Oblivion Graphics Extender

This thread is a catch-all discussion for anything related to the Oblivion Graphics Extender (OBGE or OBGEv2).
Previous Threads: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1045352, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1047648, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1050580, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1056861, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1057645, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1060479, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1067368, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1072753, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1074452, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1076282, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1078966, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1080264, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1082970, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1086305, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1092614, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1102453, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1110112, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1120859, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1137696, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1143824, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1149596



History & Introduction

Timeslip's Oblivion Graphics Extender

The Oblivion Graphics Extender is an OBSE plugin created by Timeslip that adds extra functionality to Oblivion's scripting language, focussed on the implementation and manipulation of graphics effects. It adds support for fullscreen shaders and extra HUD elements, provides information about graphics memory and screen resolution and allows you to clear some of oblivions textures from graphics memory.

Without Timeslip's original version Scanti probably wouldn't of known where to start in writing this project, so kudos to him. You can find Timeslip's Oblivion Graphics Extender http://timeslip.users.sourceforge.net/obge.html.

A number of mods take advantage of OBGE for their effects. These include:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16323
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21424
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30973



The Oblivion Visual Effects Project

This was a project started by IlmrynAkios that was dedicated to making Oblivion look better using various filters and low-level DirectX tricks, utilising OBGE for its effects. It spurred the discussion on the improvement of various areas of Oblivion's graphics, leading to a few released mods and some affiliated mods, proposed as part of the project but developed separately, being released. These are:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14339
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15245
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15566

The project is currently on haitus as various difficulties in its progression occurred, and IlmrynAkios found that his time available for work on it was becoming very limited.



Oblivion Graphics Extender v2

A continuation of both Timeslip's work on expanding the functionality to Oblivion's scripting language regarding the implementation and manipulation of graphics effects and OVEP's work in making Oblivion looking better using a variety of graphical effects, OBGEv2 is both the name of Scanti's rewrite of the OBGE OBSE plugin and the accompanying project that is focussed on the creation of various post-processing effects to improve Oblivion's graphics.

Scanti's rewrite of OBGE is centered around the exposure of more information about Oblivion's graphical processes and the fixing of bugs present in the original. The original OBGE should not be used alongside OBGEv2, which should be backwards-compatible with OBGE mods.

The modders that make up this project work hard to bring you the effects they create, so please respect them for taking the time to do so. If you would like to contribute, please feel free to participate in the sharing of knowledge and ideas to help us strive to complete our goal. If you are able to find useful resources that can benefit the project, please feel free to share them as well. This project is in a Beta Phase and will probably be in that state forever as add new things are added to it. Expect bugs when using newly created shaders, or when using/tweaking the shaders on your own.

Due to the Work In Progress nature of OBGEv2, few mods have been made to use it, but these include:

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18385
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27972

In addition, all OBGE mods may be used with OBGEv2 instead of OBGE.

*Attention*
If you are having any problems, please read the OP and the FAQ very carefully before posting. If your question is not answered, then report the bug as detailed in the 'How To Report Bugs Helpfully' section below.



Downloads

Pre-requisites:
http://obse.silverlock.org/ - v0019 is required.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30054
http://github.com/scanti/Oblivion-Graphics-Extender-v2



Screenshots/Videos

See the Nexus page for screenshots and videos of the effects currently available. The effects seen in some of these screenshots/videos may have been obtained by tweaking the variables in the shaders involved.



OBGEv2 Shaders

Below is a list of all the shaders available from the OBGEv2 project on TES Nexus. The list does not include any shaders that may have been added since this readme was updated, or any shaders that are only available for download from the project's forum thread. Version numbers are taken from the version numbers within each shader file, and are not indicative of relative quality.

Depth of Field Shaders:
These shaders optionally give a Depth of Field effect, progressively blurring objects with increasing distance from the focus point (what the crosshairs point at), or a Distance Blur effect, progressively blurring objects with increasing distance from the player.

Circular Bokeh Depth of Field - Bokeh_Circle_DoF.fx

Crysis Depth Of Field (v1) - CrysisDoF.fx

Depth of Field (v7) - DepthOfField.fx

Hexagonal Bokeh Depth of Field - Bokeh_Hexagon_DoF.fx

Pseudo-Bokeh Depth of Field - Pseudo_Bokeh_DoF.fx


Ambient Occlusion (AO) Shaders:
These shaders use stylised lighting to add depth and contrast to the scene, mainly by shadowing recesses. Two types of AO shader are available: Horizon-Based AO (HBAO) and Screen Space AO (SSAO). These are all SM3 shaders.

Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion - HBAO.fx

Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - ssao_test.fx

Performance Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - ssao_perf.fx

Ring Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - Ring_SSAO.fx

Volumetric Screen Space Ambient Occlusion - Volumetric_SSAO.fx


Other Shaders:

Bleach Bypass - HLSLbleachbypass.fx

CelShader+EdgeAA (v0.3) - CelShader+EdgeAA.fx

Color Effects (v5) - ColorEffects.fx

Color Grading - HLSLColorGrading02.fx

Crysis Color Mood (v0.2) - ColorMood.fx

ENB Color Effect (v2) - ENBColorEffect.fx

Godrays (v4.2) - Godrays.fx

Normal Filter Anti-Aliasing - NormalFilterAA.fx

Screen Space Indirect Illumination (SSII) - SSII.fx

Sharpen - obsharpen.fx

Vignetting - HLSLvignette.fx




How To Report Bugs Helpfully

Read the OP and the readme fully, especially the FAQs. If your problem is not answered there, do the following:

Supply the following:
- Your Operating System.
- Your graphics card.
- Your OBGEv2.txt. This log is in your Oblivion directory.
- Your OBSE.txt. This log is in your Oblivion directory.
- Your shaderlist.txt.

The above documents should be posted exactly how they appear in the file, in spoiler tags.

In addition, if what you are experiencing is a graphical bug of some kind, you should supply screenshots. It has been noted that Oblivion's screenshot function may not work with OBGEv2 installed, so in that case use FRAPS or some other 3rd party screenshot tool. You can convert the image from .bmp to .jpg in Wrye Bash. Upload the screenshot and post a link to it, so we can see what your problem actually looks like.

If your bug is with a shader effect, and you have altered any variables within the shader, also post the lines on which you changed anything, exactly how they are in the shader, in codebox tags.

We can't really help all that well without the above information, as especially with graphical errors, it can hard to describe them in writing in a way that we will be able to understand what's going on.



F.A.Q.s

Q: Is this a RELz? Should I download this?
A: This is a Beta (and hopefully stable) release. It will always be a work in progress and could contain bugs from time to time. If the thought of this scares you then this probably isn't the mod for you.

All shaders are supplied with no documentation of any sort besides what is on the Bethesda Oblivion forum thread or in the shader file itself. Hence there is an element of DIY involved in using the products of this project, especially when it comes to tweaking the settings of the shaders. Within each shader effects file there may or may not be a section at the beginning of the file detailing any variables that you can change, and what they do. You are advised to check there before posting if you wish to tweak any shaders.

Q: Does this require OBSE? If so, any specific version?
A: Yes, it does require OBSE, and you must use at least v0019, however you are advised to use the latest version available.

Q: Does OBGEv2 require any specific hardware to run?
A: The shaders are compatible with both ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards, although some shaders (marked with "SM3" above) require a Shader Model 3 compliant graphics card to run. Any NVIDIA graphics card that is GeForce 6 Series (released 2004) or newer supports Shader Model 3.0. Any ATI graphics card that is Radeon X1000 Series (released 2005) or newer supports Shader Model 3.0.

