Star Wars Galaxies

[crisp python]

For discussion regarding getting it to work with RTX Remix and any mods that people make.

First, in order to get Remix set up so that it will detect the game, download the most recent build of Remix from the repository here https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/rtx-remix/releases
Next copy all of the loose files and the .trex folder inside the remix-0-X-X folder you downloaded into the root folder of your preferred SWG client.

The next step which is optional, but highly recommended in order to not have to manually select sky textures, is to download the most recent rtx.conf file from this thread.

Also optional is downloading the newest version of DXVK-remix https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/actions/workflows/build.yml

You will need a GitHub account in order to download them. Just click on the most recent build, and under "Artifacts", click on the release build to download "dxvk-remix-(numbers and letters)-(more numbers)-release

Once downloaded, copy the files inside into the .trex folder inside of the game's root folder.

Keep in mind that while some builds of DXVK-Remix that were published after the newest build of RTX Remix may have performance and compatibility improvements, they might also have regressions as well that affect performance and compatibility. Use them at your own risk and if one causes instability, you may have to try an earlier version.

In order to get the game to launch with Remix, first go to the SwgClientSetup_r.exe, go to the Graphics tab and disable Vertex and Pixel Shaders, Bump Mapping, Hardware Mouse Cursor, and Multi-Pass Rendering. I would also recommend ticking Windowed Mode and Borderless Window. Once you have done this, you may launch the game.

If you are playing SWG Legends, you will need this file in your root folder as well, as the launcher's setup executable does not allow for toggling Vertex and Pixel Shaders on and off #1098135032381583392 message

The game does still have a few graphical issues, but is mostly playable in its current state. The major issues are as follows:

~~1. Terrain does not quite render correctly, even with terrain blending turned on. The blended texture will change depending on the camera orientation and position. ~~

2. Anything that is meant to have color blending, such as colorable vehicles and certain body parts such as Twi'lek lekku, will either not have any coloration at all, or be entirely that color rather than only certain parts of it.

3. Humanoid characters and female Sullustans have their faces render as a black or white texture.

4. This relates back to number two somewhat, but the sky does not properly transition between day and night. There are never any stars in the sky.

Now, as it stands, RTX Remix does not automatically process the normal and specular maps and therefore will only render the diffuse (color) maps of a given object. In order to have normal and specular maps reapplied, I have made an EXTREMELY WIP material mod which can be found here
https://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-galaxies-rtx-remix-vanilla-material-replacements

In order to get Remix to pick up these mods, once you have extracted the folder, move the "rtx-remix" folder to the root folder of your SWG client.

The folder structure should be as follows: (root)\rtx-remix\mods\GameReadyAssets

Keep in mind that if you have any texture mods installed, they could interfere with this mod as the replaced textures and materials were added based on very specific texture hashes and different textures (even the "same" textures but with a higher resolution) would have a different hash.
This would not cause a crash, but would mean that that objects that use that particular texture would not have added materials such as normal or roughness maps.

The mod was created with the help of Kim's MagicUSDA Python script and ChaiNNer (which converted the game's original normal maps to a format usable by Remix)

This is what I have been working on so far. My goal was to get the entire Mos Eisley cantina up and ready with all of the game's normal maps applied and specular maps hastily inverted into roughness maps. All of them were upscaled along with the albedo maps. I made some normal maps with ChaiNNer for those objects that did not already have them.~~ I also experimented with emission maps, but I can't get them to emit anything other than red light.~~ (This has been fixed)

Also, do keep in mind that the game is very prone to crashing, most especially when you aren't in a building.

[steady locust]

very nice and are you using regular remix or dkvx?

[crisp python]

Just regular Remix as of now.

[steady locust]

any wrappers?

[crisp python]

None. It already uses Direct 9 so there is no need.

This should work on any version of SWG you choose, whether it is SWGEmu, Legends, Restoration, Evolve, etc.
(Edit: It does not in fact work with Legends.)
(Further edit: It actually does with the right .cfg.)

#1098135032381583392 message

[steady locust]

cool

[jagged flint]

Legends doesn't seem to let you disable shaders, Guess cause its DX9c.
Unless anyones had any more luck recently with it?

[stable marsh]

didnt they do a bunch of custom rendering things or something, i remember reading about it

hmm maybe not, i might have been thinking of the ILM mod, but it looks like they dont support it anymore

[crisp python]

That's a shame. I hope that they consider adding it back in now that there's a very good reason to.

[crisp python]

The latest release. Still a lot to do, but more and more objects and characters have been touched inside the Mos Eisley cantina. Also some experiments with setting metallic amount for metal objects. Probably went overboard, but this is all just a test anyway.

[torn crane]

Anyone have any luck getting in to work with Legends? CTD map load, just wondering if there is anything I can tweak to get it up and running.

[jagged flint]

If you turn off texture baking in the client settings it will load, and the remix UI will work, but thats as far as it will go.
Legends uses dx9c for some reason, so it remix never fully hooks on.
I checked the logs, it can't find a camera or something so it reverts back to raster rendering.

[crisp python]

With and without GameReadyAssets.

[torn crane]

Ahh, I turned everything off and managed to get it to 'work' as you say, appear but do nothing, by turning off all settings but interesting to know which one in particular it was. Hope they can get this working, I'd love to get into asset making for this.

[crisp python]

Other versions of SWG work. I can confirm from personal experience that SWGEmu and Restoration both not only get in game, but have raytracing.

[steady locust]

@crisp python how do moda usd files work and how do i merge the captures?

[crisp python]

Mod.usda files basically store all of the information regarding the changes you have made. They are sort of an archive of everything that will be put to use. Without it, RTX Remix won't know what to use even if you have modified everything else. As for merging captures, I don't think you can, though I could be wrong about that. I have just been working on them one at a time.

[steady locust]

ah ok

been wrapping my head around it

got alot of usd files

in mats

[tight drum]

Whereabouts would I want to extract this?

Also -- I figured I'd mention you also need to disable World Preloading (at least it crashes my game on load otherwise)

[crisp python]

You will want to extract that to your /rtx-remix/mods folder in the game directory. Also, very good catch. I will add that to the post up there.

[tight drum]

Thank you kindly!

[crisp python]

Now this mainly only affects the Mos Eisley cantina. There are some things that will affect the game at large, like some of the clothing and alien materials and whatnot, but by and large you will only really see a significant difference inside of there.

[tight drum]

Good to know. 🙂

And to make sure, is it:

|-./ rtx-remix/mods/
| /meshes
| /SubUSDs
| mod.usda

Or do I want to have the directory called /GameReadyAssets directly within /mods?

[crisp python]

You want to have /GameReadyAssets inside of mods.

[tight drum]

Thank you kindly 🙂

By the by, I noticed that you disabled Direct lighting and enabled indirect. I've been messing around on my own otherwise and I realized that the intensity of the direct lights needs to be at like 0.001 to be anywhere near normal. Maybe I'm altering the wrong settings and just playing by ear incorrectly though.

I'd also mention that the light sizes (I can't remember the name of the property...) is defaulting to like 5.0, but the sphere is usually intersecting with walls and stuff.

Not sure what's right/wrong but it might help you out in testing 🙂

[crisp python]

Ah, I did add a few lights at first as a test, but I ended up using emission maps for certain things instead as that seems to work better and more realistically and never got rid of the others.

As far as Direct lighting, I don't remember why I turned that off. Might've been on accident while I was messing with other things.

It might've been while I was trying to figure out what was causing some of the crashing if I had to guess.

[tight drum]

I honestly have no idea how to do anything beyond messing around with the settings in the UI, as I've not really gone further than that stage, but your emission maps and such are probably more accurate regardless

[tight drum]

Yeah, right now I'm getting crazy performance drops when I'm moving around outside in mos eisley. Not sure why -- it didn't happen in my SWGEMu setup (I'm trying your setup in Restoration)

[crisp python]

Well, the emission maps are actually from the game itself from the most part. I can't take credit for them, lol. Some of them were just in the alpha channels of some of the diffuse textures and some were their own separate texture.

Honestly, other than the AI upscaling that I did for all of the textures, pretty much everything you see is from the game itself. The roughness maps are just converted from the specular maps. I did use ChaiNNer to make some normal maps for things that didn't have them, and for converting the ones that do exist to octahedron, but a lot of the ones here are just upscaled from the game's files.

[tight drum]

Aha I see. Very good to know. I think this is the game that has some of the coolest potential. If only Legends worked.

Just imagining doing something like the Ryyyat trails with a lightsaber lighting the way. Very glad we can still use other servers

[crisp python]

It is a shame about Legends. Hopefully they re-enable the option to disable shaders once they see what RTX Remix can do.

[crisp python]

This rtx.conf re-enables Direct lighting and some other stuff I had disabled while testing.

[tight drum]

Only slightly related, but do you know of any way to get rid of the horrible default forest texture from disbaling texture baking?

[crisp python]

I tried to do so with only the tiniest bit of success. It seems that all of the humanoid races all share the same material, which I suppose makes sense given that they all use the same default texture. I assigned one of the human face textures to it, which makes everyone look like they are a part of Kabuki theater as it doesn't take any of the skin color information into account.

I suppose it is a minor improvement.

[crisp python]

Now without disabling texture baking, each race has their own unique textures. Sadly, until disabling texture baking becomes no longer necessary, I fear that there is only so much that can be done.

[crisp python]

This one has a few changes. This fixes some normal maps that were converted incorrectly which should make them look much better now. It also fixes some emissions so that they look more correct. There are also the standard increases in the number of clothing and species materials.

[crisp python]

Just some miscellaneous additions.

[autumn storm]

would you mind submitting an entry for this game to the new compatibility list?

[crisp python]

Not a problem! Entry has been submitted.

[autumn storm]

thanks 🙂

[crisp python]

This mainly deals with some Theed exterior textures which is a marked departure from what I was going for originally.

[crisp python]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jy402meo89p1qbFRBg5dvYeB7DAlJa05/view?usp=sharing This adds experimental water materials to the game. You will have to go to Naboo to see it as of right now.

[tight drum]

Are you testing with any particular emulator? I had an issue the other day with restoration when I left the cantina the whole world seemed to come apart with mesh madness.

[torn crane]

Love that you're carrying on with this and hope legends becomes compatible soon so I can use it. Any chance you could post a screen or two of the changes you make as you update us?

[crisp python]

I have done a bit of testing with both SWGEmu and Restoration. In my experience, that seems to happen with both. I am not sure how to keep that from happening, sadly.

[crisp python]

I reckon I could do that, at least with the more major stuff like water and possibly new planets and such.

[crisp python]

When you see the pictures and videos I post, that is really just me having found a lucky angle where the game doesn't just decide to have the geometry go every which way but loose, lol.

[crisp python]

While doing a bit of testing, I have found that setting the Fused World View Mode to "In View Transform" seems to make the mesh deformations less frequent and intense. I will recommend that if you are using one of the experimental builds with anti-culling that you either not enable it or only have it enabled in doors.

Leaving it turned on outside leads to this.

[crisp python]

Also, I would like to note that while this does make the geometric deformations less prevalent, they will not go away entirely.

[tight drum]

I’m curious. I haven’t encountered this when I was doing my own setup of textures and such. Have you been applying all the world textures to be listed as “terrain textures” in the editor? I noticed when I was originally testing that, it would raise the texture slightly. I honestly don’t know what it’s used for but I wonder if it’s a remix issue with textures being applied in the editor and there being a conflict of some sort.

[crisp python]

I have not tried it with SWG, but I have tried it with a few other games. It always does seem to raise the textures no matter what. I think it is likely not fully ready to be used just yet.

[crisp python]

There has been a minor update that adjusts the water properties to look more like the original game. There have been miscellaneous materials added as well.

[crisp python]

Also, I am not sure whether this is a result of the most recent build, adjusting the Fused World View Mode or a combination of the two, but I made a trip on my swoop bike from the Lake Retreat to Theed and back again without a single crash, which is a trip that is roughly 4-5 KM both to and from. Before, I could not stay outside for long without encountering a crash. Crashes even inside of cities was fairly frequent and going outside of them would all but guarantee a crash at some point. Therefore, I must most heartily recommend the most recent build of Remix if you wish to play this as it may actually be possible to play the game rather than just gawk at the pretty graphics.

