S K Y D C 0.4preview - A taste of things to come

Requirement: Pure 0.205+
For CSP, grassFX, activate MSAA

The future is here!... or is it? DC "0.4preview" is a taste of things to come.
*Please note that 0.4preview is not 0.4. The full 0.4 experience will come once a new pure update comes out.

We took a gamble. Currently, 0.4preview is very experimental. A lot of visual aspects will suffer due to those experimentations, but we can safely say it looks MUCH better than 0.3. 

There's A LOT to cover:

It's the update that fixes key major sore issues such as bloom & glare, exposure technics and most importantly, colors.

First things first, the most exciting part about 0.4 are the reflections improvement. We literally fixed AC's reflection. This is the main reason of the substantial visual changes from 0.3, bringing us closer to the DC vibe.

0.4preview:

0.4:

In the past, with 0.2, we have improved car shading, by improving light bounces shading on car reflections, thus making them more fitting to the environment.

For 0.4, we did another experimentation but this time we affect Fresnel reflection. To give you a simple idea of how "Fresnel" works, look at the windshield of the GT3 RS: there's a more pronounced gradience. It is lacking in 0.4preview. It's one of those small details that actually makes a huge difference, really affecting the emotion that the game looks and feel real.

Fresnel impacts all reflective materials, achieving much more realistic results, thus making reflections a LOT less overblown. 

0.4preview:

0.4:

Colors & bloom

Wow. Massively improved, and much more accurate than ever. 0.3 looked way too yellow and dull. Sepia has been toned down massively - and is now controllable for users.

0.3

0.4

0.4preview is much more vivid. The new bloom, glare and colors adjustment is a massive step up to  achieve a more natural look than before. Bloom is toned down massively. I've come to realization that bloom was way too strong after seeing the game on another monitor! It was simply too bloomy for no reasons in places where there shouldn't be any bloom, so this has been fixed.

Exposure Handling & S K Y's Exposure Blinding

Exposure has been optimized and re-built fRoM tHe GrOuNd Up to better reflect how actual exposure handling works.

pureCandy:

S K Y D C 0.3

S K Y D C 0.4preview:

The exposure blindness that was written for 0.3 was like an added layer to the exposure, so whenever the exposure adjusts, some sort of second "pass" got on/off, executing blindness. You can see it whenever you look at very bright spots and then quickly look away to a dark spot. 

Looking from my monitor, the exposure adjustments looked great without caveats, but on another monitor, you can see brightness and contrast gets broken. So this needed to be changed big time.

In 0.4, blindness works seamlessly. The sun now does its job of blinding your vision properly without the use of sunblinding shaders from the upcoming pure version!

The new glare adjustments is helping a lot to provide a much more convincing sun blinding effect and dare I say, I believe DC 0.4 is the only ppfilter that has a proper sun glare that actually affects your visuals, without the need of the upcoming pure shaders. It's no longer a sunlight on your screen to simply look beautiful but a sunlight that serves a purpose as well, which is to make the overall ppfilter feel more natural.

HDR

Moving forward all S K Y ppfilter's will support HDR. For SDR users, In Pure Config > "pp" section, I highly recommend adjusting the "paperwhite" slider, otherwise your game may look blown up!

Reaching the peak

Right now, I believe we've now reach a limit to the point there's very little room for improvement, it's all about the small details now. Only upcoming Pure updates can give us ppfilter creators more room for massive improvements! The main reason why S K Y D C won't be released soon is because Pure currently lacks a lot of features! Like fog, which is something I am impatiently waiting for. But Pure updates always bring a lot of amazing surprises like landscapes, and sunblinding shaders that will be very useful for S K Y D C and any other ppfilters. This is very exciting and I am eager to see what the future of Pure holds!

I think that's enough for now, there will another post within a week or 2 explaining more in details about reflections improvements that will come for the full 0.4 release.

Thank you guys so much for the support at ANXMOIA. As you know, without you guys, none of this would happen.

Alright, enjoy 0.4! If you have any feedback, constructive criticism, any harsh things to say about 0.4, please please please post your thoughts in the comments or in discord! 

Thank you all!
S L X C K

Known issues:
Taillights at high exposure during daylight will appear gloomy. This will be fixed on full release of 0.4.