Hollow Knight - Silksong

[brave ice]

that last build posted gets it down to 200

[keen lion]

I've handled that before from some other game. Didn't really notice it here

[thick moss]

yeah. have to destroy all pipelines stuff in the device destruct call, to make sure everything in the device data is cleared.

[pearl night]

yay pargon

Surprisingly its running at 576p on a switch(handheld mode)

[keen lion]

Even the main menu is only 700fps. Tunic goes to 1300 with 3d elements

might be the decompressing of textures every frame

Vram shouldn't be a concern, but the Unity engine back then was very memory conscious because it was basically mobile first

[worthy hollow]

Pargon is awesome lol. One of my fav era posters for sure.

[keen lion]

Simple DevKit draw on/off will tell you which shader is nuking fps

[pearl night]

I don't see him on discord much anymore

[keen lion]

My guess is that 4096x4096 texture needs to be decompressed every frame

[onyx zealot]

his Dead Space testing with SD card and slow ssds was nice

[keen lion]

I did find a way to make 8bit/16bit hot swappable during runtime, but 8bit is so bad it shouldn't even be an option

[regal yoke]

Lilium's blue noise dithering helps a lot of you are using an LG OLED display for example, it's a lot better than the driver level dithering

it's kinda performance heavy though

[keen lion]

When I do texture stuff. Game already seems hammered on Steamdeck with shader math.

[subtle mantle]

It’s not really a display thing. It’s just a low res texture

Also qd oled

[subtle mantle]

Could you in theory make it a toggle to avoid the extra performance overhead on low powered devices?

[keen lion]

Probably better to fix the texture, then it's free

[keen lion]

i can tell if something is faster or slow based on coil whine 😅

these 4096x4096 bc7 unorm textures are killer

i'm just going to texture dump, and then make them rgba8u, that might make things a bit faster, even if more vram

time to try my igpu, 5090 too stronk

[gleaming flint]

Having a grand time modding Silksong, eh? 😄

[keen lion]

intel gpu crying

all draws bypassed , just black screen

can't even scroll discord

well, at least confirmed renodrt is faster than aces

oof

sprites_lit from 95=>19fps

yeah, that 4096x4096 texture

[keen lion]

rip, can't dxcpl because xboxpass protection

[onyx zealot]

gog version > *

no drm

[keen lion]

static SwapChainUpgradeTarget bc7upgrade = {
    .old_format = reshade::api::format::bc7_unorm,
    .new_format = reshade::api::format::r8g8b8a8_unorm,
    .ignore_size = true,
    .view_upgrades = {
        {{reshade::api::resource_usage::shader_resource,
          reshade::api::format::bc7_unorm},
         reshade::api::format::r8g8b8a8_unorm},
        {{reshade::api::resource_usage::unordered_access,
          reshade::api::format::bc7_unorm},
         reshade::api::format::r8g8b8a8_unorm},
        {{reshade::api::resource_usage::render_target,
          reshade::api::format::bc7_unorm},
         reshade::api::format::r8g8b8a8_unorm},
    },
};

got bc7unorm => rgba8u working, not sure if faster, but definitely means i can do texture replacement now

because if i can load a rgba8u buffer from cpu, then i can load a texture from disk

ooh, can do bc7 to bc3 as well

bc7 => unorm / bc7 regular

no real difference

bc7 vs rgba8u

repeatable, so it is faster

but the issue is more that it's a 4096x4096 texture which gets trashed for cache

[onyx zealot]

4.2% more fps

[brave ice]

i can do more testing tonight if you need a steam deck / linux freak

[keen lion]

i'm testing on my intel igpu

i can build this and you can try

but it's still cpu decompression which takes forever to load

might even take a minute, but after load benchmarkable

but data is data

bc7 => rgba8 (over cpu)

[brave ice]

I'm no expert but I do know that the Xwayland HDR method is doing some fucked up swapchain shit since Xorg can't actually do HDR, so Valve has a hack to pull the data out of the application and forward it to the gamescope wayland compositor

no idea if that swapchain fuckery could be interfering with your /reshade swapchain fuckery

[keen lion]

seems like just expensive in general

i also put a 8/16 bit button to test

[brave ice]

to test that stuff I can use:

https://github.com/CachyOS/proton-cachyos

PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 %command%

I can't help at the moment, but later i can

[brave ice]

actualy i'll test this really quick fo ryou

okay, baseline test from this version:

1080p since 1440p was too close to 60fps

ColorGradeBlowout=0
ColorGradeContrast=50
ColorGradeExposure=1
ColorGradeFlare=0
ColorGradeHighlights=50
ColorGradeHighlightSaturation=50
ColorGradeSaturation=50
ColorGradeScene=100
ColorGradeShadows=50
FxBloom=50
FxBloomClip=0
FxDrawPauseMenu=1
FxGrainStrength=51
FxHDRVideos=2
FxHeroLight=50
FxHueClip=50
FxSaturationClip=50
FxVignette=100
GammaCorrection=1
ToneMapGameNits=203
ToneMapHueProcessor=0
ToneMapPeakNits=600
ToneMapType=3
ToneMapUINits=203
ToneMapWhiteClip=100

[brave ice]

error 126 while loading the addon

alright, i gotta go, i'll be back later

[thick moss]

Wait they were using compressed textures as render target?

That makes no sense.

These are loaded from directx image files on disc directly, pre compressed. Cooked assets.

I didn't even think these formats supported being a render target. AFAIK they can decompress on the fly but not compress.

The advantage would be in used memory and bandwidth of moving around smaller compressed textures,

But yeah they are probably slower to sample, but probably not dramatically

[crisp hedge]

should I just use the one on nexus with default settings? Going to start the game soon. Thanks for the work on this!

[dusty pelican]

probably best to use the github release that's the most up to date one

sent the link in the first message

[crisp hedge]

sounds good thanks!

[subtle mantle]

I think I found a weird issue. Or maybe a byproduct of the game being made for sdr.

The hero light seems to clips some light sources to white when it’s over top of them. I’m not sure if this is just the hero light “coloring” it because I believe it’s a white light or if it’s actually clipping.

Also is the film grain a new thing for this game or does replace a built in system? @keen lion

[keen lion]

new, hollow knight 1 had grain, and i replaced it with my grain system. it was rather bad in general, and they removed it in Silksong. I just put it in for consistency (and also serves as a free denoiser).

[subtle mantle]

Gotcha, thanks

[thick moss]

I wonder why they removed it. Interesting

[thick moss]

Do you have a screenshot?

[subtle mantle]

I didn’t take one for some reason but I’ll take one when I’m home

[signal cliff]

do i use this version or the one pinned?

[keen lion]

pinned, always

[signal cliff]

Ok

[signal cliff]

by the way, how do i install reshade on Silksong?

do i actualy run the exe this time ?

[subtle mantle]

if anyone has gotten to the ||second lane fight|| it looks fucking insane with the mod

[onyx zealot]

just unzip the dll

[signal cliff]

i just run the reshade with addon exe and it worked :3 by the way guys, what settings are you all using?

[onyx zealot]

yeah that works too of course

[keen lion]

HDR Look with 800 nits peak (172 game nits) and 100 ui nits

[signal cliff]

Ok :3 gonna try that

[keen lion]

i put saturation clip down to 20. the d65 can look so off in highlights

vanilla / default / hdr-look / hdr-look +saturation_clip:20

[dusty pelican]

look pretty similar

color of the default probably looks closer to the other imo

[onyx zealot]

vanilla looks terrible lol, great job

can't even see hornet

unless discord on macos is frogging up the image

could be, but also looks bad in chrome, so maybe not

[supple isle]

Does this apply to the deck also? Or should I stick to defaults?

[keen lion]

i have an LG C3

also in dark room/controlled environment

[supple isle]

gotcha, i'll play with the settings a bit. tysm!

[subtle mantle]

HUGE MEGA MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING

||Theres some weird blue on the "Black Silk." I've only seen it here. Its sorta kinda visable in sdr so im thinking it could just be a bad texture thats getting exposed by not being clipped.||

[keen lion]

i'm only on act2 just now

[subtle mantle]

||SDR for example||

[keen lion]

can't be clicking stuff 😕

[subtle mantle]

this will 100% spoil act 2 so maybe wait to look into this untill later then lol

[keen lion]

lol, i'm pushing an update now, is this a bug?

or just pretty colors?