[crisp python]

With the most recent DXVX-Remix build, https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/actions/runs/4878414062, the game seems to no longer have any geometry stretching issues at all. I have therefore set the Fused World View Mode back to none which provides more accurate lighting.

The only crashes I have noticed have been while checking the in game map. It doesn't happen every time, but it seems to be when they occur the most often.

[crisp python]

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/9f3bd806b9bb43d5eb8101d4238ae79d29dea173d76bd7498f4e5e67add644ee?nocache=1 Given the rather large size of this, I figure it might not be a bad idea to attach a virustotal link so that you all know it is on the up and up. A few changes have also been made, this time dealing with parts of the Emperor's Retreat on Naboo.

[cosmic trellis]

Those screenshots look way better than what I'm seeing, but I'm using MTG assets, should that matter? I'm assuming you have to do a bunch of asset selection to get this looking correctly?

Most are the same textures though, tatooine looks pretty jacked on my end though

(using your config)

Naboo is even worse 😂

[crisp python]

What I did was a bit of manual material replacement via Omniverse Create to get the screenshots I took. I ended up making a Google Drive link as it got too big for Discord's 500 MB limit. I only really got around to Tatooine and Naboo, though. At this point more so Naboo.

[crisp python]

Here it is. It gets updated periodically whenever I have the time and motivation, lol.

As far as MTG assets, I don't think they would conflict unless they replace or add any textures. Then again, it would really only be a problem if they were particle effects or something along those lines. It shouldn't cause any crashes. It might just look a tad off.

The terrain is for the moment going to still look a bit messed up no matter what as terrain blending is not a thing yet. That is something that the Remix devs are planning to implement, however.

[cosmic trellis]

Your textures fix that green hue and all?

[crisp python]

Really all they do is add back normal maps and roughness maps to certain objects in the game. This does at least help things look a bit less flat and waxy, but the green hue may be related to the lighting in that area. I am not sure as I haven't wandered too far into the wilderness as of yet.

[cosmic trellis]

Where do you place these materials and meshes you provided?

.trex/usd?

[crisp python]

You will want to place the GameReadyAssets folder inside of (Star Wars Galaxies root folder)/rtx-remix/mods. You might have to make the mods folder as I believe by default RTX Remix only creates a "capture" folder inside of the rtx-remix folder.

[cosmic trellis]

Is this normal?

[crisp python]

Yes, that is perfectly normal. Mark explained that it is a status indicator that they used while developing Portal With RTX I believe to differentiate between some replacements that were still a work in progress and ones that were fully finished.

One way to test out if they are working correctly is, once you are loaded into the galaxy, bring up the Remix menu, go to the Content tab and uncheck and recheck "Enable All Enhanced Assets".

If you notice a difference when you do so, it should be working correctly.

Granted, you will only really notice a difference on Tatooine and Naboo. Tatooine for the most part only inside the Mos Eisley Cantina and Naboo mostly just the area around Theed and possibly parts of the other cities.

Ah, and also the Emperor's Retreat.

[cosmic trellis]

Hmm, unchecked and chehcked it, didn't see much of a difference. I mean, switching it on/off there was a difference but no difference between when originally logging in and flipping it back on

Looking pretty crispy over here on tat too

[crisp python]

Try the cantina. You might find a more pronounced difference in there. I didn't get around to replacing a lot of the exterior textures there just yet.

[cosmic trellis]

something just seems very wrong, everything is washed out compared to yours

[crisp python]

What are your settings in the setup EXE?

[crisp python]

That's odd. It looks like some things have been affected, but others have not. Some of the clothing textures look like they have proper materials for example.

[cosmic trellis]

Strange, I open my mail and things look better

[crisp python]

It looks normal, but it lacks raytracing entirely. It falls back to rasterization. A lot of the menus do that temporarily. Sometimes if you mouse over the tool bar as well.

[cosmic trellis]

So odd, and frustrating lol

[crisp python]

Very odd indeed.

Maybe try moving some of the MTG assets out of your game folder temporarily and then relaunch the game.

I have not used any sorts of graphics mods with my installation, so I wonder if that could be it?

[cosmic trellis]

Possibly, I may give that a try this weekend.

[crisp python]

So there is some good and less than good news regarding Star Wars Galaxies with the newest version of RTX Remix. With 0.2, the game is more stable than ever. I have not encountered any crashes from using the map yet, and even travelling from planet to planet no longer seems to cause random crashes. It is also no longer necessary to disable Texture Baking in the setup EXE. The bad news is that humanoid characters' faces still won't work correctly, except instead of them using a default texture, they now just use a completely black texture. This, unlike the default texture that comes with disabling texture baking, does not happen without Remix. You may see an example in the picture below.

Still, if I had to choose between character faces and stability, I would take stability in a heartbeat. In that regard 0.2 is a massive success.

As an additional note, disabling World Preloading no longer seems necessary as well.

[jagged flint]

Hmm i wonder if that means Legends will work now.

[crisp python]

Sadly it does not appear so. The main problem there is that they don't allow shaders to be disabled for some reason in the setup EXE.

[jagged flint]

oh yeah i forgot about that

[tight drum]

Been a while since I've been able to play around. Just wanted to ask @crisp python -- I know I need the newest remix release, and this last rtx.conf is probably the newest, but is there anything else I'm maybe missing?

[crisp python]

That should be sufficient. In my testing, it seems a lot more stable now, especially when moving from planet to planet or really with anything involving a loading screen. I still need to play around with some of the newer experimental builds, though. As far as I know, not much can be done for the faces. I am not sure why they aren't rendering correctly as there aren't any shaders being used for them. I will try to at least do what I did before with the default forest texture and replace it with an actual face texture.

[crisp python]

I have tested out the most recent build and I have noticed that Anti-Culling actually for the most part doesn't produce visual glitches anymore, at least as long as you don't touch the Instance Max Size.

I do not, however, recommend using the experimental Terrain Baking system just yet with this game.

[dusk mica]

Anyone tried SWG again?

I wonder if faces appear now.

[crisp python]

I've tried it off and on every few new builds or so. Last I checked, faces are still a no go. It does seem to remain stable, though. I helped a friend do some grinding the other day for a few hours and it didn't crash once even as we went from planet to planet several times.

[autumn storm]

did you mess with the scene scale by any chance?

setting it to 0.01 usually helps

[crisp python]

I tried doing so, but results were mixed. Then again, the problem might also be that I missed some terrain textures. There are quite a few to track down. The game uses tons.

[crisp python]

This has been updated quite substantially. Using the MagicUSDA Python script that Kim made, almost every single material has been replaced. Many will need manual adjusting as there are many blank black roughness maps making things reflective that shouldn't be at all and there are some materials that have different diffuse textures but share normal and roughness maps, so don't expect perfection. That being said, the result of this is that rather than having only a few parts of a handful of planets and a random scattering of clothes, props, etc with material replacements, now everywhere should have them. This means no matter where you go, you will see most things looking as they should.

Sadly faces are still messed up, I am sorry to say.

I would also recommend deleting any previous GameReadyAssets folder as the way this one is setup is quite different from my older ones and just placing it on top of the old one might cause issues.

[dusk mica]

Does it work on Legends now?

[crisp python]

I have not tested it recently, but I would assume not. The issue is that Legends doesn't allow one to change the shader model used. The only way that SWG works with Remix is if one disables shaders entirely, which most other servers allow.

If they have changed that on their end since the last time I checked, then there is a good chance that it would work. I can check later on tonight when I get home and see.

[cosmic trellis]

Can you not change it in the config?

The client config exe just makes changes to options.cfg, I don't remember off the dome what changes shader version but you can find out pretty easily using an older version of the games client config exe

[crisp python]

Hmm. That's worth a try, honestly.

[cosmic trellis]

I personally have no interest in Legends or any server running on leaked code but you could try that. I probably won't touch remix until the face bug is resolved

[crisp python]

Understandable. It is incredibly immersion breaking to say the least. It will probably take a reworking of how Remix handles objects that use multiple textures laid on top of each other to make a final image. I think I saw Mark mention something about that the other day.

Ah, it was about dynamic textures being used, which most characters' faces would fall under.

Might be a while before it gets implemented, as that does sound like a bit of work, but hopefully that will help sort out that issue.

[little notch]

Looking a little bit like Mars Attacks

The good news is there were no crashes, @crisp python I'd definitely be intererested to know more about your settings

[crisp python]

I do have an RTX.conf file posted that should have a lot of stuff like sky textures and whatnot categorized already. I also have a Remix mod that adds back the materials to the game as Remix by default only renders the diffuse textures. I will go ahead and like both to you.

#1098135032381583392 message #1098135032381583392 message

Keep in mind that the material replacements are very much still a work in progress. There are a lot of objects that will be reflective that should not be and vice versa yet. This game has a staggering amount of textures to sift through.

Also, sadly there is nothing that can be done about faces yet. That is one of the biggest immersion killing glitches yet. That's why most of my shots avoid having any humanoid character's faces in them, lol.

[little notch]

I loaded your config and gameready stuff that's how i got this far. I think it must be your lighting and RTX settings that make your environments so different

[crisp python]

Hmm. I am not seeing the typical warning about replacements in the lower left hand corner in your screenshots. The correct folder setup for them to be picked up is .\SWG Restoration III\rtx-remix\mods\GameReadyAssets

You may also have some luck disabling Multi-Pass Rendering in the setup.exe. I also have taken to disabling bump mapping as well since Remix doesn't really render them anyway without material replacements.

This is my most recent RTX.conf. I still would recommend keeping terrain texture baking off for the time being.

[little notch]

cool I'll give it a shot

I think I may have put the assets directly in the mod folder so I'll move them to a gamereadyassets subfolder

[crisp python]

I will warn you that you will need to manually enable the replacements in the Remix menu. I would not recommend doing so until you are actually loaded in game (as in can move your character around), as with the newer builds of Remix, it can cause the whole thing to freeze if you do something that causes the game to go back to rasterization. Generally, disable the replacements before you open any menus or anything like that to avoid that happening.

I don't know why it does that. Older DXVK versions didn't have that issue.

[little notch]

is that on the texture categorization are or do I just point to the directory somehow

area

[crisp python]

You can enable and disable the replacements from the game itself as long as Remix picks up on their location. In order to enable or disable them, press ALT + X to bring up the User Graphics Settings menu, then go to the "Content" tab. From there, you should be able to check or uncheck "Enable All Enhanced Assets". It might take a few minutes to load them all in first, though. As long as you see a message in the lower left hand corner of the screen that says "loading enhancements", you should have the directory for the assets set up correctly.

[little notch]

okay, thanks. I'll give it a shot

[crisp python]

https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/actions/runs/5156951318 If you have too many issues with it, this DXVK build does work with the game. It is a lot less optimized, so performance will be noticeably worse, but things like the space skybox will render more correctly and there won't be any issues with freezing when asset replacements are enabled and the game rasterizes.

[little notch]

It's been loading for a few minutes now, but with a warning that "Replacements are not production ready. Status: Layer data missing."

[crisp python]

That warning is fine. It's apparently just a holdover from Nvidia's work on Portal With RTX. As long as it shows that, it means that it was able to find the replacements and loaded them just fine.

If the game itself takes too long to load, you might have to restart it, though. I have to do that on occasion, otherwise it just sits there forever.

[little notch]

got the enhanced assets to work but the stability was marginal

had to wait until they loaded at the character select screen then disable them then load the character wait a minute and then enable the enhanced assets and any options or even a vehicle i accessed caused the game to crash out. I'm probably hooked.

[crisp python]

Yeah, I don't know why it does that. The earlier build of DXVK I linked doesn't have that issue, so you can just leave the assets on entirely without the need to figure out when to enable and disable them, but the overall stability and performance is reduced, so your mileage may vary.