Q: How do I get involved with this project?
A: There are a few ways that you can get involved:

If you can write shader code, then you can get stuck in making your own effects right away. The shaders can be written in either HLSL or ASM.

If you can write in C/C++, then perhaps you would be able to help me in my work on the OBSE plugin. I have a github respository so you can fairly easily create a fork and add your own changes. This site also allows you to create your own wiki pages for the project. As I don't speak wiki anyone who can is more than welcome to contribute to it.

It would also be beneficial if you know anything about low-level DirectX and the OBSE plugin system.

If you can't do either of these things, you can still contribute support, articles and papers on graphical effects that could be implemented in Oblivion, and whatever else you can bring to the project. Especially cake or ice cream. :cake: :icecream:

Q: I found a bug...
A: Good for you. If you find a bug, please report it as detailed in the 'How To Report Bugs Helpfully' section above. We can help you more when you explain the problem better.

Q: I cannot see an effect I have installed, and my OBGEv2 log has the line "Failed to load" after the line "Loading shader ()". How do I fix this?
A: This results from OBGEv2's inability to compile the shader effects you are trying to load. Make sure that you have the DirectX update linked to above installed, and if using a shaderlist, that you have spelled the names of the shaders in your shaderlist.txt exactly as they should be, with the .fx extension. In the case of some effects, you must also have a graphics card that is Shader Model 3 compliant.

Q: ScreenEffects/Realistic Health/OVEP Motion Blur/OVEP Forward Motion Blur or setting bUseLegacyCompiler to 1 causes OBGEv2 to crash. How do I fix this?
A: If your shader uses the half variable type then OBGEv2 will try to use the legacy compiler. If you are missing the d3dx9_31.dll file then OBGEv2 will crash. You will need to copy over the d3dx9_31.dll from the Extras folder into your Oblivion game folder to fix the problem.

Q: The ordering of the objects on the screen is messed up or the game menu has no buttons! Why is this happening?
Q: Once I got the effects to work, my AA disappeared? WHY?!?
A: The method used to expose the information used to read the depth buffer is incompatible with Anti-Aliasing. This is reported to be the case on both ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards, although owners of ATI graphics cards can force AA through ATI Tray Tools without problems. The only solution is to edit the OBGE.ini file in your My Documents\My Games\Oblivion folder and change this line:

[DepthBuffer]bUseDepthBuffer=1

to:

[DepthBuffer]bUseDepthBuffer=0

This will however cause any effect that uses the depth buffer to stop working properly. This currently includes all the SSAO and Depth of Field shaders and the Godrays, NormalFilterAA and CelShader+EdgeAA shaders.

Q: A shader is listed saying it has multiple effects. What does that mean?
A: If a shader has multiple effects, it means that it rolls many effects into one file, and gives you the ability to choose which of these effects, or combinations of these effects, are applied to your game. This has the advantage that you can cut down on the number of shader files you have to keep track of. You will generally be able to make these selections by changing variables in the shader.

Q: How do I change/tweak shader settings/variables?
A: Open up the shader .fx file in a text editor such as Notepad. The variables are found at the beginning of the file, and may be labelled as tweakable and/or commented with information regarding them.

Alternatively, you can alter most shaders' variables in-game using the Support Plugin, though these changes are not recorded in the shader file.

Q: My Godrays is just a searchlight in clear weather.
A: Godrays are best displayed in cloudy weather types, from 6 to 8 in the mornings and evenings. However, if you get the searchlight effect, you have to edit the shader's FOV setting to match your ingame FOV. An example would be if you play Oblivion with a FOV of 95, you have to edit your Godrays shader file to a FOV of 95. To edit the shader, change the value of "#define fov", near the beginning of the file, to the value of your FOV.

Q: Why do objects in the distant have weird black stuff on them when fog weather is active?
Q: Using the SSAO shader does weird things to stuff underwater. What gives?
A: That is from the SSAO shader, and occurs because OBGEv2 does not give any information on fog, so the effects are applied as though there is none. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future update.

Q: SSAO demolishes my FPS; any ideas?
A: The easiest way to improve your frame rate while using the SSAO shader is to reduce the sample size, and correspondingly increase the sample area. There is a performance version of the shader, that lowers quality slightly in return for a large performance boost, and an alternate version that produces a weaker effect at a fraction of the performance cost. The reason the SSAO shader has such a large performance hit is because it has to calculate information about surface normals from scratch, as this information is not available to access.

Q: How do I get the EdgeAA effect?
A: The EdgeAA effect is part of the CelShader+EdgeAA shader, to enable the effect change the following variables as shown:

flgEdgeMask = 0;flgEdgeAA = 1;

Q: Where is the src folder with the source code?
A: The source is not included in the package. Instead, it is available on the GitHub repository. That means you will always have access to the latest version of the code and people can contribute their own code to the project.

Hard to believe 21 threads ago, we had none of this...

Has anyone seen Scanti around recently?

Settings recommended by users

Note that these may have been recommended for previous versions of shaders and in later versions may not give the same desired effect. If settings for variables aren't given, then they should be left at the default values.

Color Effects

By Dekidasu:

extern float Saturation = 0.5;extern float Brightness = 1.1;extern float FGIntensity = 0.5;extern float BHMagnitude = 1.42;extern float BHBrightness = 9;

By Smooth: (for a 'local contrast'-type effect)

extern float Saturation = 0.8;extern float Brightness = 1.1;extern float GContrast = 1.6;extern float GBrightness = 1.2;

Color Mood

By Omega Novious:

extern float moodR = 0.5;extern float moodG = 0.5;extern float moodB = 0.5;

By Dekidasu:

extern float moodR = 0.9;extern float moodG = 0.75;extern float moodB = 0.35;

Depth Of Field

By Psymon:

float DoFAmount = 5;

By Smooth:

extern bool DoDistanceBlur = true;extern bool DoWeaponBlur = false;extern float DoFAmount = 4.1;extern float FullFocusRange = 0.5;extern float NoFocusRange = 0.9;

ENB Color Effect

By wetibroman:

extern float BrightnessMult = 1.05;extern float BrightnessPow = 0.75;extern float tempF0 = 0.06;

Godrays

By Smooth:

extern float noonshaftex = 0.93f;extern float noondecay = 0.89;extern float endevening = 22.0f;extern float Density=0.65;extern float Weight=0.65;extern float noonsaturate = 0.015f;

Normal Filter AA

By Smooth:

extern float filterStrength = 1.1;

I just remembered right before this issue started, I had just finished updating my Nvidia drivers. I'm not sure if that would effect it or not but that's the only thing I remember changing before noticing that godrays was no longer working.

So, I've recently gotten a half decent PC, so am checking out some things I'd always brushed off as "yeah, I'll never run that". What sort of performance would I be looking at with a GTS 450?

I'm tempted to ask the obvious: What resolution do you play at? What settings have you chosen for Oblivion, and have you tweaked the ini, or anything else? What mods are you running? Any texture/mesh replacers, and the like? Is your GPU overclocked? Which drivers are you using with it? What CPU do you have? Is it overclocked? What kind of (and how much) RAM, and at what clock? HDD/SSD? Details of either/both? If HDD, is it defragged? Do you have a proper sound card? If not, do you run a lot of music/sound mods? Or, on the other hand, do you use Quiet Feet MAX? (...)

But the thing is, I have no idea how it would run, even if I could ask *all* the right questions, and you answered every one of them. :shrug: You'd really have to ask someone with almost precisely the same hardware and mods/resolution/graphics setup/settings. Given that ideal situation, there would still be differences in typical performance, I would wager.

