HBAO+ Compatibility Flags Thread

I think the Nvidia Fallout 4 Graphics, Performance and Tweaking Guide (down currently) mentioned that Ultra is rendered at "half"-resolution (960x540 at 1920x1080) and lower settings use "quarter"-resolution (which results in pretty noticeable 4x4 pixel blocks).

Hmm, I tried that flag a few days ago and it didn't seem to have any effect at all. I'll give it another go later, maybe it just wasn't working in the areas I tested (Red Rocket and the flooded excavation site).
EDIT: not seeing anything - could be an operating system / driver / hardware / resolution dependent issue?

 

It's definitely more subtle than the LoTF flag, but I'm pretty sure there's a difference, especially with some of the distant objects.

Without flag:

Spoiler

With flag:

Spoiler

 

Thanks for clarifying.

Most pictures i've seen it looks fine. http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=151416
(This comparison makes it look great actually in solving aliasing issues and resolving detail. Resolving the specular aliasing issue present is actually fairly impressive to me.) (Lol I hadn't read the thread in a day or two and I actually found this on Screenshotcomparison.com first before here haha)

It does seem like it make random textures use a lower mip map as in the comparison above. (or is an issue with something. Because it doesn't look like simple blurring. I can only spot like 2-3 instances of that in that whole shot.)
(EDIT: Ok actually it seems to be mostly confined to really harsh specular issues. They probably target that with a wider filter or something. And so it makes it look a little bit softer than everything else)
But I don't know I don't have the game so I can't say how it is in motion. The footage i've seen in compressed videos looked fairly decent from an AA point of view in motion.

If people are saying it has ghosting though, based on the screen posted above by someone else, the game's own MB seems to cause a double image/ghosting like effect as well. So who knows how the two are interacting.

Yes my thought as well. There are a lot of texture aliasing issues, specular aliasing issues, edge aliasing, geometry aliasing even maybe some moire that I can spot in that comparison (Thanks btw) that it seems to deal with at least in that still shot very well. Though whatever they are doing for the specular component could be dialed down just a tad.

 

Anywho, I should be finishing my ToZ tonight after work. Been busy.

 

there already are higher quality ppaa better then whats being used in games atm, and i called him dumb cause compared to most the solutions being pushed out fallout 4's "TAA" is the best ive seen lately and does a far better job then txaa x4 does on gta v imo this is in motion not static images clearly 4xmsaa done right will be better then post solutions minus a few. Pretty sure nvidia had a shader based supersampling post aa a few years back idk if it was ever used with anything tho, ubisoft made something very similar to it that had results close to 8xmsaa in quality but ive yet to see this done outside of console usage or to the degree shown in the tech demo...
also there is ghosting in the TAA used by bethesda but there are also cvars you can change the TAA settings with ive not looked to see if they do anything as ghosting only shows up when i have low framerate and vsync off.. long story short i replied poorly cause someone likes to bash on something cause he has a hard on for the all holy msaa that no one can run anymore and being honest

<<<<<i run 1080p and the actual need for aa is very little once i upgrade to 4k all ill need is a cheap fast ppaa >>>>

also sidenote , considering most nvidia features im sure their godrays is only optimized for maxwell which runs it about 3x faster then previous keplar and gets worse so on and so on... Everyone should just wait for enb to get through bug testing and fix the crap bethesda put in their game

 

I can't see any change there (aside from slightly different time of day).

Tested it again with MSI Afterburner OSD enabled and spotted one thing that does change significantly...

SAO off, HBAO+ off

SAO off, HBAO+ 0x00060000 (Call of Juarez(DX10), Call of Juarez)

...GPU usage / framerate.

EDIT: Yay, I can post links now.

•••••

EDIT2:
Decided to test a bunch of different flags while I'm here.
SAO off, Nvidia Inspector Ambient Occlusion setting "High quality":

HBAO+ off Baseline

0x00100000 (Civilization V) Subtle, short range, cheap, GPU usage increased.

0x00110000 (TitanFall) Strong, long range, expensive, GPU usage decreased.

0x00120035 (Strife) Moderate, mid range, expensive, GPU usage decreased.

0x00130000 (F1 2014) No visible effect, GPU usage decreased.

0x00140000 (Lords of the Fallen) Strongest, long range, expensive, GPU usage decreased.

0x00150000 (Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth) No visible effect, GPU usage decreased.

0x00160000 (Project CARS) No visible effect, GPU usage decreased.

0x00170000 (Mortal Kombat X) No visible effect, GPU usage decreased.

0x00180000 (Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain, Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes) No visible effect, GPU usage decreased.

-----

HBAO+ off, SAO on Moderate, long range, cheap, GPU usage increased. Lower precision compared to HBAO+ flags?


EDIT3: Tested a few different locations (Vault 111, Thicket Excavations, The Castle) for water/fog bleed-through and camera angle breaking.