[subtle mantle]

im thinking its an example of a bad texture thats just getting exposed by sdr

i dont think its a reno bug

buts its minor

ive only found it in one spot

something to maybe fix, although idk if its possible, but not caused by an issue with reno

thats my theroy at least

[keen lion]

does it fix with Vanilla Look?

[subtle mantle]

lemme test

no

vanilla look actually just breaks it even further

in a different wat

way*

LOL

[keen lion]

does vanilla/off look the same?

[subtle mantle]

vanilla look?

[keen lion]

vanilla tonemapper

which is hard clip

[subtle mantle]

very close

yeah id say its the same

idk how do give much more info without spoilers so ig just lmk when you get to act 3

[keen lion]

vanilla/off should be the same as true vanilla, except for the 8bit binding (not worth replicating)

[subtle mantle]

yeah i think it is

just the gamma correction makes it look different

okay yeah its the same

i turned off gamma correction

but the issue is still ever so slightly visable in the normal game so i think its a game issue

if that makes any sense lol

[subtle mantle]

whats new?

[keen lion]

add sdr options, more shaders, forced hdr option, remove swapchain proxy, use hdr10

[subtle mantle]

oh shit

[keen lion]

more sdr/performance stuff, except made hdr look use 25 saturation clip

[subtle mantle]

what does removing a swapchain proxy actually do?

[keen lion]

faster

more for steamdeckers

also removed aces because it's ass and slower

[subtle mantle]

ah

more shaders as in some stuff was missing?

[keen lion]

act 2 has more shaders, so it's just a more just in case

though most of that is only going to be when trying to supress bloom clip which is 0 by default

[subtle mantle]

so its unlikely to be a visable change but techincally they were clamped?

[keen lion]

no, by default everything is unclamped just by the 16bit upgrade

but people may want that clamping for whatever reason

at least for comparison

[subtle mantle]

ah okay

[left karma]

||i've reached the credits but didn't see this... ||

[boreal cargo]

If I had my HDR settings looking good, are there any new settings with the latest update I should take a look at and tweak?

[keen lion]

only changed {"FxSaturationClip", 25.f}, for hdr look. Reset All resets to 203 for game brightness. only way to get the HDR reference white is by hitting HDR Look

more quality of life, ease of use stuff in this build

https://github.com/clshortfuse/renodx/releases/download/snapshot/renodx-hollowknight-silksong.addon64
new build up

[subtle mantle]

@keen lion ui brightness defaults to 200 instead of 203

how could you release something so broken

[keen lion]

defaults to your Windows HDR ui slider

[subtle mantle]

was it like that before?

[keen lion]

nope

fixed to 203

[subtle mantle]

ah

[keen lion]

now it's whatever you have for Windows HDR UI slider

[subtle mantle]

ill just set it to 203 then because i dont think you can get the windows ui to 203

i think it goes 200 then above 203 at the next notch

[keen lion]

i could make if that if it's 200, make it 203

let's do that before nexus

[subtle mantle]

that would be nice

cause id assume everyone who uses 200 actually wants 203 lol

[keen lion]

it's an int, so yeah

[subtle mantle]

i just mean from an end user perspective

[keen lion]

// SDRWhiteLevel represents a multiplier for standard SDR white
// peak value i.e. 80 nits represented as fixed point.
// To get value in nits use the following conversion
// SDRWhiteLevel in nits = (SDRWhiteLevel / 1000 ) * 80
ULONG SDRWhiteLevel;

[subtle mantle]

like the people who set their windows to be 200 nits probably wanted 203

[keen lion]

good ol' microsoft, using a ULONG for nits

[subtle mantle]

the fuck

microsoft must just not care

[keen lion]

it would be 2537.5 which is unrepresentable

so i'll force it 203

[subtle mantle]

same shit with decivce data

you cant have the eid or whatever its called be 1000

its 993 or like 1007 or some shit

[keen lion]

comes up 1499

that's the default in SDR for me

but could be panel reporting and the HDR calibration number isn't available when in SDR

[subtle mantle]

probably this

some monitors do their own internal fuckery when they get an hdr signal to my knowledge

[keen lion]

might be intentional to say clip up to 1500 and the display can tonemap the other ~50%

[subtle mantle]

@keen lion is it possible to tone done the itm on the cutscenes? 1k nits looks rough some times

[keen lion]

it's kinda broken to be honest, might be better off or bt.2446

i had to do some weird stuff i don't normally do

also the act2 cutscene straight up didn't get scaled up

and when i pressed Home to check the devkit it skipped the video. had to watch it on youtube 🙁

[subtle mantle]

like the intro to act 2?

[keen lion]

yeah

was at ui nits

100 nits

[subtle mantle]

oh i see

[keen lion]

couldn't grab the shader either

[subtle mantle]

bt2446 is the same as just sdr right?

no enhancements, just displayed correctly

[keen lion]

no, it's itm

the somewhat official recommendation

https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-r/opb/rep/R-REP-BT.2446-1-2021-PDF-E.pdf

Methods for conversion of high dynamic
range content to standard dynamic range
content and vice-versa

[subtle mantle]

ah

im asssuming its still using my peak brightness slider though, right?

[keen lion]

yeah

but also contrast and everything which is not how i usually do it

[subtle mantle]

i just tried it. still kinda has the same issues.

im looking at the fast travel cutscene

hornets head is just a spotlight

so so bright

[keen lion]

yeah, but that's ITM

it's full 100% white in the original

so that always maps to peak

[subtle mantle]

you could limit the peak for the ITM seperately though, no?

[keen lion]

generally i don't because it'll be inconsistent, but this is kinda borked anyway

[subtle mantle]

its inconsistent anyway though, no?

[keen lion]

shouldn't be, usually it's generally okay, but this isn't a 3d rendered game

3d rendered / real life doens't have 100% white normally

[subtle mantle]

i see

if you turn hdr videos off itll just be gamma corrected sdr, right?

[keen lion]

yes

[keen lion]

i put the latest build on nexus

[sharp ivy]

why is film grain before lut

is that just to match how it was done in the first game

[pearl night]

defaults are fine

it clips at 1000 nits

[keen lion]

i was thinking would keep white balance, though i guess doesn't matter since it's by luminance

i forget if my grain is by luminance or not

or if it's per channel random

[keen lion]

also so people don't complain about over peak nits

oh, but i guess that screws up contrast

so it should be after tonemap

hmm, but then... it also is screwed by game brightness

nah that is fine, moving it after

[sharp ivy]

I thought grain didn't cause overshoot peak since it's only on shadows

I never saw it go over peak in batman I'm pretty sure

[keen lion]

might have been cyberpunk things, but yeah makes sense

should basically be 1.0x in highlights

yeah, 80 contrast/100 grain is dark and gritty as you'd expect

0 grain for comparison

[stiff valley]

The last thing you mention here hopefully makes it possible to use Direct Scanout on Linux! I'll let you know.

Compositors on Linux AFAIK can't do scRGB and Direct Scanout at the same time

It's possible only with PQ

[stiff valley]

Confirming this!

[keen lion]

shadows to 55 for hdrlook

eh... i like it murky

[keen lion]

uncapped bloom is making things whiter than they should be. bloom clip 100 will make it like vanilla, but i'll still look into it

[keen lion]

there's hero light and hero glow 😕

only way to extra hero glow is by tracking the texture and the coordinates used

hero glow is massive

[subtle mantle]

I’ve started to notice the texture banding/edges more

[night stream]

New version are super cooked for me for some reason? The latest snapshot from the mods page and the latest version from the nexus page. Had to revert back to 20250905b to make it look normal

[keen lion]

Screenshot?

[night stream]

UI brightness slider didnt work also

[sleek lantern]

windows dolby vision mode screwing things up maybe?

[night stream]

Doubt it since the only thing I have done between these screenshots is change the renodx addon file from a newer one to older one 🤔

Tried resetting setting etc but nothing could get rid of that ugly oversaturation

[keen lion]

screenshot of renodx settings

new addon actually turns on Windows HDR for you, which may have never been turned on

[subtle mantle]

Both those screenshots look cooked honestly

Unless it’s a discord mobile issue

Or it’s an absurd peak that my phone can’t do

Wait are these not screenshots

Are these pictures of your monitor?