[crisp python]

I have tinkered a bit with the texture configuration a bit. I would definitely still recommend disabling replacements before you encounter a loading screen of any kind, but you should be able to open up any of the menus without instant rasterization and thus, unhooking.

[crisp python]

It would appear that the most recent DXVK builds have solved the issues with the space skybox. It now renders like it did a few months ago without any blue triangles or messed up looking planets, though the starfield background is still missing. There are also still issues with replacements causing Remix to unhook if they are loaded while the game defaults to rasterization for any reason.

[stable grove]

Hej just an idere to try
if you guys wanna try moding Swg Legends

the Options.ini has been locked to shader
maxVertexShaderVersion=0x0200
maxPixelShaderVersion=0x0200

to disabel them it must say
maxVertexShaderVersion=0
maxPixelShaderVersion=0

You need to have the game up to date then change Option.ini and run the game from the install directory
I use this way on my camera zoom freeChaseCameraMaximumZoom=6

[crisp python]

I have tested this and can confirm that it does work. I have been told that custom.cfg saves everything relevant to what Remix needs and does not get overwritten, so I will link it below.

A sample options.cfg as well.

[crisp python]

And thank you for discovering this, by the way. I had tried it a while back, but wasn't able to get it to work.

[stable grove]

Np thats why we are here right 🙂
Btw awesome job on modding the game, It looks great you should really put up a guide to how you get most stuff running

[torn crane]

Yeah, a guide would be great! I've got legends up and running but its a flickering, shimmery mess 😂

[crisp python]

I can do a sort of complete guide in the opening post, but as far as the flickering goes, that's sadly something that can't be fixed, at least for the moment. The terrain is made up of several layers of textures that blend together and Remix's own terrain blending system is only meant for blending a few textures together, I think.

Plus there are a lot of steep hills and mountains which it also struggles with.

One bit of good news, however, is that a recent commit has fixed the problems with games unhooking from Remix when they fall back to rasterization for any reason (most often during load screens). This will bring stability back to what it once was, thankfully.

[cosmic trellis]

Wooo update. Wonder if it fixed the face textures.

[stable grove]

Would love that

[frail lily]

I would also love some kinda guide to setting this up as i'm kind of a doofus lol

there's alot of different files and instructions in this thread and I cant really make heads of tails about what I should download or listen to

thanks for your hard work though @crisp python

[crisp python]

I have needed to do so for a while now. I will try to do so tonight when I get home. Honestly, I think part of the problem is that a lot of the earlier instructions came at a time when Remix was a lot less stable, so there were a lot of weird options that needed to be ticked to get it to work and not immediately crash. It has made a lot of progress since then, though it still isn't perfect by any means. Doesn't really crash all that much, though.

[frail lily]

that would be awesome, been meaning to get back into resto

[crisp python]

I went ahead and wrote what I hope will be a sufficient guide in the opening post.

#1098135032381583392 message

I have also gone ahead and decided to upload the most recently updated RTX.conf for use.

[tired parcel]

thanks for .conf file any updates?

[dreamy flume]

Jumping in here as I want to be able to help with this, some observations which you might already know.

Lightmap Textures - in SWG if you see a texture that is all white, but in set up view it has a "white cutout" like in the screenshots below, it's probably a Lightmap texture, it's the only option/category I found I could tag these textures to bring them back to the 3d world space.

[dreamy flume]

In Mensix, setting the screen texture to UI Texture seems like the only proper option, it restores NPC/Starship terminal names in 3d world space, and restore some 2d UI elements, such as background on target selected HAM UI element. As far as I can tell, it's the best option for making the screen readable, although some of the other options seem interesting, they don't restore the above mentioned elements.

Exporting/editing this texture might be an interesting study in textures, this texture is animated as well, by the way.

[dreamy flume]

@crisp python Hey, how did you determine the texture categories for elements such as the "escape menu" "main menu" "options menu" "inventory" when I try from a fresh rtx.conf file and go through the texture assigning, I don't see the UI menus show up, other then UI elements

[crisp python]

It's been a while since I messed around with that, but from what I recall, a lot of the UI menu stuff is bundled together in certain textures rather than being their own individual things.

[dreamy flume]

RTXRemix doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between UI textures and other textures, speaking strictly considering inside the game's structure. In other words it doesn't know that UI textures have a UI_name prefix, it refers to every texture by a hash address, which I guess makese sense, it just references what's in memory

is there some onboarding technique for generating the first/initial rtx.conf file? when I start from scratch it populates the config with some values.

but the sheer amount to textures you have specified is much larger than what I've been able to set alone. is it the post capture omniverse tool that lets one configure those?

I've not made any captures yet as I didin't get past the intro issue where geometry hashes/colors in debug should be non changing, as Omniverse will use those hash values to put back textures/objects, at least from my understanding. So if geometry hashes change colors, it's bad for replacement by RtxRemix

[crisp python]

Indeed it cannot. This is also why if a game uses normal and/or specular maps, they need to be manually reassigned via the toolset or what have you.

[dreamy flume]

@pastel frost mentioned a few options for adjusting, but none of them seem easy. #general-remix message

[crisp python]

There is no real way to do that. You just have to go through the game and set textures to whatever they should be as you go.

[crisp python]

That is correct. The ground and any animated mesh cannot be replaced, but static meshes can be.

And any object can still have its materials replaced even if the model itself can't be, hence why the ground and characters have normal and roughness maps despite their unstable hashes.

[dreamy flume]

I've played around with what he suggested in that post, but results are the same, it seems terrain z-fights the textures used for blending between two ground materials

Best Geometry settings I've found, or rather minimal once that load the game/terrain are

rtx.geometryGenerationHashRuleString = positions, indices, geometrydescriptor
rtx.geometryAssetHashRuleString = positions, indices, geometrydescriptor

yea I think the ground can't be replaced at the moment because of the terrain geometry hash changing with camera rotation, kinda like trying to mail a letter to an address that's changing every time the camera rotates

Oh I see what you're saying

also mentioned is GPU skinning and forcing the camera to do translation in GPU, but that probably would require editing the exe 😏

When I tried just specific geo hashes

what does the DXVK remix do for this?

[crisp python]

There is a program called SIE that can be used to extract textures, shaders, models, etc from the .tre files in the game's folder. It is possible that somewhere in one of them is the code that determines how things are skinned and if so, it may be possible to edit it.

https://modthegalaxy.com/index.php?resources/sie.1/

I used this myself in order to extract the game's textures so that I could convert and reassign the normal, emissive and specular maps for the material replacements.

[dreamy flume]

We/me/whomever, need to figure out the geometry hash situation, that would go a long way.

Maybe do a bounty on a real games programmer to help us, 😂

[crisp python]

That and faces. It's so weird.

[dreamy flume]

you mean the weird humanoid face thing?

[crisp python]

Yeah. One of the longest standing issues to this day along with the terrain.

Well, and the sky to a degree.

[dreamy flume]

that's probably an extra decal set to invert or some crazy stuff for freckles or something

there's a mod to fix it if I recall, might be able to intergrate that here

[crisp python]

That'd be worth a shot, honestly.

[dreamy flume]

next for me is going to try and get the terrain builder/editor configured to see if I can make a terrain/planet from scratch that can remedy the z-fighting, and or do something to address the geo hash's

[pastel frost]

I'm kinda confused as to why you feel like you have to get the ground's mesh hash stable?

z fighting between parts of the terrain is exactly what the terrain baking system was created to handle. you should just be marking all of those textures as terrain

[dreamy flume]

My understanding is that the geometry hash's should not change color, so that omniverse can address/replace them with oniverse generated ones, is that incorrect?

[pastel frost]

Stable geometry hash means that the mesh can be replaced.

that's all

if the geo hash is unstable, you can still replace the material, and bake those draw calls with the terrain baker to resolve the z fighting you're seeing

[dreamy flume]

hmm, ok this is new info, would that be done through the RTXRemix menu?

[pastel frost]

there are several games that work great with remix but have unstable hashes. it doesn't mean Remix overall doesn't work. it just means that you can't create a new, high poly mesh and use that to replace the ground.

https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/blob/main/documentation/TerrainSystem.md

all in the runtime menus

[dreamy flume]

thanks for that!

would be nice to update the terrain, make it at least twice as vertices dense, but modding textures along might be a big bonus, you gave me new direction to go in, thank you Mark

[pastel frost]

mesh replacement is a bonus feature, it's not a requirement for playability or pathtracing

[dreamy flume]

not sure if you know, Star Wars Galaxies, one of the first MMOs to use a dynamic terrain stored in a simple file 🙂

[pastel frost]

well if it's stored in a simple file, can you mod the original game to increase the terrain's poly count? often for meshes with unstable hashes, modding the original game will still let you get a high poly mesh in there, then you can use remix to replace the texture with a PBR material. That's how we had to do all the skinned characters in Portal, since we couldn't replace any skinned characters back then

[dreamy flume]

that is now something I will attempt with this new information, try the terrain baker, and later play around with modding the terrain.

again, thanks for your help, it's appreciated.

[dreamy flume]

Hey @crisp python question about the rtx.conf you shared, is that file based on something? or did you create and configure all the values in there?

[crisp python]

It was just generated by starting the game and then modified by editing it within Remix's Dev Menu in the game for the most part. I think I may have edited it a few times outside of playing the game a few times, but the vast majority of it was in game.

[dreamy flume]

so the settings such as unit scales and z up values and all that you painstakenly configured?

[crisp python]

All of that was done in game. I just set the unit scale to the lowest and Z Up because they were the settings that looked best with the terrain baking.

[dreamy flume]

got ya, how do you do the terrain baking by the way?

[crisp python]

Terrain baking is in the first tab of the dev menu. I forget what it is called off hand, but it is the one you see by default. It has stuff like setting the game to exclusive full screen and a large number of tabs. You may have to scroll down a bit to find it. It is near the Geometry tab if I recall.

It is far from perfect, though, at least with this games. It works really well with some games - sometimes even 100% perfectly - but this one it does not for some reason.

[dreamy flume]

Oh i see it, Rendering > Terrain System [Experimental] Enable Runtime Terrain Baking

[crisp python]

There you go. You can try to play around with the settings there and see if you can get it looking good. It may just take the perfect sort of configuration that has eluded me thus far, but with this game I have had no luck with it.

[dreamy flume]

what planet did you do that config for, tatooine?

cause on taanab...

[crisp python]

I only did configuration for the vanilla planets, including the NGE ones, although some of them may be incomplete.

[dreamy flume]

which would you say is the best case scenrio planet?

[crisp python]

Tatooine I think should have most of its terrain textures set, I think.

[dreamy flume]

thanks

[crisp python]

Naboo and Corellia would also likely have a good number of them set.

[dreamy flume]

did you do any of the capture to bring it into RTX Remix tool?

[crisp python]

You shouldn't need to capture any of them in order to set them as terrain textures in RTX.conf. You can do that from the dev menu.

[dreamy flume]

yep, was just wondering if you had done

[crisp python]

I did make a few captures, but most of the work of material replacement was done by Kim's MagicUSDA Python script.

I was lucky, because even though the game's textures are located in compressed archives, they still have the same texture hash when they are loose files.

[dreamy flume]

i suppose a file hash would not change when decompressed, or at least it shouldn't cause I think that would alter the file

Wild!

but for some reason terrain baking is not working for me, on a clean rtx.conf from you

[crisp python]

I think I may have deselected those road textures in order to experiment setting them as decals. You can see if setting them to terrain helps any, but what you have there is pretty much what it looks like for me as well.

[dreamy flume]

roger that

[crisp python]

Oddly enough, it seems to look best with vertically slanted surfaces.

Like, a heavy slant.

[dreamy flume]

I think I read that it's supposed to look best with horizontal

[crisp python]

It is supposed to, but here it does not.

Which makes me wonder if setting Z to up is not quite the answer for this game.

Then again, without it being set, it looks even worse.

[dreamy flume]

wish there was an easy way to toggle terrain baking on/off with a keypress

oh and that grouping textures by category did as well.

