...and now a little explanation, to Notice anything different

[EldoradoRailroad]

If you can, take a look at this first:
https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showth...hing-different

For those who left constructive comments in OP in Open Rails Screenshots, I say THANK YOU!

All of my posts in that thread were .gifs which introduce some aliasing of colours/colors and graininess.

Way back in MSTS times we had this:


Then came ORTS and we had this (forever ):


For those who are so inclined you can look at this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra,_penumbra_and_antumbra

I have a request for comments, with regards to this work.

1) If you like what you see, why do you like it?

2) ORTS has had this curiosity for well over a decade now, why did nobody else notice or "complain"?

3) Running ORTS with dynamic shadows turned on has a runtime penalty with lower frame rates. Aside from the previous sentence, is this the only reason why I have seen so many posts without dynamic shadows enabled? As an example I do see a single screenshot at Trainsimulations.net with dynamic shadows enabled.

4) I have purposely chosen to make this change with an old version of ORTS, and a weak graphics card. What graphics card and how much GPU memory are you using? This is important to know, so I do not develop this in a vacuum.

5) Could you live with some quirks related to the display engine(s) used by ORTS that would not always give you the desired visual result with enhanced dynamic shadows?

As mentioned this is a work in progress. It was suggested many years ago that what I am doing was not possible. The ideal rendering of dynamic shadows requires some compromises for real time display. Even a little bit of "fakery" to simulate the real/ideal.

All constructive comments are welcome, and thank you for your time writing them up here.

Thanks,
Steve

[eric]

Shadows improve the visual experience tremendously, so thanks for taking that on as a mission.

I've noticed that the shadows have always been a bit sloppy, but to me it was more important for the core things to be working right: physics, signaling, AI and activities.

With the big rocks more or less moved, there's time to focus on the niceties and forward looking things like a new shapefile.

[pschlik]

Shadows have always looked funky in OpenRails, so any improvement will be quite welcome. And while I know not everyone can feel the same way, my GPU is definitely ready to tackle more!

[paulytechnic]

I like what I see! Big difference!

I've always noticed the shadows in Open Rails could use a little improvement, but even with it's shortfalls, I thought the shadows for everything else on the whole was better in OR. This change is way beyond better. (Of course, I don't posess the coding know-how to make any such improvements myself, so I didn't feel it my place to complain in the past.)

The sunlight in your screenshots also seem a bit more vibrant; is that another change you made to OR, or just the increased "contrast for clarity" for that screenshot? Either way, I do think ReShade does a good job with improving the look of things, but it would be nice for OR to do a bit better rendering on its own without depending on ReShade, too.

For what it's worth, I'm running with a modest NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 2GB. I can tolerate a few oddities if the shadows as a whole are better.

[EldoradoRailroad]

I like what I see! Big difference!

I've always noticed the shadows in Open Rails could use a little improvement, but even with it's shortfalls, I thought the shadows for everything else on the whole was better in OR. This change is way beyond better. (Of course, I don't posess the coding know-how to make any such improvements myself, so I didn't feel it my place to complain in the past.)

The sunlight in your screenshots also seem a bit more vibrant; is that another change you made to OR, or just the increased "contrast for clarity" for that screenshot? Either way, I do think ReShade does a good job with improving the look of things, but it would be nice for OR to do a bit better rendering on its own without depending on ReShade, too.

For what it's worth, I'm running with a modest NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 2GB. I can tolerate a few oddities if the shadows as a whole are better.

It has been a few years since I ran a version of Monogame ORTS with Reshade, mostly the benefit (I saw and experimented with) was the blurring of anything outside of the train that was moving when the train was in motion of course.

I think it would be helpful if a person such of yourself could post some screen shots of Reshade enabled, with your favorite/favourite Reshade settings. As a matter of interest, as I recall, Reshade did nothing to enhance shadows.

For purpose of illustration in the original thread with screen shots, yes there was some contrast enhancement within ORTS itself. Some of that might be a bit excessive, or not. As mentioned this is a work in progress. If this experiment is not on anybodies radar, no harm is done. But if you are interested, it would be helpful if you could provide some info with screenshots as what route and what rolling stock was used with Reshade.