0x00100000 (Civilization V): Breaks at certain angles (different from other flags), appears to break some surface lighting (specular?) at others. Minimal water/fog bleeding (from the places it actually worked) - though that might just be due to the short range of the effect.

0x00110000 (TitanFall): Breaks at certain angles. Worst water/fog bleeding. Interestingly the strength of the AO effect and of the water/fog bleeding is reduced if you have a weapon drawn.

0x00120035 (Strife): Breaks at certain angles. Slight water/fog bleeding at a distance, gets worse up close.

0x00140000 (Lords of the Fallen): Breaks at certain angles. 2nd worst water/fog bleeding.

 

You could be right, I didn't test it extensively. Though, the time of day can't be that different, since I just saved and reloaded to take the picture. I had in-game SAO enabled in addition to the HBAO flag for both screenshots.

 

If you guys can find a flag that doesn't break or turn off at certain angles, we can probably attempt to modify the flag to work so it doesn't bleed and what not.

Reference this post
http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5175028&postcount=1844

Using the flag that doesn't turn on and off and only say bleeds.

Modify the parameter bits. They are the same as with DX9


00 00 00 00
Strength
00 00 00 00
Use FP16 Linear-Z (0 = R32F, 1=R16F) (Each value further from 0 reduces precision more and more. Dark Souls II is the only one IIRC with a value greater than 1. 0 shouldn't be an issue)
00 00 00 00
AO Fog Amount (Values used in Official.Flags: 1,6,8,A,D,E,F) Also reference my last posts on Tales of Zestiria above if you can find them to see how AO Fog and others interact.
00 00 00 00
Blur Sharpness
00 00 00 00
Unused(?)
00 00 00 00
AO Fog Fade off factor (Distance to Half strength)
00 00 00 00
Angle Bias
00 00 00 00
Multiplier


The values in a hex editor need to be entered manually when changing. Copy/Pasta will not work.

 

Tales of Zestiria has been such a nightmare lol.

Pretty much I think it's impossible solve certain issues, they don't crop up as much in lower resolutions, but they become more apparent around 1440p or so and get worse the higher you go after that.

And now i've discovered an issue with my insertion logic too.
Allowing a depth test pattern only in the match mask bits but not matching it in the insertion logic allows AO to work in certain scenes that it doesn't without (At least with the current set up. Setting Depth test in both does nothing), but this causes the aftermentioned problem here
http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/852TalesofZestiria20151.jpg
Luckily it only seems to happen at high resolution (This was downsampled from 3072p). But it's still somewhat visible at 1440p even. Who knows what else it could cause later on?

Virtual Fighter syndrome is also a wash. The only way I could figure out to make it invisible involved basically tweaking it to the point where the was almost no AO at all.

I think i've gotten it though to a level of playability without major issues.

 

Ok so I think I got it pretty much perfect as it's going to get.

Will post later. I need to finish the OP for editing this stuff as well as finish the other guide.

 

so if i change AO Fog Amount and AO Fog Fade off factor i can fix water and fog bleeding?. Or waht values should i change to fix that?, i want to try that on TF2 too Tf2 have a horrible ambient occlussion settings.

 

They both tie into each other.

It will most definitely fix bleeding when the game is using fogging. Set Fog amount to 2 and Fade off to 3 to start out and see how it looks.

It might help water it might not. Water might need different insertion logic if through the combination of parameters doesn't fix it.

 

Any working flags for Jade Empire?

 

EDIT: Don't use this, no longer reliable.

- Grim Dawn -
Flag: 0x00000032 (FIFA 14)
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ||||||||||||||||||||
General Information: Subtle effect. Haven't noticed any glitches with it enabled. Doesn't bleed through fog/water as far as I've seen.
EDIT: in certain areas the AO strength seems to increase, when this occurs it bleeds through fog a bit.
AO sometimes turns off (or decreases in intensity) while the cursor is over certain characters and items and/or when some ability effects are on-screen.

Screenshots:

No AO: One | Two

0x00000032 (FIFA 14): One | Two

(screenshots taken with 32xCSAA (CSAA actually has an effect with the in-game Alpha to Coverage option enabled) and 8xTrSSAA forced, no AA bits. Ambient Occlusion setting: High quality.)

0x00000029 (Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) is a potential stronger alternative, but the shading on grass is too dark - a modification to the flag might be able to fix that issue.

Tested many other flags, most don't shade grass, break at certain angles and/or bleed through fog and water.

-----

Testing some now - only checked on the menu so far but 0x0000002E (Guild Wars 2) seems to work reasonably well (fairly subtle, doesn't bleed through fog/light rays or the waterfall, shades grass and tree leaves).

EDIT: 0x00000032 (FIFA 14) also works, even lighter than 2E but has slightly longer draw distance (I think... :3eyes: ). Could be improved with flag editing?

