Unreal Engine 3 DX11 - Universal Fix

[DJ-RK]

Considering that "Universal Fixes" are all the rage these days and since I needed to work on several UE3 games consecutively, I figured it would make a nice opportunity to aggregate them to form the basis of a universal fix for DX11 UE3 games, which I've done and think I've reached a point where I'm happy enough to make the v1.0 initial release.

Unfortunately there really aren't all that many UE3 games that are DX11, most UE3 games are actually DX9, and many of the DX11 UE3 games already have dedicated fixes (and most of those were made by myself), so I'm not quite sure if there will be much practical use for this tool, but there's probably a few odd titles out there without fixes and there are still some new UE3 games still being released occasionally which may get preemptively fixed by this, so it's better than this not existing at all.

For that reason, I'm also not going to take the route of attempting to achieve "perfection" in all DX11 UE3 games (at least definitely not in the 1.0 release). This tool SHOULD fix all common effects, that being lighting/shadows, decals, many reflection types, most screen effects (god rays, lens flares, etc), and even has some basic built-in HUD handling for some common HUD types, but nearly every game handles advanced effects like Screenspace Reflections or volumetric effects differently and those may still require work in some games.

Here's a list of the games tested against this tool so far:

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition - Visually flawless except for environmental reflections in ME2 & ME3.
Killing Floor 2 - Visually flawless
Xcom 2 / War of the Chosen - Reflections on surfaces at extreme angles appear to hover over reflective surfaces rather than be in-depth inside the surface
Xcom: Chimera Squad - Visually flawless, as far as I've played
Borderlands 1 GOTYE: Visually flawless, except for volumetric flare outs
Mortal Kombat X - Motion blur must be disabled, reflections a bit further into depth than they should be.
Mortal Kombat 11 - Untested so far, but will be next.

Due to the generic handling of HUD elements in this universal fix (at present time) any of the above games that have dedicated fixes from me generally will have better HUD and UI features, and probably be closer to a 100% experience overall, so please always try those first and if they seem to be broken then fall back on this. There are quite possibly other old game fixes by other fixers that this universal fix may be in a better state, either due to them not being regex-based and broken due to updates, or perhaps less visual features were fixed at that time, etc.

I plan on keeping this tool as clean, lightweight, well documented, and as user-friendly as possible. As such, at this time the only keybindings are as follows:

F2 or Shift + F2: Cycles forwards or backwards through 5 convergence presets
F3 or Shift + F3: Cycles forwards or backwards through 5 HUD depth presets (only on those that get picked up by my HUD regexes)
F4: Disables HUD (only on those that get picked up by my HUD regexes)

Here's a link to a list of all Unreal Engine games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U ... gine_games
(Unfortunately the link does not differentiate between Dx9 and Dx11 UE3 titles, but if you sort the list via release date anything released within the past 5 years will likely all be DX11)

And finally here's a link to the tool itself: Unreal Engine 3 Universal Fix v1.0

For now I've only included the x64 .dll. I admittedly forgot all-together that some games may still be 32 bit, and may require the 32 bit DLL before packaging. I'll include the additional files in an upcoming version, but for now if using this with a 32-bit game users will need to obtain the d3d11.dll, d3dcompiler_46.dll, and nvapi.dll files from a 3DMigoto release build.

I've got even more planned to come! I'll also add more content to this post over time. All reports and feedback is valuable and appreciated! Enjoy!

[skyrimer]

Nice addition, I may give a look to some UE3 dx11 games and see how it works!

[3DNovice]

SuBmerged comes to mind as a game that has never received a fix. It was on DarkStarSwords todo list, but he
never got around to it due to updates I think or 3DMigoto limitations (prior to Regex at the time), Dunno.

Any how, a quick look at Steam shows it on sale $1.99 https://store.steampowered.com/app/301860/Submerged/

A sequel is coming soon
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1614 ... en_Depths/

Also, if I remember correctly, all Unreal 3 games require that you edit the Engine.ini or else 3D will not re-engage if you alt tab.
This is because 3D Vision was integrated into the game engine thru a partnership with Epic. So in my documents find the game
save location and in the config files open the Engine.ini and change false to true.

