Graphical Eye Candy

[Thalassicus]

I haven't seen this information mentioned in the various wikis and articles I've read about Oblivion's graphics over the years, and I'm not really sure where to put it so people can find it. Any thoughts on where it could go? If it's already located somewhere in an obvious place I overlooked, please point the way. It's more along the lines of general graphics card usage.

 

For those who are unaware, on many graphics cards it's actually possible to use both high dynamic range lighting (HDR) and anti-aliasing (AA) in Oblivion at the same time, plus anisotropic filtering (AF).

 

Most graphics cards also have tools for adjusting your display for the lighting in the room where you're using your computer, which applies to anyone and uses the same tools, so I'll discuss it first.

 

 

http://www.normankoren.com/monitor_test_txt22.png

Picture 1

It helps a lot with visual quality (and doesn't hurt your FPS at all!) if you customize your monitor for the level of ambient light in your viewing environment. Brightness and contrast will be discussed below. Equally important as these two, if you have calibrated gamma, Picture 1 should appear a neutral, blank gray from a distance of several feet. Any noticeable vertical waves of brightness or other irregularities in the image show a need for gamma correction, or poor monitor performance.

 

Note that viewing angle makes a big difference on LCD monitors. With these calibration images, ensure the image is centered on your screen and you're looking directly at it, not at an angle.

 

NVidia's and AMD's graphics cards generally come with a software control center. For example, on my Radeon 5700-series card, AMD (who bought ATI a few years ago) provides the Catalyst Control Center (CCC). On my previous geforce 6800 there was an NVidia control panel. You just need to figure out where these controls are on your particular system -- and certain features like Profiles might not always be available, even if video card display settings can be changed. Google searches can likely find alternatives if your video card doesn't supply the profile software itself.

 

In the particular example of AMD's control center, the image correction tools are under the menu Graphics -> Desktop Properties -> Color.

• Contrast controls where the monitor reaches a full white value.
  
• Brightness controls where the monitor reaches full black.
  
• Gamma controls mid-range tones.
  

1. Set your contrast value as high as possible without causing bright areas to white out. I simply used my desktop image (artwork located here) for this purpose. When the bright area of the sky in the upper area of the painting had just started blanking out to pure white and bleeding over into neighboring regions, I stopped increasing contrast and lowered it slightly.
   
2. Using Picture 2 below, adjust your brightness value until the "Black A" bar is just barely visible at the 2.2 level. More details on using this chart can be found here.
   

   
   Picture 2

   
   

3. Adjust your gamma value. The area of the Picture 2 gamma chart on the left where the outer and the inner vertical bands seem to have the same gray level moves up or down when changing the actual gamma. Keep changing the gamma until the center of this neutral area is at the 2.2 mark, the value used for the vast majority of color systems today. On my monitor, no area was perfectly grey (probably since the monitor is about 4 years old), but I got it as close as possible. Alternatively, you can use Picture 1 above until it appears neutral grey, which I actually found easier. Many more details on gamma correction can be found at this link.
   
4. Save your settings. If you have AMD's control center, click Apply.
   
5. Create a profile for this viewing condition. If you have the CCC, click on Options -> Profiles -> Profiles Manager. This is where you can create video card profiles on many Radeon cards. I named a profile "Desk Lamp" and checked it to only use settings from "Desktop Properties: Color".
   
6. The viewability of an LCD screen changes significantly depending on lighting conditions - The back-lit glow of a cell phone is extremely bright in a dark room, for example, but can barely be seen in full sunlight. Therefore, repeat steps 1-5 to create a profile for each lighting situation you might view your computer in. For example, in addition to the nighttime "Desk Lamp" profile, I created a daytime "Blinds" profile for average days with the window blinds slightly open, "Bright" for clear days in the afternoon with blinds fully open (room's on the afternoon side of the apartment complex), and "Dark" for no desk lamp or sunlight at all, perfect for watching movies with the curtains closed.
   

Whenever your room's lighting significantly changes (small differences don't matter), activate the profile for that lighting condition. With the CCC, if you enable the option to show it in the windows system tray, you can right click the icon -> Activate Profile.

 

 

(Click the screenshot to see the effects properly at full size)

Now, on to Anti-Aliasing, High Dynamic Range Lighting, and Anisotropic Filtering.

• AA smooths out rough, pixelated edges in an image by running calculations on nearby pixels.
  
• HDR simulates the natural effects of the human eye, adapting to localized brightness conditions in different areas of a scene, and causing very bright areas or light sources to have a soft glow around them.
  
• AF makes textures dramatically sharper when viewed at a steep angle, such as at a distance or around a corner (note the green wall and distant cobblestone textures in the screenshot above). AF cannot be enabled with the standard Oblivion video settings; perhaps the consoles the game was designed for didn't have it.
  

This guide is primarily if your computer's performance is good and you'd like to use these eye candies. Even if your computer can't handle these in Oblivion, however, this method applies to any game. I used this same process to enable antialiasing in Warcraft 3, for example, which is a rather old game and doesn't normally have that feature.

 

Oblivion doesn't have any inherent issues with running all at once, other than the normal framerate shifts associated with any changes in video quality. For my Radeon 5700 / Intel i7-920 computer, since the hardware bottleneck is memory speed rather than processing power, barely any fps is lost with all three enabled and maxed out graphics settings (average 30-60 fps outdoors, depending on the quantity of lights, grass, and NPCs onscreen). On my old Geforce 6800 system it'd likely make Oblivion unplayable, however, so mileage will vary. It's also vital to follow the tips on the Oblivion Performance Project website - StreamLine and lower-poly, less dense grass are two things in particular that can have a big performance boost on any system. The various tools and tips on that site doubled my low-end fps.

1. Regardless of the video card or software program you're using to create graphics profiles, first you generally want to create a default profile with "use application defaults" for most/all settings. (In the CCC, settings of interest are under -> Graphics menu -> 3D.) Make sure to apply the settings (In CCC, Apply button).
   
2. Save this profile, and instruct it to save all settings but not Desktop Color (which applies to your monitor calibration profiles, above).
   
3. Then, change default 3D settings you want to override for a game, turning off "use application" for those settings.
   
4. Create a new profile with these settings, and instruct the profile to run "C:\Games\Oblivion\obse_loader.exe", or wherever you have obse installed (CCC Profile manager -> Applications tab). I also generally create a shortcut to the profile, rename the shortcut + give it the icon of the game, pin it to the windows taskbar and use it to launch the game. (CCC Profile manager -> Activation tab).
   
5. Save the profile, and tell it to save only the 3D settings.
   

For Oblivion, I created a profile with 8xAA and 16xAF. Then in the Oblivion launcher, I set AA to none and HDR to enabled.

 

When the CCC profile shortcut is activated, it loads the profile's AA/AF settings and runs OBSE. Once Oblivion loads up, the video card is automatically reinterpreting its graphics processing to use AA/AF, in addition to the HDR setting Oblivion told the card to use. If I want to play another game without these settings, I activate the previously-created Default profile.

 

If you want to use the shortcuts in Bash or OBMM to run the game instead, you can leave out the run-obse part of the profile. Just activate the profile, and wherever you run Oblivion from, the settings will be used (or any other game for that matter -- while a profile like this is active, it overrides all applications that process their graphics through the video card). When you wish to disable the settings, reactivate the Default profile.

[bben46]

Looks like good info.

You could post this under articles.

[Jenrai]

I was actually playing with these the other day on my system (Athlon quad, 8gb RAM, twin MSI Nvidia chipset 1gb cards, SLI linked) as a result of playing around with the HDR/Bloom/AA in the Oblivion settings naffing up on screen writing whilst in the game (its all blurry, even the shop signs are illegible. Books however are unaffected so I wrongly thought a mod had done it) and realised I could use the Nvidia control panel to enable AA & HDR at the same time, which seemed to overwrite the game preference settings telling me only one was available at a time. It didn't even register that I could probably enable AS too though, so I'll check that out when I get home.

Kudos for you and thanks for this. :)

 

Jenrai

PS - playing around did fix the writing, so it certainly wasn't a mod.

PPS- MSI are a third party provider. Their cards generally aren't quite as hot as Nvidia's own, however, for the price difference, they're great if you're working to a budget.

***Edit*** Will give the Kudos later (if I remember). Unfortunately, work's ninja-blocker stops it. /sadface

[Thalassicus]

Looks like good info.

You could post this under articles.

 

Thank you. I added a section on monitor calibration as well, since it's done with the same video card profiles. I can't move it to the Articles forum myself, though, new threads can't be started there.