Real Dust - Graphics Mod for Project Reality and A2

[agus92]

Originally Posted by MAVEN

Real Light is nice, I acrually named Real Dust similarly as it aims to achieve realism too lol. It was a quick pick of a name, supposed to be temporary but meh.

Real Light doesn't use 3D LUT palettes and depends on more shaders. Real Dust was based on PR GEM which itself is a MasterEffect ReShade and which itself is a ReShade 1.1.

You can use any version for personal use only, no commercial use of course. All of these presets and mods forbid sale and uncredited distribution. You can also make own preset as it's not that hard.

As for the spoiler, I really need that in the thread. Don't want to lag loadup times but also don't want to remove old screenshots as they showcase changes over versions. I saw threads with spoilers and I'd like to add spoilers to mine.

No need to thank me.

Spoiler for learn to use Google:

https://www.realitymod.com/forum/misc.php?do=bbcode

[MAVEN]

Nice trollback

Thank you so much for that code listing page, helps a lot.

Will test it now:

Spoiler for Test:

Works

Time to update the thread

P.S. I haven't finished ports and v5 of RD, but working on it from time to time.

[doop-de-doo]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Mineral

Who needs color anyway. -_-

To the top with you.

[MAVEN]

Originally Posted by doop-de-doo

To the top with you.

He responded for v1 of the mod which really didn't have much color but since v2 I found a way to fix this. Now the mod has a lot more color and there's an optional switch you can use to add even more color than the vanilla -.-

[MAVEN]

V5 is up

V5 brings several new features and fixes. Lens dirt was moved to other method and mixed with 3D lens glare for better realism, now it appears only with very bright objects and the flash is more intense but measured. There is a new filter called anamorphic glare which aims to emulate offlection that appears on high def optics or quality goggles by live reflecting environment subtly, measured it to fit with RD. I also added fisheye effect (curves screen) to help fix game FOV and add optical feel to vehicle HUD details this is experimental so let me know if you don't like it. V5 also features Gaussian light leaking commonly seen in games today, helps emulate light reflections on objects. I also optimized texture size and rendering, improving performance on some systems. There are now new switches to use.

As a bonus I ported RealDust to SWAT 4

The v1 of S4 port was based on V5 and uses effects in a more agressive and intense form making for more cinematic/headcam feel than usual RealDust experience thus improving an old game by a lot.

As usual you can find all changes, download links and screens in main thread description. For v6 I plan on implementing true or better light rays and other improvements, I also plan on porting RD to BF2142 and RedOrchestra 2.

Screen highlights

[MAVEN]

Just added RealDust port version for Red Orchestra 2

It was based on v5 and uses custom settings as well as an extra texture. The mod helps warm up RO2 color and remove the "blurry feel" of that game which is IMHO best ww2 game on Steam, a worthy mention is Forgotten Hope 2 mod for which I also recommend using RD for PR as it's yet another awesome BF2 mod.

Here's some screen highlights. You can find more in main thread:

[IAmNotMatthew]

My eyes...Horribly bright, too much special effects, lens flare on lens flare, cannot see anything...I cannot play with this for more than 10 seconds, my eyes hurt from this.

[matty1053]

I agree with IAmNotMatthew, WAY too much lens flare. I think I'd be better off shining a flashlight at my monitor while I am aiming. Might have to wear sun glasses if I ADS. Tested it out early today and it hurt my eyes. Will try out RO2 though, that looks VERY beautiful.

[IAmNotMatthew]

Matty, no, I tried RO2, it's almost the same, can be worse, I had the brightness on 110% and it looked like this, I had to move the brightness down to 90% to be able to see something, the chat is distorded, looks like it's 3D when I'm not wearing 3D glasses, special effects make aiming hard, you ADS and you get blinded by lens flares. You need to decrease the brightness below 75%, if you decrease that much you won't see anything, but special effects.

[MAVEN]

Thanks for the feedback.

I found it really strange that some users report the brightness to be too high yet others told me it's perfect and the mod makes the colors come up.

So I did a research on the topic.

It turns out that:

- The mod works differently on different hardware and is mostly affected by resolutions.
- Each monitor type responds differently.
- Although not recommended, most people crank their monitor settings (brightness, contrast, luma) way up to 100%, for a record I use 50% brightness and 100% contract but on others even lower values, this helps produce natural light. There is a tool to help you automatically adjust these for your monitor and make it's colors corrected, more info bellow.
- Different GPUs behave differently with the mod.

I am currently working on v6 for PR, this time around I am testing the mod on multiple monitors, different resolutions etc. I've found a solution but it needs to be balanced further and this takes time.

Until v6 is out, here's what you can and should do in general sense:

- Lower your ingame brightness to default.
- Lower your monitor brightness (if it's maxed out) to optimal one.
- Use RealDust switches to turn items that are annoying to you, you can find these in the main thread. Most affecting are bloom and flares/glares.
- Switch the RD mod in-game off using ScrollLock key when you don't want it to interfere with your interface.

There's a gadget that can automatically balance your monitor settings and profiles for you. These are pretty cheap to buy. I've used some on my designer monitors on the workstation as this job requires extreme precision but it never hurts to do this yourself too. While pricing can range from 20 USD to 300 USD, you don't really need expensive one, just the most basic thing will do.

They are called Color Calibrators, but good ones can fix your brightness and contrast too - https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&pag...%20calibration

Here's how it works - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUVrRM0Njk

If you're on the budget, there are plenty of video tutorials that show you how to calibrate specific monitor settings.

I would also like to explain how RealDust (ReShade) works, in most plain laymans terms possible:

RealDust does not interact with 3D objects in the game at all, what it does is it intercepts frames your GPU has pre-rendered but not "uploaded" to your PC and it applies various calculations, overlays and then uploads the frame for display. Since it doesn't interact with 3D space, it uses pixels to react, here's examples.

For bloom - RD goes "hey I see a white pixel brighter than usual, does it have friends? If yes, let me make it glow"
For sharpening - RD goes "hey there are random dark pixels, do they have too many friends? If not, let me give them some"
For color correction - RD goes "hey this yellow color is too yellow and contrasted, looks cartoony, let me replace it with sandy yellow, hey this sky is too blue looks like paint and not natural sky, let me replace it with cyan-blue"
For lens flare - RD goes "hey these pixels are in center and very bright, let's add them some nice 3D effects and remove other effects until these are gone"

And so on, you get the idea. Each filter in RD (ReShade) uses multiple matrixes and calculations for every frame, thus the process is complex, however since it relies on pixel count it will be affected by your resolution hence RealDust is optimized for 720p to 1080p. Also, since RealDust relies on pixels, it cannot smartly see that you are in a bright menu it will think it's skyline or explosion, equally it cannot intelligently know you are looking at ground or sky, it relies on color patterns and settings I've made in my preset. So keep this in mind. RealDust is not fix-it-all solution but a rather one-for-all that aims to improve certain elements of your game, however this costs processing power and may not work with all game elements as a result.

I will publish v6 when it's ready.