Natural Mod PP Filter 31

Sorry for the update spam...

• In Sol 2.0 alpha 5 Peter added update_sol_custom_config__post() allowing me to boost ambient brightness without wrecking the clouds (something changed in Sol 2.0 meaning that my previous approach lead to blown out clouds at dusk/dawn).
• Also new in Sol 2.0 alpha 5, ambient__AO_visibility modifier to boost ambient
• In conjunction with it I've tweaked the cloud settings for better results at dusk/dawn, which will benefit users of this filter on some older versions of Sol too.

Previous changes:

• Changed approach to night time lighting, should yeild better results on floodlilt tracks (particularly those with poor CSP configs).
• Adjusted sky settings in preparation for sol 2.0, although I don't recommend using this version with the current Sol 2.0 alpha due to issues with clouds with my .lua, I will make a further update to make it work nicely
• White balance/colour temp, unlikely to be a noticeable difference
• Minor ambient bightness tweaks
• Set godrays depending on sol weather "badness", avoids casting godrays in some bad weather scenarios
• Reduced sun saturation so that things go less yellow when in direct sunlight

ignore

• ignore

• Morning/evening ambience:
  • With @Peter Boese 's help I've been able to boost the ambient light and sky brightness curve when using Sol, so that they dont drop off as fast with the sun angle, giving a feel much closer to what I see at say 6pm/8pm (before it looked like everything gets dark too early). I've omitted this from the photomode filter to ensure you can still get vivid high contrast photos
• Night racing optimisation
  • Enabled Sol's ppfilter__modify_glare after checking how it works and that everything still looks OK. Brake lights should be more visible at night now.
  • Used .lua to boost exposure and contrast slightly at night. Better visibility with headlights and better black level
  • Tweak glare parameters

Update only really relevant if you use in conjunction with Sol, can probably be ignored otherwise.

Screenshots taken with Natural_Mod filter and Sol Clear weather

Evening comparison - 19.28 2020-04-25 Barcelona
The intention here is to have more ambient light to better reflect what you see at these times of day (assuming you aren't wearing sunglasses)...
New

Old

You might think that the old one looks better in terms of contrast and colour, but that's why the photomode filter filter retains the default ambience:

Night comparison
New

Old

New

Old

Sorry for 3 "updates" in one day... simple things can be difficult sometimes... Thanks to @Andrew_WOT for prompting me to actually test the CM install process and discover that my .lua files weren't being installed due to how i packaged the files and wrote the instructions... The impact of this is mainly that if they werent being installed, the sky would be oversaturated and the white balance would be too warm.
Updated the instructions to reflect this... sorry again!

Tiny fix to prevent artefacts like this from occuring (relates to sunrays). No visual changes (Thanks Hornet for pointing it out).

Screenshots taken with Sol 1.5 weather

ignore

• Fixed brake lights (they were pink/poor previously). AC engine requires high saturation % for them to work properly, I've adjusted contrast and gamma to compensate, the end result should look about the same.
• Utilised some of Sol's neat .lua options.
• Adjusted godrays parameters to not be excessive when glare is set to maximum in AC graphics settings. It's not possible to set values that work well on all setups, so if you have problems, disable them in graphics settings or tweak the filter to your liking.
• Removed Natural_Mod_Sol, the same result (exposure boost) can be acheived through the sol_custom_configs .lua if needed.
• Removed Natural_Photomode_HC.
• Updated Natural_Photomode based on new base filter and some aspects of old Photomode_HC filter. Some filters were renamed, so you may need to manually delete old ones.

Screenshot taken with Sol weather

Changes:
Basically none, ignore unless you haven't tried this filter with Sol before

• Reorganise and update instructions for Content Manager/Shaders patch/Sol
• Added Natural_Mod_Sol: exactly the same as Natural_Mod but with autoexposure disabled (find it annoying and doesn't seem necessary) and static exposure set for Sol
• Minor tweaks to Natural Weather (for people not using Sol)

Reason for update:
I've been using the latest versions of Shaders Patch and Sol (both incredible, those guys are geniuses), as I just wanted to play and wrongly assumed I would need to keep tweaking my filter as CSP/Sol develop. After trying LA Canyons (also incredible) with Sol sunny weather with my filter in VR, the result felt more realistic/immersive, so I thought I'd make it easy for others to try this setup by reorganising the files and instructions.

