New effects and installers

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Re: New effects and installers

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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Wed Apr 08, 2020 11:46 am

Hello all community

Sorry for my english i am french and not very good in Shakespeare language.
I wil sincerely congratulate and thanks Blue Max and all community Darksabber and DTM for your incredible work.
I read your forum since the Begin.
I ll start with Tie fighter when i was 12old and never stopped to play the xw TF and xwa

It was very nice to see you allways work to upgrade this beautifull game.
It is very sad we dont have a real new sim game since. Fortunately you are here

I ll test the mod with my HTC vive. it was an incredible work to make this old xwa compatible!
The dynamic cockpit is a great idea and evolution!
But i think the resolution in Vr was a little poor and particullary i think the depth effect is a little flat.
We see too much the background as a image. can be badly set?

The best effect i see is with the 3d vision glass.
A real deph effect! The vatness of space
But with your mod and 3dvision i can't use your beautifull Bloom effect.
In the left eye the bloom effect stay in place/print in screen and the screen become white.
See my picture.
capture-xwa-3dvision.jpg
The right eye is good.
When i put bloom_levels to "1" (in bloom.cfg) i have not this problem.
I Think it is your "pyramidal system" of bloom.

With reshade effect i have not this problem.

Do you have an idea if it is possible to fix that ?
If not no problem it is soon a magic uptdate!

Thank you by advance
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marcop000
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Post by marcop000 » Wed Apr 08, 2020 3:17 pm

Update about my previous attemp:

I have instelled these updates in this order:

XWAU Craft Pack 1.6
Effects by Blue Max's version 1.1.2
Dynamic Cockpits v1.0

and now with some few small fix, the cockpit work perfectly and the result is similar to a AAA game ... incredible ... I don't have words to descrive it ...

There is only a bit compromise the framerate is low: only 23 FPS this after disable all antialising mode (MSSA and FXAA).

The resolution is 1920x1080 and my GPU is nvidia GTX 1060 6GB.

Can you suggest me some setting to play at stable 60 FPS ?
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Trevor
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Post by Trevor » Wed Apr 08, 2020 5:44 pm

Can you suggest me some setting to play at stable 60 FPS ?
Stable 60fps from 23fps? You will have to disable the effects to achieve that.
We see too much the background as a image. can be badly set?
Not sure what you mean there?
But i think the resolution in Vr was a little poor and particullary i think the depth effect is a little flat.
To be fair, space is vast and we only see "3d" up to about 10m (the x-wing is about 15m long)
Increasing IPD beyond your own eyes will yes, make things further appear to "pop" BUT you will effectively feel like you are playing with minitures as everything will be under 10m.

I also ran the 1.1.1 installer and had no problems, very well put together installer.
(I made backups of my configs first since I needed to fix some things again after)

Trev

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Wed Apr 08, 2020 6:45 pm

@marcop000: I've got the same GPU and I can get ~100fps @ 1920x1080; but I have to install hook_time.dll, have you tried that? I do get some drops in framerate when there are complex models on the screen; but that's still a limitation of the engine right now.

You can also try setting "ssao_buffer_scale_divisor = 2.0" in SSAO.cfg -- but this will only work for SSAO and SSDO.

Finally, you can also set "ssao_type = Deferred" in SSAO.cfg, that's the fastest shader that still implements most of the new effects.

@eddyfurax:
But i think the resolution in Vr was a little poor and particullary i think the depth effect is a little flat.
You can adjust the resolution using SteamVR's settings. Trevor already pointed out that far away objects will either look flat or will look like 3D miniatures. If the *cockpit* looks flat, though, you can adjust the strength of the stereoscopy with: Ctrl + Shift + Alt + Up/Down. Also, take a look at this video for more ideas on how to adjust your experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqPLOXu ... e=youtu.be

(The first part of this video -- the installers -- is now obsolete; but the second part is still relevant)
The best effect i see is with the 3d vision glass.
This mod was not designed to work with 3D vision glasses. How did you make it work? What type of glasses are you using? AFAIK there are either polarized glasses or glasses with active shutters (or something else?)
When i put bloom_levels to "1" (in bloom.cfg) i have not this problem.
If you do this, you'll essentially disable the bloom effect, so that's why the problem goes away.
BTW, most bloom effects also implement pyramidal bloom because that's a very fast way of doing it. I don't think that's the problem. Instead, I'd like to know more about how you made this work with 3D vision, so that we can get to the proper root cause.

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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:13 pm

Thank you Blu_max for your answer.

