3000 steps condensed into one simple performance guide (plus spotting)

[DJBscout]

I've had some pretty nasty struggles with spotting (small screen and small dots resulting in having to stare almost directly at, and thus scan 3-inch square sections of my screen to notice a moving dot), so I finally got reshade to work (it crashed on startup, but turned out to be as simple as renaming some configuration files).

 

Because my screen is on the small side (1080p 17" 144Hz), spotting dots themselves is incredibly difficult, so the way to go for me was to lean on sharpening to create halos around sharp objects, which made spotting at a distance, my main issue, much easier. I left most of the settings in the beta 2020 file as-is, but also tweaked some myself.

 

Compared to the latest file (found on page 6), here's what I found had improved results. I only found the latest file when I came here to write up my settings, and haven't yet compared the results of the latest file to my personal settings, but I've found mine to be very effective. It works by creating halos/shimmer around targets, so if that's something that you don't want, you probably shouldn't do this. Personally, I've found this to make spotting much easier while scanning an area, rather than having to stare at a given area. The slight shimmer of the halo around spots is eye-catching, which helps make up for my small screen, but like I've mentioned isn't particularly pretty.

 

Here are my changes:

• Curves changed to chroma mode and exp formula
• LumaSharpen sharpening strength increased from .300 to .805, and offset bias increased from .700 to .796
• DPX was left as-is
• Added Vibrance (or more accurately didn't remove it), set to .148
• I turned off fake HDR, as colors were saturated enough for my taste already (note: not present in the latest file)
• I added the new filter, Filmic Anamporphic Sharpen
  The settings below result in very strong sharpening, but only on very small edges/objects. This tends to make small objects (like distant aircraft, some canopy scratches, some specific rivers borders, and certain trees) POP in comparison to their surroundings.
  • Strength was turned up to 100, the maximum value
  • Radius was reduced all the way to .02-.03
  • Clamp was turned up to 1.00, the maximum value.
  • (If you go into the debugging setting, you can view the sharpen pattern, and see the results of tweaking the values)

 

EDIT: I believe the anamorphic sharpen will actually sharpen the thin, already-sharpened edges, which means the curves and/or lumasharpen primarily determine what anamorphic sharpens. I think this is the case because I still noticed very strong sharpening on the edges of enemy aircraft at fairly close range.

 

It sacrifices some realism and aesthetics for improved spotting. If I found the game's spotting bearable without doing this, I wouldn't. However, I don't, so I do. I still wanted to make planes pop out as much as possible, while ruining the appearance of other things as little as possible. This is why I recommend the Filmic Anamorphic Shapening filter so much. When you turn radius down very low and heavily increase clamping, the sharpening effect only really kicks in on very small objects, so you can increase the sharpening effect on distant enemies very heavily with minimal detriment to the overall picture.

Edited August 13, 2020 by DJBscout

[GarrettJMorgan]

Does this work with VR or does something special need to be done for that?

[Charlo-VRde]

I think this thread may be more up do date for us VR flyers

 

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by Charlo-VR

[JG27_Mainz]

Very helpful tips here, thank you.

[Japsai]

Hi all.  Is Reshade still banned in MP with the latest game update?  Thanks

 

[=SqSq=SignorMagnifico]

On 11/7/2021 at 9:27 AM, Player_39854 said:

Hi all.  Is Reshade still banned in MP with the latest game update?  Thanks

 

It's all based on the server side. Some servers still don't allow reshade. Any chance we can get an updated version of this for 2022?

[bbenham]

Does anyone have any updated Re-shade settings that would be considered optimal for late 2022?

There seems to have been a lot of recent tweaks by the devs to things and I'm still using the settings at the top of this post.  Seems ok, but want to make sure it's still the best.  Was using FXAA antialiasing and based on what I just read, I should switch it to MSAA-4, so did that already and it looks a bit better.

[JG_deserteagle540]

Hi Bbenham,

 

Switching to MSAA-4 makes it look a lot smoother.

 

Concerning Reshade, I played with the following settings:

 

SMAA( not needed with MSAA-4 on)

Curves

Adaptive sharpen (This one is great)

DPX

AMD FidelityFX adaptive sharpen( not needed with adaptive sharpen on)

Colourfulness ( only used it on my laptop, not on my PC)

 

 

 

 

[=SqSq=SignorMagnifico]

On 10/17/2022 at 4:00 PM, bbenham said:

Does anyone have any updated Re-shade settings that would be considered optimal for late 2022?

There seems to have been a lot of recent tweaks by the devs to things and I'm still using the settings at the top of this post.  Seems ok, but want to make sure it's still the best.  Was using FXAA antialiasing and based on what I just read, I should switch it to MSAA-4, so did that already and it looks a bit better.

If you have an Nvidia card, use DLDSR 2.25x and MSAA 4x if your system can handle it. DLDSR works wonders with anti aliasing.

[nachinus]

I just found this thread yesterday after several years of flying IL2 on and off. I thought that the game looked really nice but had some weird lighting engine that made it look less 'real' than DCS. Didn't make a big fuss about it since it still looks good and plays good in my PC.

 

But then I bought my 1440 new monitor and took interest in trying to make the best of the sim and started to read technical stuff in the forums and learnt about this bloom thing everybody seems to dislike and try to get rid of. So I read this thread and see that reshade seems to be a great and cost-effective tool in terms of performance, better than some in-game gfx options. I never considered using reshade in any game because I didn't think that it was a good idea to add an external plug-in over a demanding and complex piece of software, specially flight sims, but man was I wrong. I followed the suggestions here and the game looks AMAZING with no noticeable performance hit, much more real and clear, so I can see aircraft and specially ground units much better and more detailed than before, so it didn't just improved how the game looks, but how I play it.

 

I'm really thankful for this thread and the OP!!!

 

After a little bit testing, these are the reshade filters I'm using:

 

Adaptive sharpen

Colourful

Vibrance

 

Ingame HDR and Sharpen OFF.

Edited October 22, 2022 by nachinus

[greybeard_52]

On 5/24/2019 at 12:27 AM, Velxra said:

Reshade 2020

My sincere compliments on your preset for ReShade! At first glance I was struck by the slightly psychedelic colours, but once I got used to them I appreciated their vividness, together with the extreme sharpness of the image.
I applied your preset with ReShade to Rise of Flight as well. After a few days of use, both with BoS (and FC) and with RoF, I'm so satisfied with it that I think I couldn't do without it!
Thank you again!

[greybeard_52]

I would like to thank again the author of these ReShade tips that have greatly improved my game. I only added to the Geronimo preset the iMMERSE Anti Aliasing which improved the look of the objects, a bit too "crispy" for me, without compromising their sharpness, and I removed all the unused shaders from the ReShade installation, which has greatly reduced loading times and possible problems. I also activated the 16x Anisotropic Filtering in the NVidia control panel, a function that I believe the simulator lacks (perhaps it only exists for the terrain) noting with pleasure the disappearance of the "blurring" of nationality crosses and cockades on the wings. I did the same, incidentally, in Rise of Flight, where I already had 8x AF enabled, but I think this video card setting improved it slightly.