Spoiler: Update Instructions

With Assetto Corsa closed:
Open JSGME/Content Manager, disable the previous versions of Natural Weather/Natural Oculus Rift Filter etc., then right click and delete them.
Follow normal install instructions

If you dont use JSGME/Content Manager, you should be able to work out what to do

Quick shots with Natural_Mod_Sol at 12:00

Spoiler: Weather Changes

Enabled Content Manager feature: Disable Shadows for Heavy Fog, Mid Clouds and Heavy Clouds

Light Clouds:
Number of Clouds increased, size, distance and speed adjusted
Ambient and sun brightness adjusted

Clear:
Ambient increased at early/late hours

Mid Clear:
Ambient increased at early/late hours
Cloud distance increased

Cloud textures
Removed one of the textures which had a distinct pattern that was immersion breaking

Photomode filters:
DOF adjustment

Oculus Rift Filter
Slightly reduced saturation

Light Fog
Colder ambient in morning/evening
Rebalanced lighting (and therefore fog to compensate), more believable now

Light Clouds
Overhauled lighting, particularly morning/evening hours, looks more distinct from mid clear now

Clear/Mid Clear
Dialed back sun power a tiny amount

Mid Clouds
Reworked ambient+sky+clouds with respect to heavy clouds

Heavy Clouds
Reworked ambient with respect to mid clouds
Fog distance reduced

Light Fog
8:00

13:00

Light Clouds
8:00

13:00

Mostly subtle tweaks to improve things that are maybe more noticeable in VR.
Also improved performance in cloudy weathers by reducing number of clouds (mid clouds had way more than it needed previously).

Natural_Mod/Natural_Photomode
Tweaked saturation, brightness, contrast and gamma

Natural Oculus Rift Filter
Tweaked saturation and brightness, disabled autoexposure, adjusted glare. Overall is closer to the normal monitor filter. It's brighter than before but I think it looks more realistic.

Clear/Mid Clear
More ambient light in middle hours
Adjust ambient at early/late hours
Adjust fog
Adjust clouds distance

Light Clouds
Adjust ambient at early/late hours
Adjust size/number/distance of clouds (A bit of a different look but seems more believable in VR at least)
Adjust fog

Mid Clouds
Small tweak to fog
Reduced Number of clouds and adjusted cloud distance

Heavy Clouds
Reduced Number of clouds
Adjusted cloud distance
Slightly more ambient

Heavy/Light Fog
Reworked to try and recover from an issue introduced in AC 1.8/1.9

Updated default weather backup

Probably final version unless anyone has any feedback.

Clear/Mid Clear

• Reworked sky and horizon in middle hours as they seem to have changed in AC 1.8. Looking really good in VR now
• Sun power at highest angle reduced slightly to reduce washing out of grass etc (sun is set to be slightly stronger in clear than mid clear)

Light Clouds

• Adjusted sky at early/late hours
• Reduced number of clouds

Accidentally included both old and new cloud file names in 3.5.4, removed old ones now.

Installation notes:
The name of the cloud textures changed in AC 1.7, suggested update procedure:

1. Disable and delete Ben Lee + WagnumPI Clouds and Natural Weather with JSGME
2. Delete any cloudxb.dds files from the root of SteamApps\common\assettocorsa\content\texture\clouds
3. Unzip the new version of the mod to the root of your AC install folder, run JSGME and activate Natural Weather and optionally Ben Lee + WagnumPI Clouds

If you do things manually, just make sure there are no cloudxb.dds files left over in the root of the above folder.

Minor update, primarily for oculus users (be it PP off or on, as there are tweaks to the oculus filter and to the weather that should be an improvement in VR vs v3.5.2)

3.5.4

• Updated cloud texture file names for AC 1.7
• Balanced the lighting in heavy clouds
• Default Weather backup updated
• All changes from 3.5.3. - see below

3.5.3 - didnt upload this one to RD but here is what changed since 3.5.2

For oculus users:

• PP-off exposure adjusted slightly in some weathers such that its better in rift
• Oculus ppfilter tweaked such that its less washed out in rift

For everyone:

