[TheSisko87]

Do any of you guys play fs2_open with shaders enabled on your video cards to enhance the graphics?  I tried using hdrish, but that was WAY too extreme brightness.

[Taristin]

Nope.

And you would have to tweak the settings in the shader file for HDRish for it to look anywhere near good.

[S-99]

I play with shaders. Yes hdrish is my favorite one, but if you find hdrish too overpowering, there is actually an hdrishlight smartshader. I haven't tried the light one, but i imagine it wouldn't be so brilliant. On the other hand, as far as people here playing with smartshaders, there's like one or two people maybe more, who do. It makes the game look really nice, go check out the cool wallpapers thread, or the 3.6.8vp screenshots thread. You'll find a ton of great looking screenshots enhanced perfectly with hdrish. As far as hdrish being too brilliant? Well, you have to remember that the sun is a lot more brilliant outside of an atmosphere. But, the only thing i don't like about hdrish is that is fake hdr's your hud too. And because of that engine flares from other ships can completely obscure all aspects of your hud.
Anyway, Raa is sort of the enemy of hdrish, which is fine in all respects. Everyone has a gripe or two about the smartshader.
Can't use it on nvidia cards, the fact that it's not real hdr, it fake hdr's everything(which means the things it shouldn't fake hdr like the hud and game menus), and the fact that it really is too bright.
Try looking for the hdrishlite, or hdrishlight, whichever it's called and see if it's better. But if you ask me, the current hdrish smartshader for fake hdr effects is fine enough, when you complement it with good flag settings, which i thought made it a good deal less bright while maintaining all the beautiful glow.

[Slime]

By changing_{S-99 *cough*} some specular values and ambient factor, I've perfected HDRish to look quite beautiful without overdoing the effect. I'm rather addicted to those shining warp vortexes... vortexi... whatever.

_{A small edit} Oh, it was you, S-99? Thanks for those flag settings 

[S-99]

i know everyone changes their flag settings, but what i meant is when you change them further, you can make hdrish look a lot better and not be so bright, and of course take more advantage of the dynamic lighting that fs2 has. So like don't i guess thank me for flag settings i haven't given anyone yet.
These are the ones i play with that look great with or without hdrish should anyone want to try them(unless slime was remembering something i did from a while ago).
Have *-spec_point flag at max
Have *-spec_tube flag at max
Have *-ambient_factor flag at 75
Have the *-spec_static flag at 0.8
Of course this is also the standard lighting everyone puts in for the flags for ambient lighting and specular highlights. Spec point is how much lasers contribute to specular highlights, it likes nice at max. And spec tube is for beam weapons, you should at least have that at max, looks awesome. Anyway, if you don't have hdrish, well the game looks great without it anyway, the thing that i like the most from hdrish is the glow affect especially from the subspace vortexes. But yeah, if you ask me hdrish is not too bright right here at all.

[neoterran]

what's max ? you just put in the word "max" or is there some value, because the wiki doesn't say anything about using "max" ?

[S-99]

Sorry about that, when i meant max, i actually mean the highest it will possibly go, which is "1.0". On another note, idk if you can bring it higher than the max, i haven't really tried before. I don't want it higher than the max, but if say you had beam and laser specular highlights at like 3.0 or something(if possible), take some screenshots, and we'll know theoretically what the game looks like to the player when doing shrooms

[Slime]

Yes, those were the ones. I put the "max" ones to 100 and everything seems to be working good.

[S-99]

Have fun with your ****ing "max"
You know next time you  need to find out what the maximum values are on a flag, just do some research. In reality, idk what the wisdom of putting spec_point and spec_tube on 100 would do. My guess, in a technical sense would possibly not work. If i remember correctly spec_tube and spec_point required a number with a decimal point, meaning if you wanted it on 100(i'm thinking that didn't work), you'd need 100.0
But since the 100 value seems ****ed up, i'll just say idk what's with you sooo
Go you're "max"

[neoterran]

yeah, 100 is definately, wrong.

[S-99]

I bet things seem fine for slime because 100 doesn't work, and it's at some other default value right now.
The way you input flags is like such "1.0-spec_point" in that format, no quotes, put a space after that for another flag, click apply.

[Taristin]

The way you input flags is like such "1.0-spec_point" in that format, no quotes, put a space after that for another flag, click apply.

err. Are you sure on that? I'm fairly sure it's the command line, and then the value, and not vice versa.

[S-99]

How else are you supposed to enter them? I just tried the other way raa, and it like didn't work at all, it just ignored the flags. With the format of *-spec_static, i would assume that where the star is, you put in the value, and that works. And one great way to tell that the flags have been ignored, is when the ambient_factor75 (or ambient_factor-75(neither worked) command doesn't work.

[Mars]

S-99, I'm sorry, but your just plain wrong, if your using windows, the way you put in command lines is -<command> <value>

[S-99]

Ok, i'll try that, but i swear, you can get the flags working my way too no joke on that
So technically i got them to work backwards from the start It's all working properly, and not inversed, no one told me that you need a space between the value and the command

[CP5670]

The normal HDRish looks ridiculous to me. I tried HDRish lite instead and it actually looks very nice on ships and weapon effects, but it tends to mess up the backgrounds. I haven't really decided whether or not to use it on a regular basis.

[S-99]

I do enjoy using hdrish, but it is too bright, you don't want a mission in subspace with it (just obscures your hud, but looks nice). Hdrish is extremely lite, i play with it now. It does give the environment a lighting enhancement. You know it's there, and it's not too bright and overwhelming like the other one. It really makes the light reflecting off of ships look nicer. It does have a glow from light reflection, but it's not overwhelming.

This is with hdrish lite.

[S-99]

Just using normal hdrish, if you look closely, you can see the light reflecting off of the sobek glowing also. It does look nice, but i wish it were a bit more dynamic. The hdrish bloom effect seems to be static, if it were dynamic, that'd probably make it a lot better. If anyone wants the smartshaders, just send me an im or something, and i'll send away. They're fun to experiment with, but the one thats fun to actually play the game with is hdrish-lite.