[dreamy flume]

Druqs Man!

[pastel frost]

oh, yeah, that definitely looks like the terrain has the incorrect "down" axis

might be that it just hasn't been set up to work with however this game's axis are set up - I know we had to add a lot of details to get that working proper in the USD capture system, and I wouldn't be surprised if we don't have all that complexity in the terrain system's handling

what does it look like if you toggle zUp?

[dreamy flume]

I'll put together some examples for you tomorrow @pastel frost

[pastel frost]

There are a few terrain debug camera modes if you enable debug mode - it'd be good to show what the cascade map looks like

I'll just be forwarding this along to the dev who built it tho

If you do put together a bunch of videos / etc, then best to put those together into a github issue so it gets formally tracked

[dreamy flume]

Works for me/us, if someone can get better support for this game it would be wonderful

[pastel frost]

Was thinking about this last night, and I remember there's a setting somewhere in game setup for fused world view transforms. should be a drop down with a few options. You should play with that and see if helps the terrain

[dreamy flume]

Yea, I've tried many combinations with fused and no dice.

[dreamy flume]

@crisp python Hey, it's been mentioned that you tried to get the Scene Unit Scale close to 0, right are you able to elaborate on that more, why close to 0? just what seemed best?

[crisp python]

It is what seemed to make the terrain baking the least blurry. Granted, it can also affect the scale of the game's lights, so having it as close to 0 as possible may or may not have been the right call.

[dreamy flume]

Did you read that in the docs or something about the light scale?

If one edits the conf and manually sets the scale to 0, it sticks, but it doesn't seem to make a difference in my testing..

[crisp python]

It is something I have noticed in other games. Not every game, but at least some.

[dreamy flume]

I did find a certain angle that with baking some of the texture was showing up right, kind of like fading into the correct texture, based on camera angle, but I'm not able to reporduce it..

frustrating

With rtx.sceneScale = 0.00000000000001 I get this kind of result with baking, but it's probably nothing..

[dreamy flume]

Hey @pastel frost - can you clarify this statement? "does baking mean it tries to make a complete texture atlas over time, or each frame it tries to render-to-texture the individual meshlets"

[pastel frost]

you can view the cascade map (the baked terrain texutre at various LODs) as a debug view. It basically tries to stick a camera up in the sky, raster all the terrain draw calls from up there into the cascade map, then use the cascade map as the texture for the original terrain meshes.

it's not trying to do anything across frames, although since it doesn't explicitly clear the cascade map each frame it's possible to get data from previous frames when the current frame didn't draw to that pixel.

I suspect the problem in the video you posted a couple days ago is that the 'camera' used for rasterizing the original terrain draw calls is actually way off to the side instead of way up in the sky

although that doesn't really explain why it changes with camera movement... it's probably being set up relative to the player camera instead of relative to the world? dunno

[dreamy flume]

Is it possible to try to "flip it from +y to -y or something?"

instead of just trying to set it to z is up?

[pastel frost]

I'm not actually familiar with the code for how that's all done, just the theory of it

[dreamy flume]

If I was to go into freecam mode, go above the terrain a bit, and mess with the settings, might I get a better result?

[pastel frost]

If no combination of settings from the z-Up and view model sections is giving you a decent result for terrain (particular if yall find a good setup for capturing that still doesn't work for terrain) then that probably means we're not supporting this game's transform setup properly

camera position / rotation shouldn't change the terrain result (aside from distance to the terrain changing what cascade level is being rendered, which shouldn't be visible.)

Is there any setting of Fused World View where the terrain doesn't change when you rotate the camera?

[dreamy flume]

yea there is, one sec

Scene Z-up, no fused world view mode

[pastel frost]

so for that one it still looks like it's drawing from the side, but it doesn't change when you move the camera around?

[dreamy flume]

In View Transform

In World Transform

in world transform is the same as none

[pastel frost]

I can't really tell what's going on from the screen shots, you're going to need to move the camera around and think about the results

and try doing it with the "Terrain: Cascade Map" debug view enabled

[dreamy flume]

ok ill do that shortly, one more question

like say you have this from above with the different blends, if it bakes that all into one big texture, how is it going to dynamically replace it with new textures

[pastel frost]

it bakes it every frame

you know how some games do a minimap? where it just has a camera above the player facing down, and shows that on a little screen in the corner?

we're doing something similar, but where that camera only draws the terrain, and instead of a screen in the corner, we just project that back onto the original terrain mesh

[dreamy flume]

thanks, I gotta go AFK a couple, but i'll try to capture a GIF for you with the setttings you suggest above

I get that process, but is it baking it with the old or new textures? if old, what's the point? if new, why bake it at all rather than swapping them out in the main render?

Sorry, I'm acting as a middleman between you and a guy that knows a thing or two about this game engine, above is his question. he's helping me trying to understand the system

brb

[pastel frost]

oh, when you say new, you mean the remix replacement materials?

even with replacement materials, we run into problems blending textures together based on an alpha channel - it's a common and easy raster hack that just doesn't have any equivalent in path tracing (or in real world lighting). terrain depends heavily on doing that blending, so we actually rasterize each replacement texture separately into their own cascade maps, then use those cascade maps to make the PBR material for the actual ray tracing

[dreamy flume]

got ya

[dreamy flume]

I captured a video with what you suggested, its 700MB so give me a few to upload it

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AfmQ5d9gRYFmF7Mt2Gz2RhEyUWu0PbTG/view Needs a few minutes to process

[dreamy flume]

@pastel frost

[pastel frost]

yep, definitely broken. You should attach that to a github issue with some screenshots.

[cosmic trellis]

Is that the creature_test zone? If it is, or a clone of it, it has a mess load of visual issues to begin with. I don’t know what you’re testing, I haven’t been following this, but I wouldn’t use those dev test planets for trying this stuff out

[dreamy flume]

Yea I've considered that, it seems even non test environment planets do the exact same thing, the problem with non test terrain is that there's a TON of textures there that could be causing issues for classification of the textures, particles, fog, animals, humanoids, tree leafs, branches, etc, etc, etc. the idea was to do away with all that. But you do raise a valid point, I'll produce another video with "release" planet to further test.

Here's another bizarre example, it seems that off in the distance the sun is causing the terrain to render as if permeating from the sun/sky texture, in green I point to a very faded sun? and the terrain textures seem to be cast from that in this example

[dreamy flume]

@pastel frost I did a capture and opened it in Remix, does it look normal to you that one light seems to be exactly in the terrain, another under it? (the little sliver on right right is the captured terrain. Or could it be that one is sun light, other is moon or something and it's waiting to rotate during the cycle and I just captured it hidden under the world?

[pastel frost]

games do odd things with lights, but it is strange that one of them is underground. Sunlight should come in as a directional light, not a sphere light.

games in this era were very limited in the number of dynamic lights they could use, they wouldn't waste one by having it underground all the time

[dreamy flume]

There's actually 4 or more now that it looks like

i started to pull them apart

[pastel frost]

it's real hard to say what the game is doing with lights, especially in a test level like that.

[dreamy flume]

that one is an actual real map that retailed, not a test one

Maybe the suggested my friend made that -y is up could be right, i dunno what to make of this yet

[pastel frost]

err, where's the rest of it then?

[dreamy flume]

I think it captured what was in the camera's viewport?, is that seem right?

[pastel frost]

the camera could only see a flat green plain with a small bit of .... rock?

it captures whatever the game is drawing, which is usually what the camera can see

[dreamy flume]

little green dot off right from center of the image is the player character

[pastel frost]

oooh, you were super zoomed out then?

[dreamy flume]

yea I think so

[pastel frost]

it looks like the geometry is right ways up at least, and the character is standing in the right orientation

[dreamy flume]

well not that zoomed out but zoomed out

Can I send you the USD to look at? 😛

[pastel frost]

don't really have time to look at stuff in detail, I've got actual assigned tasks I have to work on.

[dreamy flume]

understood

i guess as a test I could pull those lights up, save it and preview it in game

see what it does

I just noticed that green plane is the water plane

[pastel frost]

move around a bit and take another capture, see what lights are present then. if they still have the same hash then they're modifyable

[dreamy flume]

light_16digitnumber seems to be the hash for the light in the name of it right?

[pastel frost]

yep

[dreamy flume]

Hey @pastel frost , will these be helpful to debug issues with the terrain? I've not yet made the video demonstrating the actual debug mode https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe_brkDhFpvVUrpvA94WkyoPk643QxB7k

[pastel frost]

Ultimately, unless you're willing to dive into the terrain baker's camera code and fix it, one of our engineers is going to have to spend some time digging into this and fixing it. Probably including getting your game up and running locally, so we can see the raw data the game is sending to the gpu.

You should file a github issue with this - your previous videos were plenty of proof and a good amount of data, you don't need to keep recording more stuff. Just make sure the instructions to reproduce the issue (i.e. the game setup instructions are good)

To provide a bit of clarity - I was hoping with the earlier video requests that one of the remix engineers would be able to watch it, say "oh he just needs to change this setting over here", and everything would work. Since that didn't happen, it'll need to go through formal reporting, scheduling, etc.

We've actually talked this over internally, and it seems like the rather extensive camera / coordinate system fixes we did to make captures come in more reliably need to be applied across our entire codebase. that might be what's causing this, but we won't know for sure until we try it.

[dreamy flume]

Thanks for the info, next I'll do the ticket then

[tidal marsh]

This doesnt actually look half bad. Sure there is some issues to clear up but it definitely has anice effect

[chilly vault]

I had a quick look at the terrain baking issue, the issue is the calculation of the 'right' vector. It computes {-1,0,0} rather than {1,0,0}. If I hardcode that fix, it works:

maybe that can be some help for you in generalising a fix - or you could expose it as an option worst case I suppose

oh and it computes the bounding box wrong too, so I just disabled that per video

doesn't seem to help with the terrain making things unstable though, unless it's just a different issue entirely:

[tidal marsh]

Awesome work Sytner, definitely promising move for SWG, of course this is right up your alley with the tools you have made

[dreamy flume]

Elaborate on this, terrain, making things unstable.

I think texture baking in their solution to the terrain textures popping, if you mark all terrain textures as terrain, and enable terrain baking, that should be "the solution" as far as I'm understanding the purpose of texture baking, unless there's also a way to improve terrain textures without the baking, which would be great.

[chilly vault]

well it stopped the textures popping, it is 'the solution' for that problem

but you can see flickering still - it looks like the pixel history for the the terrain gets lost when the geometry changes and so the denoiser can't do a good job

[dreamy flume]

got ya, anyway I can try your change?

very cool that you were able to find the bug with the vector

[chilly vault]

yeah if you want to try it, https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/blob/58bf1a362cc767127cb3d9fb463069286056aacb/src/dxvk/rtx_render/rtx_terrain_baker.cpp#L946 - hardcode that to {1,0,0}

[dreamy flume]

humbug, I really need to learn how to compile things lol

[chilly vault]

just follow the instructions on the repo

[dreamy flume]

since you contributed that change to github, it should eventually get upstreamed right?

[chilly vault]

I haven't contributed it

my fix is specific for SWG, the real fix is to figure out why calculateSceneRight returned the wrong value or just allow the user to specify it in the config

[dreamy flume]

maybe just a coding error?

[chilly vault]

scrap that - I was thinking wrong

😄

actually I think they just do the cross product the wrong way around

Vector3 SceneManager::calculateSceneRight() {
return cross(getSceneForward(), getSceneUp());
}

right hand rule so, with forward {0,0,1} and up {0,1,0} that gives you {-1,0,0} which seems like the wrong way to go

so just reverse it to up x forward

that might be the legit fix

I'll PR that and they can see what they think

[dreamy flume]

w00t!

[chilly vault]

although it's not wrong... it just depends what coordinate system the game uses

so maybe it should be an option

[dreamy flume]

I see you're already a developer on this discord 😛

[chilly vault]

you pick your own title lol

[autumn storm]

bottom of #rules 🙂

[autumn storm]

so does this affect other games potentially?