• Some minor tweaks to clear, mid clear, mid clouds, heavy clouds

Filters:
Natural_Mod and Natural_Photomode:
Slight reduction in saturation (unfortunately brake lights get even more pale because of a bug in AC)
Slight adjustment to exposure/brightness (overall slightly brighter)

Rift:
Autoexposure disabled, need feedback on what makes for the best EXPOSURE value

Weather
Mid Clear:
Clouds greatly improved

Mid Clouds:
Brighter sky in middle hours

Cloud Textures:
Slight reorganisation

Filters:

• Forced to rename them because kunos stole my name and overwrote my filter! Please use Natural_Mod.ini
• Small performance improvement (3-4 fps)

Weather:

• Light Fog: Rebased on 1.5 files
• Mid Clouds: Brighter sky in middle hours
• Update default weather backup
• PP-Off support: increased exposure in clear and mid clear

Oculus users - make sure you reinstall the rift filter as this was overwritten by the update. V3.5 of the filter should give you a few extra fps too.

Screenshots of v3.5
Mid Clear


Mid Clouds


Clear


Light Fog


Light Clouds

Filters:
Tiny reduction to bloom on brake lights etc
Tiny increase to godray length
Weather:
13.30

Clear:
Sky/horizon in middle hours tweaked
Mid Clear:
Sky/horizon in middle hours tweaked
Reduced number of clouds
Light Clouds:
Cloud settings reworked and number reduced
Low Sun colour changed
Mid Clouds:
Clouds visibility reduced to blend more with sky

Cloud textures:
Updated the textures that were cleaned up by @WagnumPI - Note there are duplicates in the folder so that all kunos clouds will be overwritten when using JSGME to install

screenshots not updated yet

Filters:

• Small tweak to glare, some brake lights were a bit overdone with old values, godrays remain at same brightness as before
• Photomode filters now have shorter godrays as they look dumb in external cams. Long rays are only required for cockpit view to get the proper blinded by the sun look

Weather:
Clear/Mid Clear:

• Tweaked sun colour
• Fog colour reduced (more subtle)
• Brighter horizon in middle hours
• Horizon at low sun tweaked (clear and mid clear match now)

Mid Clear:

• Fog distance increased slightly

Light Clouds:

• Tweaked clouds, horizon and sky colour

Cloud textures:

• Added one additional texture

Haven't got time to update the relevant screenshots but here are some Photomode shots by @quakeguy

A few more Photomode screenshots from the beta version (identical except small tweak to sun colour since these were taken):

by @Tino66

and @quakeguy

3.2a:
Corrected zip file name
3.2:
Fitler (applies to all inis):
Reworked glare from scratch for the purpose of improving the blinding effect when driving into the sun. The changes might not be drastic but they allow for more flexible control over the godray effect by tweaking the following parameters without affecting anything else:
[GODRAYS]
LENGTH=(increase for longer rays)
GLARE_RATIO=(increase for brighter - use small increments)

This change is worthwhile as godrays effect is linked to FOV, and in previous versions adjusting these settings didnt have the desired effect, but now it is very easy to tweak to get it just right for your FOV.
As the oculus has high FOV, I have put longer rays in that filter which should hopefully give a good result

Weather:
Reduced reddishness in clear/mid clear early/late hours sun/horizon, should be much more realistic now. Mid clear has a warmer horizon vs clear.

Added option to buy me a beer by popular demand http://paypal.me/ears1991

A couple of quick screens:
Mid Clear 8.00:


Clear 8.30:

Fitler (applies to all inis):

Reworked glare from scratch for the purpose of improving the blinding effect when driving into the sun. The changes might not be drastic but they allow for more flexible control over the godray effect by tweaking the following parameters without affecting anything else:
[GODRAYS]
LENGTH=(increase for longer rays)
GLARE_RATIO=(increase for brighter - use small increments)

This change is worthwhile as godrays effect is linked to FOV, and in previous versions adjusting these settings didnt have the desired effect, but now it is very easy to tweak to get it just right for your FOV.
As the oculus has high FOV, I have put longer rays in that filter which should hopefully give a good result​

Weather:

Reduced reddishness in clear/mid clear early/late hours sun/horizon, should be much more realistic now. Mid clear has a warmer horizon vs clear.​

Added option to buy me a beer by popular demand http://paypal.me/ears1991

A couple of quick screens:
Mid Clear 8.00:


Clear 8.30: