Oh, I did not know that.

I have diverse grasses, then RPG Backdragon?s grass meshes (it?s an optimization, the best quality version, still optimized some), then I just installed the grass textures from ATP2 (AmpolX?s texture mod).

Overall AmpolX?s textures lend a lot to the overall looks now, they work very well with the current "tone" I have in the game, though there?s a manually installed QTP3 Redimized filling the gaps.

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but using the FO3 SSAO with nHancer provided a very lackluster affect.

http://filesmelt.com/downloader/Before.jpg - http://filesmelt.com/downloader/After.jpg

Open them in two tabs and swap back and forth, the difference is very subtle.

Yeah, it is subtle. I use it as well. But there is no performance hit. Besides it was designed for Fallout 3.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, because I don't see any changes with the nHancers Ambient Occlusion. The SSAO FX shader works though.

Did you leave nHancer running?

I have tried both things. The only thing that works through the nHancer thing, is the anti aliasing.

Are your nVidia drivers the latest ones?

Here's a link to the edge detection shader I posted about earlier - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2584752/CelShader.fx . Not a lot has changed, except for the kernel; so the edges should look better. More screen shots ( with DoF this time ) :
. Screen http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu320/shademe/Oblivion2009-12-1612-44-01-55.jpg / http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu320/shademe/Oblivion2009-12-1914-23-01-81.jpg
. Screen http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu320/shademe/Oblivion2009-12-1612-48-57-81.jpg / http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu320/shademe/Oblivion2009-12-1613-07-41-94.jpg
. Screen http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu320/shademe/Oblivion2009-12-1612-52-08-33.jpg / http://i659.photobucket.com/albums/uu320/shademe/Oblivion2009-12-1613-02-40-00.jpg

Compile target is PS3.0, but it might work with 2.0 too.

Looks kinda like borderlands

I am thoroughly impressed by your remarkable powers of observation. Well spotted indeed.

looks like cel shading... hated it in zelda, would hate it in tes4

It's uh, it's supposed to.

The Wind Waker had very good gameplay. Which is what matters in a game. ^_^

But back on topic, I do like the new shader. I just finished playing borderlands and I liked it, so I'll have to try it out. I'm not sure if this is possible, or if it's been done before, or even if a shader is necessary for this, but would it be possible to have a few raindrops hit the screen at the start of a storm or rainy weather? It would get annoying if it persisted through the entire storm (In my opinion anyway), but what I mean is, as the rain starts, a few drops hit the screen (maybe with a sound effect?) and then they kind of fade away as the rain picks up.

Ravin

Edit for friendliness

Being worked upon. By me, if I recall correctly. I think I was going for something similar to Crysis's screen waterflow effect.

Cool. I shall be waiting for it's release good sir. :thumbsup:

Ravin

Little things like that are always my favourite additions to games. Especially in a game as immersive as Oblivion. I would love you more than a bowl of Lucky Charms served by Kelly Brook if you can get that working.

Bump?

Since it's vacation for most people, I doubt much is being done on this right now.

From the screenshots, I knew I *HAD* to have the sunshafts, but I thought the ssao looked crappy. I must say the ssao is absolutely stunning in motion though. Some textures like rocks from QTP3 were given extra depth and dimensionality, but the real improvement is to the plants. Before, they looked like a bunch of textures pasted into the gameworld. Yeah, the grass looked great for its day but now pales in comparison to something like Crysis. The ssao makes it look like it's actually part of the gameworld. Now the graphics look a lot smoother and more cohesive instead of like seperate parts smashed together. The plants I modded in look even better....whereas before they were all the same lightness now the interior leaves are shaded.

The performance hit is massive though. I have a triple crossfire 5970+5870 setup and I get 25-35fps walking around in thick forests even with the optimizations posted early in this thread. Beforehand, I had solid 60 with vsynch on at 2560x1600 with a ton of mods, grass distance at 11000, and grass size increased. Hopefully I can find a way to get the framerate up some more.


Edit: I discovered that reducing the samples even more gave a massive performance gain. I went with

ssao_sample_size = 1
ssao_sampling_area = 9.2

The sampling area is just a complete guess. But the above numbers got me back into the 50-55fps range, so basically double the performance over 2 sample size. I speculate that at 2560 I may have been hitting up against the 1GB memory limits of my cards though, so this may be more of a bottleneck remover than a performance doubler and people with weaker cards won't be helped as much. Even at that greatly reduced rate it still looks great. I *think* there may be less extra detail on the rocks, but the vegetation shading still looks good and the game looks way better than it did before. I'll get some shots up.

Here are a few full resolution shots.

Before:
http://img255.imageshack.us/i/screenshot1.jpg/

I took a closeup of a bush for a reason. You can see that really only the lower right corner is shaded at all and it sticks out badly. The interior of the bush is all one brightness. The grass and the bush contrast with each other more than they should, with the grass all being uniform lightness except for canopy shadows. Even here you can still see that a heavily modded and maxed oblivion is one of the best looking games on the market.

After:
http://img69.imageshack.us/i/screenshot0s.jpg/

Note how much more cohesive the second image looks though. It's like we took a shiny next-gen coat of paint and slapped it all over Oblivion. The grass and the bush blend together much better now, and we have what looks almost like the grass self-shadowing on itelf. Which, if you see how much grass I like in my Oblivion, would probably run at a frame every few seconds to have true self-shadowing grass. Also pay close attention to the interior of the bush, which is now properly shaded. The game looks so much better, and only dropped from 60 to 51 fps. The real drop is a lot bigger, since I lost all those frames above 60, plus I can usually maintain 60 with 4x supersampling AA. In practical terms though, it's a tiny drop for huge boost in image fidelity. I thought the visuals of Oblivion had mostly been tapped out and hadn't been paying attention until I saw someone post some sunshaft screens in a random thread on hardforum, but this is a boost on the level of stock textures to QTP3. Granted, this mod couldn't be at it's best without everything that came before it, but it's easier to go from good to great than it is great to amazing. It would be nice if the fog glitch was cleared, and if there was a way to get rid of the blinding effect that can occur midday without turning off HDR, but those are easily worth dealing with. AA would be nice too, but I'd probably leave it off anyway since I don't notice at 2560 with depth of field. I still can't believe oblivion looks like this:

http://img69.imageshack.us/i/screenshot02t.jpg/

Nice shots! The last one looks amazing, and the plants with SSAO is just astounding.

I finally bit the bullet and got around to trying this out for myself. Just the SSAO, as it's the one that appealed the most (I'm sure I'll try out the godrays at some point too, though).

I am most thoroughly impressed! Great stuff! The visual difference is quite remarkable Thankyou very much for the work that went into this!

Vac

What kind of computer do you guys recommend for all this? My 4650 with 1G VRam isn't enjoying the beauty as much as I am

Yup I've just got back from a week's holiday with my family over Christmas. I did take my laptop with me but it spent most of it's time playing Dora the Explorer and Peppa Pig videos for my nieces and nephew.

I did try to get it finished before Christmas but I messed up the texture manager. I did a big programming no no. I planned out everything before hand and then changed my plans at the last minute to 'simplify things'. I'm now rewriting it the original way I planned to do it. After that I need to write the save/load routines and I should be ready to release after a bit of testing.

When I do a release can I include the shaders posted in this thread with the plug-in? Can the authors of each shader let me know.