This might be a dumb question, but do you have to change the graphics settings once this is installed? or are they already done by the mod? thanks for the info!
Unfortunately, my computer is older and in ADS firefights I often lose 50%+ FPS with this, running 1920 res. Is there a wiki/UE4 resource which describes which setting in the mod files implements the graphic option you mention in the description? I'd rather learn for myself and tweak than ask you to make X number of mods with various combinations of options toggled or adjusted. Nor should you. :)
Nice, thanks! I had to uninstall it as it was causing AFE to crash due to graphics load (would judder to a stop when many many aliens exploding and spraying liquid FX everywhere, then crash) but I'm interested in tweaking it up. It's an incentive to upgrade as well. :)
Thank you very much, I'm happy to endorse this. :)
I've already tried them. None of them seem to have any effect in Aliens FE.
In my own research, what I found is that this isn't tweakable via the config file. Apparently it's something that's defined in material properties for the hair meshes (or something like that). They are dithering the transparencies on the hair (something done in modern games to reduce frame time spikes) and then it is supposed to be smoothed out by Temporal Anti-Aliasing (something referred to as "DitherTemporalAA" in the material properties in the UE4 editor).
If you despise the ghosting caused by Temporal Anti-Aliasing like I do, then the only thing you can do is use FXAA as it does some blending of the dithering. While it still looks bad, it doesn't look as bad as it does without FXAA, and you don't get the horrible ghosting effects caused by TAA.
With UE4 games like this I force enable FXAA in the engine.ini file, and then I inject even more FXAA with ReShade and tweak it for better blending. I also slap at least a couple of sharpening shaders after that in ReShade, usually DELC_Sharpen and AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, although I've been playing around with Smart Sharp recently as well due to its denoising capability.
DELC_Sharpen is from repo qUINT by Marty McFly AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening is from repo SweetFX by CeeJay.dk Smart Sharp is from repo AstrayFX by BlueSkyDefender
The AstrayFX repo also has a ReShade shader for NVIDIA DLAA, however it has a pretty hefty performance hit and does about the same thing as ReShade's FXAA shader (which has almost no performance hit at all), so I don't see much point in the DLAA shader until the performance issues are worked out.
Note: Adding CMAA2 before FXAA in ReShade and tweaking it for highest quality helps a little bit as well, but that shader has a performance hit roughly equal to the SMAA shader which may be too much for the small benefit it gives.
CMAA2 is from repo Insane-Shaders by Lord of Lunacy
This can additionally be fixed with FXAA and NFAA via Reshade, but that also makes the image more blurry (which can be somewhat offset by the various Reshade sharpening filters, or via r.TonemapperSharpen in Engine.ini.) Will have to give your settings a go.
NFAA doesn't come anywhere close to blending the dithered transparencies in the hair (maybe in 4K, but not in 1440p). Unless of course you have to tweak it in order to do that.
Personally I enable FXAA in the game, and then add more FXAA in ReShade (which I've tweaked to be considerably more blurry), then sharpen the s#*! out of it with DELC_Sharpen and CAS. It mostly smooths out the dithering, but not completely.
One problem with this game is the often over-the-top saturation, caused by funky auto exposure settings, which is seemingly a common feature of UE4 based games. In AFE, it's more visible in the third chapter, especially in the alien ship, where the saturation just gets silly. I found some lines that arguably "fix" the saturation though. Be aware that this essentially makes the game even darker, without the over-the-top saturation, and renders the flashlight ineffective in some cases (as in, the darkness basically overpowers the flashlight), without additional tonemappper tweaking.
This potentially makes things look a bit more washed out. You may need to also tweak r.TonemapperGamma=(number) and/or r.Color.Mid=(number) to compensate for the darkness. Note that r.Color.Mid basically controls brightness, where 0.5 is usually default.
Edit: While the game looks much better without the forced overbearing saturation, the tweak above basically destroys the flashlight. I need to do some more experimentation.
Anyone know which lines to add/edit in order to increase game volume exponentially? My game volume is at max in-game, everything set to 1.000 in all of the relevant file configs and game is still barely audible. I have other UE4 games, all with the volumes set to 1.000 through the ini files, and the audio in those games is fine. Yet, AFE, with the same settings, is barely audible.
