Watch_Dogs - General moding

One thing that really infuriates me about this game is that the bloom and sky look compressed. If this was not a thing then it would look much better, the bloom is somewhat smooth but still comes up blocky up close. The sky just does not do well at all, even with all the things that i have done to sky.lib nothing seems to fix the fact that it looks compressed to all hell until it gets to the darker part of the sky. I just do not understand why it is like this, if it was not this game would look so much better, the only sky preset that i have seen do well is the E3_storm sky, but it only works if it is raining , only when it rains is when the sky looks good... *sigh
if only...

 

@ModAiC what make you think he has the same facial as old aiden ? gonna take a look at it, i found another working Aiden model, he's a just a little bit different than the release, his coat physics is slightly better

 

No way! Finally improved Coat Physics? Do it! Can´t wait man.
What is it that it makes you feel, it is better? More E3-like?
And please get Aiden´s old Face back to working, that would be so amazing.

 

dont get excited, if it was anywhere as good as E3 i would have called myself your savior ! hahaha ... no more seriously, its just SLIGHTLY better than the original, the model is called " for_intro " probably used is some cutscene or whatever

 

Link recreated.

And avoid Firefox for Mega. Use Chrome or IE.

 

One solution I'll use will be SweetFX.
It works quite well with "Realistic Preset"

 

@Essenthy, can you show us screenshots of the model you found for aiden and leave a link to download the standalone?

 

It's same as usual model

For old face, as ModAiC said this flyerguy has a Latino face, but if you actually pay attention to the details, the overall shape, it does look very look-alike from e3, just ignore eyes and skin tone and more wider nose, also take in account that he will look drastically different with proper skin color and having his cap on
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com...065CF3243D3C59F32311B74/1024x639.resizedimage

Face definition dxpx seems to work only correctly when applied on a xbg main file of that model

 

its exactly the same graphically, the only difference is when aiden walk his coat physic is slightly different, and he only put his thumbs in his pocket instead of all his hands, will post it later today

 

ah ok, as long as there is an improvement in something i will take it
Now i see that you guys are talking about anti-aliasing... FXAA is not AA, it is just a shader based post process method that is used to blur the image, this reduces texture quality and makes the image look overall softer, in my opinion, FXAA would be the total opposite of what you should want.
AND, the reflection quality that you guys are talking about with it being downgraded with msaa and txaa is (at least for me) not the case, MSAA, make the image look sharper and makes the reflections look very nice and non-downgraded compared to shader techniques such as SMAA or FXAA or no AA at all. The same thing applies TXAA, pretty much TXAA is just MSAA with a temporal shader that does cause some blur but the MSAA (used for sharpening the image) balances it out, this of course will give you the best performance/look in the game considering that TXAA x2 is of higher quality than MSAA x4 in terms of overall aliasing, flickering, crawling, texture quality (texture quality remains nice and sharp with both). The best method to get rid of aliasing though would be Temporal SMAA, pretty much the same concept with the temporal aliasing in TXAA but with SMAA, this is good for performance and actually looks the best when you see how little of an impact on performance it has compared to TXAA x2, but like you guys have been stating, it degrades the reflection quality AND makes the textures look blurrier than even with no AA. Pretty much, I would stick with TXAA x2, it works the best for me.
Also, my settings are MUCH higher than vanilla Ultra, i actually have to play at 1360x768 with TXAA x2 with all my settings higher than Ultra and LoD at enhanced vanilla ultra, this could be the reason why reflection quality looks so good for me, but as for on screen aliasing, there really is not that much.

 

excuse my ignorance, but in this file are disabled shaders?


it would be nice if someone could reactivate least this ....

 

???? where is this from genstar ? its not on defaultrenderconfig.xml ??

edit: it has something to do with the files unpacked from shaders.fat, but i still have not clue where to edit these settings

 

my defaultrenderconfig.xml http://www.mediafire.com/download/el7vwtzy4t4sus2/file2015.rar

 

Oh my GOD ! I was looking for POM for a while. Good find ! Will try to enable this if possible !

