Every PC player should know about this tool, ShaderToggler.

[Nintendo]

Maybe this is old, probably is, but I recently came across this tool, and I use it in almost every game I can. Sometimes just out of curiosity.

Long story short, it lets you quick toggle on and off any effect in a game including HUD, fog, outlines, shadows, meshes, lighting, vignette, bloom, DoF,...etc. Almost everything you can think of. I heard it can remove TAA but I haven't tried this one. Now you can disable most of those effects from day one without waiting for mods or modifying game files.

https://github.com/FransBouma/ShaderToggler

You can add shaders to groups and set hotkeys to quick toggle on and off the shaders in that group.

Here's a quick guide on how to use it: https://framedsc.com/ReshadeGuides/Addons/shader_toggler_repository.htm

This is a reshade addon. It's NOT your ol' reshade filters.

This mod on nexus showcases some good use cases like removing rim lighting and weapon trail effects:

Here are some examples from my experimenting (I know some of these are extreme examples. Just to show what's possible) :

The idea use case is to toggle HUD with hotkey or remove stuff like chromatic aberration, bloom, blur, glowing on pickups, fake rim lighting,..etc. in games that don't let you in the settings.

Here I removed the volumetric fog from AC Mirage.

Also in AC Mirage, I could remove all vegetation:

Here in DD2 I removed the color grading: This is straight up removing the color grading. Not applying filters on top of it like most reshade presets are doing which affect performance.
Before:

After:

Here I removed the overlapping character outlines from BG3:

Here's Ghost of Tsushima with all the lighting removed:

Toggle my shaders if old.

 

[Roven]

Ah yeah let's remove all the details from my game. That's what I've been looking for for years!

 

[Nintendo]

Ah yeah let's remove all the details from my game. That's what I've been looking for for years!

Click to shrink...

This is not about removing details. I just showcased what's possible. You can use it to remove subtle effects like chromatic abbiration, bloom, motion blur.etc from games that don't let you do it in the settings. Or HUD elements or enemy outlines or glowing interactable objects. Stuff like fake lighting on characters. There are so many use cases for this.

 

[J75]

That Tsushima picture is interesting. You used to be able to do potato super low settings in games that would make it look like that, but now devs don't allow you to go that low as it breaks the vision of the game, but still interesting "what if" if those settings never went away.

 

[Ahti]

Thanks for sharing! I've been using Reshade quite a lot lately and might give this a try too.

 

[daninthemix]

Ah yeah let's remove all the details from my game. That's what I've been looking for for years!

Click to shrink...

Strange driveby that ignores the obvious benefits demonstrated in OP's screenshots.

 

[Roven]

This is not about removing details. I just showcased what's possible. You can use it to remove subtle effects like chromatic abbiration, bloom, motion blur.etc from games that don't let you do it in the settings. Or HUD elements or enemy outlines or glowing interactable objects. Stuff like fake lighting on characters. There are so many use cases for this.

Click to shrink...

Well these sound more like practical examples. The ones from the OP Not so much

 

[Whisu]

Great for taking screenshots.

 

[Roven]

Strange driveby that ignores the obvious benefits demonstrated in OP's screenshots.

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If you choose a title like OP did, I expect a bit more than making games look like crap, sorry

 

[Re-Tails]

That is cool, thanks for sharing. Curious what you mean by HUD though?

 

[Nintendo]

That is cool, thanks for sharing. Curious what you mean by HUD though?

Click to shrink...

You can assign a hotkey to toggle the HUD on and off using this tool.

 

[raketenrolf]

This is great for stuff like vignettes, what kind of weirdos like those anyway.

What you did to AC Mirage and Dragons Dogma is a crime though.

 

[TheMadTitan]

If you choose a title like OP did, I expect a bit more than making games look like crap, sorry

Click to shrink...

Someone informing PC users about a tool that will let them turn off graphical settings even though a game won't let them do it natively to their aesthetic and performance benefit and then using a wide range of examples from subtle to potato in order to properly demonstrate what the program is actually capable of is precisely the point.

You missing the point entirely doesn't mean Nintendo chose an incorrect title for the thread.

 

[monketron]

Nice one Nintendo, Art Director's in tears right now.

 

[Elven_Star]

Thanks for bringing this up. Not being able to turn off vingette and chromatic abberation in some games drives me nuts.

 

[Yuntu]

Well these sound more like practical examples. The ones from the OP Not so much

Click to shrink...

There is a practicle example in the OP with the Horizon shot and removing the fake character lightning. And OP literally explains it can do that.

Maybe read it next time.

 

[antitrop]

That's how you get Ghosts of Tsushima: Legends esports ready. Kind of fascinating.

 

[nsilvias]

Finally a tool that lets me kill vignettes. Hopefully also raindrop and dirt screen effects

 

[astro]

Thanks for sharing this OP. I'll take a look later. There are a few games I would love to use this on. I wish I'd had it for my playthrough of HFW, that hero lighting was obnoxious at times.

 

[behOemoth]

That's how you get Ghosts of Tsushima: Legends esports ready. Kind of fascinating.

Click to shrink...

For a brief moment I completely forgot the settings competitive quake players used back in the day.

 

[dex3108]

Nice one Nintendo, Art Director's in tears right now.

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Any Art Director who approves non removable Chromatic Aberration should eb fired :P

 

[Blade30]

Thanks for sharing, this looks interesting.

 

[Jubilant Duck]

The removal of rim lighting is a great first step but even with it gone Aloy still isn't lit in a way that's natural to the scene she's in. She looks greenscreened into the environment.