Bruh

[keen lion]

it's fine. it's what he sees

probably some cooked HDR mode

[subtle mantle]

Yeah

[keen lion]

i intentionally made sure Windows HDR was turned on by default now because i couldn't imagine how many people don't turn it on or know to turn it on

[left karma]

that's a good qol feature

i sometimes forget to turn on hdr when i play a game with hdr

[night stream]

This is on a LG CX and I’ve done HDR gaming/tinkering since 2020. Always toggle HDR on on Win11 before I start to play anything HDR (if the game has HDR)

And yeah they’re pictures not screenshots, it doesnt matter really does it

[keen lion]

@night stream screenshot of renodx settings please

and reshade log if you can

[night stream]

Yeah wait I have to swap the version again

[keen lion]

no reason really why HDR10 should be borked, unless there's something else drawing on top of it, like a reshadefx.

[night stream]

this is what the UI brightness slider is doing for me on the new version

it adjust anything but the UI

[keen lion]

hmm, sounds like a missing shader

i took out swapchain proxy

[keen lion]

what screen resolution? if you want to run a trace with https://clshortfuse.github.io/renodx/renodx-devkit.addon64 in that spot and send me the reshade.log that'll probably be enough and i won't have to ask a bunch of questions

somebody on nexus said:

I must have had a major saturation bug when launching the game. I don't know why, but when I restarted the game, it disappeared, and now it's very clean...That's why I modified my comment in the meantime. I'm playing with HDR Look, and I just set the thumbnail to 0. Otherwise, it's very clean...
I wouldn't say no to different settings from other users to see the differences, anyway, thanks, boss.

probably related

@night stream do you have borderless on?

[shell jasper]

I just updated the game (GoG) and the addon, works fine for me, with my old preset

Maybe try to restart your GPU driver, nvidia sometimes behaves strangely when you turn on a monitor after turning on the PC (Like dxgi independant flip not working, for DSC monitors turned on after boot)

[night stream]

That was it. I had fullscreen on, switched to borderless and works fine now 😅

[keen lion]

i'm sure it's a custom shader that i don't have

i can't get fullscreen to work without hard crash

the game tries to change your windows desktop resolution

[night stream]

I had to disable reshade and renodx so I could change the setting

[keen lion]

exclusive fullscreen does a bunch of nonsense and probably does custom gamma

[shell jasper]

I just got this with latest addon though..

[night stream]

It was crashing with them on

[keen lion]

sdr/hdr switching. reshade fx stuff, not really the addon

[shell jasper]

Right, I had toggled HDR/SDR in reno ui
If I start in HDR and don't touch that, it works fine

[keen lion]

well at least i'll be able to find why/where it crashes for others

[thick moss]

are you enabling advanced color?

[keen lion]

hdr first, fallback to advanced color

[thick moss]

advanced color isn't just HDR

on laptops it's some other stuff

[keen lion]

i know

[thick moss]

it can mean to use the automatically calibrated display mode

and for some reason on some displays it breaks completely

[keen lion]

i have a dolby vision laptop

that doesn't have HDR

but it's an optional flag. for the 3 people who have that, they can turn it off

because some windows versions don't have enable HDR

so advanced color is best you can do (and also what microsoft recommends)

the hdr on is partially undocumented because microsoft, of course

[thick moss]

MS docs are a disaster

[keen lion]

static bool SetHDREnabled(const DISPLAYCONFIG_PATH_INFO& path, bool enabled = true) {
  if (GetHDREnabled(path) == enabled) return true;

  DISPLAYCONFIG_SET_HDR_STATE hdr_state = {};
  hdr_state.header.type = DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_SET_HDR_STATE;
  hdr_state.header.size = sizeof(hdr_state);
  hdr_state.header.adapterId = path.targetInfo.adapterId;
  hdr_state.header.id = path.targetInfo.id;
  hdr_state.enableHdr = enabled ? 1 : 0;
  if (DisplayConfigSetDeviceInfo(&hdr_state.header) == ERROR_SUCCESS) {
    return true;
  }
  // Fallback to older struct
  DISPLAYCONFIG_SET_ADVANCED_COLOR_STATE advanced_color_state = {};
  advanced_color_state.header.type = DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_SET_ADVANCED_COLOR_STATE;
  advanced_color_state.header.size = sizeof(advanced_color_state);
  advanced_color_state.header.adapterId = path.targetInfo.adapterId;
  advanced_color_state.header.id = path.targetInfo.id;
  advanced_color_state.enableAdvancedColor = enabled ? 1 : 0;
  return DisplayConfigSetDeviceInfo(&advanced_color_state.header) == ERROR_SUCCESS;
}

DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_SET_HDR_STATE

[thick moss]

Yes I do exactly the same thing 😄

[keen lion]

static bool GetHDREnabled(const DISPLAYCONFIG_PATH_INFO& path) {
  DISPLAYCONFIG_GET_ADVANCED_COLOR_INFO_2 advanced_color_info_2 = {};
  advanced_color_info_2.header.type = DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_GET_ADVANCED_COLOR_INFO_2;
  advanced_color_info_2.header.size = sizeof(advanced_color_info_2);
  advanced_color_info_2.header.adapterId = path.targetInfo.adapterId;
  advanced_color_info_2.header.id = path.targetInfo.id;
  if (DisplayConfigGetDeviceInfo(&advanced_color_info_2.header) == ERROR_SUCCESS) {
    return advanced_color_info_2.highDynamicRangeUserEnabled != 0;
  }
  // Fallback to older struct
  DISPLAYCONFIG_GET_ADVANCED_COLOR_INFO advanced_color_info_1 = {};
  advanced_color_info_1.header.type = DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_GET_ADVANCED_COLOR_INFO;
  advanced_color_info_1.header.size = sizeof(advanced_color_info_1);
  advanced_color_info_1.header.adapterId = path.targetInfo.adapterId;
  advanced_color_info_1.header.id = path.targetInfo.id;
  if (DisplayConfigGetDeviceInfo(&advanced_color_info_1.header) == ERROR_SUCCESS) {
    return advanced_color_info_1.advancedColorEnabled != 0;
  }
  return false;
}

both DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_GET_ADVANCED_COLOR_INFO_2 and DISPLAYCONFIG_DEVICE_INFO_SET_HDR_STATE have no description on msdn

i think it's 26100 sdk (win11)

[thick moss]

we could do a PR for that

[keen lion]

they probably don't know what they're going to do with it yet

but it works on win11 at least

advanced color is just a windows 10 fallback at this point

[keen lion]

exclusive fullscreen does a subregion copy, that explains it

there's no point in supporting exclusive fullscreen, but i should figure out why it crashes

got cooked colors with exclusive fullscreen, so it was that. i'll throw up a warning

[thick moss]

ah it crashes for me too

i haven't debugged as it's trash and useless so

[night stream]

Old habits die hard. I still use it because back in the days it was recommended for VRR to work properly or something like that. Blurbusters g-sync article still recommends fullscreen for DX11 or older titles. Though I feel like this was the first time exclusive was causing HDR problems

[sleek lantern]

exclusive fullscreen doesn't exist in dx12, silksong is dx11 though so understandable why it still has an option there i guess

[keen lion]

Sounds like misinformation or outdated information, honestly:

With the release of Windows 10, we added Fullscreen Optimizations – which takes full screen exclusive games and runs them instead in a highly optimized borderless windowed format that takes up the entire screen.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/demystifying-full-screen-optimizations/

Flip model presents go as far as making windowed mode effectively equivalent or better when compared to the classic "fullscreen exclusive" mode. In fact, you may want to reconsider whether your application actually needs a fullscreen exclusive mode, since the benefits of a flip model borderless window include faster Alt-Tab switching and better integration with modern display features.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3ddxgi/for-best-performance--use-dxgi-flip-model

It's only relevant for Windows 7

Probably only makes sense in the context of exclusive fullscreen in Windows 7 vs not when not using flip. But flip model (required for HDR) is better

[agile crypt]

Ya iflip model fixed all of that since win8

[shell jasper]

Enable this in Windows 10/11 in "Graphics Settings". Should upgrade any games to use newer proper borderless, no point in exclusive fullscreen with that.
You can always double-check if it works on these old games with SpecialK or PresentMon

[keen lion]

i did some general texture debanding and just doesn't help the textures. needs replacement. well, at least i have a dither system

baked banding

and because it's an atlas texture, you'd have to hard code which texture is the hero light glow and then manually expect the sampling coordinates to see if it's the one you want

you're better off doing texture replacement

it's just completely clipped in the texture itself, they dun goofed

posterized to show the clipping

[keen lion]

need to finish the game because textures have spoilers

[dusty pelican]

the downsides of modding a good game lol

[atomic ferry]

real

[worthy hollow]

this might not be the best idea for mods with SDR support. You'll also be forcing HDR on on panels that "support" HDR but look like ass.