[chilly vault]

yes, I think it will be correct for games that use right hand coordinate system, wrong for games that use left hand

[dreamy flume]

@chilly vault I'm guessing you'll file a support issue for this? And the lighting texture popping? Or @autumn storm since you chimed in here, that's no longer necessary?

[chilly vault]

wasn't planning on it - I would have made a PR for it but there's more than one way to fix it so I don't want to waste time guessing at what they would want 🙂

[autumn storm]

you should open a corresponding issue in the rtx-remix repo (unless you did already) to bring more attention to it

[tidal marsh]

  Vector3 SceneManager::getSceneUp() {
    return RtxOptions::Get()->zUp() ? Vector3(0.f, 0.f, 1.f) : Vector3(0.f, 1.f, 0.f);
  }

  Vector3 SceneManager::getSceneForward() {
    return RtxOptions::Get()->zUp() ? Vector3(0.f, 1.f, 0.f) : Vector3(0.f, 0.f, 1.f);
  }

  Vector3 SceneManager::calculateSceneRight() {
    return cross(getSceneForward(), getSceneUp());
  }```

so looking that these

    RTX_OPTION("rtx", bool, zUp, false, "Indicates that the Z axis is the \"upward\" axis in the world when true, otherwise the Y axis when false.");```

  template <typename T>
  Vector3Base<T> cross(const Vector3Base<T>& a, const Vector3Base<T>& b) {
    return Vector3Base<T>(
      a.y * b.z - b.y * a.z,
      a.z * b.x - b.z * a.x,
      a.x * b.y - b.x * a.y);
  }```

    constexpr Vector3Base(T x, T y, T z)
      : x(x), y(y), z(z) { }```

So looks like we need to enable that RTX option

[tidal marsh]

Looks like it is already enabled here in this

haha I see we really like our ternary operators

Well disabling that option didnt seem to make a difference for my previous test

[crisp python]

Fortunately that is no longer required. It was just certain builds of dxvk-remix around that time would crash if the game ever rasterized and then went back to raytracing while replacements were enabled. It affected a number of games from what I could tell, but it has been fixed for a while.

Ugh. I had almost forgotten about that. Those were dark days. I do not miss them.

[tidal marsh]

Well Il looking off of what Sytner found with the terrain baker issue

Ill have to throw some debug into this and compile it tomorrow

[chilly vault]

that one is wrong, Y is up for SWG

the up vector is correct, the right is wrong

return cross(getSceneForward(), getSceneUp()); needs to be return cross(getSceneUp(), getSceneForward()); for LHS coordinate system

[tidal marsh]

ahhh thats right

I always forget that whacky client side z and y swap

[tidal marsh]

ahh sooo...

something like this c++ Vector3 SceneManager::calculateSceneRight() { return RtxOptions::Get()->shouldInvertSceneRight() ? cross(getSceneUp(), getSceneForward()) : cross(getSceneForward(), getSceneUp()); }

    RTX_OPTION("rtx", bool, invertSceneRight, false, "Inverts the getSceneRight for a left-handed coordinate system.");```

[chilly vault]

yeah, something like that, it should be called 'leftHandCoordinateSystem' or something more like that though imo

maybe there's a smart way to infer it rather than having to add the config option though, I'm not sure

[dreamy flume]

I am slowly learning python on Brilliant.org, but seeing you do the coding and correcting other code, pretty amazing.

Will one of you please open an issue on the rtx remix repo as Kim suggests? Being that I just barley get what the issue is, I should probably not do it 🙂

[chilly vault]

fine fine, here - https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/rtx-remix/issues/432 😛

[dreamy flume]

thank you 🙂

you'll work for nVidia yet!

[dreamy flume]

Sytner, one more for the lights making the terrain flicker 😛

I'll buy you a 6 pack

or a 12 if you push the issue 😛

[chilly vault]

I haven't looked into that one, so can't describe exactly what's going on other than SWG's constant regeneration of terrain geometry seems to reset the pixel histories

[cosmic trellis]

Does that face texture bug still exist? Can’t remember if it was only for human/zabrak, only recent screenshot I see that shows a face is mon cal

It used to just have the default texture with the trees and stuff for the face

[dreamy flume]

yea it does, it came back with Remix, RTX paints it black though for some reason, SWG is the new black-face

I wonder what that is, maybe it's freckles or something, some overlayed texture that's unnecessary? maybe we could just make a local mod to remove it.

Mon-cal head patterns come out weird too, they I think take the value of the 2nd'ary character skin color, but don't do the alpha channel blend or something causing the head to just look green, in my case

[cosmic trellis]

Lmao, arguably worse than it used to be 😂

[tidal marsh]

changed client settings

hmm one of those settings really changed the outcome. Illl look into it a bit more

[tidal marsh]

This fixes the faces and a lot of other stuff

Actually may just be breaking most othe the remix stuff, which is why faces get fixed

[dreamy flume]

@cosmic trellis / @tidal marsh - #game-compatibility message

[tidal marsh]

Wel latest build from the main branch crashes my client upon zoning if Vertex/Pixel Shader is enabled.

[dreamy flume]

If I keep shaders at any version other than disabled, the RTX stuff doesn't work at all.

[dreamy flume]

Running on Linux, genuinely surprised.

[cosmic trellis]

It’s come so far, I finally ditched Windows forever a few months back. Such a relief to be finally done with it.

[dreamy flume]

There might be more tinkering to get it set up as you wish, but once you do it's smooth sailing.

[dreamy flume]

I am doing some testing with leaving vertex shader disabled and turning the pixel shader back on, it seems to be "not totally broken" the terrain still gets the RTX treatment, but face textures on characters are now at least back to the default green forrest/tree texture.

I noticed that in character select screen the character keeps his cammo pants, but in world he does not. I'm guessing the render pipeline is doing something else when the world is not loaded?

Thoughts?

[crisp python]

With the two most recent builds of DXVK-Remix, it would appear that faces are fixed! Well, somewhat. The rest of the body does not match the face color (it looks like the face color is usually more accurate to the un-pathtraced rendering) and it would appear that each face creates its own unique texture, making it impossible to have things like normal mapping (which is normally applied by the age slider to add wrinkles) or roughness automatically applied. They would have to be added on a face by face basis manually via the tool set, which would be virtually impossible to do for every single face in the game that exists or could exist.

Still, this is a pretty big step forward. A lot less unsightly than the alternatives.

[dreamy flume]

Sweet, I'll try it tomorrow

Which build did you get?

[crisp python]

https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/actions/runs/8089110070 This is the one I used that I believe fixed it. I haven't tested the one after it, but I would imagine it is also stable.

[dreamy flume]

did you see that Sytner found the terrain bug issue for terrain baking?

[crisp python]

I did! Very exciting to have two fairly major issues taken care of so far.

[dreamy flume]

What do you think of this facial texture coordinate thing?

When I set the monCal head spots texture to terrain it started to show to properly, but also on the ground

[crisp python]

That is most puzzling. I know that the way these tattoo or marking textures work is that they have an alpha channel that is used for determining which parts of a mesh should be colored, though which color is used is provided by the game itself. One would think setting these textures to "decal" would do the trick, but in my experience it does not.

[dreamy flume]

Some of the game's UI elements seem to be tied to different view ports in the render pipeline than traditional UI elements that function what would be considered more traditionally, inventory window etc.

Here for example you can see me setting a UI sprite sheet texture as a UI texture in RTX Remix, doing so knocks the raytracing out of the 3d world view. But it does mean it makes the overhead map show the green building plans and player character/npc indicators.

I'm assuming this UI texture sheet is somehow tied to the world viewport, would that be so that it functions correctly?

Is it possible edit the UI files in SWG to see where the client (where in the render pipeline script) is placing certain UI elements, such as this UI sprite sheet?

Or would it be a better approach to try and figure out if it's possible to crate a "texture category filter" in RTX remix layer that would reclassify this texture category in a way that renders correctly while not knocking out raytracing in 3d space?

Would Tracy or RenderDoc help me get insight into this process?

There are other textures too that seem to be rendered not in the traditional UI view port such as in this picture, that when certain UI elements are brought up, such as the log out menu in this case, they once again break the 3d world raytracing effect, but they do render the green elements of the UI (logoff menu), where otherwise it would not be visible.

Also, notice the overlay map in this screenshot, as it also causes it to render correctly without setting the other texture sheet to UI element category - Would Tracy or RenderDoc help me get insight into this process?

[tidal marsh]

Sytner PR"ed the coordiante fix https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/pull/61

hopefully we can get that merged and it will be a step in the right direction to get this to function for SWG pre-cu based clients

[tidal marsh]

Cherry-picked the fixes from the PR locally

[dreamy flume]

Man... SWG UI sure is amazing. overlay map interacts with the 3d world space! lol

[dreamy flume]

Overlay map "works" by turning OFF "Show in Primary Space" for Rendering > Player Model >

[dusk mica]

Dang you all managed to get face textures

This gets better each month

[dreamy flume]

I think it's the Remix Devs that did, it's not perfect but improvement.

it's part of their DXVK releases/builds

[dusk mica]

That's even better, means Remix can be improved and be even easier to use over time.

So less work players have to put in, unless they want something very specific

[dreamy flume]

I am noticing some things that with changes/updates don't work as well as they did before, but that means they can probably be reversed if needed since the code is there. I don't know how to compile/build my own versions yet... Hopefully soon i'll get to that.

[dreamy flume]

Got overlay map to display semi-properly (it seems to render only on the sky) , volumetric lights seem to be troublesome to SWG, so turned those off for now, tweaked lights and textures, terrain textures still flicker, did not induce Sytner's Terrain Left Handed fix. Sky seems to still be problematic, stars don't show up. Lights in buildings are not always showing.

RTX Off

RTX On

Seems Pre-CU/NGE clients differ vastley on how they work with Remix, settings for NGE look horrific on Pre-CU

[tidal marsh]

Even good graphics can't make the NGE become pre-cu SWG.

[dusk mica]

Very nice

[dreamy flume]

Looking better every day.

[royal granite]

Is there a more recent version of the rtx conf?

[royal granite]

I tried your fix for the overlay map, but it didn't seem to fix it. Instead It is just a triangle at my player model's feet.

[dreamy flume]

Ya it seems it's due to remix not being able to deal with more than one camera right now

Which is what overlay map seems to use

I can upload a conf file later if you wish, but it's more or less better to just play with the settings yourself

[royal granite]

Yeah, I've been doing that, but I'm a bit new to remix to learning the different settings has been a bit of a challenge.

I'd at least like to take a look at your conf if you don't mind.

[dreamy flume]

Im not sure where I am with it at the moment as I constantly recreate them.

it could be broken

[royal granite]

Gotcha, thanks.

[dreamy flume]

this is latest build from the devs too - https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/actions/runs/8456384872/artifacts/1364146146

download dxvk-remix-5594caa-480-release

[autumn storm]

you can just use the downloader in #remix-beginners-guide too

[royal granite]

Yup, I got that installed. Worked like a charm.

[royal granite]

The conf seems to be broken, at least on my end. I loaded in game and it was just a black screen. Just a heads up for you.

[dreamy flume]

Under asset texture tagging, click second tab and change sky to depth buffer

Or find any sky texture like a planet or clouds and set it to sky texture

I'll make a new config for you once I sit down at the computer later today

@royal granite

[royal granite]

Gotcha, I'll take a look here in a bit. Thanks for the info.

[dreamy flume]

This one is basic, didin't mess with anything. It looks pretty good especially seems to now consider the sky pretty correctly. I set this up on Tatooine only

Software

Remix

[royal granite]

Gotcha, I'll check it out, man. Thanks.

[dreamy flume]

I'm surprised how well the sky looks now, must be the Remix downloader Kim linked above, must have a newer build of the remix than I was using.

By disabling the volumetric lighting under Rendering > Froxel Radiance Cache/Volumetrics you can actually get a result pretty close to what swg looks like, as far as background "fading" is concerned.

