ReShade - how to make MSFS shine + LG OLED TV HDR tweak

Hey all,

I used to tweak visuals with the GeForce experience overlay, but recently I've used ReShade with very good results. I find ReShade has way more flexibility in terms of tweaking the visuals. And there's no need to go "all out" with the settings - just a few subtle changes, and the sim will really shine. 

One thing that's been bothering me for a while is the greenish-yellowish hue that affects everything in the sim - ground textures, clouds, atmosphere. FinalLight has posted a great solution to this over at flightsim.to. Essentially he tweaked LUT values for ReShade with the following goals: 

• Correct the tone of the sim that was red shifted.
• Reduce the white haze over the image, giving the image a more contrasty solid look.
• Make clouds white again, removed yellow/beige tint.
• Change the colors of the atmosphere

The installation is fairly simple.

1. Extract the contents of the .zip and place the folder ''ReshadeInjectUWP'' in C:\%UserProfile%\
2. Copy ''FS2020-Reshade-STARTUP.bat'' to your desktop (or anywhere you prefer)

You then have to start MSFS from the .bat file. On the first start, ReShade will inject the shaders and textures. Press the "home" key to open up the ReShade menu once MSFS has finished loading. Whilst in the "home" tab of ReShade, select "FinalLight_v1.3.ini" at the top of the window. This will activate "LUTTools.fx". 

As the "home" key is already assigned in MSFS, it's probably a good idea to change the assignments in ReShade. To do this, go to the "settings" tab. I've selected "7" for the overlay key, and "6" for "effect toggle key". 

At this time, MSFS will probably look a lot more natural, with closer to real life clouds, ground textures and atmosphere. I went a bit further however, to bring out a bit more contrast overall. 

To do this, you need to download another shader, namely the qUINT repositories. On the Github page, click on "Code" then "Download zip". Extract the folder "qUINT-master" to a location of your choice. Then go to the ReShade "settings" tab, and under "input processing" click the "+" symbol. Navigate to the location of "...\qUINT-master\qUINT-master\Shaders" then choose "select". 

Then you need to activate the "qUINT_lightroom.fx" shader. Go to the "home" tab, scroll down until you see "qUINT_lightroom.fx" then tick the box to the left. Now, the following tweaks very much depends on personal preference. To bring out some more contrast and true black levels, I've increased the "Global Black Level" to 8. I've also slightly increased colour saturation by increasing the "Global Vibrance" level to 0.05. It's a subtle effect, but I think the overall visuals look very good. 

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As an added bonus for LG OLED TV owners, I discovered an amazing tweak by FinalLightNL over at the MSFS official forums. What this does is to tune HDR on your TV to bring out even more natural atmosphere colours, especially at dusk/dawn. This will make the sunsets look orange/red as opposed to pink. First go the TV menu => "all settings => "picture" => "picture mode settings" => "advanced controls". Set "dynamic tone mapping" to "off". 

Finally the last tweak which is sort of like the icing on top of the cake. And this is a pretty huge one for owners of LG OLED TVs. When in "all settings" => "picture", place the marker over "picture mode settings" (without selecting it). Then hit "1113111" on your remote. This will take you to a "secret" menu. Here, set "Mastering Peak" to 1000 nits and "MaxCLL" to 1000 nits. What this does is to bring down the total nits from 4000, to prevent the specular highlights from being blown out. This will really make MSFS shine, resulting in MUCH more details in the clouds and atmosphere. 

If you struggle getting ReShade to work, OverKill Simulations has made a very easy to understand youtube video.  

That's it. Blue skies! 🙂

Edited August 16, 20223 yr by Cpt_Piett