That's precisely the confusion I've been trying to avoid. It's a pain to understand, isn't it?

What can be downloaded here isn't at all related to Timeslip's OBSE plugin that goes by the name Oblivion Graphics Extender (OBGE). Scanti's test OGE plugin isn't a replacement, it is a completely separate plugin that has enabled the use of a few features that OBGE doesn't have access to. It doesn't include the features that Timeslip's already has.

What's more, you don't need Timeslip's OBGE to use anything developed here, only Scanti's OGE.

It's all very confusing and in need of sorting out. I'd say that the best thing to do would be to refer to them as Scanti's and Timeslip's plugins as appropriate. This project was named OBGE (then OGE) because it will at some point include a rewrite of Timeslip's plugin, but that hasn't happened yet.

For those that don't know, Scanti's plugin is the one named "DepthTest.dll" and Timeslip's plugin is "obge.dll".

And the arguement for OBGE instead of OGE for forum searching is a good one.

As wrinklyninja did state, this isn't really OBGE that Timeslip worked on so it will not replace anything from the Original OBGE or any other version. Scanti's plugin is something of its own that adds the new effects like the depth buffer for oblivion (which has allowed us to get shaders.) Once the time comes that Scanti has re-written Timeslips OBGE, then shall we change the name. As I did state, its just a name which can easily be changed in the next thread.

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/539/10971603.jpg
You would notice that the Godray is not working, however it is the newer version.

OK, fair enough - if it's different, you shouldn't use the same name. But I still recommend coming up with some four+ letter name for it Scanti's plug-in.

Though DepthTest.dll seems like a poor choice... what does that even mean? (facetious question, no need to answer)

@ UK47Howard: Have you tried going into 1st person? I play 1st person, and so it probably looks a bit weird in 3rd person, I've never checked. If that is the problem, then I can probably get around it for the next version.

@ DragoonWraith: Answering anyway! Scanti called it that, I can only presume, because he started off with the plugin as a means of trying to expose the depth buffer. He wasn't sure how well it worked, so it was a test, and he hasn't got round to renaming it yet. Perhaps he will later.

On a separate note, I just loaded up the game for the first time with all three shaders, and I was left speechless. The SSAO brings Oblivion to life, and the combination of all three is just mindboggling. I just want to say: good work, you guys. :thumbsup: :icecream: I'll try to get some screenies (unfortunately Fraps wasn't running).

EDIT: Oh, and UK47Howard: Your character should be in focus, in you are in 3rd person. The focus point is taken as the centre point on the screen, which in third person is where your head is. A side effect of a thoroughly rubbish 3rd person camera. I'll try to think of a better way of addressing this for the next version.

EDIT 2: Well, I think I just managed to cut about 30 maths functions calls and a unneeded function out of my DoF shader, which is always good. I can't believe that it took me this long to realise it though. I think I might be able to cut out a bit more yet, hopefully simplifying the blur process. Anyway, here's some screenies of what I was raving about before:

http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-12-0814-44-48-59.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-12-0814-45-35-52.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-12-0814-45-39-13.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-12-0814-45-54-40.jpg Quite a nice effect occurring here, could be considered a bug, but I like it.
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-12-0814-46-19-39.jpg
http://i617.photobucket.com/albums/tt255/WrinklyNinja1/Oblivion2009-12-0814-46-34-57.jpg Possibly my favourite.

into 1st person? I get not DOF at all !

Look, you're obviously doing something pretty wrong. There are only three parts to using the shaders: the obse plugin, the shader files themselves, and the shaderlist.txt. Get rid of everything related to this, and start over. Follow the FAQ instructions to the letter. Make sure you have a Shader Model 3.0 complient graphics card. Install that DirectX update.

Very nice pictures there wrinklyninja :thumbsup:
Number 6 is also my favorite

I'm a little dissatisfied with it myself. For the most part, the effect is quite lovely, but it has some problems that can break the ambiance. Anything regarding alpha channel is a problem: Hair, cobwebs, faded geometry, and the like, but nothing I can do about it. Once you go into a dark dungeon with that glowing billboard particle fog about (usually present in undead infested dungeons), you can see the SSAO cut right through the fog, unnaturally. If only we could apply SSAO before the fog and particles: just the basic textured and lit scene. It would be much improved in that case.

I've been tweaking the shader a bit. I've modified how the jittering works, it makes the noise much smoother, which makes it a bit easier for the blur to make a nice smooth image. But all my ideas to get more performance haven't panned out. This SSAO algorithm is just expensive. The most favored idea I have is to render SSAO to a smaller buffer, then upscale it to the desired resolution, but I can't do that with this plugin just yet. Maybe in a later version.

Really appreciate that you taken your time to work on this HawkleyFox.
Thank you :icecream:

Edit:
Do you think when/if SSDO is possible to implement, it would cut down more on the FPS than SSAO, HawkleyFox ?

Some eye candy :
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/1860/62761830.jpg
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/4140/49934785.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/1356/55413684.jpg
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/3483/71180227.jpg
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/122/21875726.jpg
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/7585/75097404.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/8117/61423242.jpg

Very good work, yet several "bug" prevent me from enjoying it :


SSAO : dramatic drop in FPS
Depth Of Field : 3rd person bug
Godrays : AA disappeared


I would be really happy if you fix it, however I'm afraid that's impossible.

