[OverDhill]

Just curios as to what Lighting Preset you use in the wxLauncher if any these days?  I am running the nightly build.

The game graphics are looking good. Just was wondering what people's preferences were. 

Don't think we can use SweetFX for FSO.

[Darius]

HerraTohtori's with newest lighting code and shadows, never used anything else so far.

[Deepstar]

I play with Baseline recommended+no_emissive_light. Played never with a different setting for 10 years, now.
Only exception is, when a mod deliver own lightning-settings, then i use that, because they exist for a reason in this case.

In classic campaigns without in-game cutscenes i am additional playing with fov 0.39. All ships are much bigger and so it have a much better feeling.
Only in campaigns without cutscenes, because a different fov have the tendency to break them, so you can not see everything that happens there. But i do not know, if this is still the case like it was at least 5 years ago.

[AV8R]

Speaking of lighting - which lighting preset(s) will make metallic textures look a little less shiny and more "satin/brushed" looking (if I'm explaining it right)?

Here are the current values I'm using for each parameter:

-ambient_factor 0
-no_emissive_light
-spec_exp 11
-spec_point .6
-spec_static .8
-spec_tube .4
-ogl_spec 80
-bloom_intensity 40
-fov 0.5

EDIT: Also set in the launcher:

All Maps Enabled
Post Processing Enabled
Soft Particles Enabled
FXAA Enabled
Lightshafts Disabled
All Others Unchecked

[Kolgena]

Use the latest nightly (since lighting was broken up until March 8) and set

spec_point
spec_static
spec_tube

all to the same value. These control the specular lighting strength vs diffuse lighting strength for each type of light (weapons/explosions, suns, beams respectively) and default to 1.0. Setting to 0.1 will look pretty matte, but you may want to settle closer to 0.5. If you want extra shiny, go above 1. I wouldn't recommend using different numbers for these as objects will look more or less shiny based on the source of the lighting, which is weird.

[AV8R]

Use the latest nightly (since lighting was broken up until March 8) and set

spec_point
spec_static
spec_tube

all to the same value. These control the specular lighting strength vs diffuse lighting strength for each type of light (weapons/explosions, suns, beams respectively) and default to 1.0. Setting to 0.1 will look pretty matte, but you may want to settle closer to 0.5. If you want extra shiny, go above 1. I wouldn't recommend using different numbers for these as objects will look more or less shiny based on the source of the lighting, which is weird.

Thanks, I'll give this a go.   

[AV8R]

Well, that was interesting. This new nightly is full of surprises:

1) While the overall lighting is better (seemingly more accurate) and the fire effects are really spectacular in the new nightly (3/11), the light "glow" around most lighted surfaces is a bit much (Prometheus bolts glow like crazy!).
2) My vid card (NVidia 750 Ti) is still not quite up to task to handle light-shafts or shadows without frame rate hiccups.
3) The improved FS2 reticle (smoothed lines and curves) has reverted back to the angular, choppy lines of the old reticle.
4) Almost 300 (cache) files have appeared in the Cache folder under any mod folders I've tried. Are we back to the old IBX cache files in a new form?
5) The afterburner sound cuts out during the burn most of the time.

Just a few observations. If this kind of info is supposed to be posted under the SCP forum, please move this post if you must.

Otherwise, nice work on the new SDL lighting system.

[Mito [PL]]

I suggest taking a look at bloom_intensity parameter. Might help.

Also, your 750ti isn't a problem. FSO utilises only single CPU core, and boy, this thing needs a pretty powerful one to go like that. If it isn't, then there's the problem, I suppose. Just check out CPU utilisation in Task Manager while playing.

[The E]

4) Almost 300 (cache) files have appeared in the Cache folder under any mod folders I've tried. Are we back to the old IBX cache files in a new form?

Not exactly. The files that appear there are the shader binaries, which we write out to disk so that we don't have to keep compiling shaders on the fly.

[Kolgena]

I don't think anybody's rig can handle shadows right now without slowdowns. My RX480 with an OC'd 6600k frequently drops into the 20-50s if shadows are on and things get busy. However, if you turn off shadows, the new lighting isn't that much slower than the old lighting.