But I'm not sure which is better, If you want result closer to SWG originally, disable vol. lighting like mentioned above

or, you can also enable Legacy Fog remapping, and tweak the value for Single Scattering Albedo to .1 on all 3 values, sort of brings back fog, but it does fade the sky considerably. It does look neat though.

Here's a config with fog remapping

There's still the issue of facial shader doing some weird colorization where it shouldn't be, its looking better since i think about 3 weeks ago someone from nvidia pushed a DXVK-remix update/build, but it's not 100% yet. And terrain textures still flicker with terrain baking enabled/terrain textures set. Sytner seems to think it's something to do with how the light hits the SWG's dynamically generated terrain

Lastly setting the Game Setup > Parameter Tuning > Sky Tunning > First N untextured drawcall to some value above 1000 helps to render the overlay map, but only in the sky, terrain geometry blocks it.

As seen above.
I've only once by a fluke somehow got the overlay map to render at top level, i think it maybe the render pipeline doing some reshuffling via game's exe that allowed it to show up properly, I don't think I did anything to get it to work properly.

Oh and pressing a UI window (not all) like command browser will knock RTX off, I do that intentionally for testing software vs remix rendering on the fly.

you can fix it/restore it by removing "UI texture" tag from this texture here

You're pretty much up to date on where I've gotten it to.

I'm not sure which look is better with the fog remapping enabled or disabled

Oh and I'm using the enhanced textures Boba pinned in the pins here, they do make the environment look better, otherwise you're just looking at the albedo texture

Let me know if you have any questions.

[white charm]

@dreamy flume is there any installation guide for this game, any issues one could encounter
also please provide a copy of the most recent rtx.conf file, Thanks

[dreamy flume]

The latest is right above you mate, just read up, it goves over some configuration options.

Also pinned comments have the re-processed textures if you want to try those. And an installation guide.

[heavy yacht]

Any updates before I start messing around with this today? 🙂

[dreamy flume]

The latest builds keep improving things slowly/slightly. The set up I outlined a little bit above will still get you there most of the way

[heavy yacht]

Very cool.

I've never messed with RTX Remix before, but I'm passionate about SWG. Hoping for some neat results.

[dreamy flume]

From my experience the skybox tweaking causes the most issues with "the look"

If you don't start with any of the configs attached you'll just see black lol

There's still flicker with ground textures and rays how they hit them, Even if you do texture baking

Someone is trying to push 3d skybox fix for NVIDIA to upstream, but they didn't yet from when I last looked

Oh be sure to set shaders to disabled in swg config utility, check the pins

[heavy yacht]

Will do. Thanks 🫡

[heavy yacht]

Has anyone messed around with the lightsabers?

[heavy yacht]

okay, so I'm messing with. I turn on raytracing and my screen goes black. Did I do something wrong? I followed the instructions in the pin, minus the mod download

[dreamy flume]

You can try tagging one of the UI texture sprites as UI texture. Or changing the sky box under texture settings to camera and depth , that will work for you

Or try using one of the latest Rtx.conf files in the chat thread

One from here #1098135032381583392 message

Or the one below, I explain what the differences are

[heavy yacht]

let me try that

sabers are not great

how can I get my overhead map to work?

[dreamy flume]

Interesting

Try setting the saber texture as a different type to see if it fixes it

Overhead map is problematic at this time as rtx remix only works with a single camera, and overhead map uses a second camera to render the view

[heavy yacht]

I'm brand spanking new to this with no experience whatsoever in modding, so let me give this saber thing a try.

[dreamy flume]

I did find a setting where it does render, but it looks different, but I can't tell you how to set it up right now as I don't have access to my PC at the moment

I can post a "how to" for the overlay map tomorrow

It ends up looking like this #1098135032381583392 message

[heavy yacht]

force run seems to have light, but it doesn't reflect

I take that back

there is a faint glow around the area it is in

[dreamy flume]

Most of those textures will probably have to be set as particles

[heavy yacht]

any time an object is animating smoke it drops my FPS significantly

https://i.imgur.com/pYB14R1.jpeg

the bottom of a rebel base

[dreamy flume]

What gfx card?

[heavy yacht]

3080

[dreamy flume]

Ya try setting all those gas textures as particles

[heavy yacht]

still dropping frames, but not nearly as badly

[dreamy flume]

Did you use the tool to download the latest unreleased builds of remix runtime?

[heavy yacht]

the tool?

I just downloaded what was in the pin

[dreamy flume]

#1098135032381583392 message

The official release is relatively old

[heavy yacht]

oh so it shouldn't be tanking my FPS then? 😄

[dreamy flume]

Might improve them

But uncertain

[heavy yacht]

so I'm downloading the toolkit?

[dreamy flume]

It's not the toolkit, just a test build of the runtime

Same as you initially set it up for swg

[heavy yacht]

thanks, lemme give it a try

that works even a little better

problem is that

my guess is that SWG has a lot of stuff that could potentially be a bunch of particles

and just lag the game heavily

is there a way to adjust lighting on things that should be lighting?

like terminal screens, for example

[dreamy flume]

Ya, all about categorizing those textures

Well that's part of it

[heavy yacht]

yeah, like I can "add lighting" but it's extremely bright

[dreamy flume]

Lots of give and take

You just have to play with settings as I won't be able to explain it all

[heavy yacht]

https://i.imgur.com/aw0NCkq.jpeg

got sabers to be a little bit better, but not really

it's missing the "core"

this is actually what pre-publish 9 sabers looked like lol

lasers seem to do well

[dreamy flume]

What that actually is, is probably just the glow texture, I'm willing to bet the saber model/texture/shader is probably more complex and thus remix is having problems with it

[heavy yacht]

the "core" of the saber should be 3 different textures

which it cycles between to animate

[dreamy flume]

Ya, remix has problems with the more complex shaders so far

[autumn storm]

that's because transparency is pretty intensive for Remix

[dreamy flume]

You can scroll through the textures and see if you find something resembling a saber blade, try playing with categorizing that texture

[heavy yacht]

oh, interesting. Is there a way I can get it to ignore transparent textures like that?

[autumn storm]

find it in the Remix overlay and set it to ignore

[heavy yacht]

thanks

for some reason my personal light doesn't work now lol

[heavy yacht]

what is it that's causing this blur on textures that looks like a mirage?

is it motion blur?

[crisp python]

https://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-galaxies-rtx-remix-vanilla-material-replacements
I went ahead and stopped being lazy long enough to upload what I have done so far to ModDB. It is far from complete, but it should cover the majority of materials that needed replacing.

[crisp python]

Motion Blur is enabled by default. You can disable it in the Remix user settings.

[heavy yacht]

I'm going to check it out. Thanks!

is there a way to upscale textures and improve models with RTX remix?

[crisp python]

Basically, by default Remix only renders the diffuse texture of a given material. This adds back the normal, roughness and emissive maps that the game had in a format that Remix can utilize.

[crisp python]

You can upscale textures with the toolkit, but it is slow and the results can be a mixed bag. You might be better off using one of the community made upscaling models here. I haven't tried them yet, but I have seen what others have done and some of it looks pretty decent. As for models, it is indeed possible to replace models using the toolkit, but only for non-animated models.

[heavy yacht]

non-animated, so like pieces of armor and weapons?

[crisp python]

To give an example, you could replace a TIE Fighter since it has no animations, but not an X-Wing, as it has the S-foils opening and closing.

[heavy yacht]

or maybe just weapons since armor actually bends according to the species

[crisp python]

Weapons, yes. Armor, no since it has to be animated in order for movement.

[heavy yacht]

I gotcha

even cooler weapons would be nice.

[crisp python]

Buildings could be replaced, as could bushes and trees.

Now, while the animated models themselves cannot be replaced, their materials can be. They could be given much higher resolution textures, and it would even be possible to add normal, roughness, metallic, displacement, subsurface scattering and emissive maps to said models.

As long as these textures are replaced on Remix's end, there would be no need to skirt around any 32-bit memory limitations as Remix is a 64-bit program.

[heavy yacht]

yeah, I love that RTX remix handles all of that

technically, we could settle for the basic lighting and just upgrade textures/models and have RTX handle the entire load and the game would look way better than it does right now

[crisp python]

Well, the thing is, without the path tracing being enabled, Remix doesn't have any bearing on the scene. It's a bit of a package deal in that regard. You either have the entire scene recreated with path tracing, or you're just getting the vanilla visuals with nothing else.

[heavy yacht]

oh

dang

[crisp python]

Now, another issue that plagues interiors especially is that like most games of its time, this game relied pretty heavily on ambient light. Remix only makes use of actual light sources, so a lot of interiors can end up pretty dark by default because of that.

[heavy yacht]

yes, I noticed walking through Theed Palace that it was very dark lol

and guild halls are like pitch black if you don't put any light sources in them

[crisp python]

Now, that is something that can be replaced within the tool kit as well, and I did add some lights to the Mos Eisley medical center in the mod, but adding lights (and potentially adding light source models so that you don't just have phantom lights in the middle of rooms) for the whole game will likely be a pretty time consuming job.

[heavy yacht]

I imagine it would. Luckily, we do have personal lights. The dark areas just gave the game an atmosphere I've never seen in the game before. It was really cool.

[crisp python]

It certainly does help give the caves a bit of a more realistic look and give more a reason to use the personal lights like you said, lol.

[heavy yacht]

oh man, I didn't even think to try walking into a cave. I'm going to have to try that.

it really gives the game an entirely new feel.

[heavy yacht]

@crisp python were you able to get lightsabers to look good?

[crisp python]

Sadly not. I am not sure exactly what that would take for it to look correct. It is possible that some combination of texture tagging might do the trick, but I don't think anyone has cracked it yet.

[heavy yacht]

I'm guessing it's an issue because sabers are animated

blaster bolts look as they should

[heavy yacht]

@crisp python just tried out your mod. It's fantastic!

[crisp python]

Why thank you. It's far from perfect, but I like to think it is better than nothing, lol

[dreamy flume]

@crisp python that mod you linked above, is that still the same textures you converted using Kim's script/tool?

[crisp python]

Yes. It is slightly updated and I did experiment with adding lights to a limited number of buildings, but by and large it is the same.

[dreamy flume]

So it's not just textures anymore

Did you ever notice that with the original texture conversion you did, if one selected enhanced meshes, most textures would get blown out if light hit them?

[crisp python]

Was this all the time or only on Tatooine? If the latter, I think I know why.

[dreamy flume]

I think mostly tatooine

I just thought maybe texture processing bug or remix bug as there were no enhanced meshes to my knowledge

[crisp python]

Ah, that was the result of an early experiment I did was adding distant lights to the suns there that I forgot to get rid of until recently. This was before the toolkit came out that I tried it.

At the time it didn't work particularly well because no matter what I set the intensity of the lights to, it was still overwhelmingly bright.

[dreamy flume]

Interesting, I though I only used your converted textures thing

The mod you linked is an updated version of textures and some lights included you said?

[crisp python]

It only mattered if you selected enhanced meshes. The way that works is actually different than you might think. It toggles whether any models are replaced, but it also toggles any added lights to meshes.

One might think that the enhanced lights option would deal with that, but no.

[dreamy flume]

Did you roll that back already?

[crisp python]

Correct. Nothing too fancy. I think I got emissive maps for just about all of the terminals and there are some lights added to the Mos Eisley medical center and a few other buildings, but that is it.

[dreamy flume]

Also are you using just remix to modify the textures and adding lights?

This is progress, I'll have to try your updated mod then

[crisp python]

Yes. There are no actual mesh replacements. I lack the artistic talent for that, lol.

[dreamy flume]

there's a 3d sky depth fix that someone named KingDavidW is trying to get nvidia to upstream but thus far no luck - https://github.com/NVIDIAGameWorks/dxvk-remix/actions/workflows/build.yml

i want to try it but I don't know how to compile it myself.

[heavy yacht]

anyone know of a way to turn off culling? or at least not cull things directly behind you

I think the culling is responsible for light leaking into buildings where it shouldn't be

well wouldn'tcha know it, there's an anti-culling option

lol

it's sorta working well, too

[heavy yacht]

messing around with the lightsaber again. It seems like the texture for the core of the saber is in the middle of my saber

https://i.imgur.com/hL6amHq.jpeg

[crisp python]

For the moment, it's all we have. Some coding wizard might be able to figure out how to disable it in engine, but that would be the only way to my knowledge.

