Beautify Your Games
with ReShade
1
Throw some shade
It’s important to note that we’re not running ReShade on any
kind of ludicrous hardware—our test machine here is a lowly
Core i5-4590 with an affordable bus-powered Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti
on board. Only the latter is really tested, given that ReShade is
mostly GPU-bound, but it’s going to mean you asking slightly
more of your hardware, and just how much extra processing it
demands depends on the particular shader you employ. That
said, you might actually be able to improve performance if you
switch out certain in-game rendering options for ReShade’s
more efficient post-processing shaders. Switch off antialiasing,
for instance, and instead pour on some FXAA after the fact, and
you may well discover an extra lick of speed.
>> Let’s begin by getting ReShade installed. It’s not a traditional
program, or even a traditional driver, and you don’t install it in the
same way. Instead, you need to individually apply ReShade to each
game you want to use it with. This makes sense: You might not
want to use the same collection of shaders on one game as you
do on another, and indeed you might not want ReShade layered
on every single game. It’s not difficult: Download the setup tool
from http://reshade.me and save it somewhere safe, as you need
to run it for each game you want to tweak. Run it, hit the button,
and find the game you want to tweak—by default, it opens the
“steamapps/common” folder on your boot drive, so dig into the
appropriate folder, and select the executable of the game.As PC users, we’re Pretty luCky. Virtually every game gives us options. We can customize
our control scheme, we can mess with config files, and we can adjust graphical performance,
often to the most minute degree. Try doing that on a console. But let’s face it: Sometimes those
options aren’t enough. We’ve invested in high-end graphics cards that can cost more than
a decent used car, so we should be able to abuse them in any way we see fit. That’s where
ReShade comes in. It’s a post-processing injector, meaning it sneaks its way in between your
game and your graphics card’s final render to screen, enabling you to add your own effects and
shaders to the eventual output.
Want to add depth of field to an older game? Sure, why not? Want to tweak the colors of a
dim game and brighten it up? You can do that while adding little to no performance overhead.
Want to use ray tracing in a game that wouldn’t otherwise support it? Even that is (sort of)
possible with Pascal Gilcher’s experimental global illumination shader, available through
http://www.patreon.com/mcflypg. The only thing ReShade can’t do is improve gaming graphics while
running on integrated hardware—you need to upgrade for that. –alex coxYou’ll need this
reshade
Download it from
http://reshade.me.a discreTe
graphics card
Virtually any card should work,
but you’ll get better results on
more modern hardware.2
Version opTions
Next, select whether your game uses Direct3D 9,
Direct3D 10+, or OpenGL—if you don’t know which
option to choose, check out ReShade’s compatibility
guide at http://reshade.me/compatibility. If your game
isn’t there, opt for D3D10+ and reinstall later if it’s
incorrect. ReShade can only work with games using
D3D9 or above, because it literally intercepts calls made
to the rendering API. If you’re trying to jazz up something
older (such as, for example, the earlier 3D GTA titles,
which use Direct3D 8), you need to grab the d3d8to9
wrapper from the tab at the top of http://reshade.me,
and drop it in the root folder of your game. Want to go
even earlier? Direct3D 7 and above aren’t supported,
but some games have had their own API upgrades in the
intervening years. If there’s a D3D11 version, use that.3
choices, choices
At this point, you’re offered the opportunity
to download a collection of standard effects
[image a]. These are, although sometimes a little behind
the curve in terms of their development, pretty decent,
and they cover a broad range, so we recommend clicking
“Yes” and downloading these to start—we’ll extend
ReShade’s abilities with a selection of more complex
shaders later. You’re given the option to select which
to install; while ReShade suggests picking as few as
possible, we encourage you to go crazy this first time,
and install all of them, because they can be enabled and
disabled at will. Once the ReShade window switches
to “Edit ReShade settings,” you’re ready to go: You can
launch your game as normal. You’ll know ReShade has
installed correctly if you see a new overlay appear along
the top of your game.4
Layer iT on
Hit Home on your keyboard, and ReShade pulls
mouse focus from your game, and automatically
starts a tutorial. Step through it until you click “Finish.”
You’re now ready to apply your first shader. But whichA©^
reshade.me56 MAXIMUMPC aug 2019 maximumpc.com
R&D