The first screen shot I posted "https://i.imgur.com/qbQMCe5.gif" was made with a vintage gpu system (2009!), with only 1gb of gpu memory to work with.

Thanks,
Steve

[paulytechnic]

Now that you mention it, I guess ReShade really doesn't do anything with the shadows themselves.

In any case, here are a few screenshots using Open Rail 1.4 (stable) with ReShade 5.8.0 and Scott Brunner's "SCOshade.ini" presets (I haven't been able to get Open Rails 1.5.1 to work with ReShade) taken on the ATSF Seligman 2.0 route with dynamic shadows and all shadows enabled.

[R. Steele]

Now that you mention it, I guess ReShade really doesn't do anything with the shadows themselves.

...

ReShade has the capabilities to change the grey scale, gamma ( degree of contrast ), and detail rendered in shadows, it will not change how they are rendered ... ( to my limited knowledge of ReShade ). To the best of my knowledge ReShade is compatible with the current stable version of OR.

[scottb613]

ReShade has the capabilities to change the grey scale, gamma ( degree of contrast ), and detail rendered in shadows, it will not change how they are rendered ... ( to my limited knowledge of ReShade ). To the best of my knowledge ReShade is compatible with the current stable version of OR.

Hi Folks,

Nice shots Paul - they look real good.

Yeah - been using ReShade in other sims - before it was available here - huge fan. I seldom run ORTS without it. There are so many shaders available - each with numerous settings - you should be able to get what your after. I like attempting to make a bright sunny day - look like a bright sunny day. The default ORTS/MSTS never had the best rendition of graphics - the lighting always always seemed flat and lackluster.

Regards,
Scott

[EldoradoRailroad]

This begs the question..how many are ALWAYS using ReShade?

Judging by the replies I see here, it seems that ReShade is the "goto" co-rendering tool that is in popular use, by those who care how things "look".

As mentioned I tried ReShade a few years back, but because I am involved with many things, I found it rather tiresome porting my ReShade setup from one (interim) release of ORTS to another, especially when tracking down a bug through regression tests. So I let it slide. I hope there is some "goto" link to get ReShade that is compatible with version 1.4 of ORTS. As mentioned elsewhere, the current use of MGfx binaries at runtime for shaders is not conducive to easy coding/testing as it requires a separate compile after each code edit. I might elect to supply MGfx binaries only for testing in the wild.

Overtime there seems to be two camps, those who are firmly more interested in operational physics and those who like to have a nicely rendered sim. While I do get some enjoyment out of properly implemented mechanical simulations, and this is probably more relevant for complex things like steam engines, I tend to focus more on visual/aural things, where visual also includes models (shape files/ textures etc).

So my friends, if ReShade is the order of the day for visual things, then the only thing I need to work on for the public release of any code is just shadow enhancement(s)?

I hope this thread does not get hijacked into another ReShade thread.

Steve

[eric]

Even if you keep the scope to shadows, that alone is a huge enhancement.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

[pschlik]

As someone in the physics camp, I don't exactly have the time or remaining willpower to figure out reshade. It's not that I don't want things to look nice but that I have a to-do list that is far too long as is. As such, I would like the maximum improvement to graphics with the minimum user effort, so the more that goes into vanilla Open Rails the better.

[rdayt]

More, better shadows. Yes.
ReShade will only make them appear better in game.

Randy

[PerryPlatypus]

As someone in BOTH camps (physics and graphics), shadows have long been one of the weak points of ORTS. Both in terms of overall appearance, and that early morning/late evening (when shadows are long) seem to have a major impact on performance/framerates, moreso than almost any other factor (at least that's what I'm experiencing on routes with dense forest foliage producing lots of shadows). Anything that can be done to improve appearance and/or optimize performance of shadows is time well spent imo. In terms of coding, I'm not sure how much of this overlaps with James Ross's recent work on lighting (which included improving the brightness/contrast between direct sunlit vs. shadowed areas), but I assume you are coordinating with him at least a bit.