Marty McFly's Ambient Obscurance (MXAO) with IL
- Marty McFly
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Topic Author

The default settings are a good starting point, there's no "best practice" way of using it. I mostly set the radius to my desired result, then set the quality to as low as possible (don't look at debug, often AO looks bad in debug but just fine in normal game play) without having any flicker or ghosting, and then I adjust the intensity until I like it. In case I encounter any AO where it's not supposed to be (shadowing on low poly environment with a 175 degrees angle or so) I adjust the normal bias until it's gone. I wanted to create a video guide for a while now but i lack the motivation atm.
- Scorpio82CO
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- Marty McFly
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Topic Author

That's why usually, AO is drawn before all transparent objects.
- Scorpio82CO
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- Martigen
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Hey Marty,Marty McFly wrote: Ok so I had a look at SMAA. Yes, it indeed grabs the unlinearized, unflipped, un-whatever raw depth buffer. Raw sauce, no ketchup. As far as I see, there are 2 options, each with their own (dis)advantages:
...
www.mediafire.com/file/3tbsjt3jcazy13b/SMAAFixedDepth.7z
Sorry last post on this -- given this thread here: reshade.me/forum/shader-discussion/4298-...fix-this-thing#27967
And that your changes appear to be good, do you want to push to github to replace the current SMAA?
- Darius_bd
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Hi Marty! I have a problem and I'm hoping you could shed some light on it. I'm playing ETS2 and I'm trying to enable the MXAO but it does nothing. In the debugging options I set to only see the AO/IL but I just see a white screen (similar with culling faces, it's just black). I think I'm doing something really dumb because other ppl say that MXAO works fine with their Eurotruck Simulator 2 without saying that they did much...
I installed the latest ReShade (installed for the DX9 version of ETS2) and downloaded MXAO via the installation.
Thanks beforehand!
- TheBlueOne
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- Darius_bd
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Darius_bd wrote: .
Hi Marty! I have a problem and I'm hoping you could shed some light on it. I'm playing ETS2 and I'm trying to enable the MXAO but it does nothing. In the debugging options I set to only see the AO/IL but I just see a white screen (similar with culling faces, it's just black). I think I'm doing something really dumb because other ppl say that MXAO works fine with their Eurotruck Simulator 2 without saying that they did much...
I installed the latest ReShade (installed for the DX9 version of ETS2) and downloaded MXAO via the installation.
Thanks beforehand!
Ha, I found the problem. One has to set the scaling in the graphical settings of the game to 100%. And at least on my case, it still works with MLAA turned on. I leave it for reference for other people.
- Riadon
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- Marty McFly
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Topic Author
MXAO samples in a specific pattern and the denoiser is tuned for that, but raytracing must sample purely random which needs a different denoising. The required blur is very wide and I don't want it to kill off all detail, haven't come up with a good solution yet. It's very gimmick'y anyways. While working on that, I found a good improvement for the regular MXAO blur which is now much more calm and flicker free.
- RobinNyan
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- Shady
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Screenshot: [url] ibb.co/i31Erd [/url]
- Uncle Crassius
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Shady wrote: Want to use MXAO in GTA V with Reshade 3 but get some stripes on the ground and walls. I set reversed and logaritmic in Reshade settings. Does anyone have some working reshade settings for MXAO in GTA V? Is DX11 the problem?
Screenshot: [url] ibb.co/i31Erd [/url]
Have you tried disabling logarithmic? In pretty much every game with a supposed logarithmic shader I get really ugly stripes so I go without and it looks great.
- Shady
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A bunch of people who use ReShade in The Sims 4 are reporting that MXAO decreases in strength, almost to the point of disappearing, when they enter the freecam mode (and returns to normal when they exit it). I can't replicate this problem, and I don't know enough about how it all works to understand what might be causing it. It almost looks like a scaling problem, like when effects don't scale with resolution and so become smaller and tighter iyswim, but it's only affecting some people, and there's no resolution change between gameplay mode and freecam mode.
Is this something you've come across before in any other game? What might I suggest to help them troubleshoot the problem?
Thanks

Edit: a thread about the problem is here . If you scroll down to the notes you'll see other people adding their own information about the issue.
- Uncle Crassius
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Two people I'm troubleshooting with said there was a difference in behaviour between fullscreen and fullscreen windowed, but they had opposite experiences: one said freecam worked fine in windowed, the other said it worked fine in fullscreen... I have no idea what's going on there. I play in windowed and have never had a problem.
- Zantiag0
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But on some games it doesn't work, like on Mafia II or in PCSX2 emulator (i tried Spy vs Spy game, I think it will look amazing with MXAO). Why? It just doesn't works, and on the debug options, one option gives me a white screen and another option gives me a black screen. I have readed and I think is because the depth buffer or something like that. Is there any fix for play on these games? (and more that I want try, like Bully: Scholarship Edition)
And thanks so much to Marty for make this awesome effect (I don't know how to call it), I have a video of Breath of the Wild with MXAO and some others effects like Bloom or ambient lighting.
- Shady
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- v00d00m4n
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Please, stop dumbing down this shader, return what was removed back to official repository.