Might see what happens if I crank up all FXVolume settings. Although I'm not sure if anything will happen with values higher than 1.000, assuming that 1.000 is absolute maximum.
Edit: I'm having some success via setting the MasterVolume level to over 100 via GameUsersettings.ini. For other games, a volume setting that ear would explode your drums, but with AFE, the sounds is now almost the same level as other games. Now if only I could find the setting to remove the forced volume ducking at the main menu - where sounds are seemingly always borderline inaudible, whatever volume you set your masters to. Then there's that weird 'fade in to almost actual volume level' once you reach the hub, followed by the actual corrected volume level (that was "fixed" through the ini file volume edits) once you are in mission...
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This might be a dumb question, but do you have to change the graphics settings once this is installed? or are they already done by the mod? thanks for the info!
Unfortunately, my computer is older and in ADS firefights I often lose 50%+ FPS with this, running 1920 res. Is there a wiki/UE4 resource which describes which setting in the mod files implements the graphic option you mention in the description? I'd rather learn for myself and tweak than ask you to make X number of mods with various combinations of options toggled or adjusted. Nor should you. :)
Thank you very much, I'm happy to endorse this. :)
In my own research, what I found is that this isn't tweakable via the config file. Apparently it's something that's defined in material properties for the hair meshes (or something like that). They are dithering the transparencies on the hair (something done in modern games to reduce frame time spikes) and then it is supposed to be smoothed out by Temporal Anti-Aliasing (something referred to as "DitherTemporalAA" in the material properties in the UE4 editor).
If you despise the ghosting caused by Temporal Anti-Aliasing like I do, then the only thing you can do is use FXAA as it does some blending of the dithering. While it still looks bad, it doesn't look as bad as it does without FXAA, and you don't get the horrible ghosting effects caused by TAA.
With UE4 games like this I force enable FXAA in the engine.ini file, and then I inject even more FXAA with ReShade and tweak it for better blending. I also slap at least a couple of sharpening shaders after that in ReShade, usually DELC_Sharpen and AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, although I've been playing around with Smart Sharp recently as well due to its denoising capability.
DELC_Sharpen is from repo qUINT by Marty McFly
AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening is from repo SweetFX by CeeJay.dk
Smart Sharp is from repo AstrayFX by BlueSkyDefender
The AstrayFX repo also has a ReShade shader for NVIDIA DLAA, however it has a pretty hefty performance hit and does about the same thing as ReShade's FXAA shader (which has almost no performance hit at all), so I don't see much point in the DLAA shader until the performance issues are worked out.
Note: Adding CMAA2 before FXAA in ReShade and tweaking it for highest quality helps a little bit as well, but that shader has a performance hit roughly equal to the SMAA shader which may be too much for the small benefit it gives.
CMAA2 is from repo Insane-Shaders by Lord of Lunacy
Personally I enable FXAA in the game, and then add more FXAA in ReShade (which I've tweaked to be considerably more blurry), then sharpen the s#*! out of it with DELC_Sharpen and CAS. It mostly smooths out the dithering, but not completely.
In Engine.ini add,
r.DefaultFeature.AutoExposure=1
r.DefaultFeature.AutoExposure.ExtendDefaultLuminanceRange=1
r.DefaultFeature.AutoExposure.Method=1
This potentially makes things look a bit more washed out. You may need to also tweak r.TonemapperGamma=(number) and/or r.Color.Mid=(number) to compensate for the darkness. Note that r.Color.Mid basically controls brightness, where 0.5 is usually default.
Edit: While the game looks much better without the forced overbearing saturation, the tweak above basically destroys the flashlight. I need to do some more experimentation.
Edit: I'm having some success via setting the MasterVolume level to over 100 via GameUsersettings.ini. For other games, a volume setting that ear would explode your drums, but with AFE, the sounds is now almost the same level as other games. Now if only I could find the setting to remove the forced volume ducking at the main menu - where sounds are seemingly always borderline inaudible, whatever volume you set your masters to. Then there's that weird 'fade in to almost actual volume level' once you reach the hub, followed by the actual corrected volume level (that was "fixed" through the ini file volume edits) once you are in mission...