No trailer but here's your reminder to join the OFFICIAL!!!!! Dark Souls 4 steam group!!!! This is made by me and I know a guy whos cousin has a brother who works with a guy who knows a dev in FROM SOFTWARE!!!!

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/darksouls4

Join up, losers.

Originally posted at: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/21/dark-souls-2-pc-tweaking-guide/

Dark Souls II Steam group: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/darksoulsiipc

We previously investigated what Dark Souls 2 delivers out of the box, and it certainly has a nice selection of options. However, due to the unique strengths of the PC platform, we can try to go further in order to enhance our visual experience. In this article we will be relying entirely on generic, freely available tools. No hardcore hacks required.

The in-game anti-aliasing option enables a post-processing solution, more specifically FXAA3 with the “high quality” profile, as it is commonly provided in many modern games. While its implementation is of much higher quality than the blur available in the first Dark Souls PC port, it still suffers from the drawbacks inherent in such solutions (you can read more details about the various types of aliasing and anti-aliasing here[www.beyond3d.com]):

• No anti-aliasing for sub-pixel structures (objects which have less width or height on screen than the size of a single pixel).
  
• Instability in motion, because the edge blur is generated from individual images and not true scene data.
  
• Slight unintended blurring of pixels which are not on aliased edges.

We have multiple options for improving image quality in the game. Since Dark Souls 2 supports arbitrary resolutions, one option is to use downsampling[www.tested.com], either as a replacement for, or in addition to, the in-game anti-aliasing setting. This allows us to achieve an arbitrary level of desired image quality, though with a serious performance hit.

Video Settings

In short, downsampling from 4k resolution and beyond makes most games look their very best, bringing out all possible detail while eliminating artifacts, but it requires a very powerful PC to maintain acceptable performance levels. The screenshot below was taken at the 7680x4320 resolution (16x “Full HD”!) shown in the image above and downsampled.

Screenshot

However, there is another, even better option for those of you with Nvidia graphics cards. I discovered a “compatibility flag” which works with Dark Souls 2 and enables the use of any level of SGSSAA (2x, 4x and 8x). In order to perform this tweak, you need to get Nvidia Inspector[www.guru3d.com] and set up the Dark Souls 2 profile as shown here:

Nvidia Inspector

It may be slightly confusing to select numbers associated with other games such as Diablo 3 and Demigod here, but all it means is that what Dark Souls 2 does in regard to rendering is similar enough to what these games do for that particular “hack” to work. Here are the specific steps you need to perform for Inspector-based tweaking in Dark Souls 2 (as annotated in the image):

1. If it is not already there, add “darksoulsII.exe” to the list of executables associated with this profile, by clicking the icon with the small green “+”.
   
2. [Only if you want to use HBAO+, see the next part of the article] Enter “0x0000001F” in the “Ambient occlusion compatibility” field.
   
3. Enter “0x004412C1” in the “Antialiasing compatibility” field.
   
4. Select “Override any application setting” as the “Antialiasing – Mode”, and select your desired level of SGSSAA in both the “Antialiasing – Setting” and “Antialiasing – Transparency Supersampling” fields. Higher levels are higher quality, but also cause a larger performance hit.
   
5. [Optional] If you want to force full anisotropic filtering on all textures in the game, you may do so here.
   
6. [Only if you want to use HBAO+, see the next part of the article] Set “Ambient Occlusion Setting” to “Quality”.

I previously described the drawbacks of the post-processing antialiasing method used in the game, but concepts like temporal stability and sub-pixel structures might appear quite abstract without an example. The following animation shows the difference on some swaying grass, which is an example of a thin structure in motion. To make the distinction more obvious, the image is scaled by a factor of 2 in both dimensions.

Note how the in-game anti-aliasing does not work well in this use case, causing flickering and image instability, while 4xSGSSAA handles the situation perfectly. AMD users need not fret, downsampling from a sufficiently high resolution can achieve similarly good results.

