Beef's Shader Based NVGs v1.1.1 addon - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

In chasing realism sometimes it makes things more complex in a game. The easiest answer is to get adjustable brightness for the scope reticles so they can have a day and a night mode ... it's on the 1.2 figure-out-how-to-do list anyway, perhaps triggered by turning on NVGs. Green lasers and sights from B&S also get washed out but red do not (as much) due to the YUV conversion that I use to pack the image data into a single channel in order to manipulate the lightmap and albedo in the other two color channels.

I've added fixing the binoculars to the todo list for 1.1, thanks for the heads up

As far as the long term nvg upgrades for bino stuff, its also a pretty good idea, but I have to keep 'scope creep' or whatever its called within check, so that I finish what's in front of me before adding too much to the todo list, but its not a bad idea. Thanks for sharing :)

In next update the shader scopes patch will keep your original scope_blur_inner value when you don't have nvgs, and disable it when you are using nvgs, then restore it afterwards.

Adding a sound to brightness adjustment is a good idea, I've added it to the v1.1 todo list

I also added fixing the binocular error to the 1.1 todo list.

I did this when shader scopes is enabled as my only real option with shader 2d scopes because there's some conflict with the two shaders that I can't easily resolve, so when you zoom in and shader scopes takes over it needs to switch to a single tube or the data packing gets displayed instead of the actual NVG image.

I've got some progress to make on differentiating between the shader 2d scopes and ironsights

I'll take a look at the alt sights

As far as bloodsuckers...damn

I'll see if I can do anything about this, but if not then I'm gonna chalk it up some explanation like 'their skin absorbs visible light and emits it in NIR band so that they can become invisible but if you're wearing NVGs then they show up better' or some **** and call it a feature not a bug ;)

No worries, in 1.2 after some of the other shader mods reduce the number of shader params they use, I'd like to add MCM sliders or options to adjust each NVG generation color settings so no editing of night_vision.h is necessary. However, even with data packing, it requires at least 2 more shader_params to be available to fit all the stuff I'd like so it won't be in the next patch just yet so that I don't hog up all the space.

If you made your own color setting that you like the look of, I'd love to hear what you ended up.

Take the 0 to 255 number that you choose in RGB scheme (say 155) and divide by 255. It'll give you a number between 0 and 1, and that's what shaders can take for inputs.

I have some ideas for later, but for now as some others noted above simple increase the washout threshold until your sights no longer washout.

Hmm I guess that's not unreasonable, as it somewhat splits the middle. Probably in 1.2 as I'd like to release 1.1 sometime sooner than later and I have a lot on the todo list still. Assuming it's fairly quick like a IsClassPistol(obj) sort of check yeah, and I may consider expanding it into an ADS all sights, ADS iron sights, ADS pistol only or something similar ...

It's planned for v1.2 to get a 'disable dof' setting into MCM ... just have to figure out how to pack more data into the same number of floats is all ...

In the meantime, if you're feeling experimental, you can decrease this value I've circled in pp_blur.ps.

Change it from
float scale = 0.3f;
to something like
float scale = 0.15f;
and it will decrease the total 'amount' of blur slightly.

Link to screencap: Imgur.com

I've minified the shader a bit just to be able to see the bigger picture when putting all the shaders together, but if you're curious about the original blur, it's an implementation of my `IGN + Vogel - Chaos` blur that you can see on Shadertoy (Link: Shadertoy.com). Pass 1 here takes Luma and Lightmap and adds a blurred depth buffer to the blue component of RGB image in order to provide a slight 'halo' around objects in second pass of DOF so it's not a sharp cutoff, and pass 2 is the actual 'blur'.

In the MCM options you can determine whether NVGs stay on while ADS or not.

That you can 'override' it is a good bug, I need another check there, thanks :)

Also, being able to select whether it stays on in iron sights / optics / etc is a further step that I'd like to take, but probably in 1.2 since I'm not yet sure how to differentiate between scopes / ironsights.

In general, aiming down sights with night vision is basically impossible IRL due to the limited depth of field that they present, and is why IR lasers are the norm for night operations. (Or actual weapon mounted night vision / thermal scopes). When B&S gives the ability to turn on/off lasers for weapons (Haruka already coded this) it'll be a lot more useful feature as well.