The best thing is to try one or two shaders, and if it works out for you, great! If not, perhaps look at either not bothering with it/them, or on the other hand, dropping some mods/replacers. Something like that.

edit: It's very subjective, but personally, I would rather be running SSAO (or HBAO) and NFAA at least, than use the very largest/best replacers/mods (and/or greatest number of them in combination). If I had to sacrifice one or the other, that is. And yeah, you *might* have to, with that card, because it's middle-of-the-road, so to speak, not high end.

Right now I couldn't answer a single one of them - when I say recently, I mean quite recently, I'm halfway through reinstalling oblivion (with essential modlist) and have yet to see how it even runs
I suppose what I was really trying to ask is "How much of a performance hit are these" - the SSAO bits say they have a decent performance hit, for good reasons, but they don't, nor I suppose CAN, give specifics. For the resolution I know I'll not be running 1920x1080, simply because my monitor doesn't support that

On the one hand, I've been playing the outstandingly beautiful JC2 for the past day, and Crysis defaulted to, and ran at, very high across the board - but I'm all too aware of oblivion's shortcomings. I suppose, as you say, I shall simply have to dive in and see how it works out!

It's pretty much the only sure way, yep.

I can say (fwiw) that SSAO (or HBAO) has the largest impact on FPS, for me. And I do love having AO on. But the good news there is that they vary - a lot - in terms of impact, The guide in the OP is good, for that.

Not sure what would follow it. Perhaps... NFAA? Haven't tested, mind you. Again, a shader I'd rather not do without. But then, if you end up not using OBGE, there are other ways of getting AA to work, even with HDR. And then again, HDR isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be anyway, if you ask some. I'm ambivalent - I don't mind it, and I don't mind Bloom, either. But I do currently run with HDR (and AO and AA), for what that might be worth.

With the support plugin (these days ) it's a breeze, to try them all. Er, one by one at first, perhaps!

I've added settings recommended by users to the 3rd post of the thread. These are ALL the settings that have been posted since thread 1, and that still apply to the latest shaders. If you have tweaked settings, please post them too, because there's not very many ATM.

Also, I need to get caught up on screenshots, I missed heaps in the last thread...

I'm pretty sure vtastek posted some settings he or she favours, in either the previous thread, or the one before.

Either way, I'll post some of mine in this post right here, once I'm settled on a few more of them. It's taken me a while, and it still is, but I"ll get there. One day... bliviongate:

Sounds good!
My last PC had a highly subpar graphics card, so regardless of what I get running it'll struggle to look worse!

Is it just me, or when using the support plugin, the HBAO shader seems to load after any DoF shader. (Or is it supposed to?)

Also, are there any nice settings for the ENB shader out there? So far i like the ENB shader the best and use these settings:

extern float BrightnessMult = 1.05;extern float BrightnessPow = 0.75;extern float tempF0 = 0.06;

However, caves or some interiors are still quite dark, and I find it hard to strike the right balance

I've been working on a new depth of field algorithm with extremely high quality. These are the features that do/will set it apart from the other depth of field shaders when it is complete:
Hexagon Shaped Bokeh (complete)
Defocused LDR Highlights (complete, could possibly be improved to HDR as OBGE improves)
Satisfactory Partial Occlusion (begun)

Before releasing it I still have to:
Implement my Partial Occlusion Algorithm
Improve blurring at the low end of the blur spectrum
Remove unwanted color bleeding

This shader however is much more performance heavy than the other DoF shaders. According to the Oblivion console it can bring my 8800 gt down to 30 fps from 60 fps (although strangely without a noticeable decrease in gameplay smoothness)

And, here are some screenshots:
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot247.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot246.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot245.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot244.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot243.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot242.jpg

Well, I installed it, and have just spent the last hour debugging why I was freezing on load - check through the last thread and apparently it's the SSAO shader that's auto-loading, though I can neither find nor change the shader load order. This wasn't made clear, and I was a little miffed, but I'll live. Couldn't it be made not-on-by-default, though?

tomerk: While I can't offer anything constructive, I can offer this: holy frell that's pretty.