AllowNvidiaStereo3d=True

[DJ-RK]

SuBmerged comes to mind as a game that has never received a fix. It was on DarkStarSwords todo list, but he
never got around to it due to updates I think or 3DMigoto limitations (prior to Regex at the time), Dunno.

Any how, a quick look at Steam shows it on sale $1.99 https://store.steampowered.com/app/301860/Submerged/

A sequel is coming soon
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1614 ... en_Depths/

Cool, thanks for mentioning this, I remembered seeing it on DSS's Github repo, but I thought I remembered it was DX9 so I would have overlooked this one. At that price I'll add it to the collection, and give it a pass over in the near future. I see lots of reflections, so I imagine this one might actually need a little work to make it really shine!

Also, if I remember correctly, all Unreal 3 games require that you edit the Engine.ini or else 3D will not re-engage if you alt tab.
This is because 3D Vision was integrated into the game engine thru a partnership with Epic. So in my documents find the game
save location and in the config files open the Engine.ini and change false to true.

AllowNvidiaStereo3d=True

I find disabling Fullscreen Optimizations usually does the trick for Alt + Tab shenanegans, and haven't had to change that flag for any DX11 UE3 games ever. As far as I'm aware that was only used for DX9 games, and essentially made the games 3D Ready, but seemed hit or miss whether it actually worked or not. I know in the case of Borderlands 2 that flag did intially work, but now no longer works, sadly.

[3DNovice]

This just came to mind, wasn't the Bishock re-mastered games were remade using Unreal 3? AFAIK, they never received a fix,

Anyone playing these, should try this.

Edit: Never mind it seems that while it was upgraded to dx11, it's a modified version of Unreal 2.5 from what I could find
in the Steam forums. I'm downloading to test.

[DJ-RK]

This just came to mind, wasn't the Bishock re-mastered games were remade using Unreal 3? AFAIK, they never received a fix,

Anyone playing these, should try this.

Edit: Never mind it seems that while it was upgraded to dx11, it's a modified version of Unreal 2.5 from what I could find
in the Steam forums. I'm downloading to test.

Hehe, "Great minds think alike." Indeed, I thought of that and tried loading up Bioshock 1 Remastered, and although the fix did hook BS1:R didn't pick up any of my regex scripts, so looks like the code difference from UE2.5 to UE3 isn't immediately compatible. I'm willing to bet it would be trivially easy to add, so you could consider that as a possibility to be added in the future, thus making this a bit of a "hybrid" universal fix. I also loaded up Bioshock Infinite, which to my knowledge should be UE3, and even that has a completely different approach to lighting and will require some regex additions, but I'll get around to that eventually (low priority, since as far as I know the existing fix still works).

Things will be a bit slow in terms of any updates coming from me for the next little bit. I'm currently prepping for writing some IT certification exams, while I've been concurrently taking some other online courses for the past couple months, in order to hopefully return to working in IT instead of construction (and I have been these past couple years to my body's detriment), and so these have rightfully become my main focus and priority. I think I've also become a lot less interested in fixing games lately, and become a bit more interested in the idea of creating new tools for development, but I'm a long ways off from that becoming any sort of reality. I am still committed to fixing Crysis Remastered (and hopefully 2 & 3 after that), and Phantasy Star Online 2, as I've previously announced on here, so anyone still waiting on those can rest assured I still have plans for those, but I don't have anything planned beyond that, so we'll see what the future holds.

[3DNovice]

Awesome, I was just going to say that I tried both games but they were not compatible with the UE3 universal fix.

Yah, manual labor can be hard on the body, but less so than muscle apathy in some ways. If I was younger, I'd go back to work in the Oil Fields.
I did it for a few years in North Dakota before a down turn in oil prices forced layoffs. Crazy good money, I worked two weeks on/one off.

[DJ-RK]

Yah, manual labor can be hard on the body, but less so than muscle apathy in some ways. If I was younger, I'd go back to work in the Oil Fields.
I did it for a few years in North Dakota before a down turn in oil prices forced layoffs. Crazy good money, I worked two weeks on/one off.

Yes, the physical work was tough, but I actually enjoyed it! Especially after years of dealing with corporate BS and bureaucracy, I particularly loved the simplicity and even the brutishness of it, lol. If our union didn't have agreements in place for all of us to work 44 hours per week it wouldn't be so bad because the money was better than what I was last making in IT, or anywhere else for that matter... with that sort of money I would have been able to survive off of only working maybe 30 hours a week, which my body would easily handle, and I would have LOVED that sort of work-life balance, but NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooo, we can't have people not being slaves to the system in this society and have people work within their own parameters that they've chosen for themselves. That would be ludacris!

But yeah, right now I'm in more pain now, healing from a herniated disc at the base of my spine, which is from the muscle apathy you're referring to. Sadly for me it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't" apparently.

Edit: It just occurred to me it's possible that the reason the Bioshock Remastered games didn't pick up any of my regexes might simply be because they might be running older shader models than model 4.0, and if that's the case it might only be a matter of telling my regexes to look for older models as well. Something for me to possibly look at over the weekend, in between my studies.

[3DNovice]

Once your back is better, I recommend getting an ab roller and ab coaster. For whatever reason, I hate sit ups.
The ab coaster is fantastic, but the roller mechanism on it is not smooth and is noisey, they definitely skimped here.
I grabbed one gently used from Craigs List. Ab Rollers are cheap. Just don't overdue it in the first days/month.

This video prompted me to grab one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu8yXkdXfKc

[DJ-RK]

Spot on!

Yeah, I'm starting to focus more on engaging my core and re-evaluating how I carry my body with my movements (anterior pelvic tilt, etc), and it's become painfully aware how weak my abdominal muscles have become. Never knew of such a device, when you said ab roller I assumed you meant the little wheel with handles that you hold onto with your hands and roll forwards and backwards. Sadly living in a bachelor apartment means I don't have much room for such a large, dedicated workout machine, and I already have a heavy-duty reclining gym bench taking up what little space I can spare, though if space weren't at such a premium I'd probably be looking up one on Kijiji/CL myself.

Anyways, to bring this somewhat on topic, I've started looking a bit closer at Bioshock 1 (sadly it's not just running on an older shader model, it's running on ps4.0 and just looks like a completely different engine than UE3 almost, at a first glance at least), and also learned that Splinter Cell: Blacklist is another UE2 game with a DX11 mode, so that's now being looked at being supported as well, if adding UE2 support doesn't provide any conflicts elsewhere (unlikely, but worth mentioning).

[3DNovice]

FWIW
https://blindsquirrelentertainment.com/ ... ollection/

Re-wrote the 2.5 Unreal Engine to take advantage of both 64-bit & Multi-Threading
Improved lighting and shadows for BioShock and BioShock 2
Added real-time reflections and bump maps to BioShock
Improved VFX textures and particles for BioShock and BioShock 2

Also, I was also talking about the wheel with handles as well, it helps as well.

[Chtiblue]

Take care DJ-RK, there are a lot of muscle exercices on youtube that can be made without workout machines

[DJ-RK]

Take care DJ-RK, there are a lot of muscle exercices on youtube that can be made without workout machines

Thanks Chtblue (and D-Man11) for caring enough to chime in here about my health and offer helpful suggestions. I certainly wouldn't wish this type of pain on anyone (literally feels like my spinal cord is constantly on the verge of being snapped in two by pressure from my own spine. Fun!), but thankfully after living with this for 2 weeks now I'm feeling a wee bit better and on the mend. Indeed, some of the best exercises for me right now involve no workout machines. Probably my favourite, and most effective one is called smoking cannabis (it's legal where I'm at, sorry for anyone that it isn't), really helps to loosen up/lessen the pain enough to do all the stretching needed. Highly recommended!

[Chtiblue]

Indeed, some of the best exercises for me right now involve no workout machines. Probably my favourite, and most effective one is called smoking cannabis (it's legal where I'm at, sorry for anyone that it isn't), really helps to loosen up/lessen the pain enough to do all the stretching needed. Highly recommended!

yeah cannabis is gold

I'm using both normal cannabis (THC) for recreation or focus in tennis ^^ and CBD cannabis for better sleep (Insomnia) or pains & aches.

I don't know if you are already using CBD but it works great for pain and avoid to be always high ^^. You can mix CBD Flowers (10% CBD) with Moonrock CBD (75% CBD) for better effects

I hope you are using a vaporizer for cannabis or CBD, so much better and priceless for the health (no combustion and no nicotine addiction), not to mention you can only have the high effect of THC without the smooth physical effects if you vaporize shortly and at low temperature 8)

[skyrimer]

Best luck with your health situation DJ RK, we don't value enough being healthy until we lose it.