[crisp python]

That's very odd. I wish I had more to tell you, but I haven't made it as a Jedi yet in any of the servers I have played, lol.

It also looks like the center of the handle is where the actual casted light is coming from.

I suppose that would have been less computationally expensive than having two lights for a double bladed lightsaber.

[heavy yacht]

if you want to test out jedi you can use the test server on SWGemu. They have blue frogs you can easily get jedi from.

[crisp python]

Ah, that is true. I never think about that even though that would literally be perfect for testing.

[heavy yacht]

😛

[dreamy flume]

Still several issues with Remix and SWG, mainly the sky is not 100% there, you can't see the stars. Distant terrain flickers and looks washed out. Only thing I noticed different is that the overlay map is now green vs a shaded silver. (It still only displays on the skybox, terrain/structures knock it out)

I've messed with some settings to try to get it to look normal, best attempt with about an hour of trying thus far.

Left is software rendering, Right is RTXRemix.

This is the config for above images, and I've only played around on Tatooine.

[heavy yacht]

is that real NGE or just a UI mod?

oh I guess it is real nge since no mind bar lol

[crisp python]

It has been added to the most recent DXVK build. I have been playing around with it, but the results I have gotten have not been the most helpful as of yet.

In space it does seem to do a bit better. Planets actually have lighting applied to them and the clouds cast shadows onto them.

Still no starry back drop, though.

And planetside

[dreamy flume]

Results are looking interesting

[crisp python]

With "Allow Cubemaps" enabled, the sky on planets looks considerably better.

One sky texture seems to always follow the camera though, for some reason.

[dreamy flume]

Is the texture set to sky?

[crisp python]

Seems to be.

At least, all of the ones that I can select are.

[dreamy flume]

Don't suppose this addition has any benefit in overhead map

[crisp python]

Not that I can tell, sadly.

[dreamy flume]

Thanks for the updates, I'll have a look tomorrow

[crisp python]

This only occurs if you turn "reproject sky to camera" off and then back on, or on if it had been previously off. If you restart the game with it on, it looks like this instead.

Increased the reprojected sky scale to 128 in order to avoid the sky clipped the starships flying around, but it seems to have made the sky even darker. Granted, it is night time, so it probably should be dark, lol.

[dreamy flume]

It's nice to have new options to play with

[crisp python]

Indeed it is. We're getting closer and closer to perfection.

By the way, I played around with some mesh replacements recently. Battlefront 2 2017's N1 Starfighter and YT-1300. Obviously I won't be including these in any mod just so that we can avoid any potential issues with EA, but it is a good example of the level of quality that this game's graphics could one day possess.

Also the landed BF 2 X-Wing and TIE Fighter with one of the ground textures from BF 2's Naboo.

[dreamy flume]

That's neat!

[crisp python]

So it would appear that the darkness persists even into the daytime.

Also had to go into the toolkit and adjust the alpha blending settings of one of the sky textures. Curiously, this caused them to be drawn at separate heights rather than fighting on one height layer.

This is an example of that. Also, setting the reprojected sky scale back down to 16 improved the color of the clouds, but any gaps are still pitch black.

[dreamy flume]

Somehow the overlay map is tied to the sky as turning on "Reproject Sky to Main Camera" also changes the color of the overlay map

[dreamy flume]

Turning on "Reproject Sky to Main Camera" and setting the scale to minimum .1 or .01 causes the overlay map to start to draw as top level element (over the environment) which is good. But by scrubbing through the scale you can see that the actual overlay map is casting shadows over the terrain.

I wonder if we yanked the overlay map out of the game if it would fix the sky issues altogether.

[dreamy flume]

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-remix-rest-api-comfyui-app-connectors/

[dreamy flume]

I'm curious what this texture is

It seems to be/look like some terrain shading texture as it seems semi-transparent, and seems to be part of the terrain. When I set it to UI it does show up on terrain just as an example

setting it as terrain texture doesn't seem to make a different to apperance.

Messing with DLLS/RR settings seems to make the sky flicker or even go away unless camera is moved in a certain way

[dreamy flume]

It's official, I hate this game's skybox

[crisp python]

Those are my thoughts are well, lol.

I can imagine this game's skybox is going to be one of the harder nuts to crack as far as Remix goes.

[dreamy flume]

also the overhead map

[crisp python]

I noticed that it uses several "gradient" textures per planet which likely deal with the colors of the sky as the day goes on.

[crisp python]

That too.

[dreamy flume]

oh interesting, could be why with RT on the sky looks very different color wise.

[crisp python]

This game relies very heavily on texture blending, I have noticed. I do have to wonder if at least some of these problems could be solved by doing something similar to what Arrokoth and Gaukler did with EAW to get the space fog of war working by rewriting some of the shaders. Then again, it is possible that the way this game handles texture blending is beyond that.

[dreamy flume]

who is Arrokoth and Gaukler, and what is EAW?

[crisp python]

Star Wars Empire at War was a strategy game released back in 2006. Arrokoth and Gaukler are two modders who have been tinkering with the game.

[dreamy flume]

oh neat, with RTX or just modding?

[crisp python]

With Remix.

It has an odd issue with the game's units in that the diffuse texture's alpha channels, which are used for team coloration are instead interpreted by Remix as a transparency map and this causes the units to become transparent in those areas unless the alpha channel is removed from the textures.

[dreamy flume]

sounds like some next level stuff, just to even figure that out

[crisp python]

SWG does something different in that it just seems to ignore the alpha channels and will instead just color whole objects whatever color was supposed to be on the opaque parts of the diffuse texture's alpha channel.

[crisp python]

Agreed. Goodness knows I don't have the mental capacity for all of that.

[dreamy flume]

Just the fact that you're still tinkering with it and not giving up means you got the capacity, just might have to learn more CS to get deeper in 🙂

[heavy yacht]

@crisp python you are doing absolutely amazing work, my man. I don't understand this stuff, but I can see the difference. It's amazing.

[crisp python]

Well, I really can't take much credit. The folks at Nvidia are the ones doing most of the work. Sytner is the one who added support for the left handed coordinate system that fixed the terrain blending with this game. All I did was use Kim's MagicUSDA python script to automatically assign all (well, the vast majority) of the game's own roughness (inverted specular) and normal maps to the proper diffuse textures and I used ChaiNNer to convert the normal maps to the octahedral format that Remix requires to properly utilize them.

[autumn storm]

but you're the one who put it all together 🙂

[tired parcel]

Is that all Boba lol. That sounds like alot to me.

[crisp python]

Most of it was automated, really. There are a surprising number of cases where multiple diffuse textures might share a single normal and/or roughness map, and those do have to be applied manually, though.

[tired parcel]

Things are looking good. I look forward to when its all done.

[autumn storm]

also afaik you're the only person that uses that script now haha. i'm glad it's still working for you

i can't even remember how to use it

[dreamy flume]

its been superseded by something better?

[heavy yacht]

@crisp python have you tried getting the battlefront T-21 to replace the SWG T-21?

[crisp python]

I have not tried as of yet, but assuming that the mesh hash is stable, it should be possible. I can't imagine that it wouldn't be stable. Most weapons lack any sort of animation.

One thing I have been considering is trying to figure out how to replace the starship lasers with 3-D geometry. Even just a simple cylinder or something.
It would have to be done client side as the lasers don't have a stable mesh hash as it stands, however.
If I could manage that out, performance during the GCW space battles would improve considerably, I think.

[autumn storm]

my script? not necessarily, it just isn't that important

it still has some functionality that nothing else does though, like naming manually dumped game textures with the same hashing algorithm that Remix uses so you don't need to do captures (or as many)

[dreamy flume]

This game is so full of odd behavior, or at least behavior I don't understand. For example if I set a random "world" texture (in this example its the glass on top of the guard tower looking thing) to UI, the overlay map (mini map) shows up as it should.

Is this action forcing the overlay map to render from a different camera or something? Anyone can help me understand what's going on here?

Also, this renders the glass behind the environment.

[crisp python]

That means the glass is being rasterized as opposed to being path traced. As for why that helps the overlay map to render correctly, I honestly can't say. I know that once something is set to be a UI texture, all subsequent draw calls are rasterized as well, so I suppose that could be part of it, but it really makes one wonder why there isn't some mask texture that can be marked as UI that would accomplish the same thing.

Then again, I suppose the overlay map is being drawn dynamically. There is no real fixed texture or whatnot being used because it has to be able to account for player placed structures and such.

[crisp python]

So recently I decided to try my hand at a little experiment to add lighting to the lasers in space. Green is the standard unmodified green laser from the game. Blue is a replacement. First it is replaced on the game's end with a dummy 3-D mesh instead of a 2-D particle, secondly within RTX Remix as an actual mesh with emissive properties and a blue light added. Every blue laser created will spawn a dynamic light along with it. At the moment, I only have the blue laser replaced, but it shouldn't be terribly difficult to replace the others.

I have noticed a bit of a ghosting issue with the replaced lasers, but other than that they seem to do the job, though this is just a rough pass at it.

[dreamy flume]

Oh 😲 wow that's awesome

Did you attach the lights through remix?

[crisp python]

Indeed! Normally it wouldn't be possible, as the game's normal way of rendering the lasers is by having them be a particle, which means that they don't have a stable mesh hash to attach anything to. I first had to make a dummy mesh, then I used SIE to extract and edit "projectiles.iff" to reference this mesh instead of the normal particle file. From there I just had to capture a scene with the new dummy projectile and replace it and add the light within the toolkit.

[dreamy flume]

That's brilliant

[crisp python]

Now, while having the additional lighting from the lasers is great, that was actually a secondary concern for me. My primary goal was to be able to improve performance in space. One of the biggest killers when it comes to path tracing performance is having a bunch of transparent textures to deal with. All of the lasers use them. Now, having a few here and there is usually not too bad, but the GCW space battles would have dozens upon dozens of lasers on screen at the same time, and if you would look in the direction of a space battle while it was going on, performance would plummet. Even going down to DLSS Ultra Performance, the framerate could easily drop to the teens or even single digits. My idea was that by replacing all of the lasers being used by the frigates with actual 3-D meshes, this would improve performance considerably.

[dreamy flume]

Is it working performance wise?

[crisp python]

So far, so good. I have since replaced all of the red and green lasers (which are the ones that are used by a lot of NPCs, including the frigates) and performance is overall much better.

Plus, you get all of the pretty lighting from having all of those lasers flying every which way.

Best of both worlds

[dreamy flume]

I wonder if this technique could be used to fix lightsaber issues too, as those shaders are a nightmare for rtxremix

[crisp python]

You know, the thought did occur to me. I don't know how much more complicated it would be, though. From what I can tell, rather than having a specific color assigned to a number of textures like the lasers do (e.g, green laser, blue laser, red laser, etc.), the lightsabers all use a texture that is dynamically colored by the game itself via the alpha channel. Even if replacing the blades with a 3-D mesh did work, the question remains if it would utilize the color that the game would normally have the particle use or if it would just be a static color.

Plus it would be difficult if one wanted to add a light to it, as there would be no real way to get that light to take the color of the lightsaber as far as I know.

Now, all of the sabers already come with their own light, but double bladed lightsabers have theirs in the middle of the hilt for some reason, which does not look terribly correct.

[dreamy flume]

Hehe

It's a great idea with the space lasers though

Might be utilized for other things too if not lightsabers as you say

I've not tested new remix releases of late, should jump back in to see

[crisp python]

I would say that there really haven't been any visual improvements as far as SWG goes. Everything that didn't quite work before still does not.

Though nothing has been broken, either.

[dreamy flume]

Got ya

[woeful sundial]

I saw a YT video from 3 months ago on this. Is it still pretty much in the same state as that or are there updates worth checking out?