[onyx zealot]

@keen lion https://steamcommunity.com/app/1030300/discussions/0/546746634645557243/

Added Dithering effect option in Advanced video settings. Reduces colour banding but can slightly soften the appearance of foreground assets. Defaults to 'Off'.

[keen lion]

I had my own dithering. Won't fix much unless you fix the textures

But compared to 8bit way better

[silk loom]

if they bothered adding dithering any chance they couldve updated the textures?

doubt it tho

[onyx zealot]

The current version of that patch is now live on the public-beta branch (version: 1.0.28626) if you'd like to test it for yourself. Expect a few more additions and tweaks before full release.

you can check it out already it seems

[silk loom]

oh true

[onyx zealot]

on steam at least

no idea if game pass has this concept lol

I doubt it?

[silk loom]

no chance

yeah

[onyx zealot]

https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/19925955/

[silk loom]

no way

[onyx zealot]

bless steamdb

[silk loom]

dumping rn

[keen lion]

They would have said so. I doubt they did. There's only some textures that are bad. Not everything. They're too different issues

16bit fixes compositing 8bit on 8bit so it barely needs a ditherer

They're fixing 8bit composition which renodx doesn't use

Renodx will still be limited by bad 8bit textures with baked banding

[silk loom]

right yeah

still the bad textures can still be improved even in 8bit right?

[sleek lantern]

https://tenor.com/view/jack-nicholson-jack-nicholson-yes-yes-nod-head-nod-gif-17444176260167585294

good for non renodx users at least

[keen lion]

Yeah. Obviously higher resolution would be better, but the banding is baked and the largest offender. I can look into actually redoing the textures after I beat the game.

[silk loom]

not sure if these are the right ones but

[keen lion]

Yep those

[silk loom]

yeah that banding is still atrocious lmfao

especially the middle left

[keen lion]

I did add dither to just that in realtime and didn't do much. Or you dither is so much you can't see jack

[silk loom]

yeah honestly im fine with how it looks with your dithering

[keen lion]

I have grain on when I play which is kinda the same

Though real dither would apply to all luminances

[silk loom]

oh i also have hero light kinda low too so i guess that makes it harder to see

[keen lion]

It's part of another shader which I was thinking of calling hero glow

It's what makes characters turn white when you walk by them

And the glow is that texture from above^

[silk loom]

oh really

didnt know that was separate

is all lighting texture-based or is there any procedural stuff?

[keen lion]

All compositing I think. Maybe hero light is the only procedural

Bloom is technical mixed. Both a texture compositing and procedural

[silk loom]

wait what

i thought for sure hero light was based off a texture

even though its just a circle lol

cos the banding

[keen lion]

Might be amplified by the glow. Will check. But the game really needs new textures first and foremost

[silk loom]

yeah

[keen lion]

it's the same texture

hero light and hero glow both use the same megatexture

so fix that texture and banding is fixed on both

[silk loom]

yup

wonder why steamdb tracked an update though?

oh wait that was prob diff

yeah not the same texture i think nvm

[keen lion]

public beta

[silk loom]

yeah i just mean i guess they mustve changed some other texture for it

[keen lion]

i'm going to file with the team, see if they respond

[silk loom]

that would be awesome

highly doubt it though

by the way - with gamma correction off it just uses pq in hdr right? so its not needed?

[keen lion]

gamma correction is needed for hdr

basically always, in all hdr

only reason not to is because your display is on SDR which does 2.2

that doesn't exist in HDR

[silk loom]

ive read through the whole windows srgb/2.2 mismatch, is it because of that

[keen lion]

not entirely

srgb/2.2 mismatch with Windows HDR is how it handles SDR content. the game is outputting in HDR, so it's kinda separate

[silk loom]

yeah thats what i figured

[keen lion]

we just don't handle SDR like Windows HDR would

we take the game output and do 2.2 on it, like a SDR display would.

so i renamed it SDR EOTF Emulation, instead of gamma correction

[silk loom]

oh and that needs to be compensated for?

i see yeah

[keen lion]

SDR would take the signal decode it as 2.2. It's a misnomer to really say "Off". Because you have to choose a way to decode SDR. "SRGB" decode is the default or off

except when in SDR, you do "SRGB" so the display does it as 2.2. it's weird

[silk loom]

ohhhhh i see what youre saying yeah

[keen lion]

the textures are already in srgb, because that's how they work

[silk loom]

wait so do monitors in hdr mode always use 2.2 or pq?

[keen lion]

so if you never decode the textures (and just overlay them), they're essentially in srgb the whole time. then your SDR display comes and decodes it as 2.2

monitors do PQ, which is just a transfer. it's not a custom look or gamma like CRT/SDR does

it's 1:1 what the display outputs

SDR being screwed up and special numbers is one of the major issues with SDR. not standard, or a mix of them which ends up meaning no one standard

in SDR what you output isn't what is display. it gets morphed by the display and you have preadjust for that

it's kinda insane

HDR doesn't have that. PQ Encode on graphics card out. PQ Decode on display

1:1

[silk loom]

right ok

[keen lion]

the official encoding for SDR depends on where in the world you are, what your environment is, and what year you're talking about

and the official decoding for SDR didn't exist until like 2005. it was just "kinda CRT-like"

[silk loom]

but games like silksong were presumably designed around 2.2 right?

[keen lion]

they weren't really designed at all,so you take SDR monitor default decode which is 2.2

[silk loom]

yeah

[keen lion]

official standard is called bt.1886 (2.4) and nobody grades to that outside of netflix

i don't even know what youtube is graded to. it's graded to what people use more. i don't even know if youtube is 2.2 anymore. might be "whatever the hell iphone does"

SDR is "whatever the majority of users are doing"

[silk loom]

i hadnt even considered stuff like that

so its best to set emulation to whatever the base game was created using right

which is usually 2.2

[keen lion]

yeah

i've legit only seen Ghost of Tsushima actually want 2.4

and do the proper SDR encoding for bt.1886

most games encode in srgb (do nothing) or use a 2.2 lut,

[silk loom]

how cinematic 😍

[keen lion]

but no game is asking you to turn on SRGB EOTF on your monitor (if it even has that mode, since my LG legit doesn't have it)

confusingly monitors refer to srgb: the color space (same as BT709), not SRGB the decoding

[silk loom]

yeah lol

[keen lion]

so "srgb" options on monitors can be vague

[silk loom]

so is renodx stepping in before the tonemap and thats why it has its own gamma setting

[keen lion]

it's a final thing that affects everything, including UI

[silk loom]

but the output of it otherwise is srgb eotf?

or the input

[keen lion]

everything is srgb encoding, and the final pass decode everything as 2.2, like a display would

[silk loom]

yes ok that all makes sense to me now

[keen lion]

that simplifies dealing with stuff. because, for example, UI shaders don't need to be decoded and encoded back to srgb. you can leave them alone

but for tonemapping. it decode as srgb, tonemaps, and then encodes back to srgb.

only what's called bg-srgb, which supports more than 1.0 values, and negative values for BT2020

(bg = big gamut)

[silk loom]

lol i like that

[keen lion]

there's some slight special math for peak nits, because it sets to a peak that will be, for example, 1000 nits, after the 2.2 decode

[silk loom]

thanks so much for explaining! planning on seeing if i can work on a mod myself sometime soon so its super helpful

[silk loom]

is it like a non-linear equation

[keen lion]

yeah

though the variable for the tonemap to know to adjust peak nits because there will 2.2 at the end is the same variable used by the final output pass to know how to decode

[silk loom]

yeah just the inverse right

[keen lion]

float3 ApplyRenoDRT(float3 color, Config tm_config) {
  float reno_drt_max = (tm_config.peak_nits / tm_config.game_nits);
  [branch]
  if (tm_config.gamma_correction != 0) {
    reno_drt_max = renodx::color::correct::Gamma(
        reno_drt_max,
        tm_config.gamma_correction > 0.f,
        abs(tm_config.gamma_correction) == 1.f ? 2.2f : 2.4f);
  } else {
    // noop
  }