Big fan of bioshock games and splinter cell though, so I'm glad youre giving them a second look.

[DJ-RK]

I hope you are using a vaporizer

I could comment on every part of the above (and I'm sure we could both agree we could probably talk endlessly on the subject), but for brevity I'll just say that ^ this is my preferred (and only) method of consumption. My desk is littered with just as much vape gear as it is gaming stuff. Just easier to say smoking cannabis to the uninitiated.

@Skyrimer: Thanks as well for those well wishes, and also glad that you're equally excited in revisiting some of these games.

[Chtiblue]

I hope you are using a vaporizer

I could comment on every part of the above (and I'm sure we could both agree we could probably talk endlessly on the subject), but for brevity I'll just say that ^ this is my preferred (and only) method of consumption. My desk is littered with just as much vape gear as it is gaming stuff. Just easier to say smoking cannabis to the uninitiated.

Awesome 8)

[Feisty_Fernando]

Spot on!

Yeah, I'm starting to focus more on engaging my core and re-evaluating how I carry my body with my movements (anterior pelvic tilt, etc), and it's become painfully aware how weak my abdominal muscles have become. Never knew of such a device, when you said ab roller I assumed you meant the little wheel with handles that you hold onto with your hands and roll forwards and backwards. Sadly living in a bachelor apartment means I don't have much room for such a large, dedicated workout machine, and I already have a heavy-duty reclining gym bench taking up what little space I can spare, though if space weren't at such a premium I'd probably be looking up one on Kijiji/CL myself.

Off-topic but as a chronic back pain sufferer myself:

Strengthening core muscles with PT exercises 3 days a week, knees and upper thighs with a recumbent bike, and losing weight are the best choices for chronic pack pain.

Diagram included for a choice of exercises, some might be more painful than others. Don't forget to stretch, it helps out immensely.

[3DNovice]

There's a list of UE 2.5 games on PCGW, unfortunately, the API is not listed.
But I'm going to guess, that by looking at the dates the others are dx9 only.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Engin ... Engine_2.5

BTW, I have to ask.
While baked, have you ever rolled into Lucy's Eastside Diner and asked for a Grant or an Ian and then told them to make it a Quad?

Or signed up for the Uncle Grant's Eating Challenge?

Edit: nvm, I always get Vancouver and Ontario mixed up.

[3DNovice]

Also, if I remember correctly, all Unreal 3 games require that you edit the Engine.ini or else 3D will not re-engage if you alt tab.
This is because 3D Vision was integrated into the game engine thru a partnership with Epic. So in my documents find the game
save location and in the config files open the Engine.ini and change false to true.

AllowNvidiaStereo3d=True

I find disabling Fullscreen Optimizations usually does the trick for Alt + Tab shenanegans, and haven't had to change that flag for any DX11 UE3 games ever. As far as I'm aware that was only used for DX9 games, and essentially made the games 3D Ready, but seemed hit or miss whether it actually worked or not. I know in the case of Borderlands 2 that flag did intially work, but now no longer works, sadly.

Yah, perhaps it doesn't apply to dx11 games, exclusive fullscreen might be created/handled differently.

DeadLight is an example of a dx9 UE3 game that requires this ini edit or 3D no longer works after alt tabbing.

[Lysander]

Edit: nvm, I always get Vancouver and Ontario mixed up.

The situation might be more dire than you think. Vancouver is a city, while Ontario is a province

[3DNovice]

oops, Toronto
The one by Niagra Falls

I saw Mary's Eastside Diner on a show called You Gotta Eat Here, but yah, that's in Victoria, my bad.

There's a website that you can go to that will list restaurants that have been on TV that are near you, if interested.
https://www.tvfoodmaps.com/restaurants_ ... -Eat-Here/

I should have asked if he's been to The Burger's Priest and had this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI6tJnZU-Go

[DJ-RK]

Diagram included for a choice of exercises, some might be more painful than others. Don't forget to stretch, it helps out immensely.

Thanks man, that's actually super useful to have it all broken down like that into target muscle groups. Saved that for later.

BTW, I have to ask.
While baked, have you ever rolled into Lucy's Eastside Diner and asked for a Grant or an Ian and then told them to make it a Quad?

Or signed up for the Uncle Grant's Eating Challenge?

Edit: nvm, I always get Vancouver and Ontario mixed up.

oops, Toronto
The one by Niagra Falls

I saw Mary's Eastside Diner on a show called You Gotta Eat Here, but yah, that's in Victoria, my bad.

There's a website that you can go to that will list restaurants that have been on TV that are near you, if interested.
https://www.tvfoodmaps.com/restaurants_ ... -Eat-Here/

I should have asked if he's been to The Burger's Priest and had this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI6tJnZU-Go

Ahh, yeah, I was scratching my head a little bit over that first message, so that's a definite no there, but I actually live within a 5 minute walk from the original Burger's Priest location (it's got multiple locations across the city now), and I've also eaten once at the Holy Chuck joint they were at. Never ordered those SUPER ridiculous burgers, but I have had BP's "Vatican" burger, which was basically a double cheeseburger between 2 grilled cheese sandwiches as "buns", which is fairly ridiculous in itself. I will say, their "Priest" burger is one of the best burgers I've ever had. Nothing crazy, just has one beef patty with a deep-fried portabello mushroom stuffed with cheese on top, and that fkn mushroom is the absolute tits man.

Anyways, I'm not here to only talk about burgers, I wanted to drop in to give an update and a bit of a preview on what I've been working on lately, which has namely been a complete fix for Bioshock Remastered. All in all, I think I've got the fix complete already, or at the very least looking pretty nice and even better than the DX9 fix thanks to having specular highlights and environment map reflections at stereo depth. Here's a few pics to show off the fix at work:

BioshockHD022_085.jpg

BioshockHD034_085.jpg

BioshockHD038_085.jpg

BioshockHD039_085.jpg

BioshockHD045_085.jpg

BioshockHD053_085.jpg

BioshockHD061_085.jpg

Not too shabby for a 15 year old game, eh? But wait, THERE'S MORE!!! See next post...

[DJ-RK]

See, I got to playing around with Reshade a little bit, and you know what's pretty frickin great about Reshade? Is that you can add a bunch of shaders and effects to old games and make them look like newer games. So after spending an evening tweaking away, I was able to add:

-Screenspace reflections (SSR)
-Ambient occlusion (SSDO)
-HDR
-Tonemapping
-Clarity & sharpening filters
-Reflective bumpmapping (adds a little bit of 3D-ness to the older textures)

Here's some before and after photo's to show the difference:

BioshockHD001_00.jpg

BioshockHD002_00.jpg

BioshockHD007_085.jpg

BioshockHD008_085.jpg

BioshockHD009.jpg

BioshockHD010.jpg

BioshockHD011_00.jpg

BioshockHD012_00.jpg

BioshockHD012_085.jpg

BioshockHD013_085.jpg

BioshockHD014_085.jpg

BioshockHD015_085.jpg

BioshockHD017_085.jpg

BioshockHD018_085.jpg

I'm certainly no pro at creating presets, but I'm pretty happy with my results so far. I tried to avoid messing with any colors and lighting too much, though the fake HDR effect does darken the lighting quite a bit (which is easily disabled for those that don't like it). Fair warning, my preset is pretty expensive performance wise, I go from 180-300 FPS down to 80 , but anything over 60 FPS doesn't matter so who cares if it causes over 50% reduction in performance as long as it's still hitting 60 , and considering all the reflections and effects these are adding, it's really no wonder it would cost so much more performance. Anyways, I'll provide my Reshade preset along with my fix for anyone that wants to use it.

Although I think BS1:R is possibly 100% fixed I'm going to wait a couple more days before I release anything. May as well just play through the game to make sure I catch everything the first go around. I've already taken a preliminary look at BS2:R and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and both of those are going to require additional work beyond what's been done for BS1:R, so those will have a later ETA.

[DJ-RK]

Ok, by happenstance someone on the Discord channel was asking about any fixes for the Bioshock Remastered games earlier today before I got there to post up the pics, and luckily for anyone salivating over the above pictures he smooth-talked his way into getting me to package up a WIP for my fix and Reshade preset together! This is still an in-progress update to the UE3 to provide backwards compatible support, hence why I'm just posting it in this thread (as opposed to creating it's own), and I'll post an official fix for the game to the blog when I've completed my playthrough.