Tested a lot of other flags, most of the ones that actually produce a visible effect either have fog bleeding issues or fail to cover certain objects (e.g. player character, some walls and stairs).

 

The OP document has been updated with all recent flags. But with this one specifically, the fogging issues could probably be fixed fairly easily now.

 

==Tales of Zestiria==
______________________________________________

0x0000002F (MODIFIED)
*Tested with 16:9/Near 16:9 resolutions only as high as 5464x3072*
*Also remember when hex editing it has to be typed in by hand to work. No copy pasta. At least in my testing.*

OK, so this was seriously an exercise in patience, trial and error and aggravation lol.

Through the probably 2 dozen hours I spent on this I have discovered that despite our labeling of the functions. There is more to them than meets the eye.
Though you can generally take them at face value for some.
Such as the fogging bits. ToZ makes gratuitous use of fogging. And the fogging bits made a huge difference when it came to that.

And while you'd expect that the fogging would only affect the effect through fog, at a value of 0 it also has large effects on how the AO is rendered. The distance is shortened, things are shaded fairly differently that weren't in fog as examples. I chose to leave this value at 1. It makes it subtle enough without breaking things.

The other values likely all seemed to play off another in one form or another. I felt like I hit dead ends several times and was going to give up until I experimented more with the other settings. And all of the experimentation is ultimately which was able to let me fix several huge issues.
Such as;

Likewise the insertion logic bits make a difference too on how it is inserted, what it looks for and when it is inserted. The pattern match mask pairs up with several same values in the insertion logic bits. And it seems generally at least some of them in both have to match up.
This was how I could fix major flickering issues, bleeding through UI elements like the minimap or full area map screen. (The default flag seems fine at first glance but at certain distances to certain objects or angles, it will bleed through the UI/Map and then turn back off ). Or the strange white screen/depth buffer issue.

One issue that did arise from this was AO not applying during the evening scene at the beginning of the DLC with my new bits. It turns out the Depth_Test pattern allowed it to work. But only if it was on the Pattern Match Mask section only. Not both. And not just the Insertion(I think.)

I will document all of these when I get off my ass to finish the OP.

Originally too, all of the issues got worse and worse the higher resolution you used. Now you shouldn't have major issues with at least the subtle values. It does get slightly stronger with higher resolution as well

It's worth noting as well that the AO does sometimes turn off at very uncommon extreme camera angles. I've never encountered it during regular play or cutscenes. Only during two specific instances during map exploration.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

No AO: Ruins|Ruins 2|Ruins Cloudy|Ruins Hole|water|Tree Corner|Ledge|Two Characters|Close up 1 near|Close up 2 Distance|Ruins fog|Big'oTree|Forest close up 1|Forest close up 2|Church|Outside Church night|Forest Night|Outside Inn|Inside Inn|Forest Day

Default 2F: Ruins|Ruins 2|Skybox|Ruins Cloudy|Ruins Hole|water|Tree Corner|Ledge|Two Characters|Close up 1 near|Close up 2 Distance|Ruins fog|Big'oTree|Forest close up 1|Forest close up 2|Church|Outside Church night|Forest Night|Outside Inn|Inside Inn|Forest Day

Modified 2F (Subtle): Ruins|Ruins 2|Skybox|Ruins Cloudy|Ruins Hole|water|Tree Corner|Ledge|Two Characters|Close up 1 near|Close up 2 Distance|Ruins fog|Big'oTree|Forest close up 1|Forest close up 2|Church|Outside Church night|Forest Night|Outside Inn|Inside Inn|Forest Day

Modified 2F (Stronger): Ruins|Ruins 2|Ruins Cloudy|Ruins Hole|water|Tree Corner|Ledge|Two Characters|Close up 1 near|Close up 2 Distance|Ruins fog|Big'oTree|Forest close up 1|Forest close up 2|Church|Outside Church night|Forest Night|Outside Inn|Inside Inn|Forest Day

Now the effect might seem too subtle or overly subtle to some. But understand this is as good as it could get without problems. If it wasn't for VFS and the way AO is used on characters, I could manage to get it a bit stronger. But it just isn't possible. It's plain to see that AO applies differently in different scenes on it's own without characters mucking it up.

The 2nd modified set of bits that are stronger will have more character AO issues. And it will get slightly worse the higher the resolution you use.
http://u.cubeupload.com/MrBonk/8a8TalesofZestiria20151.png this is how super close ups look at 1080p

 

Thanks, GW2 seems to indeed work quite well. Though, it looks like there's a small flickering problem in cutscenes.

 

So anyone tried to get HBAO working with Just Cause 3? bit suprised it wasn't added to the game as it has NVIDIA Gameworks?

 

The SSAO in JC3 seems to be ok tbh from what i've seen.

 

I've started finishing the OP with the hex editing information.

Forewarning. It's long as hell. And i'm probably only like 1/2-2/3 finished.