And I agree with ThatGuyOverThere, I can't see any issue with TXAA X2. The rendering is totally different than even 2xTemporal SMAA.

Why would MSAA or TXAA do other things than their job ? Why would devs take the trouble to reduce lod or reflection quality when AA is on ?

Maybe certain things are not suited to AA. Or it's a matter of taste.

What is sure, it's FXAA is a shader that indeed introduce blur that reduce jaggies without loosing too much details and performances. It's a nice way indeed.

But when you switch to a "real" AA method, you see the game differently.

 

its not that TXAA does wrong, its just that it has slight blur on edgy lines/texture ( wich mean it does blur some of the light reflection on ground for example ) its even worse on TXAA 4, MSAA x4 / x8 will give way more clear sharper look, its a matter of taste indeed

 

I know that FXAA is post-process based technique but it still anti-aliasing, man it has those words in it's name - Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing.
FXAA blurs the whole image a bit but not as much as the TXAA which makes the textures on Aiden's coat or on the street roads look like it's lower res,
like i'm playing on "High" textures, while i'm actually using Vanilla "Ultra".
MSAA is great. It's TRUE anti-aliasing which actually multiplies the pixel count of processed image. But in WD it downgrades geometry of reflections.

Best way to see it for yourself is to go to online free roam mode, this way the game won't pause and you still can see game graphics while you're in
menus unlike in single-player. And you can change any graphics options and see the result instantly and compare any setting. So that downgrade is most
notable in reflection of the L-Train road. It has to be sunny clear weather and wet road with puddles. Position your camera so that puddle and reflection
where in the right side of the screen. Also make sure that the orange metal support of the LT road is lightened up by the sun for clearer view.
Now go to the options and switch from different AA settings and see how the geometry of the reflection will change. It can be hard to catch the puddles in
free roam, so you can test it on the car that have the most clear and sharp reflectiveness. I suggest you to use Adamant or Sonarus.
It can be only L-Train road that is downgraded or it is other things i don't know i don't have time to test it. But the fact that it's downgrades one thing
already makes me worry and assume that there's other reflections are get downgraded too.

 

I totally agree with you. I am aware of the blurring and clearly see it.
To me, reflections don't have to be sharp anyway, as it's reflections. Exactly like shadows, according to my tastes (I am currently looking at shadows of my bed, that are not sharp). I see too that trees "loose" details. But I prefer them like this, as they seems to have more foliage, without aliasing.

It would be perfect for me to be able to use MSAA4X. I tested, I loved the visuals but it was unplayable. Too bad.

FXAA, SMAA, Temporal SMAA, MSAAx2 and TXAA X2 are the only one that keep my game playable (>=30fps).

So it's a compromise and a matter of tastes. I only have a GTX 670 with 2gb of VRAM. I don't use vanilla ultra textures, but textures made by other people (a merge of Sunset V4 and other people's creations) that are lighter and visually on the level of Vanilla Ultra textures, especially with SweetFX and AA.

It's tricks, tastes and compromises.

I understand those who have better rigs, that prefer more detailed shadows and reflections, and can afford to use them.

I think debates like that have to be put in another thread. Here is a summary of community's work.

 

Guys, you're looking at this the wrong way. Look closely at this line:

<shader name="Mesh_Weapon" add="QUALITYHIGH" remove=""/>

and now look at this, i just separated each command for you:

<shader name="Mesh_Weapon"
add="QUALITYHIGH"
remove=""/>

As you can see now it removes nothing, it only adds.

 

yeah but does that work ?

her's the other Aiden model for who want to try it, again the difference is very small, http://www.mediafire.com/download/zooo78pm3613o0k/graphickit_models.rar

put the file on patch\generated\databases\generic

 

But I do not see the parallax occlusion mapping, in the game:bang: