Elite Dangerous Setup Guide - Lets make it Dark Again :)

Pimax 8K Series
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Dark space and saturated colors here, please copy pastebin to : GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml
( c:\Users\yourname\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\ )

setup contains also , Sky Blue HUD, 4k planet textures, more visible nebulas , more bright milky way…etc

Important : please play on HIGH BRIGHTNESS IN PiTOOL and lower gamma in game , that help with colors.
Tested on 5k plus only !!

next: if you didn’t found yet good settings for your 1080 ti OC ( or RTX) , 8700k proc. you might try this setup:

7GVjwYS.jpg3840×2160 635 KB

It’s very heavy but also very sharp & still playable
around ~75 fps in space and 45~50 in heavy scenarios like planetary bases , inside coriolis and so on.

Edit 1: in this setup disabling Ambiet Occlusion in game options give me 84~85 fps in space and 60~70 fps at res and in heavy scenarios…

Edit 2 : Jackpot Guys ! Really recommending 3Dmigoto shader fix , not only make your stations & planets better by removing non VR friendly 3.3 haze https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/470722-Graphics-Mod-to-Remove-Haze

But there is additional performance benefit , like 10~15 fps more, now I have stable 90 fps at space even with high shadows ! , my non shadows setup pasted above was just wrong, ED looks munch better with high shadows, of course in more heavy scenarios 65~75 fps - still no miracles here.

1080TI/2080 TI players please paste your fps results below my post.

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Glad you found a setting that is working for you, I remember you were rather critical of the blacks for ED in the past.

So this is for the time the tone mapping feature of EDProfiler is not fixed(?).
I assume with the EDProfiler and your XML copied in the HUD color changes can be reset, also the texture sizes and such?

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Yes , tone mapping in ED Profiler is still not fixed and no one know if this feature come back, that is why we are digging in graphics configuration file… Space is definitly more dark now , I hope someone confirme that :slight_smile:
Inside stations there is still “haze” but personaly I dont care and dont want touch shadders…

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I wish Frontier implemented support for non-parallel projections on Elite Dangerous, but they have reduced their commitment to VR to the bare minimum, so I wouldn’t hold my breath on it. That would boost performance on Pimax.

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If you dont want blue hud and 4k textures and other changes copy only 1~51 lines to your gfx override file

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I refuse to go back to 95 PiTool due to the water effect. Ergo, I don’t have brightness control. Has it been fixed?

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I see so called water effect only in first 3 seconds when jumping to game and when frame rates stabilize it’s gone…

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I saw them after also, mainly when the system was being stressed, and I have an 8700K with 2080Ti!!

I may try going back

But still Pimax need to fix it asap

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EDIT : in this setup disabling Ambiet Occlusion in game options gives me 84~85 fps in space and 60~70 fps at res and other heavy scenarios…

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Do consider giving 12288 size textures for the skybox and planets a try, by the way. :7

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Will try , any impact for fps ?

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I haven’t measured, but haven’t directly noticed any (no Pimax yet, mind – currently both on a Rift, and leaning a bit on ATW (not ASW), in order to have 2.0 HMDQ).

As long as one have enough VRAM (hi, 1080Ti :)), rendering as such, and texture streaming, should suffer no impact, but hyperspace jumps will take a little longer, with the extra work on generating the galaxy background, and depending on one’s gpu allocation and work per frame settings, one could very likely see either a framerate reduction, or more LOD popping on patches of ground on planets.

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Sounds just like an engineer - giving you effectively -15% on FSD boot time (in this case spent during the jump instead of prior to the jump)…

So does a planet surface look better then during the approach/descent ? With the general sky appearance I am not sure it would make such a difference, the odd nebula looking a bit sharper doesn’t really matter because as a nebula it is sort of hazy by nature…

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I will do more ED fps test on my Asus gtx 1080ti strix (my max OC 2075) and compare to Asus RTX 2080 TI Strix (OC 2150 based review) , yesterday I ordered RTX and should be in my place on Monday :slight_smile:

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Edit 2 : Jackpot Guys ! Really recommending 3Dmigoto shader fix , not only make your station & planets better by removing non VR friendly in 3.3 haze https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/470722-Graphics-Mod-to-Remove-Haze

But there is additional performance benefit , like 10~15 fps more in Pimax, now I have stable 90 fps with my very high res. in space even with high shadows ! . My previous no shadows setup pasted above was just wrong, ED looks munch better with high shadows , ofcourse in heavy scenarios 65~70 fps , still no miracles here.

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Nice! :)=

Heheh. :smiley:

The skybox is immediately apparent, actually, with the milky way becoming a lot more “eventful”, and less rough-watercolour-like, and the stars losing a little bit of their “cotton ball” appearance. You may notice it less on the Magellanic clouds, and Andromeda, and such, but… :7

One can have many millions of the smoke puffs that make up the galaxy without slowdown, by the way, if one make them small enough. Alas, if they’re not big enough to overlap and blend, the galaxy quickly takes on a “mottled”, broken-up, appearance, without any interesting “stranding” of features – Yata_PL’s values are every bit as visually pleasing as most of the heavier workload ones I for one was experimenting with. :7

As for the planets: I’m not quite sure… I got the impression things did look a bit less: “am I losing my eyesight?”-ily fuzzy, when descending, the other night, but that could very well just be wishful thinking, and all the landable bodies in the systems I was in, were rather small, which may or may not have an effect on how the texture patches get stretched out - dunno. :7

EDIT3: Just played for another hour or so, and… This may depend on the particular planets I was checking out, but I get the impression that their (EDIT4: …global layer…) texturing does indeed have much more going on; But it is of course still wallpapered onto geometry that is a rather sparse LOD level of heightmaps. What I remain curious about, is whether, if one could kick said LOD level up a step or two, the planetary generation shaders, with their current settings, would produce sharper and more defined large scale topology - increasing the density for that geology level, which would be desireable, or only “modulate” those large scale rounded hills with lower magnitude, local scale features (EDIT4: which would just be a higher frequency “noise” on top on the still low frequency detail, without defining it any better)…

Absolutely agree! Shadows is one thing I will not compromise on. :7

EDIT: I wonder, by the way, whether somebody really talented could use that Migoto3D tool, and make variable-rate-shading enabled versions of any shaders of FDev’s that would benefit from it… :7

EDIT2: Oh - and another by-the-way: Are we running ED through SteamVR, or can it go the Oculus Runtime way, without piping back through SteamVR like ReVive, which I assume Pimax’s solution is derived from? Asking because something somebody said in another thread, made it kind of sound like it could possibly be current SteamVR that caps Pimax’s horizontal rendertarget resolution at 4k, rather than just Pimax having picked those values.

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Hmmm… another hobby of mine :wink:

yuqGziswRUd__1824x0_wmhqkGbg
yuqGziswRUd__1824x0_wmhqkGbg1824×1242 1.78 MB

Sorry for OT.

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Is this a screenshot and not indicative of how the blacks and colors look on the 5k+?

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I assume you made a joke but if you didn’t: this is no screenshot, this is real life, a photo I took on my balcony :wink:

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What? Haha!! I thought this was from ED! That’s funny. You can take a photo from your balcony with that much detail? Wow