Happy to read you.

HTC vive is very top for roomscale game like "beat saber" or "superhotvr".

I have dream to test xwing alliance in Vr since long time.
But in i was a little disappointed.

The space background is not deep and in Vr i really see all the many artefacts like this :
pixcell galaxy.jpg
it gets me out of immersion
Do you know if the background will be a little upgrade?

And the framerate is not very good and make me a little sick.
My pc win10 i78700 rtx2080 and 16go ram

But i will insist and try to adjust with the control key the convergence (ctr+alt+right...) like in your video.
I hopes find a good configuration.
I dont all understand how control my ship without see my keyboard but i will read all the read-me files.

The technology i use is 3d vision by Nvidia
It is active 3d with activ glass.
Saadly Nvidia have recently stopped this technology because they dont have the success they excepted.
But a site like xwaupgrade work very hard to make compatible this technology with new game http://helixmod.blogspot.com

I promised it is very impressive immersion and i suggest you will try if you can
I think for now it is better from my htc vive because the resolution can be very high and the deep of space is powerfull.
By exemple, if you play in exterior view your ship can be near at you. The laser fly away from your screen. You have a real impression of space.

You must have a monitor compatible (120hz 165hz better) and the kit can be found in ebay or small annonces site
A exemple https://www.ebay.fr/itm/NVIDIA-3D-Visio ... SweZ9eiKoM

To active it in xwing alliance i have just to clik "alt+enter"
I see a subject in this forum but i not all understand :
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewto ... &start=150

I know your mod is for vr.
I have just think if you have an idea why the bloom effect stay print on left screen ?
Thank you very much to study this.

It is maybe nothing.
Because with reshade and bloom magic i have not this bug.

How can i help you more?

Your mod make me want to test too Track-Ir
It look pretty good.
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keiranhalcyon7
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Post by keiranhalcyon7 » Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:43 pm

eddyfurax wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:13 pm
I dont all understand how control my ship without see my keyboard but i will read all the read-me files.
Touch typing. I don't have VR, but I typically play at night after everyone else is in bed, meaning lights out. It's a skill that needs to be developed like any other.

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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:58 pm

keiranhalcyon7 wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:43 pm
eddyfurax wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:13 pm
I dont all understand how control my ship without see my keyboard but i will read all the read-me files.
Touch typing. I don't have VR, but I typically play at night after everyone else is in bed, meaning lights out. It's a skill that needs to be developed like any other.
Hello.

You have right.
I play this game since soo long time I can almost find the keys blind.

But in the last version The mod have add an option to have all the control in the cockpit. I have just test it!
All the buttons was in the past here only for the background is now activ!
they can be activated with the space bar and the view with the headset.
It is a very good work.

But definitly the resolution actual in Vr is too bad for a good experience.
I am feeling sick after 15minutes too play.

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Post by marcop000 » Wed Apr 08, 2020 9:22 pm

Hi blue_max,

I confirm the file Hook_Time.dll is present and is updated to june 2019.

I have followed your setting and I see a good gain of FPS, however I confirm that most FPS drop (less than 30 frame) will be when there are a high number of large ships.

I thing is a limitation of the engine that is old like you write.

There is a way to optimize it ?

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Wed Apr 08, 2020 9:52 pm

marcop000 wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 9:22 pm
I have followed your setting and I see a good gain of FPS, however I confirm that most FPS drop (less than 30 frame) will be when there are a high number of large ships.

I thing is a limitation of the engine that is old like you write.

There is a way to optimize it ?
Yes, this is a limitation with the game engine right now. We would need to reverse-engineer the whole 3D engine in XWA and replace it with our own version. There are people working towards that goal, and some progress has been made; but I don't expect that this task will be completed soon (if ever). So, for now, we'll just have to live with the occasional drop in performance. Sorry!

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blue_max
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Post by blue_max » Wed Apr 08, 2020 11:08 pm

eddyfurax wrote:
Wed Apr 08, 2020 8:13 pm
The space background is not deep and in Vr i really see all the many artefacts like this :
The VR mod detects the background and pushes it back 65km away. That should be deep enough. However, there might be a bug in the code, so I'll double-check that. The other artifacts you're pointing out have to do with textures and are not related to the VR mod. Some people have already upgraded the backgrounds in the recent past; but that's probably an area where you could help too.
And the framerate is not very good and make me a little sick.
My pc win10 i78700 rtx2080 and 16go ram
I think I'm going to have to make a new thread regarding all the performance stuff. To improve performance, you can try some of the things I told marcop000 in this thread; but SteamVR will impose a big performance penalty that, at this point, cannot be avoided.
The technology i use is 3d vision by Nvidia
It is active 3d with activ glass.
Yeah, I suspected that. nVidia try to auto-detect the depth buffer and create convergence values from it to do stereoscopy. Honestly, I'm surprised it worked at all for you. Darkblue was actually attempting to fix it around Dec 2019; but we didn't hear back from him. The right way to fix this mod for 3D vision is to go into the source code for ddraw and modify how the images are sent to the nVidia 3D vision drivers. As you pointed out, this technology has been deprecated, though. So we need someone with coding skills, the right hardware, and lots of patience to try and tweak this. If someone's interested in taking up the challenge I'm happy to point that person in the right direction to modify ddraw for 3D vision.
How can i help you more?
Maybe improving the backgrounds. Touch up the places with artifacts and improve them. If you can get the Vive experience working properly, you could also share your settings in this thread: https://xwaupgrade.com/phpBB3/viewtopic ... 73#p164673

Also, if you're a coder, you might want to try and fix 3D vision too.

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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:08 am

Thank you Blu-Max for your returns

Unfortunaly i am not a coder. : (
I work as infographist

But i don't know how help you with the superbackdrop.
I think it was a mapping problem and insert from the galaxy and planet.

I have hopes that you have an easy idea to fix it in ddraw file or some idea in your config files.

3d vision work fine with xwing alliance.
The problem is the game crash after a mission if you are still in 3d.
The solution is just to come back to capital ship in normal mode. (with alt+enter in fly)

Saadly i thinks not many people play with 3dvision. : (
If you can still talk about that to the community it was very nice.

But i am very happy with the new hyperspace tunnel, the shader and the cockpit inertia !!
I have solved to have a good bloom effect with reshade. But not soo good that yours. (the bloom laser are so good with your mod).

I will make a new test in VR and the frameratte was better and with the convergence it was more confortable.
But i think very hard to play more than 20min in Vr with the poor resolution.

I wait the XWVM project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4qHsisO1K8&t=300s
He have just implement too the vr mod. With unity 3d i think it was more confortable too play

Other returns from users with steam vr and htc?

Thank you more for your times

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Post by Bman » Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:29 am

The galaxy and stars pics I believe are the older 256 indexed 8-bit colors images that are embedded in the .dat container files. They can or will be replaced with 32-bit color images. You can easily replace with Jeremy's DAT editor. As for the mapping/tweaking the image size, you can also scale the image via AlliED mission editor for regular missions by choosing the Backdrop FG and changing it's size in the text box(es). How your screen resolution is set also has some influence on it.
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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:41 am

Bman wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:29 am
The galaxy and stars pics I believe are the older 256 indexed 8-bit colors images that are embedded in the .dat container files. They can or will be replaced with 32-bit color images. You can easily replace with Jeremy's DAT editor. As for the mapping/tweaking the image size, you can also scale the image via AlliED mission editor for regular missions by choosing the Backdrop FG and changing it's size in the text box(es). How your screen resolution is set also has some influence on it.
Thanks for the small tuto.
By the past i study and use a little the X-Wing Alliance Dat Customizer ver 1.0 available in darsaber's site.
I didn't know the Jeremy Dat editor! Very nice, better pics integration.

Nobody work on a new Super backdrops? It was really wonderfull in 2014 but now i think it should be update compared too the new cockpits!

And no new cokpit for Imperial fighter ; ) ?

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Post by Ldebroy » Thu Apr 09, 2020 2:54 am

Hi, can you tell me where can I download the patch?

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Post by DTM » Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:46 am

Do you know if the background will be a little upgrade?
Yes. Darksaber did a great and long work updating all planets, stars and nebula. The Super Backdrop patch has been updated and is actaully in testing phase. It will be released in few days.
The resolution is 1920x1080 and my GPU is nvidia GTX 1060 6GB.
Try lowering the resolution. XWA is an excellent game even at the resolution of 1600x900. In fact, the game engine isn't made to work at very high resolutions.
Using a resolution of 1920x1080 you can experience the disappearance of large objects. Nothing to worry about, until you use game patches that include planetary surfaces or huge space stations, calibrated for a resolution of 1600x900 ... now, however, I'm leaving the topic ...

