Give Reshade a try if you have been reluctant!

[RTK1972 288]

2 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Pretty happy with the results so far. I took a few screenshots: 

My shaders:

• LUTTools.fx from FinalLight's preset
• LumaSharpen.fx
• PD80_03_Shadows_Midtones_Highlights.fx
• CinematicDOF.fx

And here's my preset if anyone's interested. 

Großartig, thank you, will try it !

[MrBitstFlyer 3,872]

2 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Do you have a shot of this without reshade?

No, but my aim with this particular profile was to mimic the base MSFS look but slightly increase shadows depth, vibrance and clarity.  Flicking between MSFS default and the pictures above are very similar but improved.

[cj-ibbotson 77]

5 hours ago, VBHB said:

Nah default looking good here on my Dell monitor. 

I never even considered using Reshade in MSFS as the default looks so much better than what I was used to with Prepar3D.  But even just using the FinalLight and LumaSharpen effects it totally changes how the sim looks.  Flicking it off and on shows that I used to accept a yellow / warm colour cast (despite a hardware calibrated monitor) and also an original soft image lacking sharpness.

Chris

[cj-ibbotson 77]

6 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Had a great time configuring Reshade today.  The one thing I have struggled with is tints in shadows. When shadows are deepened, they can look too harsh or have tints. I have found a shader that allows configuring of shadows, midtones and highlights separately - many shaders do this of course, but prod80_03_shadows_midtones_highlights.fx has a tint control that can 'warm up' the shadows.

In the following screengrabs I have used just three shaders. Although the shadows have been subtly darkened, they remain natural looking after a slight increase to the tint control to warm them up a little.  An increase to the highlight contrast has deepened the blue sky.

LutTools.fx for colour correction.
prod80_03_shadows_midtones_highlights.fx for tone mapping
Lumasharpen.fx for sharpening.

Here are the three shaders with settings used.

A final image in a different location that also highlights how good LumaSharp is with MSFS and the Map enhancement Mod on the Hogh LOD setting.

 

Looks great, I must try this fx file and your settings.  Thanks

Chris

[bobcat999 8,470]

18 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Does anyone know anything about the behaviour of usercfg.opt? I've changed a few settings - increased shadow maps to 4096 and turned off sharpen and film grain. Then set it to read only to prevent the sim from overwriting the changes. Is this how others are doing it? 

You can increase shadows to 6144 and they look great at 4k.  4096 will still show slight feathering I have found, whereas 8192 is unnaturally sharp, and can start to impact performance on my 3080 when everything else is going on (although not with DLSS now), but 8192 is not necessary anyway.  Try 6144 for the best look, it can't hurt and you can put it back to 4096 in a second if you don't like it.  Your 3090 will chew through it easily.

As for sharpening, I currently run with it at 50% on the slider to combat the slight fuzzyness of the flat screens in DLSS until it is fixed, so I leave that on for now, but it can go off at 4k if using TAA.  This is displayed as SharpenAmount 0.500000 in the user config, and Sharpen 1 must be enabled to allow the half setting.

I have FilmGrain 0, but I have never seen any visual difference, but I have it set to off, as I just wouldn't want it anyway.

The one that gets me is ColorGrading.  I can't tell if it makes any difference.  I currently have it set to 0, as some people say it can slightly affect performance a little when turned on, but it takes so long between MSFS loads, I forget what the previous setting looked like! 

Just to say I will be using reshade going forward when I have read all of this information, then I can decide which way to go.  I have the store version of MSFS which appears to require a different set-up, but I remember from FSX that LumaSharpen transformed the sim, and I will be able to turn off in sim sharpening after that.

PS.  Mine has never been write protected in the MS store version, and I wouldn't recommend it or you can't use the sliders in sim and have it save from there.  My experience is that it only overwrites the setting you have changed in sim, not the others.
So if you move the shadows slider to 2048 in sim, it will only overwrite that one setting.  Easy to put back anyway.  I keep a shortcut link to my user config file on my desktop, and I back it up once in a while.

[Cpt_Piett 4,618]

4 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

You can increase shadows to 6144 and they look great at 4k.

Thanks, I'll give this a try. After following the suggestion of using custom settings in the sim my changes in usercfg are working. I disabled read-only. Another thing - I'm using a terrain LOD of 400 while flying over remote areas - but still the draw distance of e.g. mountains are too short. Flying past the Alaskan coastline yesterday and the mountains look blurry. I'll probably try to increase LOD and after that I'll regret it when I realize what this does to the main thread...

4 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

The one that gets me is ColorGrading.  I can't tell if it makes any difference.

Yeah, that one's a bit "mysterious". Can't remember if I've tried with it off. 

4 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

I have the store version of MSFS which appears to require a different set-up

Yes, it requires a .bat file for reshade to start with the sim. There's a few ways to make it work, but I find that the one described here is the easiest and most "fool-proof". Note that the video is only a few minutes long 🙂

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Cpt_Piett

[Sethos 4,333]

Tried that prod80_03_shadows_midtones_highlights.fx and initially I liked the results but realized, in some scenes, especially in the cockpit, it would slightly pulsate like it was trying to re-adjust values to changing conditions or something. Unfortunate. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,618]

15 minutes ago, Sethos said:

Tried that prod80_03_shadows_midtones_highlights.fx and initially I liked the results but realized, in some scenes, especially in the cockpit, it would slightly pulsate like it was trying to re-adjust values to changing conditions or something. Unfortunate. 

That's strange, I didn't notice that. I'll pay more attention to it in my next flight. 

[ThrottleUp 617]

I absolutely cannot play this game or any of my other games (like American Truck Sim, Far Cry 6, Assassins Creed Odyssey, Ghost Recon Breakpoint etc) without ReShade.

Its an utterly fabulous bit of software that can really transform the look and feel of a game. Crosire (its creator) s a genius. As soon as I buy a new game I run it once to so that the setup creates the folders. Then I exit and immediately install ReShade.

It is of course (not surprisingly) extremely subjective. What one gamer finds realistic in MSFS makes his friend vomit. The cool thing is its so easy to tweak and you can create your own preset so easily - then upload and share it so others can enjoy it and tweak it to THEIR liking.

Some people (like me) use 10 or more filters. Other might want just one.

For example if you like the default colour palette of MSFS and dont want to change it - you dont need to. But if you want to make the image sharper, just use the Adaptive Sharpen filter of Reshade. Makes a difference, specially with distant scenery and glass cockpit symbology.

Some shots from my MSFS with my RS Preset. Amongst the filters used are adaptive sharpen, magic bloom (weak setting just to give glare effect), colourfulness (to give some greener pop to forests and landscape), vibrance (also weak setting), contrast to about 250%.

 

Sidenote - gaming monitors

My friend has an expensive $400 widescreen gaming monitor and it even came with its own controller  - a chunky box with preset buttons - each of which can be tweaked using multiple sliders. There are so many settings on this monitor and they are so good that he does not need ReShade. In fact I thought he was using RS when he was not. So I'll throw that out there. If you dont fancy a RS overlay but want to tweak the image then dive into your monitor settings. You might well be surprised.  I still prefer RS and would keep using RS over monitor settings. Its just faster for me and easier to tweak RS.

[cj-ibbotson 77]

40 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

That's strange, I didn't notice that. I'll pay more attention to it in my next flight. 

I couldnt get that fx to even work in Reshade. Got an error about failure to compile or something when I press Home key to open the Reshade window.I copied the fx file from a dummy folder I used to install all the reshade presets into.  I am getting a number of nvwgf2umx_cfg.dll crashes over the past couple of days, the sim would display a blank screen of slow flashing full screen colours at times, mainly if I go into a menu or change settings. Doesnt always but concious it appears to have started when I started to use Reshade. I did have the latest studio driver installed so changed to the game ready but the crash still happens.