[dreamy flume]

It's not much better

[woeful sundial]

Aw, bummer. Still gonna follow along though and hope to see it more fully playable someday 😄

[dreamy flume]

I've been playing with it recently but I've not achieved much change

[woeful sundial]

Hopefully those that know how to do the cool stuff figure out how to make it more stable! What I saw so far looks super promising if some of the weird things could get sorted.

[crisp python]

The biggest hurdle right now is the texture blending. I don't know how much of it could be solved on the game's end by modifying how it does its blending versus how much of it will need to be solved on Remix's end. Otherwise, it does seem somewhat stable, though I would still advise that it probably not be used while you are doing any particularly risky stuff (i.e challenging PvE, any form of PvP, etc.) just in case it does end up freezing or crashing.

[woeful sundial]

Man, certain angles/shots look amazing. Shows the potential.

[heavy yacht]

Any updates on this? 🙂

[crisp python]

Not really, I'm afraid. Newer versions of Remix do have better performance than previous ones, but all of the same graphical issues remain.

[heavy yacht]

Performance boost would be nice. I was getting a ton of frame drops from flora previously.

[crisp python]

Unfortunately that will always be the case.
Path tracing just doesn't handle large amounts of transparent textures well, and all of the flora in this game uses them.

If even just the trees in the game could be replaced (via Remix itself) with versions that had actual modeled leaves as opposed to alpha tested leaves, performance would increase in those areas dramatically.

In theory, it should be possible to do. The hashes of the trees themselves are stable.

[blissful trellis]

Ummm anyone else getting Wookie-wang issues? 🤣
...and anyone know what's causing "green-face"?
Pre-CU pub9/Core3 base

[dreamy flume]

Faces are more that just textures, is a shader with multiple texture layers. If I recall correctly

[crisp python]

Green face is an older bug that I haven't seen in a while.
Are you using the latest version of Remix (0.6.0)?

Also, what settings are you using in the setup .exe?

[dreamy flume]

With recent activity in here I tried to see if I could get SWG + RTXRemix to work again on Linux (currently my daily driver) and indeed I did, via Steam and Lutris, no lock with Bottles (kinda like Lutris). Then I got curious if I could get RTX to work on same set up but with SWG Legends, and besides having to turn off triangle culling (unlike any other SWG Clients/servers) i got the ground to render, sky is looking pretty good too. Not too far from ground truth.

getting the fog to work at distance better would be nice.

[autumn storm]

very nice 🙂

[crisp python]

@junior fern I believe I found a way to control the tiling of terrain textures. Using SIE, I went into "tatooine.trn" and edited "TilesPerChunk" to be different from the default value of 2.

The first pair of screenshots were taken with a value of 16. The second pair of screenshots were with a value of 1.

[junior fern]

Which server are you using? I've looked into SIE but I cant use it with Restoration

[crisp python]

Now, I don't believe that Restoration allows you to go into their .tre files in order to extract and edit these files from them (though it is possible to place use said files once edited), so you will need a different version of the game in order to do so.

[crisp python]

I took those screenshots in Restoration, but the .trn file had to be extracted from a different version of the game beforehand.

The base game (as in an unedited copy) is probably your best bet as far as being able to extract anything you need.

[junior fern]

So you edit that file in the base game with SIE, and then import it into the restoration directory?

[crisp python]

That is correct. More specifically, you grab the file from the base game with SIE, edit it within SIE and then save it to your Restoration directory, making sure that it lines up with the file structure that SIE has in place (so in this case "tatooine.trn" would go in a folder labeled "terrain" within the Restoration directory).

[junior fern]

Nice! If there is no terrain folder. Would it work if I just created one?

[crisp python]

It will indeed.

[junior fern]

Also, I got remix to pick up on the 64 bit. You have to place everything in the trex file right next to the exe. It loads. But the issue is, 64 bit kinda breaks without the vertex pixel shader and you need that off for remix.

[crisp python]

Also, I would advise that since Restoration is based on the NGE version at its core (even though they brought back the pre-CU profession system and whatnot), you would probably be best off changing "precu.lua" to "nge.lua" in the drop down box at the top right of the SWG Repository so that you can work with the latest versions of these files.

[crisp python]

Yes, I remember Remix used to work pretty well with Restoration's 64-bit client. It's a shame, but from what I understand they are planning to eventually port all of the game's shaders to DirectX 11 if I remember correctly. I just hope that they leave DirectX 9 support in the game's 32-bit client so that Remix will always be usable in some form at least.

[junior fern]

Hopefully they remastered it themselves when they move to dx11.

[junior fern]

When you say take the files from the base game, do I need to download the actual original game. Or the emu version?

[crisp python]

The original game would be best. You would be best off finding a copy of the game from the post NGE era.
It is no longer available on any digital storefront, unfortunately.

Finding physical copies of the game may be difficult, but not impossible (I managed to get one for about $40 or so personally).

Ultimately how you choose to do it is none of my business, but the only thing I would ask is that there be no discussion of alternative methods here.
I know it is a dead game, but it is still against the rules to do so.

[junior fern]

Gotcha! Thank you! Ill try that. Rn im trying to get the galaxy extender to work so I can raise the view distance.

[dreamy flume]

Very cool Boba !

[junior fern]

Where would i find the sku0_client.toc?

[junior fern]

Were you ever able to get an accurate lighting for the suns on tatooine?

[crisp python]

Unfortunately not, although to be fair I don't believe it is the directional light that the game uses for the sun (and moon) light that is the real issue.

The issue is that depending on where you are and what direction your camera is facing, you can have a varying number of directional (or distant) lights being rendered at one time.

As the problem is most prevalent in cities or near buildings which can be entered, my theory is that Remix is rendering the directional lights that would normally be used for the interiors of buildings whenever said buildings are within your field of view.

I am not really sure what the solution to that might be, unfortunately.

[junior fern]

@crisp python Did you ever have the issue witht he terrain doing this:

[dreamy flume]

If the scene is captured and expected into Omniverse, can the lights be altogether removed and replaced with remix ones? Taking into consideration that something might have to be done about time of day

[junior fern]

Yea this can be done. You cant remove the original lights but you can turn the intensity and exposure all the way down and then add your own.

[dreamy flume]

Looks familiar although it seems to be manifesting differently to you than it does to me

[dreamy flume]

Wish I had the time and patience to try it 😂

[junior fern]

It have the overall outdoor lighting pretty good so far. Just have to add subtle lighting to the night time.

[dreamy flume]

You're working on replacing the lights?

[junior fern]

Not necessarily. Im just approaching things as I find them. The sky was the big issue. Thats mainly fixed now so now im trying to get the terrain working better

[crisp python]

Oh, all the time. Not sure why it does that. The game does seem to constantly switch out different levels of detail for the terrain fairly frequently, so that might have something to do with it, but I can't say for certain whether it does or not.

[crisp python]

As Rollme said, it can be done. The problem is that there are so many of those lights across each planet that it would be take forever to turn down the intensity of each one at every single building in the game, and then you would still run into the issue that player placed structures would also have them and would have their own unique hashes for each one.

[dreamy flume]

Maybe a solution would be to strip out all the lights with something like SiE

Redo maps to prevent terrain LODs etc

[junior fern]

Ill look in the trn file and see if there is anything I can change. Im also gonna look at the force low detail in the launch settings to see if that fixes it.

[dreamy flume]

Good ideas

[junior fern]

Forcing low detail textures seems to mostly fix the terrain glitching. However it still happens more as the fov is turned up.

Also for the lights, there is a setting in the light translation section under game setup that let's you ignore all legacy distant, spot, and sphere lights you can check that and then add your own lights.

[dreamy flume]

I wonder if the lod engine can be completely turned off

[iron jolt]

Hello gentlemen! I got RTX Remix working on the Restoration server and was wondering what kind of frames you're getting. At 4k resolution with an Nvidia 5080 I'm sitting at 55-60fps on average with DLSS set to auto. Wondering if anyone has tips for optimization without compromising resolution, and happy to send more info of my settings if needed.

[crisp python]

As far as optimization goes, that's going to be tricky and there is only so much that can be done at the moment.
The biggest detriment to the framerate is the large number of objects that use transparent textures, which Remix (and path tracing renderers in general from what I understand) struggle greatly with.
Obviously this is going to depend greatly on where you are in the game but generally speaking, heavily forested areas tend to be the worst due to the foliage. One thing you can do is disable grass (in the in-game settings) if you haven't already, and anything foliage/flora related should be turned down as low as possible.
I would also recommend turning down the Particle Limit, Particle System Level of Detail and the Nebula Density as much as possible.

As far as Remix settings that could improve performance, limiting the number of max light bounces can be helpful, though you may only gain a few frame.
Lowering the DLSS Mode will probably give you the biggest impact.

As far as what frames I personally tend to get, at 1080p with a 3070 I usually get around 40-60 FPS with DLSS set to Balanced in areas without a lot of foliage or particle effects.

[iron jolt]

Ok great. Disabling raytracing gets me to 140fps, but that's pretty obvious. Thanks for the tips!

[crisp python]

I realize it has been a while since you mentioned this, but that would indeed help solve some of the issues - not just with terrain but in general. It would make model replacements a lot easier since you would only have to capture and replace one version of a mesh instead of having to capture and replace each Level of Detail mesh per object.

I think one of the biggest things that would help overall would be if culling could somehow be disabled. The game wouldn't have to necessarily be made to render the entire planet or zone at one time, but at least everything within your view distance setting around your character instead of just within your FOV would be a massive help, honestly.
It would fix shadow pop-in entirely and would also allow for much more accurate reflections.

I know that would strain the engine greatly, especially given that SWG at times struggles to render just everything that is right in front of the camera's field of view, but I do think there would be ways of mitigating the performance impact it would have.

For example (and this is where, as you mentioned, having the LOD system disabled would be incredibly helpful), reducing every static object's mesh on the client side to a single triangle and then replacing each of those with their actual full detail model within Remix could be one way to reduce the strain on the engine itself.
It would essentially be a way of having Remix do most of the heavy lifting of rendering all of that additional geometry instead of SWG itself.

It wouldn't solve the strain of having to render all of that additional terrain, nor would it be able to be done with any skinned meshes (so no characters, animals, vehicles which are animated like AT-STs, etc), so that could be a potential performance bottleneck, but hopefully all of that would be at least mostly offset by the gains given by what can be replaced.

[dreamy flume]

These are all interesting ideas, with all the available original tools like the terrain authoring tool, blender with plugging, and combination of editing the games setting files (forcing base LODs), or even ripping out all but base _0 level lods, replacing models via SIE, it should be possible to do most of these things, I would imagine. But who's got the time or energy?

[crisp python]

That is the thing, isn't it? It's such a massive game that going through and having to make all of these changes by hand would take
an eternity.

I think it could be done, but it would take more than a single person to pull it off in our lifetime, lol.

[dreamy flume]

It certainly is a very cool opportunity to learn though!

[junior fern]

I have a script that I made that automatically sends the selected texture to the pbrify comfyui workflow and then detects when the replacement is done then automatically selects the next texture that hasn't been replaced and sends it through. It does this for however many times you tell it. You can get an idea of how many materials are in your capture and just set it to that.

There may be a way to re-write it to work with SIE somehow.

[dreamy flume]

@chilly vault wachu think?

[chilly vault]

about using SIE for automated tasks? Wouldn't be my choice at least but maybe you can do it somehow 🙂

[dreamy flume]

I think he meant intergration, could be wrong

[junior fern]

In this case, if we are talking pure texture replacement, you would probably download all the different texture folders from SIE and place it into your game folder, or however the replacements work. Can't remember.

Then route the script to make comfyui go through each texture file one by one and replace them with exact naming. Then it should be using the updating texture files when you open the game.

[dreamy flume]

Messing with DepthDarkness shader for ReShade and I'm running into similar issues as with RTX Remix when i try to bring up overlay map, elements of it hide behind models/objects/skymap, wonder what this could mean for remix implementation.

[young cloud]

d3

oof

[young cloud]

can I get the latest files I need for this?

because I'm struggling to install it properly

on legends