#define GAMMA(T)                                               \
  T Gamma(T c, bool pow_to_srgb = false, float gamma = 2.2f) { \
    if (pow_to_srgb) {                                         \
      return srgb::Decode(color::gamma::Encode(c, gamma));     \
    } else {                                                   \
      return color::gamma::Decode(srgb::Encode(c), gamma);     \
    }                                                          \
  }

so... take peak (max), then do pow_2_srgb

(inverse of what swapchain does)

[silk loom]

ok so then i dont even have to worry about the maths lol

[keen lion]

oh definitely not. the whole framework is built for devs to just focus on the unsolved aspects. mostly everything else is already "solved"

unsolved being game-specific nonsense

(upgrades, shader patching, etc)

[silk loom]

yeah awesome, thats what i was hoping

[keen lion]

there's a lot of defaults. so some mods end up being a couple of lines

i rewrote the bioshock mod because the current one wasn't working: https://github.com/clshortfuse/renodx/tree/main/src/games/bioshock-alt

[silk loom]

hmm i havent looked at my game properly yet but i have the feeling i might have to mess with its tonemapping

[keen lion]

other than boiler plate, i just did one shader patch: ```cpp
r0.xyzw = s_bloom.Sample(s_bloom_s, w1.xy).xyzw;
r1.xyzw = s_framebuffer.Sample(s_framebuffer_s, v1.xy).xyzw;
r0.xyz = r0.xyz * bloomAlpha * CUSTOM_BLOOM + r1.xyz;
o0.w = r1.w;
// r0.xyz = saturate(sceneBias * r0.xyz);
// r0.xyz = log2(r0.xyz);
// r0.xyz = float3(0.454545468,0.454545468,0.454545468) * r0.xyz;
// o0.xyz = exp2(r0.xyz);
if (RENODX_TONE_MAP_TYPE == 0.f) {
o0.rgb = saturate(sceneBias * r0.rgb);
} else {
o0.rgb = renodx::draw::ToneMapPass(sceneBias * r0.rgb);
}
o0.rgb = renodx::draw::RenderIntermediatePass(o0.rgb);

(comments are original)

[silk loom]

yeah looking through, that really is pretty small damn

[keen lion]

and one upgrade ```cpp
renodx::mods::swapchain::swap_chain_upgrade_targets.push_back({
.old_format = reshade::api::format::r11g11b10_float,
.new_format = reshade::api::format::r16g16b16a16_float,
.use_resource_view_cloning = true,
});

which isn't really required either. that just allows bt2020 colors

[silk loom]

best-case scenario, all you have to do is resource + swapchain upgrade right?

[keen lion]

you want to pass ToneMapPass somewhere so you get all the grading options, but the defaults handle all that

like what is user peak, is there gamma correction, what's the render/ui ratio. all that is handled

[silk loom]

yeah just to get proper hdr working i mean

not counting that stuff

[keen lion]

it's rare for a game to be in SDR most of the time. there's usually one specific where it goes HDR down to SDR, either by tonemap or clip

hollow knight is SDR the whole time, so a rather separate case. it's a 2D game, so it composites differently. but 3d engines are almost always in HDR until some final stage

[silk loom]

so you just have to find the shader that clamps and rewrite?

[keen lion]

so when looking backwards it's output => ui => postprocess/tonemap => render

[silk loom]

right yeah

[keen lion]

sometimes modifying the shader enough. but sometimes that shader that tonemaps/clip also writes to an SDR texture, so that has to be upgraded

because, if you're going to go from 16bit precision down to SDR output, there's no reason to 16bit at the end either. so it's kinda expected to clamp down to 8bit

[silk loom]

ah yeah

i took a look through renderdoc a little i guess that should make finding if that happens easier

[keen lion]

a common way is to render in hdr, go to 8bit srgb, and slap it on the swapchain or some intermediate buffer (sometimes for stuff like motion blur). then you can slap UI (already 8bit srgb) on top of the 8bit srgb render/postprocessed

[silk loom]

for something like that do you have to identify the 8bit tonemapping shader

and just rewrite so it passes through as hdr?

to a proper swapchain too

[keen lion]

you can usually find the hdr render at some point, see it in all 16bit glory, and then watch all the numbers go to 1.0. it almost always is a shader because a 16bit texture can't be copied to an 8bit one. there has to be a shader involved somewhere

even if the shader is return texture.Sample(position)

[silk loom]

oh wait so that should totally show up in renderdoc shouldnt it

[keen lion]

yep

if renderdoc works

i just use the devkit (that i wrote)

[silk loom]

having never used it before i was suprised at how intuitive it was

will def hop in with reno devkit though yeah

fuck it i might take a look rn

[keen lion]

renderdoc is much better in some ways, but devkit is kinda built for what we're looking for

renderdoc doesn't prioritize what we're looking for, which is tracking textures, their formats and tracking shaders

renderdoc is more interactive for passes

[silk loom]

yeah makes sense not as focused

[keen lion]

like, you know what you're looking for

as a dev of a game you built, it makes sense. for post process modding, not as much, since you don't know immediately what to expect

shader tracking in renderdoc is much, much more involved

[silk loom]

yeah honestly even sk seemed a lot simpler for shaders

[pearl night]

I've seen some claim that luma has less banding?

[keen lion]

Placebo. It's the same. RenoDX has film grain which is just the same as aggressive dithering. Problem is textures

[shell jasper]

I tried to improve the hero light texture and load it with SpecialK as RGBA16, and it would still have banding (with hero light set at 30 it's clearly visible and same)
it was quick and dirty test (basically blurring it) so maybe that's why, idk...
(I tested and SK was clearly loading that atlas texture)

[keen lion]

you can throw a lot of noise/dither on it, but fixing it by hand is the best option. can't use renderdoc on xbox games, or else, would dump it sooner

well, since it's just texture, pix is fine

uh, did they cut this out by hand

[shell jasper]

I could send it to you, though you should be able to dump it with SpecialK easily, as it's D3D11
Render mod tools, used textures

[keen lion]

you can drop it here

i'm more surprise pix doesn't let me dump

i don't think gradients are copyrightable

also fair use

ah i can dump, right click save as

got in paint.net

i could they didn't notice the banding because they probably authored it like this

Hollow Knight Silksong_Data\StreamingAssets\aa\StandaloneWindows64\atlases_assets_assets\sprites\_atlases\core_glows.spriteatlas.bundle is the file

no need to add special texture handling stuff

this works to unpack it https://github.com/nesrak1/UABEA/releases

the asset has the raw dds without the header, so texture replacement is going to effectively be the same. not much more information except how to map the atlas (no lossless rgba32 data)

less spoilers. time to beat the game

[keen lion]

in case any graphics nerds want to fix the texture

as transparent png

[shell jasper]

Can you replace it with a "better" format ? (less banding)
At least SpecialK can let you replace textures with another format

[silk loom]

the format isnt the problem

theyre just bad textures

[thick moss]

if the character glow texture is fixed across the whole game, and the main source of banding

a similar texture could be generated live in the shader based on distance from the center of the sprite

[keen lion]

you'd have to know the position of the atlas texture and i think that's in the vertex shader, then you have to do special stuff like checking of the position is between min_max x and min_max_y

you might as well just generate on top of the dds and replace it

it's 32bit rgba, could be done in photoshop

you don't need to engine/graphics mod either. just bundle it again, it's in Hollow Knight Silksong_Data\StreamingAssets\aa\StandaloneWindows64\atlases_assets_assets\sprites\_atlases\core_glows.spriteatlas.bundle

it's Unity 6000.0.51

https://unity.com/releases/editor/archive

https://download.unity3d.com/download_unity/01c3ff5872c5/Windows64EditorInstaller/UnitySetup64-6000.0.51f1.exe

[keen lion]

this game is so loooooooooooooooong

i think i'm done and i find a new location

[young pagoda]

Feels like Elden Ring all over again and definitely lived up to the hype. In Elden Ring I had a couple moments of holy shit the map is huge, and I'm getting the same feeling over and over in Silksong.

[atomic ferry]

good to hear, cant wait to play it myself

btw i was doing some testing of rtss vs reno limiter. Really happy with the results i can basically get rid of rtss outside of games where i cant use addon build

First 2 are RTSS, last is RenoDX cap

RTSS might still be a super tiny bit more consistent

[trim pendant]

rtss has reflex so

[atomic ferry]

wym

[trim pendant]

it has nv reflex injection

so your latency will be super low

[atomic ferry]

i dont do that i think

atleast anything reflex is disabled in rtss settings, not sure if it still does anything in the background

[shell jasper]

I use SpecialK but yeah RTSS with reflex limiter should be as useful for a game like this imo

[shell jasper]

I have like 33 hours and I am still finding new areas lol
Probably around the end of act 2

[gleaming flint]

Slightly unrelated, but I've never used RTSS before for frame capping.

But ... is there a feature in there, or any other tool, where I can assign different FPS capo on monitor level?

I want my OLEDs to do 144, while others to do 120, that kinda thing?

Instead of app based, just wanna put a global limit on panel itself.

[shell jasper]

SpecialK save the frame limiter by monitor, so if you do Win+Alt+arrow key to move the window to another monitor, it will adapt

Though you have to set it once for all app, for each monitor lol

Maybe you cam do what you want with the default_SpecialK.ini 🤔

[gleaming flint]

Yeah, I know about SK. It basically saves it as a profile for each panel, and it's neat.

But that's not a global option.

And I can't use SK in every game.

But that was definitely one of my fav. features of SK.

[shell jasper]

People say SK doesn't work well with RenoDX but the rare case it is true, it works fine as local inject.

Anti-cheat games ?
Works fine for most gacha, but yeah...

[gleaming flint]

It doens't work fine with local inject, I've been using SK for years and there's a reason Kal left this server.

It's a black box when it comes to compatibility between those two.

Same setup can work for you, and not for me.

And vice versa.

And yeah, anti-cheat games.

And overall compatibility issues as well, as I just opt to use RenoDX by default in games.

As they're more transformative than QoL stuff SK offers me.

[atomic ferry]

yeah for me SK and Reno was big no together in many games

[gleaming flint]

In a perfect world, I'd love to use both but no.

I had to work ass backwards to make sure AC Shadows continued working with RenoDX after patches

Found random ass fixes that I reported to Kal as well.

i.e. disable FG in ini and launch game, and it'll work fine

But if FG is enabled, it'll crash.

Can enable FG later in-game once launched and it'd work etc

So, yeah.

PainCentral.jpg

[atomic ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/piddel-piddel-meme-piddel-gaming-piddel-pain-pain-gif-26176777

[gleaming flint]

For a tool that is supposed to take away pain points.

Not to mention, performance hit.

I had a good 5-6fps hit with SK + AC Shadows with central install.

Local install worked fine.

[atomic ferry]

Kinda offtopic btw

[keen lion]

i almost one shot the "final boss", surely to end act 2 but had stuff in my inventory and wishes not completed, so didn't retry. tried to finish out the map like i did before end of act 1. still going

[gleaming flint]

Or maybe it was more than that, I forget.

[gleaming flint]

LMAO, true.

https://tenor.com/view/piddel-piddel-meme-piddel-gaming-piddel-pain-pain-gif-26176777

[keen lion]

not this server . though we do most of our dev talk in the reshade discord.

[gleaming flint]

Oh

lmao, right

[keen lion]

also lets crosire jump in and apply fixes, just better there

[atomic ferry]

makes sense yeh

[gleaming flint]

Yeah, I've seen y'all collabing there.

pmnox, too.

Addon programming channel.

[shell jasper]

Injecting reflex in the reno frame limiter would be cool 🙏

[keen lion]

i think pmnox did it in his addon

fps limitter is like a couple of lines i wrote in a day

[shell jasper]

Having to launch rtss and close it depending on games I play is painful

[keen lion]

https://github.com/pmnoxx/reshade-display-commander

the fps limitter i wrote amounts to like 20 lines of code

[atomic ferry]

@keen lion in case you care about the framecap testing i did between yours and RTSS front edge

in silksong in this case

[keen lion]

🙏 i saw. i have an every 5 second recompute event. might hiccup the graph. i wonder if that's noticeable

basically theory is it's running fine but you can't know you're oversleeping if you don't relax it one cycle

[atomic ferry]

i see

tbf both are very very good

[keen lion]

i had a separate sleep method, but honestly that line is so flat, it's hard to make it better

[atomic ferry]

if i zoomed out a bit so its not in sub milisecond territory you wouldnt be able to tell shit

yep

[keen lion]

it works on emperical testing, which trusts nothing, no clock cycles, no advanced sleep timing, no windows API to try to sleep

[atomic ferry]

ill probably still use rtss because i can use it globally and set it once

but yours is very good

[keen lion]

i have a commented-out, second timing method, but hard to tell one flat line is better than another

[atomic ferry]

if you have any "test build" i can check it out

[shell jasper]

Will you compare with this one (with reflex) @atomic ferry ?

I guess it should be as good as SpecialK VRR optimized with reflex injected 🤔

[atomic ferry]

isnt that the same one

[shell jasper]

The one linked din renodx readme ? No
This one has nvidia reflex

[keen lion]

compared to renodx-fpslimitter? pmnox's has reflex i think

[atomic ferry]

oh i see

sure can test that

[shell jasper]

I wonder if it works more like "normal" or "vrr optimized" in SK 🤔
With reflex in both

[atomic ferry]

vrr optimized is just that it does some offset

for my my 165hz i would cap at 156 or 157

i just do 156 manually to be safe

[keen lion]

@atomic ferry i dumped one with the RENODX_FPS_LIMIT_HR_TIMER flag set in #🧑‍🍳early-access-feed

[shell jasper]

Hmm not sure, I mean you can still click the green button to have that headroom even in normal mode.
The vrr optimizer is in the list alongside gsync mode, while the vrr bias is a green button

[keen lion]

  // Use sleep/timer for as much as reliably possible
  auto wait_duration = time_till_next_frame - busy_spin_duration;
  bool changed_busy_spin_duration = false;
  if (wait_duration.count() > 0) {
#if defined(RENODX_FPS_LIMIT_HR_TIMER)
    static const HANDLE WAITABLE_TIMER = CreateWaitableTimerExW(
        nullptr, nullptr,
        CREATE_WAITABLE_TIMER_HIGH_RESOLUTION,
        TIMER_ALL_ACCESS);
    auto remaining = wait_duration;
    auto ticks = remaining.count() / 100;  // 100ns ticks
    while (remaining.count() > 0) {
      LARGE_INTEGER due;
      due.QuadPart = -ticks;
      SetWaitableTimerEx(WAITABLE_TIMER, &due, 0, nullptr, nullptr, nullptr, 0);
      WaitForSingleObject(WAITABLE_TIMER, INFINITE);
      remaining = next_time_point - busy_spin_duration - std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now();
    }
#else
    std::this_thread::sleep_for(wait_duration);
#endif

[atomic ferry]

rtss has that as well btw

[keen lion]

that's it, one is thread_sleep, the other is https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/synchapi/nf-synchapi-createwaitabletimerexw

[shell jasper]

That's needed for accurate reflex yeah

[keen lion]

reflex needs before present and after present. which needs newer reshade

reshade never gave us after present until pmnox asked for it

[atomic ferry]

ok so display commander shows the proper cap as well, neat

[shell jasper]

What is available in "fps limiter mode" ?

[atomic ferry]

in mode this

i dont need scanline sync

ill have to test each injection type i guess

tooltips dont say which is the best mode for frame present consistency

Display commander cap Option 0 / 1 / 2

0 seems best

early access test build @keen lion

[keen lion]

seems noisier than what's on the repo?

the early-access build is the same timing method as SK

[atomic ferry]

i would say so

[keen lion]

can you do a/b of latest vs EA so i can more easily compare

[atomic ferry]

sure

[keen lion]

i have my doubts that constant pinging/callback of ticks. would probably get wonky. basically asks 100nanosecond callbacks, and probably harrasses the system so much it starts affecting other things. probably stealing CPU from other threads, causing scheduling issues

[atomic ferry]

maybe but then again, this is very clean overall, we are in sub milisecond analysis here

ill try the ingame and driver cap for the fun of it

just to double check for the current (non early access) i use the one linked in utilities there right

[keen lion]

yeah, that would work fine

[atomic ferry]

[atomic ferry]

Github vs EA

ive tried making the graph exact same size of 6.8ms to 5.8ms

Github defo cleaner overall but had higher max deviances

[keen lion]

probably at that 5 second resync

because it's legit sleeping for most of the time whereas the other one is constant polling

[atomic ferry]

I'll redo the display commander ones to make it more comparable

displaycommander mode 0 in comparison

[shell jasper]

Would be cool to see SpecialK vrr with reflex on+boost and vrr optimized/normal cap

But yeah displaycommander looks quite nice aleeady

[keen lion]

isn't that no frame limitter mode?