From my recent post:

[quotI'm not sure if anyone else has experienced this, but I seem to be crashing as soon as the game loads up. I tried this 4 times with the Oblivion Graphics Extender Support.esp enabled and it crashed. After disabling it, it seemed to load and work fine. I used BOSS in order to place the .esp in my load order. Does anyone know what could be causing this problem?
e][/quote]

I'm still trying to figure this issue out. I haven't tried using the .esp again since. Sorry for the newbie-type question, but i'd really like to be able to use some of these features. Anyone have any ideas?

Is it CTDing or freezing? Mine also freezes - for about 13 seconds, or slightly over my "ok it ain't workin no more, alt-f4" threshold - but after that it works. Yours could be the same!

It froze for about the same amount of time as yours did. At that point, I didn't wait any longer. Then again, it did this about 4 times, so I assumed it was time to get out of it. Did it work fine from that point on for you?

Yes, after that initial freeze everything has worked smoothly (Well, not quite smooth when I enable everything I can to see what happens (A very pretty picture that barely moves)), and the helper plugin is really a very elegant and user friendly solution!

edit: Performance update: game running well at my native resolution of 1680x1050 using volumetric SSAO, Crysis style DOF, godrays, and the colour grading one.

Regarding the DOF, though, I prefer the look of bokeh's - however I use an over-the-shoulder third person view mod, and my character becomes very, very blurry! I've fiddled with the settings, but I can't seem to mitigate it - any help?

Ok. I'll definitely give it another shot soon. Thanks for the post.

To all experiencing temporary freezing issues: this is covered in the readme, please review it, particularly the SSAO portions.

The ssao_perf and ssao_test shaders are the culprits, so delete those two shaders if you aren't interested in using them.

I get the same problem, here I was thinking it was some other mod.

EDIT: It seem you are right, it does take longer to load then before. My suggestion is to remove all but the AO shader you plan on using. like making a Ambient Occlusion sub folder in the shader folder.

The new DOF looks quite amazing. It's a shame about the performance impact, though.
Have you tried increasing the weaponblur_cutoff variable? The only problem is that changing the zoom level of the camera will break it. You could also try tweaking the settings so that the "base blur radius" is smaller and thus making objects closer up become blurred less. However, that would also affect distant objects, too.

What roxahris suggested sounds like it could work.
On another note, I have implemented all the features I was planning on implementing in the new hexagonal bokeh dof shader. I plan on optimizing the code as much as I can, and then releasing it.
In the meantime, I've uploaded some new screenshots showing off the partial occlusion and the defocused highlights:
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot255.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot254.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot253.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot252.jpg
http://s1100.photobucket.com/albums/g405/tomerk001/Hexagonal%20Bokeh%20DoF/?action=view¤t=ScreenShot251.jpg

:drool: :bowdown:

Hexagonal bokeh! All this time, and that's what felt wrong about the shaders! I had a feeling, but never knew what it was (of course, the other stuff makes it look amazing too). Who cares what the performance impact is, I want!

Seriously though, that's probably the best DoF I've ever seen in a game, it pretty much reminds me of the DoF I see in some of the photos I use for wallpapers.

The key to the shaped bokeh was building the blurring algorithm so that I could effectively implement a scattering algorithm perfectly as a gathering algorithm. This means that with some not too complicated (although tedious) precalculated trig, the shader can be made to have bokeh of any convex shape that can be circumscribed in a circle. So, the bokeh could be made to be triangle shaped, diamond shaped, octagon shaped, circle shaped, etc, with any radial weighting system ("bad bokeh" vs. "neutral bokeh" vs. "good bokeh" in photography terms). The current implementation is hexagon shaped "bad bokeh".

bokeh_dof.fx simply produces a look that can in some cases approximate bokeh, which is why I named it that. This however, actually produces bokeh blurring.