Faulting application name: FlightSimulator.exe, version: 1.26.5.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Faulting module name: nvwgf2umx_cfg.dll, version: 31.0.15.1694, time stamp: 0x62d9e393
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x000000000019f96e
Faulting process ID: 0x15b8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d8bada8acb5fca
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.26.5.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe\FlightSimulator.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\nv_dispig.inf_amd64_47917a79b8c7fd22\nvwgf2umx_cfg.dll
Report ID: 3bb7b727-3c1e-430b-bfb5-359d1c17124f
Faulting package full name: Microsoft.FlightSimulator_1.26.5.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe
Faulting package-relative application ID: App

[Cpt_Piett 4,618]

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

Some shots from my MSFS with my RS Preset. Amongst the filters used are adaptive sharpen, magic bloom (weak setting just to give glare effect), colourfulness (to give some greener pop to forests and landscape), vibrance (also weak setting), contrast to about 250%.

Awesome shots! 

Any reason why you use adaptive sharpen and not lumasharpen? I had a look in the shaders list here but could not see adaptive sharpen or magic bloom...

[Flic1 976]

I haven't used Reshade in many years but just installed it to try the FinalLight effect.  Looks good at first glance but is there a way to toggle Reshade on/off when inside the sim?  I cannot seem to figure out how to do it as I would like to compare it to default.  Thanks!

[Cpt_Piett 4,618]

1 hour ago, cj-ibbotson said:

I couldnt get that fx to even work in Reshade. Got an error about failure to compile or something when I press Home key to open the Reshade window.I copied the fx file from a dummy folder I used to install all the reshade presets into.  I am getting a number of nvwgf2umx_cfg.dll crashes over the past couple of days, the sim would display a blank screen of slow flashing full screen colours at times, mainly if I go into a menu or change settings. Doesnt always but concious it appears to have started when I started to use Reshade. I did have the latest studio driver installed so changed to the game ready but the crash still happens.

Hm, not sure why. You could check in the log file in the UWP folder, might shed some more light. 

I had frequent memory could not be read CTDs that have stopped after reinstalling reshade a different way. May not be related but it seems that something with reshade can cause the sim to become unstable. I picked this up in a CTD thread at the official forum, and it turned out another person had the exact same errors in the log as I had. 

And I also had the issue with black screen and weird colors for a awhile. They would go away if I deactivated reshade and sometimes with reshade running if I went to window mode and back. 

If you're interested I'll describe what I did to resolve the issue - might help out others here too. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,618]

8 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

I haven't used Reshade in many years but just installed it to try the FinalLight effect.  Looks good at first glance but is there a way to toggle Reshade on/off when inside the sim?  I cannot seem to figure out how to do it as I would like to compare it to default.  Thanks!

YES 🙂 Enter the home key to open the reshade overlay. Then go to the settings tab. At the top you see overlay key (home) and effect toggle key (don't know what the default is). I've changed to overlay 7 and effect 6 but just choose something that makes sense to you and doesn't conflict too much with MSFS key binds. 

[cj-ibbotson 77]

4 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Hm, not sure why. You could check in the log file in the UWP folder, might shed some more light. 

I had frequent memory could not be read CTDs that have stopped after reinstalling reshade a different way. May not be related but it seems that something with reshade can cause the sim to become unstable. I picked this up in a CTD thread at the official forum, and it turned out another person had the exact same errors in the log as I had. 

And I also had the issue with black screen and weird colors for a awhile. They would go away if I deactivated reshade and sometimes with reshade running if I went to window mode and back. 

If you're interested I'll describe what I did to resolve the issue - might help out others here too. 

That is interesting changing to windowed mode and back sometimes helped, thanks I never thought on that. Escape etc didn't work so I ended up having to go to the task managed and closing the exe. 

Chris