C13 AEGIS Post Processing Filter 1.89 lite

Introducing C13 AEGIS Lite - with version 1.89, you get the full suite of best in class visual options, from tone mapping, and profiles, to the custom C13 Fog. Pure Gamma visuals don't get better than this, and now it's available to everyone. I hope you enjoy this, and don't hesitate to report any issues or difficulties.

Some highlighted changes since 1.65:
- Major improvements to auto exposure, eliminating night time overbright on bright cars
- Overhaul of world lighting for peak realism
- Custom fog implementation that isn't superseded by anything within Pure Gamma.

Pure 0.250 brought a nasty surprise that broke C13 Aegis in a very unique and weird way (kinda my fault for exceeding expected script complexity and being kinda lazy with function naming). Thankfully the fix was simple, massive thanks to Peter Boese who was instrumental in the quick diagnosing and fixing of the issue. If you're running Pure 0.250 you'll need this.

Forgot to re-invert a light setting, difference most ovious at dusk/dawn on non bounced light enabled tracks. Minor, but i'd prefer to not wait with this till the next update.

The moment has arrived! After a lot of work, the filter is in a great place for wider public release. What started as minor tweaking post 1.44, eventually evolved into a substantial rework of the color setup behind the tonemapping, additional support for new pure ambient lighting, implementing new glare presets, a dashcam mode, and was finally capped off with some interface cleanup.

Simplified calibration
In an effort to keep the PP tab of pure config simple and intuitive, i've removed AE limits sliders, and reworked the midpoint brightness sliders from the past few test versions. You now have a single calibration adjustment that covers all scenarios and you can set and forget.

This is joined by a vibrance adjust slider, which has replaced the "High sat mode" toggle. It's adjusting color vibrance at the saturation portion of tonemapping, which is more intuitive and granular than saturation.

New user adjustments
The user adjustments section has also seen changes, now including "Power of the sun" and "Filmic grading". You're familiar with the former, but the latter is new. "Filmic grading" provides some milky blacks in high exposure scenarios, giving that, yes, filmic look.

New glare profiles
If you've last use 1.44, this is completely new. I've implemented a way to modify glare styles on the fly, and you can select from some presets here.

C13 AEGIS Spec

GT

Gentle

Lens Flare

Le Mans

New tonemapping and other options
It's time we bid fare-well to Drago. Most feedback from users for drago was it's usability for better low end visibility. So Drago is replaced with a flatter contrast C13 Curve.

Filmic Curve

Flat Curve

The flat curve provides much better cockpit visibility at day, and has has a minor vibrance adjustment to prevent colors from washing out.

The last new thing is Dashcam mode. This enables a distortion effect and forces certain options on, to give the feeling of a low res, limited dynamic range camera effect.

It's a toy, have fun with it.

That's it for now. Some notes on compatibility.
I strongly suggest using CSP 0.2.1 or newer and Pure 0.238

As always a massive thanks to my community members and Patrons for the support, i couldn't do this without it.

Simple adjustment to tone down the extreme sun blinding present with 1.44 on Pure 0.222
This does not include any other changes present in the currently Patreon only version 1.49, such as the new dynamic glare, reworked tone-mapping and improved colorspace work. That will be coming to a free release sometime 1.5X.

Well, well, well. We're here ladies and gentlemen, public 1.44! The best Assetto Corsa Post processing filter is now free. There has been a myriad of changes since 1.32, but let's focus on the main ones.

• New tonemapping colorspace transform
  ACES was introducing quite a bit of hue shift beyond the intended scope, so i created a custom transform that really focuses mainly on the hue shift of high brightness reds.
• New saturation<>lbrightness pass in the tonemapping
  Tonemapping has a secondary pass, that uses a HSV transform to use brightness as input to calculate a saturation delta for a given luminance. This system attempts to mimic the human eye's response to light stimuli, whereby certain receptor cells respond better in lowlight condition, leading to better black and white vision, and the reduction of perceived saturation.
• Improved saturation control
  Other changes neccesitated a reconfiguration of the saturation modulation subsystem. With more focus on AE, saturation is now more stable and appropriate for the weather conditions than ever.
• Improved AE weighing for night time.
  Nighttime AE is a difficult beast to get right. AC lights have a tendency to blow out bright elements, but at the same time nights in AC with Pure can be oppressively dark. Tweaks have been made, and additional weights introduced to leverage Yebis AE to counteract overbright in mild dark contitions, with additional brightness gained for very VERY dark scenarions. Coupled with a tweak to CSP lights at Pure level, night time driving should now be much easier. Still very dark, but not in an unusable sort of way.