Thanks for the extra feedback, it could turn out helpful for next update :)

If you have a redefinition of `shader_param_8`, then there's some conflict with another shader. (The other warnings are all vanilla issues, but are warnings not errors)

Some of the possible solutions I've come across with others
- Make sure you disabled v0.9 completely
- Make sure you aren't using B&S NV scopes that rely on v0.9
- Make sure you aren't using the NVG patch from ES or Glossy SSR, since their included NVG patches are for v0.9.

Hmm, a fisheye optic is something I hadn't though about, not sure how it would look but it sounds kind of cool. I put it on the intriguing ideas list to look at after 1.1 is done. Also not sure how it would effectively be applied with dual or quad NVGs. Interesting idea nonetheless

Thanks, this is all helpful - I'm basing Gen 1/2/3 in-game off of gen 2/3/3+ IRL, if its worth something to you. An actual "gen 1" sort of device is basically worthless without IR illuminator.

I would like to incorporate autogating as well into the in-game gen2 and gen3 devices, but that will come later.

Hey, thanks for providing an image since it helps a lot trying to figure out what's going on.

Assuming you've got the "Shader Driven Scopes" compatibility enabled in the MCM menu, the issue is going to be that the radius isn't correct.

When you ADS with the NVGs enabled and Shader Scopes Compat clicked in MCM menu (and have the 'allowed to ADS with nvgs'), the NVG reads the same radius file that Shader Driven Scopes uses for its stuff, in order to match it. If the NVGs are showing up outside, then most likely either the radius isn't set right in file or the compatibility isn't checked.

A final possibility is that the callbacks weren't working right on some systems (which I fixed in v1.1.1) and this could be the source.

Let me know how it goes and what fixed it :)

FPS drops with NVGs enabled or disabled? And do you have Glossy SSR?

If FPS drops are regardless of NVG state, its because I messed up the math for Glossy SSR Patch in previous version when trying to disable SSR inside NVG radius (since it makes extra washout), and the FPS drops can be associated with the SSR.

Nothing substantial changed on the shader side, just adding a couple of floats that can be adjusted by console, and on LUA side there isn't any 'heavy' function running.

This is too vague to go on - do your FPS drops occur with NVGs turned on or turned off? There's nothing changed in shaders that could possibly take an additional 3ish milliseconds (the difference between 60 and 50 FPS, since you didn't indicate what the drop is to/from).

So if it does occur, it would have to be LUA related, and unless unregistering callbacks that are not in-use somehow negatively impacts performance, which seems not likely since it completely disables the script when NVGs are turned off, then I'm not so sure it's related to this mod, but instead to the hundreds of other settings that you can change in Anomaly

ZeD_MnizD "Fps drops" is about as helpful as stating "game crashes" or "computer running".

Without the detail I've asked you for this is a meaningless statement and the fact we're 3 messages deep without numbers is wasting my time.

Of course there is a cost to turning on NVGs - as an example I drop from 55 to 52 FPS in Cordon when turning on NVGs, but its the same cost as it was in 1.0.1 as it is in 1.1.1.

If you claim there is some difference in the performance of 1.0.1 and 1.1.1, then stick with 1.0.1 until you can provide better information.

The framerate you get without NVG turned on, and with NVG turned on please. If you can, the same values but for 1.0.1 as well, since you say there is a difference.

To understand why I need this - the NVG shader runs in ~1.05ms on my Nvidia 970m with DX11. There will always be some level of 'cost' with the additional visual effects. With a bunch of other visual mods, and most visual settings maxed is the difference between 55 and 52FPS, but if I have all the graphical settings lowered down, it is also the difference between 120 and 107FPS, because the NVG shader takes the same amount of time regardless.

But the performance difference seems larger when you are losing 13FPS at a high framerate vs losing 3 FPS at a low framerate. Without some kind of context I can't know if there's a problem or not that needs to be resolved.

For comparison's sake, in Reshade the PPFXBloom takes 1.7ms to run.