ESOptimize - Fog removal and graphic improvement.

Phinix1

Greetings!

This package is intended to give ESO a more impressive visual presence by extending the view distance, removing distant fog, and slightly enhancing color contrast (without making the game overly saturated), all with minimal performance cost.

In order for this to work, you will first need to download the ESO Launcher by Sorien. (NOTE: If you just want the enhancement and don't care about fog removal, skip installing this.) Use the 1.4.8a Hook64 Beta, NOT the 1.3.8 version. Make sure you install the prerequisites listed on the above page (Microsoft .NET 4.6, Microsoft C++ Redistributable 2015 x86, Microsoft C++ Redistributable 2015 x64). Copy the contents of the download to your \The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client folder (where the eso.exe is). It is important you install this BEFORE the next step (unless you don't want fog removal, in which case don't install it at all). If you do use fog removal, it is recommended you leave Depth of Field ON in your in-game video settings in order to blend the previously unseen details that were covered by fog.

Next, download ESOptimize, and extract the contents to the same folder as above, saying yes to overwrite. (This is all you need if you are only interested in the enhancement and don't want to remove fog). This is the latest ReShade Preview 8 and SweetFX 2.0 modified to work with ESO and tweaked by me for optimal visual enhancement without over-saturation/cartoonization.

Launch the game using Launcher32.exe instead of the normal game launcher and enjoy an improved visual experience!

Notes:

To use the 64-bit client, first rename \The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client\dxgi.dll to dxgi32.dll, then rename dxgi64.dll to dxgi.dll and run the game with Launcher64.exe instead of Launcher32.exe. If you aren't using fog removal, just rename digi.dll and run the game as normal from the eso64.exe client.

Settings.ini contains settings for the ESO Launcher program. Most of these should be left alone, however if you want to turn the in-game distant fog back on, change EnableFog=true and reload.

The \The Elder Scrolls Online\game\client\SweetFX\SweetFX_settings.txt file contains settings for the graphical enhancement. This was designed to be a very mild enhancement, but you can play around with these values if you like. There are several cinematic effects you can try like cartoon graphics, ascii art graphics, sepia tones, film grain, etc. For the purpose of this mod all these options are off by default.

Finally, you can toggle the enhancement effect on and off in-game using the Scroll Lock key (scr).

Screenshots with the effects on can be taken using the Print Screen button and will show up in your ESO game folder (the same folder you copied to during the install).

Samples:

clocksstoppe

No offence but fog exists to give the scene more depth. I don't think removing it completely improves the visuals. Good work on the color and other post effects though.

Woeler

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

Korah_Eaglecry

clocksstoppe wrote: »

No offence but fog exists to give the scene more depth. I don't think removing it completely improves the visuals. Good work on the color and other post effects though.

Eh...Id say its there so that you dont notice that the things its fogging up arent rendered completely. Not for some artistic reasons.

Phinix1

clocksstoppe wrote: »

No offence but fog exists to give the scene more depth. I don't think removing it completely improves the visuals. Good work on the color and other post effects though.

Aye, some will feel this way, however I recommend trying it as the ability to see things in the distance like ships in the harbor and temples on mountains etc. is also a huge benefit to immersion. The in-game Depth of Field helps to keep things natural enough looking to my taste.

However, if you wish to keep the enhancement AND the fog, simply edit the Settings.ini file and change EnableFog=true and reload.

Phinix1

Woeler wrote: »

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

I am only running a plain old GTX 780 and with no overclock and this installed, I am able to easilly run with all in-game settings maxed. YMMV.

danno8

Woeler wrote: »

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

Probably not.

What the fog is hiding is rather ugly and very pixelated the last time I tried this a year or so ago. You are not suddenly going to be uncovering a gorgeous highly detailed mountainside. More like a low-def muddy shadow.

It's the reason I ended up canning the experience for me. What the removal of the fog uncovered was just to ugly for me.

danno8

clocksstoppe wrote: »

No offence but fog exists to give the scene more depth. I don't think removing it completely improves the visuals. Good work on the color and other post effects though.

They went overboard with it though. Fog everywhere, all the time in all climates at all times of day.

Foggy day in a marsh? Makes sense. Foggy day at high noon in a desert? Not so much.

Reminds me of the old N64 days:

Phinix1

danno8 wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

Probably not.

What the fog is hiding is rather ugly and very pixelated the last time I tried this a year or so ago. You are not suddenly going to be uncovering a gorgeous highly detailed mountainside. More like a low-def muddy shadow.

It's the reason I ended up canning the experience for me. What the removal of the fog uncovered was just to ugly for me.

The key difference here is the view distance setting. This needs to be increased in tandem with the fog removal in order to up the resolution and detail of distant rendering.

The settings included are a reasonable compromise between performance and quality. You could further increase the distant rendering settings in Settings.ini if your system was making easy work of the default configuration.

With Depth of Field on and these settings, I find the esthetic to be acceptable.

Egonieser

danno8 wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

Probably not.