Download: Bioshock 3D Fix + Reshade Preset WIP1

Installation folder for the fix: .\BioShock Remastered\Build\Final

Press F12 for in game Help menu to see keybindings.

In game settings:
1) VSYNC needs to be on to fix dynamic light tearing/flickering bug (not related to 3D. It occurs in 2D as well, and in all versions of game)
2) I play at FOV 100, and the Reshade SSR shader uses a hardcoded FOV value, so it might be best to play at FOV 100 as well, or adjust the Reshade SSR shader setting vertical FOV accordingly to match your in-game preference.

Reshade Preset Installation Procedure:
1) Download Reshade 4.9.1
2) Run ReShade_Setup_4.9.1.exe
3) *Locate and select BioshockHD.exe
4) Select DirectX 10/11
5) Install all shader effect packages (that's not the name of any particular option, just install all of them)
6) Load Bioshock
7) Using the Reshade menu, load my "DJ-RK's 3D Fix Enhancements.ini" preset, located in the Reshade Preset folder included in the fix package
* - May involve additional steps and common sense

WARNING:
1) VERY high performance cost associated with the Reshade preset. Disable active effects as necessary.
2) I will not instruct further on how to install ReShade or edit my preset.

End note: I've decided currently to only provide the .ini file of my preset and require people to manually install it using the standard Reshade installer because this is my first time distributing a preset and I'm not certain on the legalities/ethics of providing my entire Reshade installation along with my 3D fix, for an "all-in-one" sort of mod package, nor am I certain if it's guaranteed to work on everyone else's machines as such. Anyone familiar with any of that, or able to confirm if I'm doing what's best here? I believe most other Reshade presets I've installed do the same thing, hence why I'm following suit, but I've also seen at least one preset that was just a drop in place installation (not requiring the Reshade installer to create a default profile), so I imagine that confirms it should work and is probably fine to do, but I figured I'd at least pitch the question here to see if anyone knows before just assuming, and also ask if this would be people's preference as opposed to just providing the .ini file for the preset?

[Tullebob]

Damn! This looks mighty fine! I have not played Bioshock since it came out originally, so this will be one hell of a ride. Love the art style of the game and everything else about it. Did not care that much for bioshock 2 and 3 tho, but 1 i love THANK YOU FOR THIS WORK, DJ-RK!

[Blacksmith60]

AWESOME DJ-RK !!!
With your 3D fix and preset it really shines again - absolute one of my favorites, the atmosphere is amazing, a replay is a must now - THANKS, truly appreciated

Providing just the ini is perfect.

[Lysander]

I have also not played any Bioshocks, despite getting the first one like 13 years ago, still on a CD. I'll play the first one in DX9 as I dont want to repurchase it but since I have the 2nd one remastered, I'll likely wait for your fix DJ thx!

[3DNovice]

I've also have never played Bioshock, despite owning the games. This is due to my extreme motion sickness though, which is worse in FPS games.
The water and oil slicks in the start made me super queasy, so I never continued.
Odd thing though, I caught Covid and was pretty sick. Since then, I no longer suffer from motion sickness at all, even in FPS games. (I know, WTF??)
Previously, a 10 hr FPS game would take me 30 hrs with breaks
So, I've been busy playing some FPS games while I can, fingers crossed, I never suffer from it again.

Anyhow, I am definitely looking forward to giving this game a playthrough with the new fix. Thnx

[DJ-RK]

I've also have never played Bioshock, despite owning the games. This is due to my extreme motion sickness though, which is worse in FPS games.
The water and oil slicks in the start made me super queasy, so I never continued.
Odd thing though, I caught Covid and was pretty sick. Since then, I no longer suffer from motion sickness at all, even in FPS games. (I know, WTF??)
Previously, a 10 hr FPS game would take me 30 hrs with breaks
So, I've been busy playing some FPS games while I can, fingers crossed, I never suffer from it again.

Anyhow, I am definitely looking forward to giving this game a playthrough with the new fix. Thnx

This touches on one subject that I'll take a moment to discuss, which is regarding the stereoization of reflections and specular highlights and various reflection types.