[atomic ferry]

talking about these injection modes

my bad

random RTSS lies of P i have lying around in the same 1ms graph window

so yeah displaycommander 0 and rtss front edge probably as clean as it gets

[keen lion]

latency on fps limitter is probably from computing the 1% lows

because ea is the same method as display commander

but still has the histogram numbers

[atomic ferry]

for transparency all results are Gsync + Vsync forced in NVCP

As it should be for purist frametimes

[tawdry karma]

@rocky surge cooked 👨‍🍳

[atomic ferry]

i would try SK in Silksong but i have reno installed and probably will want to rip my nosehair out trying to make it work together

[keen lion]

i'm pretty ignorant on this. i just did math for the fps limiter

should it be windowed as well?

[atomic ferry]

nah full screen is fine because borderless is also considered that

i found that many applications that arent games really dont like it when they have vrr, which they get when you set windowed there

man

looks so nice with reno and the music

[keen lion]

there's hdr yellow i've never seen before (not there, fyi)

because yellow turns to green in SDR

[atomic ferry]

well you see the settings bottom left in the beginning

i just adapted your hdr look preset slightly

[keen lion]

as in, because of this game, i've seen new colors

[atomic ferry]

OH

nvm haha

[atomic ferry]

that prolly looks bonkers on my G5 in 2500+ nit

[keen lion]

yeah, there are some nice flash bangs in this game

reasonable as well, which is just explosions

there's a purple one late game

well, late act2

[shut vale]

oh wow this game looks amazing in hdr

next on my list for sure

[atomic ferry]

sadly most people will never witness the beauty of this in hdr because they arent aware of reno or dont have a good HDR screen

but i guess that goes for all games

i have not finished the first hollow knight yet so im on really fucking around with HDR in Silksong, not actually playing it much tbh

[keen lion]

i don't dwell on it. it's why i say i make games for me, because the alternative is rather depressing

i could go back to hollow knight 1 and the newer tonemapping stuff, probably should

it just bleaches things white a bit more, so not more colors or anything

[atomic ferry]

certainly a healthy stance heh

ill probably wait if you do make some changes for OG hollow knight even if its small

[keen lion]

probably takes about 15 minutes. could do it later today, including the SDR/HDR thing

the game also shares some shaders

[atomic ferry]

sounds good hehe

no worries if you dont find the time tho lol, i have plenty other shit to play

[keen lion]

the second isn't really that tied to the first, but has different mechanics, so you're probably better off with HK first for consistency

there are some elements that play on your possible expectations having played the first one, but they are minimal

[atomic ferry]

oh its not? i thought like story wise they would be connected

good to know

[keen lion]

i thought it was prequel until 30 hours in

then looked it up and it's a sequel instead

[left karma]

much much later on (like, end of the game) there's some nudges to HK

[atomic ferry]

i see

i mean prolly makes sense to play normal HK before

[keen lion]

According to Team Cherry developers, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a sequel that takes place after the events of Hollow Knight.

[left karma]

I don't think it's required to have played HK before Silksong, but those references will look neat when you encounter them

[atomic ferry]

i like to understand even slight references tbh yeah

[keen lion]

i'm pretty sure they originally said it was going to be a prequel, but the game was planned years ago

[left karma]

lore nerds will insist you have to play it probably

[atomic ferry]

originally it was supposed to be a DLC to HK

kek

[keen lion]

the lore rivals Kingdom Hearts

i don't understand it, nor do i plan to. but it's not forced on you either

[atomic ferry]

is that good or bad ive not played KH ever

i only enjoy the music

[keen lion]

very convoluted

[atomic ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/dark-souls-1-solaire-the-flow-of-time-is-convoluted-flow-of-time-co-op-gif-4794491537078994986

[keen lion]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBODc7Txjyg

can't even get it explained

also, don't watch that if you're going to play the game

2 minutes in. already lost

and i 112% the game

[atomic ferry]

yeeh i wont watch haha

until im done with that game

[keen lion]

though the way this guy narrates doesn't help. he's not trying trying to explain. he's basically talking in prose

[left karma]

lore usually goes over my head pretty quickly

[keen lion]

trying to sound whimsical, which is horrible for an explanation video

[atomic ferry]

that does indeed sound bad

[keen lion]

it's not a "look, there are these dude and these dude"

[atomic ferry]

i mean ive watched a bunch of lore stuff on dark souls, which is very hard to grasp unless you read every item description and read up on wiki or watch videos on it

im sure itll be fine xd

[keen lion]

i also recant what i said about kingdom hearts. i'm pretty sure there's a 6 to 8 hour explanation video that ends with "look, it doesn't make sense but you at least understood enough to know what they're talking about"

[atomic ferry]

[tawny solar]

I am so over lore videos trying to do story time. just gimme the facts presented in an orderly fashion

[keen lion]

i'm watching/had-watched this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XDiWYFGGqY

doesn't take it seriously

this reminds me of the crazy stuff in tunic. tunic the enemy sound effects can be translated if you slow them down and decode them, they're actually saying something

but tunic is definitely on a whole other level since the mystery of the game is core to the gameplay

[atomic ferry]

Dude the first time I tested tunic Reno I was like bro did I install the wrong fucking language or sumn?

[atomic ferry]

i see, yeah that adds up with my findings

0 for sure the best in my measurements

im always for the best pacing

way more important to me than having the very lowest input lag possible

in RTSS i always use front edge sync for example

in my testing that was the best for pacing

but has small lag penalty

i cannot tell the diff in input though so..

I would argue RTSS is still slightly better but its really close

left is rtss

Capframe X

great frametime capture tool

yeah

in general with display commander the vast amount of framtimes is actually closer packed together than rtss but it has more outliers

if you can fix those somehow then yours would be even better

i was doing some testing with 24 fps cap and you can measure crazy detailed frametime variations kek

sure

that is a lot worse

@rocky surge

wait fuck sorry

it remembered the settings i had from testing earlier today

i was on mode 2

@rocky surge this is the correct result for 0

green is official, black is the first test build

hard to say

the outliers arent as bad

but the ones that arent outliers are not as tightly packed together as green

ill test new build now

green still public build

basically identical

[keen lion]

i realized that if i use the volume dial on my keyboard and the windows volume indicator pops up, my frame rate tanks

i'm sure it's MPO related

[atomic ferry]

Give me a few mins I’m not on my pc right now

[shell jasper]

What about SpecialK "Low latency - VRR Optimized" mode ? (with reflex+boost enabled)
In the dropdown with "normal" and the gsync one

Are you sure you're not talking of auto-vrr mode button ?

so your reflex mode is same as normal mode + nvidia reflex in SK ? 🤔

oh mb it's in the readme 😅

[atomic ferry]

i the reno nightly the wrong one???

thats what ive been using for all these tests

https://tenor.com/view/pou-pou-hanging-pou-suicide-hanging-noose-gif-9561747451850049061

[shell jasper]

nah, should be based on a nightly ver recent enough
if it loads, should be fine lol

[atomic ferry]

https://nightly.link/clshortfuse/reshade/workflows/renodx/renodx?preview

this

linked in welcome channel

yeah

ok trying the last display commander now

btw is it fine to have the present pacing delay at 0%?

should i try something different?

ight

ah i see

yeah if i set 100% or so i cant even reach 157 fps

itll drop to 140 or so

oh this seems really good

[shell jasper]

I tested SpecialK vs Display Commander in a few scenarios
180fps cap on a 240Hz display, where I can easily go to 300+fps
@rocky surge @atomic ferry

I wouldn't have guessed SpecialK "low latency" to be this worse than the normal one, in terms of framepacing, damn

[atomic ferry]

lowest latency is basically guaranteed to have worse pacing i think

[shell jasper]

Yeah, though to test latency, best would be to have these hw thing on the display too lol

[atomic ferry]

you always trade off a small amount of latency to get better pacing

[shell jasper]

It seems SpecialK normal + reflex is better than Display Commander (variants and peaks)
idk how SpecialK low latency reduce latency that much (compared to nvidia reflex)...