What the fog is hiding is rather ugly and very pixelated the last time I tried this a year or so ago. You are not suddenly going to be uncovering a gorgeous highly detailed mountainside. More like a low-def muddy shadow.

It's the reason I ended up canning the experience for me. What the removal of the fog uncovered was just to ugly for me.

Yep, exactly. There are too many distant sprites and edge of the map is a cardboard cut-out of rather very low-res image.

It does look good if you look from the edge of the map to the middle of it, however it looks horrid if you are at the edge of the map and look outwards, especially in places like Alik'r - the cliffs at the edge of the map looked like something from doom2.

The lighting effects are nice though, however I already run my own custom sweetFX setup and custom settings from nVidia.
It would be nice if the fog distance could be increased say to 150m or so, but completely removing it just reveals the ugly textures it's supposed to cover up indeed.

Phinix1

Egonieser wrote: »

It does look good if you look from the edge of the map to the middle of it, however it looks horrid if you are at the edge of the map and look outwards, especially in places like Alik'r - the cliffs at the edge of the map looked like something from doom2.

Not necessarily. In my experience, so long as you leave Depth of Field on in the in-game settings, they don't actually look so bad. The depth blur adds a sort of "poor man's fog" that makes it seem less glaringly low-rez. To me the trade off for added detail is worth it.

Ra'Shtar

I'm curious how Hew's bane looks.

Yngve_Nik

In Oblivion and Skyrim you could see one side of the game world from the other if you found a good place to stand.

Even as far as MMOs go this game's draw distance is ridiculously short. When I go outside IRL I don't see haze everywhere obscuring anything more than half a mile or so away.

Zoltan_117

Hi - BTW Soriens tool doesn't actually work with 64 bit yet. Read his thread.

Gargath

I'd say, give it to me, if it'll finally show me Throat of the World in all it's greatness.

Not actually this versus that .

ps. spots and directions the same on both pics.

Shinni

From the settings.ini

# This setting, when set to true, allows player created mods to use protected or
# private Lua functions such as: SendChatMessage, ToggleMount, PerformAttack, etc.
# If you change this setting, you must restart your game for it to take effect.

Using the launcher allows you to write addons that are essentially bots. Automatic attacking, using skills etc.
How is this not an exploit?
Sounds like using the launcher is a sure way to get banned.

Woeler

Phinix1 wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

I am only running a plain old GTX 780 and with no overclock and this installed, I am able to easilly run with all in-game settings maxed. YMMV.

On 4k?

Phinix1

Shinni wrote: »

From the settings.ini

# This setting, when set to true, allows player created mods to use protected or
# private Lua functions such as: SendChatMessage, ToggleMount, PerformAttack, etc.
# If you change this setting, you must restart your game for it to take effect.

Using the launcher allows you to write addons that are essentially bots. Automatic attacking, using skills etc.
How is this not an exploit?
Sounds like using the launcher is a sure way to get banned.

Hi Shinni,

A couple things. Firstly, this is set to false. More important however, the public version of ESO Launcher doesn't have the ability to do this even if you turn it on. As it says, it is a "GameModi Plus only feature," which Sorien hasn't even released. This means you have to pay money to subscribe and get a special version from him with this capability.

Elsewhere in the threads discussing this (I believe on Reddit), someone put in a ticket asking if using such graphical hooks was bannable, and the response was essentially "unless you use it to cheat then it's fine."

Phinix1

Here is a comparison of the enhancement with the fog on, and with it off.

With fog:


No fog:

Phinix1

danno8

Phinix1 wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

I run on 4k, I guess when installing this that even my 980ti hybrid is going to start burning.

Probably not.

What the fog is hiding is rather ugly and very pixelated the last time I tried this a year or so ago. You are not suddenly going to be uncovering a gorgeous highly detailed mountainside. More like a low-def muddy shadow.

It's the reason I ended up canning the experience for me. What the removal of the fog uncovered was just to ugly for me.

The key difference here is the view distance setting. This needs to be increased in tandem with the fog removal in order to up the resolution and detail of distant rendering.

The settings included are a reasonable compromise between performance and quality. You could further increase the distant rendering settings in Settings.ini if your system was making easy work of the default configuration.

With Depth of Field on and these settings, I find the esthetic to be acceptable.

And this is where personal tastes come to play I guess.

I hate all Depth of Field settings in games. The effect is suppose to mimic the eye by "blurring" distant objects in a similar fashion that, say, your monitor will appear blurry if you focus on you hand held up in front of you.

The problem of course is that blurriness should fade away to clarity when you actually focus on the distant object. But that can never happen because the game has no idea where you are looking at any given time. It just assumes you are always looking at the close/medium area near your character.

This is why I think DoF is such a fail effect, because of how it can't adapt to where you are looking in a general scene. I prefer everything to be clear, so when I look there it appears as it should, and if I am not looking there, well, who cares since it isn't my focus at the moment anyway.

All this said, I think removing the fog can certainly be a fair tradeoff for many people. I know I was certainly willing to give it a shot.

