MXAO applied after fog, not before

Original image:

MXAO applied (which cuts right through the fog, resulting in a strange effect):

Can this be avoided in any way?

Unfortunately not. As MXAO is an injected postprocess effect it will always be rendered on top of the game. Only way to alleviate it is to tweak fade distance or weaken it overall, but you guessed it, that's a tradeoff. Only other idea is to look if there might be a no fog mod for that game or even tweak the settings yourself if that's possible.

Yup, exactly as I would have thought. Would be awesome to directly visualize and edit the render pipeline one day... There is also that sample radius which dramatically changes, almost reverts in places, the effect. With a higher sample radius, the issue is much less an issue lol. But at the expense of realism.I don't understand it too well, but it seems the lower the sample radius, the higher the quality (0.5 is the lowest).