also be minimized enough that you can ignore it unless you are looking for it.

I should not have to concoct such a strange medley of compromises to get the game's graphics to stop having jarring distractions on a gaming PC in 2017. This is hot garbage in an otherwise incredible game. In RE6, I just boot up, hit default, set to 1440p and get in the game. No issues whatsoever. This new engine has serious rendering and aliasing problems that need to be fixed if they are going to spin more games off of it and throw them at us.

I do hope this post helps someone.