Phinix1

@danno8 while I agree to a point (I am not a fan of Bokeh DoF in games like Skyrim), the Depth of Field effect in ESO is mostly confined to far distant objects, which you wouldn't really be able to see clearly at that distance even in real life.

Look at the first image in this thread. See how it is only the very distant island and trees that gets at all blurred, and how it is just enough to compensate for the lack of the overpowering yellow fog?

Some games have effects that blur things right in front of you that aren't centered in your camera. Those type of DoF effects I agree are more distracting than add to the visual immersion.

But for the purpose of ESO, I think it works great with the removal of fog since nothing close to the player is at all effected.

danno8

@Phinix1

Hey again. I decided to give the fog removal another shot, but I can't seem to get it to work with the 64-bit client and the sweetfx shaders at the same time.

I renamed the dx**.dll files as you described and launched the launcher64.exe, but while the fog will be removed sweetfx does not apply the shaders.

Similarly, if I don't use the Launcher 64 and just launch the eso64.exe file directly, the sweetfx shaders are applied but the fog remains.

Up until now I have used Reshade Assistant that comes packaged with Reshade 2.0 but I disabled the profile before trying your stuff.

Any ideas?

Win 10.

Phinix1

I believe that Sorien hasn't updated the 64-bit version to work properly yet, sadly. I hope that he does get it working soon, though the 64-bit client still has too many crashes and sound issues for me to use it.

The 32-bit client version does indeed work with the Dark Brotherhood patch.

I'll update the OP to remove the reference to enabling the 64-bit fog removal until it gets updated.

danno8

Phinix1 wrote: »

I believe that Sorien hasn't updated the 64-bit version to work properly yet, sadly. I hope that he does get it working soon, though the 64-bit client still has too many crashes and sound issues for me to use it.

The 32-bit client version does indeed work with the Dark Brotherhood patch.

I'll update the OP to remove the reference to enabling the 64-bit fog removal until it gets updated.

Ahh ok. 64 bit does have crazy sound at times for me, no crashing though and smoother gameplay overall.

Thanks for the response.

danno8

@Phinix1

Just saw your update. To be clear, you can use the 64-bit version and get fog removal, it's just that the sweetfx shaders won't take hold.

Phinix1

danno8 wrote: »

@Phinix1

Just saw your update. To be clear, you can use the 64-bit version and get fog removal, it's just that the sweetfx shaders won't take hold.

If you read the 2nd to last page of the ESO Launcher link in the first post here, you will see author Sorien confirm 64-bit support does not work and he has no ETA on making it work, sadly. So, no fog removal for 64-bit currently, sorry.

The reason it seems to work is that running Launcher64.exe will actually run the normal 32-bit ESO. You can see in Task Manager if you control-alt-delete, it will say eso.exe(32) and not 64-bit is running.

You CAN get the Reshade/sweetfx enhancemennts to work with the 64-bit version, by renaming dxgi.dll to dxgi32.dll and then renaming dxgi64.dll to dxgi.dll and launching eso64.exe manually.

Remember to rename those back if you plan to use the 32-bit version again.

Pomaikai

Any hope of there being a Mac version of this?

Troneon

Troneon wrote: »

Thanks for the help all, first got the 64 bit client running....then tested the first version of Hook64 (Previously ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) which was created by sorien which gives the game a graphics boost, shaders, effects etc and removes the in game fog ......this was soriens first enhanced graphics launcher version for 64bit ESO and it works!!!

Then last test was to get my RadeonPro+SweetFX profile (better colors etc) to work by adding a trigger alias with the 64bit client with soriens hook64 as well and...VOILA!!!

Crisp 60+ fps 64 bit ESO with soriens Hook64 Enhanced Graphics Launcher and my choice of colors using SweetFX

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/eso-launcher-graphics-enhancer-2/page/27/

Full Album : http://imgur.com/a/Y7aYv





Before with normal crappy colors but without in game fog to compare....

Sorien just made a 64bit Update for his Hook64 (Previously ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher)

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/eso-launcher-graphics-enhancer-2/page/27/

Phinix1

Updated the original post. Follow the instructions and use Hook64 1.4.8a to disable fog in the 64bit client!

danno8

Phinix1 wrote: »

Updated the original post. Follow the instructions and use Hook64 1.4.8a to disable fog in the 64bit client!

Just saw that. Works great!

I still maintain that the fog is necessary for many scenes. It looks great 80% of the time, but the other 20% looks like this:



So that big black area in the far back would normally be completely fogged out at that distance, but with the fog removed you see that the area is simply not rendered at all.

It still looks very nice without the constant fog, it's just that when you run into the situations above it can be very jarring.

eidt: @Phinix1 whoops almost forget to mention. I did not have to change any of the dx**.dll file names to get the game to work properly for the 64-bit version. The ESOlauncher64 presented both the option of 64 or 32 bit. I just chose the 64 - bit version and voila! You may want to test yourself and then edit your instructions if it is the same for you.