I have owned over a dozen flightsims in my life, finally tried Xplane (version 11 trial).

I don't think I would purchase the paid version unless I can get Reshade to brighten up the faded out textures of Xplane.

Unfortunately I cannot get Reshade to open in the trial version. I downloaded Reshade 4.3 and ran it's executable, pointing it to X-plane.exe file and chosing DX10+. This put a reshade-shaders folder under the main Xplane folder.

But when I run Xplane 11 (trial) and push Control F2 absolutely nothing happens, reshade windows do not appear at all. Nothing to do with reshade appears at all ??

 

 

But when I run xplane I can't get reshade to appear.

 

Edited July 16, 20196 yr by Fielder

Google and try Reshade manual install. Works fine.

5 hours ago, Fielder said:

Unfortunately I cannot get Reshade to open in the trial version. I downloaded Reshade 4.3 and ran it's executable, pointing it to X-plane.exe file and chosing DX10+. This put a reshade-shaders folder under the main Xplane folder.

But when I run Xplane 11 (trial) and push Control F2 absolutely nothing happens, reshade windows do not appear at all. Nothing to do with reshade appears at all ??

 

It won't open because you chose DX10+. X-Plane is based on OpenGL, so delete reshade, and when you reinstall it, select OpenGL.

Edited July 16, 20196 yr by ninerwhiskey9W

I uninstalled Reshade by deleting DXGI.dll

 

Reshade will NOT install into my Xplane if I select 'OpenGL' tic box. Instead, the Reshade installer just freezes at 'working on X-Plane', it never proceeds to 'Success' and never installs into Xplane.

 

On the other hand, Reshade will install just fine if I select 'Direct3D 10+' but then, of course, Reshade won't work because Xplane is not direct3D. So then I uninstall Reshade from Xplane (delete  DXGI.dll ) and then run Reshade installer selecting OpenGL and reshade installer just freezes. 

 

Edited July 16, 20196 yr by Fielder

I was advised above to manually install reshader into Xplane11. This seems to be impossible because reshader has (foolishly) removed all zipped file versions of their product and replaced them with .exe files. So I see no way to try a manual install :(. 

so I removed xplane 11 and reinstalled it. And still reshader will not install into Xplane if I chose OpenGL.

I'm not the only one, googling around found other people around the net with same problem. None of those I read had happy endings where the OP managed to get reshader installed. They just left the thread or they said it just isn't going to work and gave up and then left the thread.

On the other hand, the vast majority never had a problem installing reshader at all.

 

 

So reshader isn't going to work with Xplane for everybody who has Xplane installed. And it isn't going to work for me.

 

I note that the x-plane.org forum has tens of thousands of downloads of a file to install reshader into x-plane. So apparently many other people (99,498 people to be exact) also believe that maybe the graphics in x-plane are washed out and need help.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/36509-reshade-xp11/

 

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 20196 yr by Fielder

Try running the ReShade installer as administrator or add it to your anti-virus exclusion, in case it's halting its installation process.

If that fails, create a bogus .exe file by simply renaming something and then point to that and install, or just use another game / piece of software. Then move over the files and change the directory paths within the ReShade.ini to match.

Edited July 16, 20196 yr by Sethos

I'll jump here and mention that if you can't get Reshade to work, there are many other ways to reduce or eliminate the "faded out" look of X-Plane, assuming you're talking about the external world. There is a haze effect that's over-done in my opinion. Reshade isn't the only way to deal with it.

There are many free plugins at the .org file libraries for adjusting the haze, based on a simple dataref, or you can search for ways to do that yourself. Most of the weather addons deal with it too, like the ActiveSkyX plugin I use for weather injection.

I did like Parrafin and Sethos advised. Reshade still will not appear in Xplane-11.

I shut off virus protection and manually installed the files and folders from a dummy game ( reshade-shaders folder and opengl32.dll and opengl32.ini) over inside the X-Plane11 folder. And changed the directory paths inside opengl32.ini.

Then when I open Xplane and strike the Shift+F2 or Home key nothing at all happens. The reshade menu does not appear.

So I give up. X-plane may be a fine simulator, but I cannot get it too look as good as FS9, let alone FSX. It would look way better than either if it's images weren't so faded and pale. Too bad really.

From what I understand a few ver of xplane ago, they changed the way shaders worked to to get them ready for vulcan, so from what i understand mucking around with them is not a good idea because they didnt want third parties to add any other furfies into the miix while doing there vulcan preps.

Somebody just send him the d a m n e d files.

Edited July 20, 20196 yr by Colonel X

On 7/16/2019 at 5:33 PM, Paraffin said:

I'll jump here and mention that if you can't get Reshade to work, there are many other ways to reduce or eliminate the "faded out" look of X-Plane.....

Good advice to add.  I use a couple of Lua scripts which I slightly modified, just to get deeper cloud shadows and better performance.  One is Enviro+.lua and the other X-Visibility.lua.  In Enviro+.lua, I edited one line to appear as follows:

set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/cloud_shadow_lighten_ratio", .99)

That one edit in that one script has given me much richer and deeper cloud shadows, even better than what P3D offers, and it's a free offering.

I do not mind Xplane11's washed out look so much as compared to the opposite in P3D.  We do have P3D like crystal clear vis in the desert where I live and fly out of, but in most of my business flying, the sky I have seen and atmosphere is very much like Xplane11's rendering, actually even a bit hazier.

But eyes differ too, hence my need for glasses, lol, one of my eyes is perm dilated from a stroke I had in infancy, so the flood of light into makes distance vision in that eye different than my right eye, I get a haze effect in that eye from the damage to my vision area for that eye, in my brain.  So perceptions matter from simmer to simmer, pilot to pilot, when trying to get our sims to look the way we know flight should look. 

For MSFS I made a mod called "Soft Horizons" way back then, not that anyone other than me remembers it but it still lurks in the Avsim library for FS9 and FSX.  FS9 had a terrible "hard" horizon effect, but I was on the beta and one of the MS staff shared their secrets and challenged me to modify it if I could, since the product was already post release.  They knew there was an issue and how to fix it, but the fix was too tedious for them as they were already on other projects, so I jumped in and released it as freeware way back in the day.  Xplane11 does not need "Soft Horizons" obviously as the atmospherics, or as I call it "sim artworks" are different.

John

7 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

From what I understand a few ver of xplane ago, they changed the way shaders worked to to get them ready for vulcan, so from what i understand mucking around with them is not a good idea because they didnt want third parties to add any other furfies into the miix while doing there vulcan preps.

Internal shaders and ReShade have nothing to do with each other.

Thanks John, your suggestions make good sense, much obliged.