Comrades in Arms Discussion Board

Hey guys, didn't see any other thread about this so decided to make it just to inform everyone. A new [size=1em]mod built on the InjectSMAA shader injector has been released. It [/size][size=1em]allows you to apply a suite of post processing shader effects to your ARMA 2 game.

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Quote:[size=1em]This is the official release thread for SweetFX.

I'll be posting new releases here and you can discuss SweetFX and post your screenshots and share settings here too.

So in case you're new to SweetFX Shader Suite (or just SweetFX), it's a  mod built on the InjectSMAA shader injector, that allows you to apply a  suite of post processing shader effects to your games.

You may have tried another shader injection mod before, like InjectFXAA,  InjectSMAA or FXAAtool. SweetFX improves upon all of these.

You can add SMAA anti-aliasing , sharpening and tweak the color, gamma , exposure and more.
It's meant to allow you to improve the look of your games and change the look and mood of it to your liking.
If you use SMAA antialiasing instead of MSAA or an even more expensive  antialaliasing technique you can also make the game run faster (than  with MSAA)

It can currently add:

* SMAA (anti-aliases the image using the SMAA technique )
* LumaSharpen (Sharpens the image, making details easier to see)
* Bloom (Makes strong lights bleed their light into their surroundings)
* HDR (mimics an HDR look)
* Technicolor (Makes the image look like it was processed using a three-strip Technicolor process )
* Tonemap (Light and color adjustments)
* Vibrance (Intelligently saturates (or desaturates if you use negative  values) the pixels depending on their original saturation)
* Sepia (Sepia tones the image )
* Vignette (Adds a vignette that darkens the borders to the image  )
* Dither (Dithers the image making it look like it was displayed on a monitor with more colors than actually present  )

It works with all 32bit DirectX 9 , 10 and 11 games (and many applications).
It does NOT work with 64bit game executables - use the 32bit version of your game if it gives you a choice between 32 and 64bit.
It works with all graphics cards as long as they support at least shader model 3.
It should work on Windows 2000 and newer, both 32bit and 64bit. So far  tested working on WinXP , Vista and Win7. Windows 8 is untested - please  report your findings.
It may work on Linux using Wine - please report your findings.

Current version is 1.2

You can download it here on dropcanvas. It's also on Skyrim nexus.  [/size]

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Original thread: [/size]http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=368880

Comparison with and without mod (sharpened, more colorful)

Disabled - Enabled



Disabled - Enabled



It's easy to setup and easy to tweak, so download it and experiment with it.
Make ARMA 2 look the way you want

I didn't tweak it too much so the screenshot comparison isn't jaw dropping.

Post your tweaks here if you wish.

Hey Kenwort,

The first comparison shot looks rather darker to me and I have enough trouble seeing stuff as it is

The second one looks much better (sharper) though.

With SMAA in-game now, what's the extra advantages of using this instead? I use in-game SMAA V.High although I've found that things like fences still shimmer annoyingly, so I've put MSAA on High (I think that's 8x) as well now which seems to fix that and my GPU seems to be able to cope with as it only get's used around 25-40% anyway in SP (seems to be held back by the CPU) although I'll have to check it's OK in MP, as I think the GPU was running at around 86% without MSAA last co-op night.

GPU performance shouldn't be affected by mp. Should it?

(10-21-2012, 05:11 PM)doveman link Wrote:I use in-game SMAA V.High although I've found that things like fences still shimmer annoyingly, so I've put MSAA on High (I think that's 8x) as well now which seems to fix that and my GPU seems to be able to cope with as it only get's used around 25-40% anyway in SP (seems to be held back by the CPU) although I'll have to check it's OK in MP, as I think the GPU was running at around 86% without MSAA last co-op night.

I don't think there is any advantage to be gained using SMAA and MSAA at the same time. Personally, I put AA on High and enable FXAA on lowest with the sharpen filter just to get that extra sharpness, but the FXAA is really not needed for this. Real AA will always give the better picture quality, and no amount of post-processing will prevent the flickering of fences or electrical wires.

Yesterday I played with a 3D resolution of 150%, to see if my PC could handle a 30" monitor I want to get. It worked well, and I could disable normal AA, and just put some FXAA + sharpen, and it looked quite good.


Maybe worth a try for more here?

Didn't have notify set, sorry! I've got it set to notify when posting or replying but maybe I set that after posting in this thread.

Variable, ArmA's engine's quite strange and it seems that often when playing MP, because the server is handling a lot of stuff (AI, etc) that my PC normally has to handle in SP, the CPU (Phenom II X4 955, apparently ArmA doesn't like AMD) is no longer the bottleneck and therefore the GPU gets used more, even if it's only because the fps is higher.

Alwarren, yeah I guess there's no need for SMAA and MSAA. I'll try it with FXAA low with sharpen instead.

rundll.exe, that's an interesting idea. I might try it to see if it gives better performance, although I don't think it stresses my GPU to run High MSAA, so probably not.

Can't image this game without SweetFX anymore.
Check how it looks: http://imgur.com/a/SQe2b

I downloaded it, unsure how to install it...

Just copy it in your arma 2 folder or where the .exe of the game is. Once copied you can adjust the settings in SweetFX_settings.txt file.

I've attached my settings. You can use the splitscreen to test your own.

If anyone needs a good preset for ARMA or any other game with SweetFX then I recommend checking out this website: http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/

Presets for ARMA 2: http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/239/

Presets for ARMA 3: http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/183/