XP12 has fantastic lighting, but I feel a few areas need a tweak - saturation and sharpening especially.  The blue 'Rayleigh Scattering' effect is very nice in XP12, but I feel it can be overdone, leading to washed out colours close to the viewers position.  This is all subjective of course, but I post my settings here if you are looking for filter ideas or just starting out with Reshade.  Here are the filter I use for XP12 (in the order I have them in Reshade)

prod80_01B_RT_Correct_Color.fx - this filter serves several purposes, including setting black &white points and removing colour casts.  This filter brings out subtle colours and increases overall saturation & contrast.  For example, I find the western USA desert terrain colours muted in XP12, but this filter helps to bring out the colour tones.  Also shadows will be darker than XP12 default. Important settings in this filter - this filter is 'live', so as you scan around the you will notice its effects changing with the scene. to stop this and make the filter perfect for XP12, turn OFF the 'Enable Whitepoint Correction' option and set 'Enable Blackpoint Correction' to 'find dark colour'  You may have tried many different filters to adjust colour, contrast and saturation and been frustrated with the results - this filter does it all very nicely in XP12!

Colourfulness.fx - if you feel more saturation is required over the filter above, this one is very good for the job.  I like colours to really pop, so I use this filter at its default settings.
EyeAdaption.fx - This filter helps to brighten up dark cockpits when you shift your vision from outside to inside.  I leave the settings at default for a subtle effect.
LumaSharpen.fx - This is my favourite sharpening filter from the many available.  It sharpens without artefacts.

Just these four filters really enhance XP12.  I spent many hours trying different combinations, but these four will give you a good base to start from.

Here is the western USA without ReShade.

 

With my ReShade settings

 

Interesting stuff - it encouraged me to install ReShade for the first time. But I have a small problem. I copied and pasted what I think is the code for prod80_01B_RT_Correct_Color.fx from Github using Notepad++ but it fails to compile when I run XP12 (B13). I did the same for the other fx filters listed, and they seemed to go in OK. Any idea where I've gone astray?

1 hour ago, Brian Mackie said:

Interesting stuff - it encouraged me to install ReShade for the first time. But I have a small problem. I copied and pasted what I think is the code for prod80_01B_RT_Correct_Color.fx from Github using Notepad++ but it fails to compile when I run XP12 (B13). I did the same for the other fx filters listed, and they seemed to go in OK. Any idea where I've gone astray?

I have never copied and pasted code, just downloaded the filter files themselves.  Maybe this filter also needs a texture in the texture folder?

New to this, and could not immediately see how to download from Github. If it needs a texture, I also wouldn't know where to start. The ReShade log gives no clues as to why it failed.

19 minutes ago, Brian Mackie said:

New to this, and could not immediately see how to download from Github. If it needs a texture, I also wouldn't know where to start. The ReShade log gives no clues as to why it failed.

On the GITHUB page you copied the text from, click on the blue text 'prod80-ReShade-repository' top left of page.  You will see a green button '<> Code'.  Click the button and you will see 'Download ZIP' - this file contains the shader and texture folders ready to place in your reshade-shaders folder.

The link is https://github.com/prod80/prod80-ReShade-Repository

Edited November 17, 20223 yr by MrBitstFlyer

Thanks! Just done successfully, and I'll repeat for the other files. Appreciate your help - and you are up late! I'm in New Zealand, with a fair bit of daylight to go.

15 minutes ago, Brian Mackie said:

Thanks! Just done successfully, and I'll repeat for the other files. Appreciate your help - and you are up late! I'm in New Zealand, with a fair bit of daylight to go.

Excellent!  I work shifts, so up all hours 🙂 

I'm guessing that I just put the fx file in ReShade's Shader folder and the textures in the common ReShade Textures folder. IE - no special folder tree for this. Cheers!

What version of Reshade you using, keeps crashing on start for me (5.42).

 

I'm using the same version.No crashes.

4 hours ago, Brian Mackie said:

I'm using the same version.No crashes.

Have to try again, thanks

I started using adaptive sharpen recently and really liking the results. Is there a reason you use lumasharpen over adaptive ?

6 hours ago, Baber20 said:

I started using adaptive sharpen recently and really liking the results. Is there a reason you use lumasharpen over adaptive ?

I find Luma Sharpen gives a sharp image without artefacts or look9ing over sharpened.  So many sharpen filters out there!

I'm at the 'playing about with it' discovery stage with ReShade, but using MrBitsFlyer's recommendations and settings on my vanilla version of XP12 b13 made a significant difference to the appearance of stock XP scenery for New Zealand. Next step was to test with NZ orthos - and again an instant improvement. Yes, I know ReShade's been around for a long while, but it can be daunting for the new user. Thanks for introducing us to it in a way that for me achieved pretty much instant results.

Edited November 20, 20223 yr by Brian Mackie