I find fixing these particularly challenging because what's correct often doesn't look like it. For example, a reflective surface that is not being viewed straight on WILL often yield a different looking reflection in each eye (as they do IRL), however that is what I've now essentially trained my eyes to see as "broken" from years of working on 3D fixes, and can be a huge mind-f*ck after spending a couple hours working on SSR's in a game, thinking I got them just right just to see at a weird angle later and now think they are broken, and then try "fixing" that which, as you might guess, breaks what might have otherwise been correct, and will thus create a cycle of wasted time and frustration. Another common thing is that stereoizing reflections to their full depth often looks too diverged and harsh on my eyes, and that's why it's become my preference to simply include 1/4 and 1/2 depth options, which often look a lot more appealing and stereo-fused with one another, while still being more realistic looking than being left at surface depth (which is also given an option for those that would prefer it).

Anyways, I mention all that to say/ask 2 things:

1) I feel your pain (and others like you) and hear you loud and clear, so you'll definitely have the option to make things less shiny and less visual-f*ckery. If you find your symptoms start to return (here's hoping your cured, though!), either don't use the Reshade preset (or disable the SSR shader and keep the rest) and use the provided key to set the Reflection Depth setting to surface depth or maybe you'll be fine with just 1/4 (that's actually my preference for most games myself)

2) Just curious if people really even notice the difference between correctly stereoized specular highlights + reflections vs surface depth vs broken? These are often the hardest things to get correct in a fix, and once you reach that level of fixing (beyond just halos and shadows) it becomes rather disappointing when you can't get those correct, yet I don't think I even knew what any of that was (they were all just "reflections" to me) before I start fixing games, nor could I even discern all that much between an unfixed reflection vs a fixed one for quite a while. I'm just curious if this is somewhat analogous to what I've seen in places like the DJ community, where most DJ's critique each other on their use of sound fx vs not using any, use of vinyl vs cd vs digital, etc etc, whereas most people on a dancefloor couldn't tell the difference from one from another (just so long as it isn't obviously bad, ofc). I know the obvious answer here is "a fix without perfect reflections/speculars is better than none", but I guess I'm asking for a deny/confirm for appreciation towards correct speculars & reflections from non-shaderhackers. Do you guys even notice the difference?

[3DNovice]

(here's hoping your cured, though!)

Thanks

Could you list some of the games to scrutinize these issues.

I often thought in some FPS games that the devs use a world camera for landscape and some assets, but then they use another camera for their first person perspective.
Then they get lazy and use the FPS cam for some additional things, which in turn causes using high depth settings to break more than just the weapon.
Thus, in some FPS games, the low depth/high convergence in the best option.

I also wondered that in some FPS games where only the weapon breaks, if it would be possible to add a multiplying retarder to the weapon only or just a few presets dis-associating it from world convergence.
Like weapon convergence=5% of world convergence. So that as you increase depth to make the world not so flat, the weapon doesn't separate so much that it's unplayable.

[3DNovice]

Perhaps not the best example, Call of Duty World at War is the first one that came to mind.

Of course a solution for some old games is to simply edit the config file and set the option to not render the weapon.

But in the following screenshots, you can see it's either weapon or world or some kind of compromise.

So if the multipliers on the weapon adjusted to a fraction of the world convergence, things would be beautiful.

[Lizzard]

I think most guys here who tried to fix a game themselves understands and appreciate everything going into these fixes. I know I personally wouldn't even notice when something was removed. We only notice things when its broken/not stereorised. That was one of the first things Bo3b emphasized in his tutorials. We are definitely the most spoiled brats in the stereoscopic environment. And i say this because I often find it really hard to adapt to Z3D. At some stage even Tridef was a colossal compromise. Their reflections and skyboxes are broken 50% of the time and the main reason why I still haven't tried VorpX. ( On a side note, still cant understand why Ralf is so stubborn when so many of the most talented guys here offered to help improve his product.) Transparent textures that cant have depth, is perhaps the biggest compromise on the quality and immersion area. Which is where you end up in the dilemma, do I love the game/franchise more than the stereoscopic immersion? Sometimes you cant satisfy both and the recipe turns out like salt in coffee.

