The beauty of Age of Conan`s world

Yeah, nice. I’ve noticed a lot of those setoption sub-commands over the years (I used chat-macro all the time), but never bothered to play with them.

Came back to the game. Managed to bypass a lot of UI so shaders like Ambient Occlusion or RayTracing (depth based) would work with HUD. Softer Reshade this time.
proof

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Onyx Chambers traumas :upside_down_face:

Nice work there. I really love Ardashir got the visuals.

I think however sometimes there’s TOO MUCH extra graphics processing and it’s starting to show how old the engine is! The Onyx Chamber picture shows the distinct disparity between the pillar and floor, like some cheap 3D RPG.

Agreed.
On some cases original graphics look better, but on most I believe a finely tuned Reshade gives better results. I spent a lot of days configuring shaders, sadly what would look fantastic in most areas, it would look less so in others. Main issue is that game`s lightning and materials are inconcise, white point on textures goes crazy if you turn bloom on etc, it tends to look very unrealistic (there are even meshes with missing textures in Aztels Approach).
Onyx picture is a personal meme for my friend (oh the pain we endured), not really a showcase, contrast there is gained with a dynamic contrast shader which I rarely use yet the picture was too dark. I still think I may have used a bit too strong sharpening shader.
PS. my advice:

  • turn off enhanced ocean waves & bloom :wink:

I’ve been reporting those missing texture’s in Atzel’s since the game’s release…same with the horse in low texture settings and the disappearing Necro in Lich form after zoning.

Thanks for the pic’s. I understand the difficulty in getting an all-rounded setting working, as you can see the incredible differance between zones from Tortage to Old World to the newer content which looks amazing.

Old Tarantia is a neverending source of inspiration, testing my custom Reshade preset, a bit blurry but I felt like sharing (if you are using chrome, right click Open image in new tab & press F11):






frame compare:
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=dfce8ed2-77e5-11eb-83c8-ebb5d6f907df

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It’s hard to admit to myself but my desire to play Age of Conan is fading and since a bit is not more my main mmo (even if I still enjoy dungeons and raids if I have the occasion).
So this evening, logging - this really after a long while on the forum - and reading this thread, I thought that if I didn’t try today to capture some of colors and the shades of Hyboria, I wouldn’t have done anymore.
I tried to play with graphic settings to have a nice result, but I can’t match the beautiful shader of Velovar. Anyways this is my Khemi. Me and Xerzex in the third photo (wasn’t staged so even more nice)

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A composite picture of the sunset over the canyon for the Wyrm.

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Another shot taken last night, but I hadn’t the time to post. This one has some post-work (color correction and lights/shadows editing, a crop on the right side) to enhance details (the original atmosphere of the crater, for emotional reasons, is blurry with a dominance of cold colors).

Same with perspective correction

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Nice shots! Khemi is a hard place to balance lightning/color wise, it seams you are using fakeHDRI shader or something similar? My advice is to try and balance the white-point in this case bloom, its too strong, or maybe turn off in-game bloom (thats what I do then I set up mine manually)
for instance, here I use bloom to spread the color and not to burn the image:
off


on

and again in Tarantia, bloom is used to transmit color making things look softer
off

on

it is a long process, as it may look fantastic in some areas while others would look better on normal, thats why I have keybinds for some effects like contrast etc so you can adapt on the fly.
Thanks for sharing, I hope more people share their screenshots, btw I bought Khitai and and I am yet to discover it, Old World just keeps me tied up :yum:

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Hey, ty for the appreciation and gz for your beautiful shots :slight_smile: No, I didn’t use any shader, just in-game settings and the bloom setting was turn off (I always keep it off).
The intense blooming light of Khemi (I wanted something very “warm” for Stygia) was obtained increasing godrays intensity to 75% (instead 50% default) and playing with brightness and gamma. Gamma was put to 1.0 and brightness, instead, increased of 40% or so taking as goal the max brightness and at the same time visibility of all clouds (to give them fullness). Contrast was very slightly increased (1,02 o 1,04, don’t remember now, should I open the game and check. I found it a very sensible parameter anyway, this slight enhancment does already a visible difference).
The “blooming” effect is even caused by the time of the day. Short after I took the screenshot, the light was more soft. The sunset screenshot in Dragon Spine and Kara Korum one (but this one had post-work so doesn’t count) use the same Khemi settings.

World Boss night

I thought I forgot my glasses for a second, looks incredibly blurry

yep, playing with depth of field

You my friend, are legend! Amazing job, keep up the good work.

Btw, your reshade should be premium =$
Think about charging your hard work. :muscle:t3:

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Man, can you show us the link for your reshade? please share it with us

No problem, send 5000 gold on Varthul and I will publish it with instructions :wink:

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