Oh good god, these are running all 3? Did you tweak your Godrays shader at all? These look absolutely amazing.

Gahhhh! I just realised during my rewrite of my DoF shader that it never actually applied a distance based blur, but just a general blur instead. On fixing this, I now find that nothing beyond the depth of my focus point blurs, foregound blur only. :meh: Looks like I'll have to figure out why, and rewrite my rewrite.

Any chance this could work for Fallout 3, too?

@ gyshall: Yes, that's SSAO, Godrays and DoF at the same time. All are that default settings.

Version 3 of the Depth Of Field shader is available http://cid-465896b69b9940e8.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Oblivion%20Shaders/DepthOfField.fx. Could the OP be updated?

Changes include:
- Almost complete rewrite to optimise.
- Fixed depth based blur so it was actually depth based.
- Hopefully tweakable variables are more understandable.

I tried to get a solution for DoF in 3rd person mode, but it didn't look good no matter what I tried. Those playing in 3rd person are just going to have to use Distance Blur or live with the blur being according to the camera's position, and not the player's avatar's view.

I hate to keep cluttering up the thread with non-development messages :facepalm: but in regard to the search function using four characters; as long as the thread's title spells out "Oblivion Graphics Extender" it should be fine... most people don't learn of something by its acronym and those who cba to type out the whole name don't represent that large of a percentage of users. Although it really is all just stylistically arbitrary, and search functions everywhere should be able to search for as few as two characters -_-.

wrinklyninja, can you make a static DOF ?

Turn distance based blur off.

Fixed.

EDIT: It's not really static, since that implies complete unchangingness, whereas distance based blur is dynamic in that the closer you get to an object, the less blurred it gets. But I reckon that's what you're really after.

Hmm, that's a hard call to make, but my gut says it would be faster. The SSDO algorithm works on the positions and normals of geometry, which would make it more accurate from the get go, and there would be less processing required to predict what adjacent geometry is doing. The more information available from the start, the less computations that have to be done to fill in the missing information.

The only thing I really need to implement SSDO, as described in the paper, is the surface normals. Scanti has told me that he intends to attempt to get that information, but it requires a much better understanding of Oblivion's rendering system than he has at the moment. Once that comes about, SSDO will be golden.

To give you an idea of why the SSAO shader is such a performance hog, I'll explain it out. Let's take my computer as an example:
For every pixel, and with 4 sample levels, there is a maximum of 32 AO calculations, and 65 depth samples (screen edges reduce these values).
My resolution is 2560x1600, meaning I have 4,096,000 pixels to shade.
That means that for the whole screen, there can be nearly as many as 131,072,000 AO calculations, and 266,240,000 samples of depth every frame. With this in mind, decreasing the resolution of Oblivion will greatly speed up the SSAO shader. To be honest, the fact that it gets the FPS that it does is a testament to the immense power a GPU is capable of.

EDIT: Thinking on it further, I would say SSDO would absolutely improve performance over this method. If I only get the normals, I would still have to calculate 3D positions from Screen-Space coordinates and Depth (requires a matrix multiply), which would add a bit of overhead. But if I can get a couple of buffers with both the normals AND positions of the geometry, the effect would be quite cheap. Maybe two to three times faster than this method with depth alone. I don't really feel like I'm being overly optimistic about these expectations either.

Doesn't help with some of the other problems though, like SSAO cutting through fog/particle effects and artifacts regarding alpha blended/refraction shaded geometry. Oblivion just wasn't designed with this effect in mind.

A well proven point.

I hope that Scanti finds the surface normals then :angel: , because SSAO looks good but it really hurts the FPS on my computer. Also, I think SSDO looks better.

So, the godrays seem to work allright, no FPS hit or glitch.
Only, even before I activate the test shaders.
My game looks like http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t318/artfact/Oblivion2009-12-0917-06-31-23.jpgs.

What am I doing wrongly? :S
Pluggy gives me an error at the start of the save, saying .ess pluggy save has trouble finding data.

Edit:
Well, deleting the Depthtest.dll removed the translucent horizon cut-off, but also the abilaty to activate teh shaders.
Should I put the dll back and add it to the shader list?Making it:

depth.fx
Godrays.fx

Edit2:
Right, with that setting, I turn Skingrad into a white Christmas, as if a sheet of paper was placed behind my HUD.

@ Scanti:I can't remember if I've requested this already, so I figured I'd go ahead anyway.

Would it be possible to pass variables between the shader files and Oblivion scripting? So you can set shader variables through Oblivion, and also (not sure if this is possible) so that we can get variable values from the shader. For the latter case, since the shader is re-run every frame, and loses variable values between frames, I'd imagine that you'd set (in Oblivion) a variable to 'monitor' the value of a variable in the shader, so with each frame it changes to what the last value of that frame was (or have it work only for values that don't change during shader execution). I'm not really sure how it would work, if it's possible, but I'd really appreciate it if we could get 2 way communication between Oblivion and shaders.

You don't need Depth.fx in your shader list. This has been stated several times.