I personally never come to the forums to complain about broken effects because I'm too grateful when something is playable. And because I have a faint idea of what it takes to get things fixed I always try to support you guys. When you try to perfect something you should do it for yourself. It should satisfy you first. Because 95% of us never tried to fix something ourselves and wouldn't know what was done apart from the broad effort from the readme/introduction.

Regardless, I like to stop and stare at things in the environment. Its always good to pause and inhale all the diversity of different people's passions. Because every scene was something, maybe 50 people, had a part of their life invested in. The people I despise are the ones who copied the same fallen tree just 20 steps from the same one. Its just as bad as transparent textures without depth. Everything that adds to the immersion will always be praised in my books. But compromise has been part of stereoscopic gaming since the beginning. No matter how good it gets there will always be something missing.

[Lizzard]

I also wondered that in some FPS games where only the weapon breaks, if it would be possible to add a multiplying retarder to the weapon only or just a few presets dis-associating it from world convergence.
Like weapon convergence=5% of world convergence. So that as you increase depth to make the world not so flat, the weapon doesn't separate so much that it's unplayable.

This is definitely something that has been missing for a long time. It becomes very noticeable in BlackMesa. But I think the down side and compromise will be that your gun will be converging behind walls when you stand in front of them. But it would be a great option to have its depth and convergence disconnected from the environment's.

[3DNovice]

I think one of the Battlefield games had the option, perhaps BF3?
It had to be configured in the config, I never played it though.

Edit: found the link
https://3dvision-blog.com/6569-console- ... lefield-3/

I think there was also an option to adjust the weapon position in relation to the right side of the screen.
gunX and gunY or something.

[Lysander]

Odd thing though, I caught Covid and was pretty sick. Since then, I no longer suffer from motion sickness at all, even in FPS games. (I know, WTF??)

Now, THAT's interesting! Lol
I love this community - 3DNovice's covid cures his motion sickness, masterotaku's headaches go away in S3D games...what other non-conventional medical miracles we're gonna see next?

[3DNovice]

It might be due to the fact that Covid was giving me heart palpitations, if you pinch you nostrils and blow real hard with your mouth closed, they go away.
It's an old trick passed down through the ages, but I wonder if it did something to clear my ear canals? Dunno.
I've used waxed cones before, but they didn't help too much. The first time I suffered, was playing Tomb Raider on the first PlayStation.

[3DNovice]

I recall a game where DHR performed some type of FPS weapon fix, but I can't think of the name of it.
Or perhaps it was another shader hacker, I'll try to remember.

Edit: I think it was Dying Light? I'm not sure

[3DNovice]

I think it wasn't BF3, but instead Doom 3 BFG Edition

g_gunX “6”
g_gunY “-2”
g_gunZ “-4"
set g_laserSightLength “0.1”

[DJ-RK]

First, I just want to make clear that my last post was merely just for discussion's sake, and make sure that no one was misinterpreting me as saying "reflections are hard. Is it ok if I skip them in my fixes?" or anything of the sort.

Secondly, on the discussion on first person games being problematic due to requiring a choice between 1) low convergence in order to prevent weapon/player's body from diverging, but causes everything beyond the first 2-5 meters to all appear at the same depth/infinity (ie. world looks flat, feels like playing 2D almost), or 2) high convergence, but causes weapon/body to diverge so much that you either can no longer naturally see it stereo-fused together, or it goes offscreen, and this also introduces an issue where you perceive you are further ahead in the world than your player is, because increasing convergence is like pushing the camera forward into the scene, which can make navigation and platforming a bit interesting.

Anyways, yeah, DHR's Dying Light was the first and only implementation, outside of my own, that I'm aware of. I did a similar thing of my own for an Elite: Dangerous WIP that I had going (and abandoned once I got VR), and I've also included a completely different implementation in my Borderlands 3 fix that I dubbed the "High Convergence" mode. I had plans to (and very loosely still do) implement this same mode in Ghostrunner, because I feel that game NEEDS it because you can't not see your body, and it's horrendous to play a game as gorgeous as that in what feels like 2D... I'll probably revisit that later, but this is also making me wonder if maybe this is something that a custom shader could be made for, to be able to be dropped into various games rather than be game dependent. *sigh* Yet another project idea that I wish I had time for.