Does This Look Normal?

[BluHaze]

I've actually never played through Oblivion before, and after about 4 levels I've decided to try out some enhancements.

 

I'm still in the process of prettying up the game, and I've been hearing great things about the Screen Space Ambient Occlusion effects, and decided to give them a try. So far I love the depth that it gives to buildings and static objects like fences. However I'm not sure it's looking quite right on anything that has many small protrusions, like trees bushes and grass. Here's some screenshots so you can see what I'm talking about.

 

SSAO Off:

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae68/Blu_Haze/th_SSAO_Off.jpg

 

SSAO On: (using the ssao_test.fx shader)

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae68/Blu_Haze/th_SSAO.jpg

 

SSAO Alternate On: (using the ssao_perf.fx shader)

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae68/Blu_Haze/th_SSAO_Perf.jpg

 

It seems to me that the effect is overall much too harsh on objects like plantlife, and it's creating large blocky black areas in between the leaves, and around the blades of grass. Especially when using the ssao_perf.fx. If this is normal then just tell me I'm crazy, but if it's not then I'd be happy to give you a list of everything I'm currently running, and what settings I'm using.

 

Also, I found this newer update to the ssao_perf.fx, which claims to give the effect of ssao_test.fx, but at the speed of the old ssao_perf.fx. Sounds great, but it doesn't seem to work well for me. At my normal settings it makes the entire screen massively dark, and if I crank the brightness up then I can barely tell there's any SSAO effect at all.

 

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30441

 

He also mentions a new OBGE v3 there, but I've not been able to find even a hint of this anywhere, if it's true at all.

 

Updated SSAO_Perf.fx:

 

http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/ae68/Blu_Haze/th_SSAO_Perf_New.jpg