There are many more tweaks, and it all ends up to the best visual experience you can have today in Assetto Corsa.

When I first endeavored to write my custom tonemapping functions after CSP 0.1.80preview200+ made that possible, I was obviously out of my depth. The great thing about code is the freedom to experiment. As you may have noticed, C13 Aegis doesn't look quite like other filters. That's due to two things:

• A fully custom tonemapping function (math yay)
• Using the ACES colorspace as the intermediary within which the tone mapping is being done

My math makes it possible for me to live modulate the mapping curve in the way I need to, to maintain the intended visuals. And the ACES colorspace made it possible to blow out taillights towards orange rather than white. And that's a look i like a lot.
But there's always a but.
Apparently this is a known thing, but the aces space shifts yellows quite a bit. This is mostly due to the aim of the space being a consistent, rather than accurate, color reproduction across different display devices. Here's a sample of the degree of difference:

The ACES and C13 shots are made with identical settings, with the exception of the color space used for the mapping curve application.

But maintaining color is easy, one simply needs to not over-compress during the transform. Now we must recreate the orange blowout. Analysis of the ACES matrix reveals that reds are compressed towards greens, and indeed, applying a similar compression, results in the desired look almost immediately. Some fine tuning later to neutralize the grays, and here we are.

Agressively dependable yellows even at high brightness:

Available for testing for C13 Atomotive Tier 2 patrons on https://www.patreon.com/C13Automotive
Once no further tweaks are found to be required, a public release will follow on all my usual channels.

Stay tuned and thank you.

As some of you may know, you can now support my work on patreon @ https://www.patreon.com/C13Automotive
Supporters get access to the nitty gritty behind the scenes details and regular intermittent updates with all the experimental goodies you'd expect with a filter as advanced as C13 AEGIS. That said i intend to keep my promise to always keep my work public and when a stable version is found it will be available to all, no strings attached! So without further ado: the C13 AEGIS 1.32 upate is here!

NOTE: THIS IS RECOMMENDED TO BE USED WITH CSP 0.1.80-preview218 OR NEWER! REQUIRES PURE 0.190 OR NEWER!

Changelog since 1.0:

• implemented the first ever fully custom developed tonemapping in AC.
• many exposure improvements to prevent both overly dark and overly bright scenes,
• a massive overhaul of the world lighting system - many thanks to SLXCK for sharing tips and knowledge of faking volumetrics in AC,
• an ae based glare fix for more consistent glare across the AE range - many thanks to cinarbenli for pointing out both the issue and the solution,
• introduced colour presets inspired by C13 color god,
• implemented sky modulation to better enhance the feel of weather and atmosphere,
• removed filmic mode toggle,
• other minor fixes and improvements

to use the colour presets, simply go to the PP tab in pure config and select one

I hope you enjoy this update, thank you for all the support!
If you find any issue, do not hesitate to report them, eithere here, or on Discord.

there will be no updates to address the recently released pure update, as the filter is fully compatible with the new version.

Eventually an update will be released that will add new functionality that Pure 0.180 enables, but 1.0 is 100% ready for Pure 0.180.

Thank you.

As some of you may know, CSP 0.1.80 will be bringing with it more tone mapping options, but perhaps more importantly, the ability to implement one's own custom tone mapping. Needless to say, the custom option is already being developed.

The main benefits of a custom implementation are finer control of the curve, and conceptual fitting to the aesthetic I am after. One of the issues of basic AC tone mapping was the intensity of highlight desaturation, which i've managed to successfully mitigate with my own function.

Before:

New:

Initial set up is done, tweaking will likely take a while, mostly since I'd like to maintain 0.1.79 compatibility, which means i need to work around the code written already (the filter script has ballooned to nearly 1000 lines at this point). Some refactoring will be necessary, but that shouldn't affect functionality. If you're keen to try the latest and shiniest features, the beta releases are available to filter tester patrons. So if you're interested in helping out, and would like to bug hunt buggy unfinished filters, head to the C13 Automotive Patreon and sign up.