In-game AA vs. 4x SGSSAA

As you may have noticed in the earlier article, one effect in the game I haven’t discussed in depth so far is its integrated ambient occlusion setting. Ambient occlusion is a screen-space post-processing effect which aims to simulate global illumination. The basic idea is that less light reaches places which are behind objects, or inside fissures and gaps, so these locations should be darkened.

The in-game effect is a quite basic implementation, which sometimes gives more of a “2D drop shadow” effect than an approximation of how real light would behave. It’s still preferable to not having ambient occlusion at all, but modern methods can do much better. Perhaps the best realtime ambient occlusion method currently available is Nvidia’s HBAO+[www.geforce.com]. It can be forced in a variety of games using Inspector, and after a long search I found that the compatibility flag “0x0000001F“ works almost perfectly in the game. Sadly, just almost, as the effect gets applied after UI elements have been rendered, so you get strange “shadow” effects on the UI. Nvidia should be able to do something about that with an official profile, but whether they will do so remains to be seen.

The picture below compares no ambient occlusion, the in-game method, and HBAO+. Note how HBAO+ gives a much more smooth, natural and detailed lighting effect, without the “halos” and errors common in simpler AO methods. You can also compare the effects using the full-size screenshots hosted here (HBAO+), here (In-game AO) and here (No AO).

AO Comparison Gif

One additional advantage of HBAO+ which is not visible in screenshots is that it is much more stable in motion, and does not “flicker” around small objects such as hair or grass.

In terms of performance, the in-game method is very lightweight, increasing GPU usage on my GTX 770 by about 4 percentage points in that particular scene (50% to 54%). HBAO+ requires more computation, but is still very efficient given the high quality result. It increases GPU usage to 60% when testing the same scene.

This announcement is out of space. To continue reading, go to the original article linked above.

Originally posted at: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/04/17/dark-souls-2-pc-port-mod-god-durantes-verdict/

Dark Souls II Steam group: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/darksoulsiipc

Picture 1

In 2012, Peter "Durante" Thoman wrote the popular mod DSfix for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die on PC, fixing its locked 1024x720 resolution and other issues. In 2013, he released a similar fix for Deadly Premonition. We asked Durante to analyze the PC port of Dark Souls 2 in a series of articles.

After an initial outing on PC which was barely serviceable—rendering at 1024x720, locked at 30 FPS with unusable mouse controls—From Software and Namco Bandai have a lot to prove with this sequel. For Dark Souls 2, PC was reportedly considered a major target platform from the start. In this article, I'll first investigate the technical quality of the port compared to Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition and the console versions of Dark Souls 2. Then I'll have a closer look at the options included in the game and analyze their impact.

Dark Souls 2 on PC is a massively improved effort compared to its predecessor. It renders at any resolution a given system supports, its framerate varies smoothly up to 60 FPS, it performs well even on modest systems—more on that topic later—and it comes with a wealth of graphical options. The following table summarizes most of the improvements:

Dark Souls Table

The most egregious oversights in the first port—resolution and framerate—are completely solved. Even less pronounced issues like surround sound problems and faulty keyboard/mouse controls are fixed. Small touches make it obvious that the game was truly developed with PC in mind: for example, the EULA which shows up when you first start the game can be scrolled with the mouse wheel.

A common fear among gamers was that From would make good on their promise of 1920x1080 but stop there instead of supporting truly arbitrary rendering resolutions. Something similar happened recently with the otherwise excellent port of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Dark Souls 2 has no such limit.

One big question has loomed over the PC port of Dark Souls 2: how different will it be from the console versions? Would the improvements be restricted to resolution and framerate, or would there be changes to the game’s textures and models?

Dark Souls II File Structure

In the image above, the game data file archives (*.bdt) for the PC version of the game are shown. Note that their total size is 10.7 GB. On the other hand, the following table shows the size of the data files for the PS3 version of the game – this was determined by inspecting a disc dump of the PS3 data:

PS3 Data

Note that the total size in this case is 5.7 GB, and that the files with the “Hq” prefix in the PC version have no equivalent in the PS3 version.

Previously, PC gamers were sometimes disappointed when, after large downloads, a given size discrepancy compared to console versions was entirely down to higher-quality movie files or additional localization data. This is not the case for Dark Souls 2: there is only one separate pre-rendered movie, and it is actually smaller in the PC version (likely due to better compression). The localization and font data only takes up around 30 MB in total, and is in fact the same on PC and PS3. In short, everything indicates that the 5 GB difference is caused by higher quality asset data, and a preliminary analysis of the content of these archive files confirms this assumption.

In addition to these main game asset files, the PC version includes a “sfx9999hqres.ffxbnd” file in the “sfx_hq” folder, which appears to store higher-resolution assets for special effects (such as torch light or particles). It is also about twice as large as the standard “sfx9999res.ffxbnd” file, which is the same on both PC and consoles.

Before jumping into the options, a quick word on performance. I originally intended to provide measurements and graphs here, but Dark Souls 2 generally performs so well on my system that there’s no need. With all in-game settings maximized and rendering at 2560x1440, I never noticed a single drop below 60 FPS on my PC (equipped with a Core i7 920 CPU and Geforce GTX770 GPU). In fact, the GPU was generally below 60% loaded in order to maintain that framerate. Even medium-range systems should easily maintain a solid framerate, particularly at the more common 1920x1080 resolution.

Another relevant aspect of game performance which is independent of framerates is the length of loading times, which is particularly relevant for Dark Souls 2 in light of their distracting duration in the console versions. The PC version, with maximized settings, consistently loads in 3-4 seconds from my traditional 7200 RPM HDD, and presumably installing the game to an SSD could further lower these times.

Dark Souls 2 comes with a nice selection of options, and most of them are straightforward. “Texture quality” sets the resolution of textures, “Anisotropic filtering” sets their filtering quality at oblique angles, while “Antialiasing”, “Motion blur”, “Camera motion blur”, “Depth of field“ and “SSAO” toggle their respective setting on and off. Some settings, however, merit a closer look.

This option has three settings: low, medium and high. They adjust the quality of dynamic shadows. “Low” produces blocky, poorly filtered shadows, while “medium” and “high” incrementally improve both the shadow map resolution and filtering. As far as I can tell, the console setting is either “low” or “medium”, or perhaps a combination with the resolution of “low” and filtering of “medium”. The image below illustrates the settings, but it cannot convey the full extent of the difference in motion – the lower resolution shadow is more prone to blotchiness and instability between frames.

Shadow Quality

The depth of field effect in Dark Souls 2 is not particularly unusual, but it is very well-implemented and beautiful without being overstated. It is also quite efficient performance-wise, so I suggest keeping it on. Unlike initial versions of Dark Souls 1 with my resolution fix, the effect scales up very nicely to high rendering resolutions.

Depth of Field

Dark Souls 2 gives us the option of individually toggling camera motion blur and object motion blur. The former is caused by quick camera movement, while the latter applies to objects or characters moving quickly. Separating the two into individual options is very welcome, as some people dislike camera motion blur, but no one should miss this excellent object motion blur implementation. The screenshot below illustrates the object motion blur effect in battle.

Motion Blur

This accurately named option adjusts the rendering quality of water surfaces. “Low” appears to completely disable reflections, while “high” adds dynamic highlights on top of the static reflections enabled by “medium.”

Water Surface Quality

This announcement is out of space. To read the rest of the article, please follow the original link above.

Dark Souls II Steam group: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/darksoulsiipc

Giant Bomb quick look: http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-dark-souls-ii-pc/2300-8726/

Gamespot graphics comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3xXtdg6tN0

Originally posted at: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=107229980&postcount=494

Dark Souls II Steam group: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/groups/darksoulsiipc

Here are the claimed in-game graphic options: http://i.imgur.com/axM0ho6.png

Durante's comment[www.neogaf.com]:

Originally posted by Durante:

Those settings look very real. And almost exactly what I expected. Well, actually I didn't expect "Model Quality" and "Water Surface Quality". Also nice to see a shadow quality setting, I never quite managed to improve shadow quality in DS (unlike Deadly Premonition where I manged to do that).

Well done From (if true). I'd have liked more SSAO control than "on" and "off", and higher quality AA options, but those aren't generally that hard to fix.