[Phantom Hoover]

AMD cards have a serious performance hit on FSO because AMD's OpenGL drivers are not very good. Shadows run smoothly on recent midrange NVidia cards.

[Kolgena]

Is it really that much of a difference?

Can a GTX 1060 run BP2, intro cutscene Icarus without dropping into the 20s at 1440p?

[Phantom Hoover]

I dunno about 1440p because I only have a 1080p screen but I've run through Icarus in its entirety at a near-constant 60FPS.

Frikgfeek has some AMD card with substantially better performance than a 1060 and he can't get smooth framerates with shadows on so yeah, it's a big, big difference.

[Kolgena]

That's insane. The RX 480 is supposed to be on par with the GTX 1060. Thanks for telling me. Guess all us guys on AMD should default to shadows off then.

I just found it surprising given that something like Doom runs great on AMD in OpenGL.

[FrikgFeek]

I have a 290X, which on its own has around the same performance as an RX480 and Nvidia 1060. However mine's ~quite overclocked and outbenches an average 1060 by some 13%, just barely under the R9 Fury.

And yeah, the BP cutscenes with shadows turned on drop down to the 30s in moments of heavy action. Icarus gets to like 35 while Artemis station drops down to 29. I once turned off Vsync to benchmark and Artemis station drops down from about 85 to 29 with shadows turned on which is quite a drop.

MediaVPs and older campaigns without quite as much action on screen work just fine with shadows turned on though but unless AMD's OpenGL driver gets magically un****tified you'll need a ridicously powerful card to run BP with shadows on an AMD GPU.

I just found it surprising given that something like Doom runs great on AMD in OpenGL.

What? Doom runs like ass on AMD in OpenGL. You get some absolutely insane FPS gains when you switch to Vulkan on AMD. Nvidia cards perform some 5-8% better on Vulkan compared to OpenGL while AMD cards perform 30-50% better when you switch which is ludicrous.

[Kolgena]

Yeah, I knew that Vulkan was stupidly in favor of AMD, but I thought its OGL implementation wasn't *that* bad. Performing 5-8% less than their nvidia counterparts doesn't scream "broken" nearly as much as a 60-70% drop compared to nvidia in FSO.

Well, there's about zero chance that AMD will ever fix the drivers. Even though their support is getting better over time, they have no reason to invest resources in opengl, which next to nobody (excluding mac with their ogl 3.2) uses.

[FrikgFeek]

Vulkan isn't favouring AMD, that's just the level that AMD cards should be performing at when you look at their core numbers and clock speeds. Their OGL drivers being garbage is why Vulkan seems like it's "AMD favoured". And the gap between a 480 on Doom OGL and a 1060 on OGL, cards that are even on DirectX is around 15%. That is absolutely terrible.

[The E]

Yeah, I knew that Vulkan was stupidly in favor of AMD, but I thought its OGL implementation wasn't *that* bad. Performing 5-8% less than their nvidia counterparts doesn't scream "broken" nearly as much as a 60-70% drop compared to nvidia in FSO.

It really isn't that bad. It's usable. But it does take a team like iD's Engine people to get everything out of it.

[Firesteel]

Id's also one of the only developers using OGL on Windows as well and in spite of how well built their engines can be, the AMD performance is noticeably worse. I switched from a GTX 770 to a Fury and the new Wolfenstein games still ran better on the nvidia card in spite of it having half the VRAM and being slower.

I was messing around with builds of the game I posted a while ago and the performance going between DX11 and OGL was ridiculous. Some of it had to do with how physics heavy my project is but going from a minimum of around 30 to a minimum of 10 is hugely significant and it was only an API change.

As far as FSOpen is concerned, I can get around 100-120 fps on 1920x1080 on the newest nightly without shadows and get 30-40 with them on.

[Spoon]

Yeah I usally can't seem to produce a proper framerate on my pc with shadows enabled either (760 GTX, i7 2600k)

So having spend some time testing various lighting settings, I can say with some confidence that -spec_exp and -ogl_spec don't really do anything anymore with PBR lighting. Or if they do, I just really can't see it. I've been testing with really low and really high numbers.