[atomic ferry]

yeah this

like thats superb

im not sure sk gets better than that

Green is normal Display command, teal is your latest build

way less and smaller outliers

[shell jasper]

That's SpecialK normal mode + reflex+boost at 180fps framecap (below reflex ofc)

[atomic ferry]

ok @rocky surge still has work to do

well

technically it has worse lows

[shell jasper]

a few big spikes are probably a "game skill issue", but yeah

[atomic ferry]

can you rerun that maybe

yeah

[shell jasper]

With RenoDX framelimiter added
(btw it's Display Commander 0.3.1, not nightly)

[atomic ferry]

try the one i used

[shell jasper]

ah...

[atomic ferry]

[shell jasper]

Ok that second run with SpecialK normal mode + reflex+boost is crazy lol (beside the unity game engine skill issue)
@atomic ferry

[atomic ferry]

trying SK rn without any reshade or reno

ah nice silksong crashed

god how i hate this tool

[shell jasper]

SK + Reno in HK:S works for me fine, in local inject
with the game in borderless first

[atomic ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-triggered-gif-26561244

[atomic ferry]

Ok so. SK Normal + Boost | Display commander latest test build both zoomed to the exact same millisecond window (6.52ms upper 6.22ms lower)

had to crop out the first 10 seconds on SK because it was stuttering which i never had on other limiters kek

[shell jasper]

SK by default will start with vrr optimized on a vrr display
need to force it to normal

[atomic ferry]

i have

[shell jasper]

looks worse than what I got, weird

You should just do both a 10sec capture with some delay, and restart the app so the window zoom is at "default"

[shell jasper]

You did something like this ?
Right click the framerate number and tick vrr bias basically
or well if "auto-vrr mode" is enabled (green box), should work, but idk, you wouldn't have SK normal framelimiter enabled... though reflex should replace normal anyway...

I got better framepacing on my end, with a 180fps cap 🤔

[atomic ferry]

in sk itself it looked very good but thats not what came out at the end iunno

[shell jasper]

you use the hotkey to capture, without changing window focus right ?

[atomic ferry]

yh

iunno in here looks super clean if you look at the "variation"

[shell jasper]

depends on what "graph measurement" you use

Looks like you don't have game mode enabled for that game, or you use a weird power plan, idk...

[shell jasper]

end-of-frame is not the default for reflex, it's start-of-frame
Also I would capture without SK window opened, it can stutter when you hover over stuff and move the cursor

[atomic ferry]

i dont have windows gamebar, thats why

wasnt open

and i chose end of frame because SK says it better

[shell jasper]

it's rarely worth it though, afaik
also in silksong lower latency is a good thing lol

[atomic ferry]

tried to make it as best case as possible for sk

[shell jasper]

yeah idk, feels like another framelimiter is running behind the scene and conflicting

[atomic ferry]

iunno cant be bother with sk anyways

[shell jasper]

Works on my machine ™
I literally never have issues with SK + reno lol
if it behaves weirdly, I do local and that's it

[atomic ferry]

happy for you

[shell jasper]

SK is not smart enough to use only one ? lol

So invictus is using reflex above (well, both running), while I am using "normal" because I set it below the reflex cap ? (180 on 240Hz)

[atomic ferry]

that makes sense

[shell jasper]

hmm, so reflex is basically useless when you use a framecap way below your refresh rate ?
Or it still reduce latency by doing smart thing in the game engine or smth

I see, interesting, thanks
though I am a bit skeptical 180fps with "normal mode" would have significantly more latency than 224fps reflex+boost
I mean a few ms at most...

[atomic ferry]

did cap it at 144 in sk to see if that makes any diff, reflex shouldnt interfere here i think?

165hz

reflex cap there is 157.4 or sumn

sk does 156.63 with the 0.5% offset

Or that, yeah

anyways gotta sleep

hope i was able to help somewhat

[shell jasper]

wow you're recording 60sec, that could be why it visually looks worse compared to my 10sec recording lol

Maybe a unity game is not the best thing to compare framelimiter lol, they all have "big" random spikes from the game it seems, even SK normal mode
Could be the engine garbage collector or a script or smth
Well a longer recording should smooth out the jankiness of the game/engine

[shell jasper]

low latency mode is different from reflex, right?
it's the thing in nvcp (also available by right clicking some stuff in SpecialK iirc)

[subtle mantle]

@keen lion what’s your current main objective? Just curious how far you are

[keen lion]

only have "Silk and Soul" wish

just grinding looking for stuff though

missing two fleas as well

just slapping walls until something opens up because i know where i need to go, but can't find a path

[shell jasper]

There's an NPC you can pay to get fleas locations btw
idk if it can show all of them though

[keen lion]

yeah, i have two left, can't get to them

just floating icons on a map. can't get a way to them

actually 1 left

[shell jasper]

I installed the teleport mod just to skip the runback to Last Judge boss lol

Though there's another way to get into the citadel

[keen lion]

running around looking for secret passages was fine, except now i bought everything from every shop so i'm just wasting time, nothing to grind

maybe i'll complete the bestiary

i just found a weak wall in the citadel but it was to enable getting an item, but i already got the item by cheesing (bouncing on spikes)

[subtle mantle]

Can you send a pic of your map? I’m curious

Cause I have a feeling a know what flea it is

[keen lion]

and i definitely did unintended strats for the citadel, probably sequence breaking

got important movement mechanics after already having faced the final boss

(i'm assuming for act 2)

[keen lion]

got it, lol, i think (edit: yeah)

[subtle mantle]

i assume you mean ||double jump?||

i dont think you have to sequence break for that

what requires it?

[keen lion]

||clocktower section, the final jump requires it or you have to have enough silk to LT twice||

er, wrong button

[subtle mantle]

||can you not just clawline for all of it?||

||also i never would have found that flea cause i had no idea that area even existed. I had to look it up lol||

[subtle mantle]

||oh you know what i just had 2 silk hearts at that point||

[keen lion]

|| section has two hooks you have to clawline, but you have to jump over the saws with double jump to clawline again, i did it with 4 clawlines, instead of 3+doublejump ||

[subtle mantle]

||you can just pogo the saws, no?||

[keen lion]

|| i don't think so, not those ||

legit i was doing it and i'm like. i'm missing a move, and i know what move i'm missing

[subtle mantle]

lol

for what i saw there were a ton of people beating the game without it cause everyone forgets that other area exists

[keen lion]

when you have no silk left, it's clear you're missing a move

[subtle mantle]

fair

i guess if you just have silk you wouldnt think twice

[keen lion]

well got all the fleas, let's see what i get

pretty sure i'm missing one memory locket as well

[subtle mantle]

i.. have no way to reply to that without spoiling i think

[keen lion]

just hoarding them hoping there will be another || crest||, because i don't like any of them

[subtle mantle]

i will not accept ||reaper ||slander

[atomic ferry]

Interesting

[atomic ferry]

is there a dedicated place for this topic? I feel like alot of the information here will get drowned over time

maybe make a thread in Lab or something?

or a forum post in mods like DLSS Fix

[regal yoke]

which strategy causes more severe VRR flicker?

[keen lion]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j76qWVIW_FQ

[left karma]

then you check out a real Ubisoft Metroidvania

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1413178370317095094/1418313407643259001/image0.jpg?ex=68ce538b&is=68cd020b&hm=b822d30efc9a93d6ef1ee4ec317a7b0b020999c77e18d6cf37eb3048d9f3a264&

[atomic ferry]

brooo this is so painful

because its so real

[keen lion]

git gud!

[atomic ferry]

hahaha

[keen lion]

need to finish the game now. youtube algorithm is just silksong spoilers now

[shell jasper]

I looked at a (good) interactive minimap, it's crazy the number of items on the map

[keen lion]

silksong release trailer has some act3 spoiler stuff, so might as well share similar things

these are 800/172 because can't be bothered to take real shots while playing

[atomic ferry]

oi i didnt watch the trailers