Quick Question - ReShade Effect Can't be Captured with V Key?

[Jim Robinson 122]

I just started using ReShade (in P3D v3.2) so maybe I'm a little late to the party, I guess since it's a post-process injection a person shouldn't expect to capture it with the V key? You know, I have a whole folder full of screens I've snapped since I installed ReShade/MasterEffect but in flipping through them this morning trying to sort out the good ones it just became apparent that they all suck and completely lack the pizazz they had at the moment I pressed the V key. I tried a couple comparisons with reshade on/off using the V key and sure enough, they're exactly the same - no reshade. I also tried a couple comparisons using just the PrtScn key and it's an entirely different story, PrtScn seems to capture the reshade effect just fine. Has this been the experience of others using ReShade? I'm guessing so?

 

Dangit, I had a cool nostalgic surprise all cooked up for you guys but I guess I'm gonna have to do the flight again, the v key screens I got look terrible because I have everything else (HDR, PTA) set up to look good with ReShade on and it looks horrible without it!

 

Well, that sucks, I guess FSScreen gets pressed back into service but from my experience that rules out FSX/DX10 w/reshade completely because you can't capture FSX/DX10 with the PrtScn key, all you get is black ... *sigh*

[Sethos 4,303]

Not sure what the "V" key is, is that a default game screenshot key or something you've done via ReShade? It's common for other screen capturing methods to not get the entire buffer of the game, thus losing out on stuff like ReShade effects.

 

The ReShade config files has a dedicated screenshot key that should capture the screen with the ReShade effects and dump the file in the main folder. Print Screen is the default key, so whenever you hit the Print Screen key, it should dump a .png file in your folder alongside the ReShade files. You could also change that default key to something of your own choosing, even which folder to dump it in. A quick Google should help you with that for your version. Then you can use V again and get all the effects.

[Jim Robinson 122]

Sethos thanks for the reply and information. Yes the V key is the default screenshot key in both FSX and P3D, it saves a .bmp in %userprofile%\Pictures\Flight Simulator X Files or %userprofile%\Pictures\Prepar3D v3 Files respectively. I found a bunch of .pngs in the root P3D folder, the ReShade Assistant put a symbolic link there so I guess that's why it's outputting the screenshots there. I followed your suggestion and googled the key bindings, now have that tied to the V key and unset the key in P3D's key assignments. An added bonus is that the .pngs are about half the size of the former .bmps so I don't need to clean out my screenshots folder so often!

For posterity here are the necessary steps:

-In the ReShade folder find ReShade.fx and open it with Notepad
-Add these two lines anywhere in the file, save

#pragma reshade screenshot_location "C:\\Users\\Jim\\Pictures\\Prepar3D v3 Files"
#pragma reshade screenshot_key 86

You'll need to substitute your own screenshot folder for "C:\\Users\\Jim\\Pictures\\Prepar3D v3 Files" but you must either escape the backslashes in the path by doubling them up (\\) as shown above or you can also replace them all with forward slashes (/). Make sure to keep the quotes in place if there are any spaces in the path string. I chose to output the screenshots into the same folder P3D always puts them in because that's where I'm used to having them, you can put them wherever you want.

"screenshot_key 86" is the "V" key. To unset the key assignment in P3D go into Options > Settings, click Controls on the left and then click the Buttons & Keys tab. Under Event Category select Simulator Events then click on Capture Screenshot in the pane below and finally click the Delete Assignment button below.

Now when you press the V key in sim ReShade will store the screenshot as a .png with the full ReShade effect visible and P3D will no longer output the .bmp.

I found in FSX/DX10 that the V key does in fact capture the ReShade effect so no further action is necessary to use ReShade in FSX.



ReShade off:


ReShade on:




ReShade off:


ReShade on:




Here are a couple attempting to show P3D Tweak Assistant's atmospheric scattering effect. I need to play with the options a lot more, currently I'm using only the atmospheric scattering and I've got the "General Shadows Intensity" bumped up just slightly. To me the blue haze on the mountains makes a big difference, the sim now looks much more like what you see in YouTube videos from the real world.






Much happier with my screenshots now, thanks!

Jim

[Raven9000 272]

See, this is why I keep out of things like this...

 

to me the "On" and "Off" screenshots look exactly the same.... :(

[Jim Robinson 122]

Pop each one open in it's own tab and then switch back & forth between the tabs. I'm not hugely into some of the drastic changes you can make with all these shader tweaks, HDR, post-processing, etc. so my intent was never to demonstrate the extremes of their capabilities, the difference is rather subtle.