Fallout 4 and AO

With the depth buffer working in FO4 and it being a game that badly needs decent AO (is it me or does in-game SSAO do nothing at all) I experimented for the first time with Reshade AO.

I've found that Raymarch HBAO looks the best, but the performance impact is huge. Curiously, neither my CPU or GPUs are maxed but it still drops the frames.

Has anyone who is an expert with shader-based AO found a good compromise or settings for using it with Fallout 4? Including minimising AO in the fog (though that may be a matter or simply limiting the distance).

Check out the screenshot thread on the last couple of pages. I know one member tweaked the SSGI settings so it minimized the issue with fog and water. His preset I believe is loaded onto fallout 4 nexus as well.

ssgi is imo the best useable ao from framework that has the least amount of shimmering and bleed through (in game ssao bleeds , bethesda has never learned to make games check their lighting system) SSGI is a temp fix or if your on a nvidia gpu you can force hbao+ but the fps hit is huge and has pretty bad bleeding, so long term wait for enb to work past fallout 4 game bugs and his ssao to be put in game

Yeah I'm looking at those! Have to experiment.

There's also some 'tweak' mods of the game's default SSAO to improve it.

And as you said forcing Nvidia HBAO+ also works apparently, though with varying degrees of success.

Off to try SSGI!

What is the exact definition of SSGI and where do I enable it?

Forcing HBAO+ does NOT work. Period. Check out Guru3D HBAO Compatibility Flags thread. There are some flags that do work partially, but they always result in bleeding in fog and other problems. One of the ways to try to compensate for bleeding nto fog is using FogOut mod for Exterior from Nexus Mods because it pushes the fog much further away during shity weather and that improves upon HBAO bleeding.

What does work best for me are tweaked Fallout4.ini SAO/SSAO values. They improved the effect for me to a point where I could care less for better SSAO. Here are the values I found to be perfect and they come from one of the Nexus Mods:
fSAORadius=98.5
fSAOBias=0.06
fSAOIntensity=9.9
Be sure to use the latest ENB 0.284 Beta version with all effects enabled for the best performance.

What this game does need big-time are:
1. Much better water effects, like proper reflections, refractions, etc.
2. Proper Depth of Field.
3. Parallax!