will it be? Realistically, that’s up to you. The default pack includes
a number of shaders that aren’t of much practical use, although
they’re rather artistic, but there are a few that can produce some
impressive effects. Take your pick; flick one on by checking its
box, and you should see the effect immediately. If it’s not strong
enough, start playing with the sliders in the lower part of the
ReShade interface; you can always revert to the original settings
by clicking the button at the top. Hit Home to give focus back to
your game, and close the ReShade menu.
>> ReShade’s filters work top-down, in layers. If you enable
more than one, you may wish to sensibly reorder them by
dragging them in the list. Obviously, the specific order depends
on the specific filters you’re using, but in general you’ll want to
put ambient occlusion filters first, sharpening next, antialiasing
third, and any color tweaks last on the list. That’s the logical
order, at least, but it’s going to be a process of experimentation
to find the one that works best for your game.BC D5
FighTing Frames
With a few filters installed, you may find your
frame rate dropping slightly. Even the order those
shaders run in can have a big impact on performance.
But to see what they’re really doing, you need to head
to ReShade’s “Statistics” tab. The top of it shows your
current FPS and, notably, the time each frame has
taken to render—if this goes up, the former goes down.
Below, click “Show only active techniques,” and you can
see statistics on just what impact each of your shaders
is having, with a live update of the time they’ve added
to each frame render, and the number of passes each
takes. But that’s not all—many shaders show you
exactly what they’re rendering if you hover over one of
their layers. Double-click one, and you can pop it out in
a window of its own, giving you an overlaid peek into the
inner workings of ReShade.6
whaT’s The probLem?
Some shaders also have a debug mode. Try, for
instance, enabling SMAA, and using the drop-
down box at the bottom of its settings panel to switch
on “View edges”—you see only the edges it detects (and
antialiases) drawn on screen, giving you the chance both
to refine the rest of its settings with a visual indicator
of what’s going on and to play any game as though it’s
an awkwardly colored analog of the old wireframe Star
Wars arcade game.
>> Debug options can also be handy if you’re having
problems with certain shaders. If, for example,
depth-based shaders such as MartyMcFlyDOF aren’t
functioning, enable the DisplayDepth shader, and set
its “present type” function to “Vertical 50/50” to see theReShade is a clever piece of software,
but perhaps slightly more clever than
many developers would like. It’s able
to peer into the depth map of your
games and act on that information in
a live manner—which is fine if you’re
playing by yourself and just want
some fancier graphics, but not so fine
if you’re playing multiplayer games
where depth map manipulation could
offer you an unfair advantage. It’s thekind of thing that cheat engines were
built to sniff out—and it’s so hated that
it’s entirely banned in PUBG, among
other games.
While most multiplayer games do
a fine job of disabling access to the
depth buffer, if you’d like to keep your
account intact, it’s probably a good idea
to avoid installing ReShade on anything
even slightly sensitive. If you do, avoid
going online—and if you must, uninstallReShade before doing so. You can take
a copy of your settings by backing up the
reshade.ini and DefaultPreset.ini files,
copying your “Shaders” folder, then
removing ReShade by simply deleting
its DLL files and their associated INI
files: Look for d3d8.dll, d3d9.dll, dxgi.
dll, and opengl32.dll. Run the game
again, and ReShade will be gone; just
reinstall with the usual installer, and
replace your backed-up files.MultiPlAyer MAdness
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sumo d
igital ©
Codemasters
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