Enable Ambient Occlusion!

[kyletiernan]

Yes its true, I have found a way to enable Ambient Occlusion in DCS World which ultimately gives you much more realistic shadows:)

 

I have to admit i was a bit desperate to try and figure this out :P

 

Though its far from perfect since when you move the camera in a certain spots it dissapears for some reason and its different with the time of day but overall its a good start and with minimal performance hit. Unfortunately its Nvidia only.

 

 

Steps!

 

1.Download Nvidia Inspector

http://downloads.guru3d.com/NVIDIA-Inspector-1.94-download-2612.html

 

2.Open application and click on little tool button on the right side.

 

 

3.Open up Digital Combat Simulator Black Shark profile in the top tab

 

 

4.Click add application to profile on the top toolbar (little "+" symbol) then add DCS.exe and

 

Launcher.exe from the bin folder in your install directory.

 

 

4.In the "Compatibility" section find the Ambient Occlusion compatibility tab

 

and select the 0x00000022 Prince of Persia 4 profile. (yes prince of persia...)

 

 

5.Scroll down to the "Common" section and enable High Quality ambient

 

occlusion (or whatever you prefer) and below enable Ambient Occlusion usage.

 

 

6.Click Apply Changes in the top right.

 

 

7.Done! Works with Anti aliasing too!:)

 

Here's some screens.

Before

 

After

 

Before

 

After

 

Before

 

After

 

Before

 

After

 

Before

 

After

[B25Mitch]

Wow, that looks fantastic! I've never seen ambient occlusion add that much to screenshots - I'll have to give it a try on my machine. The soft shadows under aircraft on the ground are particularly impressive.

[Dimebag]

Awesome, I'd love to see how it affects the shadows in the cockpit. Sadly I have ati :(.

[Blaze]

Running ATI as well. Hopefully not for long though, thinking of upgrading to the GTX 670...will definitely have to come back to look at this when I do. :)

[Sceptre]

Looks very realistic, well done!

[kyletiernan]

Awesome, I'd love to see how it affects the shadows in the cockpit. Sadly I have ati :(.

 

 

Surprisingly it doesn't add much if anything to the cockpit, not sure why.

[kyletiernan]

Wow, that looks fantastic! I've never seen ambient occlusion add that much to screenshots - I'll have to give it a try on my machine. The soft shadows under aircraft on the ground are particularly impressive.

 

Thanks! Yeah i would like to see how this works with other peoples set ups :)

[B25Mitch]

Surprisingly it doesn't add much if anything to the cockpit, not sure why.

 

That's probably because the cockpit textures were rendered with ambient occlusion pre-applied in 3dsmax.

[Grimes]

Mitch, Most of the textures are already baked, this mod enables Real time AO rendering.

[pepin1234]

too much!!

[Mouse]

The effect is good, but the shadows produced are much, much too strong in those pictures. It's black as night under that F-15E!

[B25Mitch]

too much!!

 

Too much AO? Perhaps, but it sure does look a lot better than none at all. Imagine how good it would look in cloudy weather, where the standard shadows are not visible. I think kyletiernan intends this as a proof of concept, and it's very convincing.

 

Mitch, Most of the textures are already baked, this mod enables Real time AO rendering.

 

I should probably be more clear:

 

The scenes in which texture-based, baked AO is not practical (such as aircraft sitting on the ramp) benefit the most from this real time AO rendering. Another example is when weapons are hung under an aircraft - currently, it's not practical to bake AO into the texture, because when the weapons are released they would continue to show a dark shadow on top.

 

The cockpit, on the other hand, is a static object(relative to itself) and already makes heavy use of baked AO in the textures. For this reason, the addition of real time AO to the cockpit would merely be giving the shadows double exposure, and as kyletiernan said, it's not a huge improvement(not sure why this is a problem - the DCS cockpits look fantastic anyway).

[kyletiernan]

The effect is good, but the shadows produced are much, much too strong in those pictures. It's black as night under that F-15E!

I agree it is alittle over done, unfortunately there is no slider to adjust the amount but if you choose performance AO in nvidia inspector you get much less AO like this.

 

 

 

Too much AO? Perhaps, but it sure does look a lot better than none at all. Imagine how good it would look in cloudy weather, where the standard shadows are not visible. I think kyletiernan intends this as a proof of concept, and it's very convincing.

 

 

 

I should probably be more clear:

 

The scenes in which texture-based, baked AO is not practical (such as aircraft sitting on the ramp) benefit the most from this real time AO rendering. Another example is when weapons are hung under an aircraft - currently, it's not practical to bake AO into the texture, because when the weapons are released they would continue to show a dark shadow on top.

 

The cockpit, on the other hand, is a static object(relative to itself) and already makes heavy use of baked AO in the textures. For this reason, the addition of real time AO to the cockpit would merely be giving the shadows double exposure, and as kyletiernan said, it's not a huge improvement(not sure why this is a problem - the DCS cockpits look fantastic anyway).

 

Yeah you are right, this is very much a proof of concept that i hope ED will see and implement their own, much cleaner/ better version of it into the sim. I think the shadows are more appropriate for an overcast setting.

some more screens with overcast...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 1, 2012 by kyletiernan

[B25Mitch]

I just had a play around with this now. I'm using a GTX570 (standard 1.25GB) and the performance hit wasn't too bad - the worst I got was 40FPS near the ground, and I think that was because of the trees. Usually I run DCS World at 60FPS, at 1920x1080 and mostly high settings. I think I'll turn it back off though, since there are indeed a few issues. The darkness of the shadow seems to depend on the angle of the camera, so when the camera is near perpendicular to a surface the shadows are too dark, and when it is almost parallel the shadows fade away altogether. Apart from that, it's quite pleasing to the eye, and it's a promising feature that looks like it has potential.

[Mohamengina]

Looks way too dark considering how bright it is outside.

[winz]

The ground shadows are bit too strong, but the self-shadowing on the airframe itself is superb, I especially love the subtle shadows around the F-16 engine. Will try this out :)

[KaspeR32]

Looks way too dark considering how bright it is outside.

 

I think everyone realizes this already considering it's a "proof of concept" and the OP would like to see it implemented in game.

 

I for one would love Ambient Occlusion properly included in the sim. I wonder how hard it is engine side to implement, maybe someone can look into that code wise.

[Invader ZIM]

I'm trying to enable this for my DCS World 1.20 version but I keep getting hung up at the part where he says you have to find the DCS Black Shark profile in the top tab.

 

I can't find any DCS profile in that game listing, let alone Black Shark.

 

If I get to that part, I'm still confused on the next part where I add the DCS.exe Which DCS.exe? the DCS World.exe? and Launcher.exe from World?

 

It looks really good and I'd love to try it out.

[kyletiernan]

I'm trying to enable this for my DCS World 1.20 version but I keep getting hung up at the part where he says you have to find the DCS Black Shark profile in the top tab.

 

I can't find any DCS profile in that game listing, let alone Black Shark.

 

If I get to that part, I'm still confused on the next part where I add the DCS.exe Which DCS.exe? the DCS World.exe? and Launcher.exe from World?

 

It looks really good and I'd love to try it out.

 

 

Sorry for the confusion, you should be able to find the profile called "Digital Combat Simulator Black Shark" not DCS Black Shark.

 

to add an application to that profile click the little green "+" symbol and then find your dcs world directory which is located here

 

C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\bin

 

then find and add DCS.exe and Launcher.exe to your profile.

 

Then follow the rest of the instructions, click apply and youre all set!

[Invader ZIM]

Thanks for the explanation kyletiernan, really appreciate it!!

 

:thumbup:

[kyletiernan]

Thanks for the explanation kyletiernan, really appreciate it!!

 

:thumbup:

No problem, i seen some screenshots you took in the WIP smoke and fire thread, it looks good with the grass :)

[docfu]

No problem, i seen some screenshots you took in the WIP smoke and fire thread, it looks good with the grass :)

 

No kidding, grass and trees look amazingly realistic with this on. It's a wonder why if you are at certain angles that Ambient Occlusion turns off but when it's on it makes a huge difference in the quality of screenshots. I often felt that stock DCS lacks some of the visual contrast needed to look like real life, the black areas you see in real life during the day just aren't there in the game...

[Megagoth1702]

ATI users. Stay with ATI. ;)

 

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4456508&postcount=6417

[Megagoth1702]

Hahahahaaaaa!!! Ambient occlusion for DCS & AMD!

 

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4475726&postcount=6843

 

EDIT: But, snap, just tested it - AO is not working with DCS for me (YET !!! japamd is very dedicated, it will work).

 

I still enjoy all the features. If you're not a RP user but have an AMD GPU, get it!

 

Ah double snap.

 

I just realised now that I left some testing profiles in AO file... DCS, Skyrim and Metro 2033 entries were not supposed to be there (they aren't working)

 

I'll fix that later.

Alright, more waiting then. :D

Edited December 10, 2012 by Megagoth1702

[mrbobo]

Thanks dude, ambient occlusion makes it look alot better. You're the best!