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Post by Forceflow » Thu Apr 09, 2020 7:20 am

Ldebroy wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 2:54 am
Hi, can you tell me where can I download the patch?
Just go to the main page:
https://www.xwaupgrade.com
There on the left side in the menu you can see the Download section.
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Post by ual002 » Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:33 pm

@DTM, fantastic. Did you ever add that Kuat I sent?
Image Image Image Image Image

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eddyfurax
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Post by eddyfurax » Thu Apr 09, 2020 7:31 pm

DTM wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:46 am
Do you know if the background will be a little upgrade?
Yes. Darksaber did a great and long work updating all planets, stars and nebula. The Super Backdrop patch has been updated and is actaully in testing phase. It will be released in few days.
The resolution is 1920x1080 and my GPU is nvidia GTX 1060 6GB.
Try lowering the resolution. XWA is an excellent game even at the resolution of 1600x900. In fact, the game engine isn't made to work at very high resolutions.
Using a resolution of 1920x1080 you can experience the disappearance of large objects. Nothing to worry about, until you use game patches that include planetary surfaces or huge space stations, calibrated for a resolution of 1600x900 ... now, however, I'm leaving the topic ...
Hello DTM,

Thank you for your answer about the next Super Backdrop. very good news.
Few years ago there was not as much update. It is very nice too see xwaupgrade team so activ!

I am very impatient to discover it.

I have test the XwaDatEditor-1.0.7 it is a very good tool with new possibility. He work better with opacity.
I was thinking to myself that in new Backdrop it will be better don't include nebular or Planet in the line of milky way.
The integration was too artificial. Nebular and planets should be positionned in the dark space of background. What do you think about?

Best regards

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Post by Kampher » Thu Apr 09, 2020 8:59 pm

This is amazing! I started updating the backdrops on my own today, but now I think I'll wait for the official release.

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Post by Ldebroy » Fri Apr 10, 2020 3:05 am

Forceflow wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 7:20 am
Ldebroy wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 2:54 am
Hi, can you tell me where can I download the patch?
Just go to the main page:
https://www.xwaupgrade.com
There on the left side in the menu you can see the Download section.
Thanks, I will try. By other way. I am new in all this installation, I did download this patch, but simultaneously the X-Wing, Y-Wing and A-Wing crafts, as well as the XWAUCPv1.6 patch. It does not let me install the 1.6 patch ´cause the computer displayed the message that for installing it needed to uninstall Darksaber´s Craft Pack 2.6 first.

I Installed all the other patchs. However, the game is been displayed on a 4:3 format, not widescreen 16:9 as before. Do you know how can I resolve this issue?

Thanks!

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Post by JeremyaFr » Fri Apr 10, 2020 8:40 am

Ldebroy wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 3:05 am
the game is been displayed on a 4:3 format, not widescreen 16:9 as before. Do you know how can I resolve this issue?
Check the DDraw.cfg file. There is a setting to preserve or not the aspect ratio.

Code: Select all

; PreserveAspectRatio = 0 (no) or 1 (yes)
; When set to 0, the display will be stretched.
; When set to 1, the aspect ratio will be preserved.
PreserveAspectRatio = 1
Open DDraw.cfg with notepad
and change the bottom

From PreserveAspectRatio = 1 to PreserveAspectRatio = 0

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Post by Avarice1987 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 10:00 am

Okay, then the resolution with 1600x900 is better than 1920x1080 ? Because 1920x1080 would be my desktop resolution. I haven't noticed any problems yet.

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Post by DTM » Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:08 pm

I Installed all the other patchs. However, the game is been displayed on a 4:3 format, not widescreen 16:9 as before.
I confirm that the patch has changed the "PreservAspectRatio" value, as indicated by JeremyaFr.
If you play the game you will find that the game is 16:9. The off-game menu, on the other hand, is 4:3 as it originally was. This is not a problem ... it is a solution ;)

However, in order not to confuse users, the installer will be modified to maintain the aspect ratio as you have known it previously.
You should know that if you prefer to keep the off-game menu in 4:3, avoiding the stretching of the image, you will have to modify the DDraw.cfg file as suggested above.

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Post by marcop000 » Fri Apr 10, 2020 5:22 pm

hi JeremyaFr,

I see the target craft chars are not easy to read and the position is not optimal.

There is a way to fix it ?
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Post by JeremyaFr » Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:50 pm

DTM wrote:
Thu Apr 09, 2020 6:46 am
Try lowering the resolution. XWA is an excellent game even at the resolution of 1600x900. In fact, the game engine isn't made to work at very high resolutions.
Is this related to the Windows DPI setting?

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