What a bizarre mash of superb technology yet eye-swimmingly "noisy" art direction that game is.

 

[Nintendo]

The removal of rim lighting is a great first step but even with it gone Aloy still isn't lit in a way that's natural to the scene she's in. She looks greenscreened into the environment.

What a bizarre mash of superb technology yet eye-swimmingly "noisy" art direction that game is.

Click to shrink...

I think because the game has baked GI so the lighting on the characters cannot be the same as the environment. That's why they added the hero lighting, to hide the fact that the characters look out of place either way.

 

[Rodney McKay]

Love the color-grading removal example.

I remember playing RAGE 1 back when I built my first PC and being excited to play such a great looking game for the first time. But then I got to an area in the game that had the ugliest color grading, even pitch black shadows were blue or green. There were more areas as the game went on that kept doing it.

I've got nothing against color grading if done well and with a purpose. But in some games it feels like it's only there because it's an easy way to differentiate between areas.

 

[Gelf]

The times I'd want this would be rare but it's good to know it exists should the need come up in the future.

I kinda love that Ghosts screenshot, call back to the days low settings where dramatically low.

 

[J75]

Maybe I could use this to get Judgment PC to look closer to the PS4 version grading wise. They changed it all up for the remaster version which is what we got on PC.

 

[AstralSphere]

I've never really given much of a shit about the debate around Horizon's hero lighting because I always loved the look of the game, but seeing that example I definitely prefer how it looks without it.

 

[Klyka]

I assume this is picked up by anti cheats?
Because i really hope so

 

[Alvis]

Oh I'll definitely use it to disable chromatic aberration and vignette in games that don't let me disable it normally. Thanks OP

 

[Vex]

Outstanding work bringing this tool to my attention, OP. Now I can remove vignette/CA from games that don't let me.

 

[Nintendo]

I assume this is picked up by anti cheats?
Because i really hope so

Click to shrink...

Yes, it is.

 

[Sir Lucan]

Thanks for this OP. I'll try this eventually in Horizon FW to see if I like it better without the constant fog. Back when I tried it on PS5 I would get really tired playing the game and even get headaches, and I think that was part of the reason. That AC Mirage pic looks better to me without the fog so I'll definitely try it.

 

[ray_caster]

That Tsushima picture is interesting. You used to be able to do potato super low settings in games that would make it look like that, but now devs don't allow you to go that low as it breaks the vision of the game, but still interesting "what if" if those settings never went away.

Click to shrink...

A lot of optimization is done on an architectural level. You could remove plenty of graphical effects and lower the resolution, yet the performance improvement does not scale linearly with the loss of graphical fidelity because the bottlenecks are eventually no longer in the rasterization process.

 

[parski]

PC is the best. Thanks, OP!

 

[Spacejaws]

There is a practicle example in the OP with the Horizon shot and removing the fake character lightning. And OP literally explains it can do that.

Maybe read it next time.

Click to shrink...

Feel like almost all examples were practical. It's subjective but the only ones that looked outright worse to me was removing the vegetation from Mirage (which still could have it's uses) and the GoT Potato shot which was obviously an extreme contrast to show what the tool is capable off.

The others, removing key lighting, removing awkward weapon trail effects, removing colour grading and volumetric fog I wouldn't say they look worse.

 

[texhnolyze]

HUD toggle alone would make this tool super useful for me. Guess I can map it to the left touchbar button for a quick toggle.

Thanks for the info, OP.

 

[Menchin]

This looks like it'll be useful for stuff like video thumbnails and screenshots - and of course disabling forced vignette and CA everywhere I can find them (that isn't Dying Light and Max Payne 3, I love CA in those games)

 

[Yuntu]

Feel like almost all examples were practical. It's subjective but the only ones that looked outright worse to me was removing the vegetation from Mirage (which still could have it's uses) and the GoT Potato shot which was obviously an extreme contrast to show what the tool is capable off.

The others, removing key lighting, removing awkward weapon trail effects, removing colour grading and volumetric fog I wouldn't say they look worse.

Click to shrink...

That's also true but apparantly wasn't good enough for them.

 

[Jahranimo]

That's pretty cool

Not sure what I would use this for but it's neat to know about nonetheless.

Edit: Actually removing the HUD WOULD be useful for screenshots 🤔

 

[Klyka]

Yes, it is.

Click to shrink...

Good

 

[R1CHO]

I remember at least some ASS Creed games having an ugly ass effect around your character while on "stealth" mode, could it be removed with this?

 

[NeoBob688]

This is great! I never heard about it.

Some uses I'd consider, to remove:

Vignette effect

Unnecessary interface/HUD elements

Chromatic aberration

Motion blur

Screen dirt lens effect

Film grain

 

[Menchin]

I remember at least some ASS Creed games having an ugly ass effect around your character while on "stealth" mode, could it be removed with this?

Click to shrink...

It should, you'd just have to read the guide and configure the tool to do that yourself

 

[Nintendo]

I remember at least some ASS Creed games having an ugly ass effect around your character while on "stealth" mode, could it be removed with this?

Click to shrink...

In theory, yes. The same way I removed character outlines and persistent spell effects on characters in BG3.

 

[Aaron D.]

Great write up, Nintendo! Thanks for taking the time.

The recent Riven demo has a Motion Blur toggle in the settings that doesn't appear to work.

If it isn't fixed for retail release in a couple weeks I'm def using this mod.

 

[chrominance]

Not sure if I have an immediate use for this besides HUD removal but this looks very powerful, will have to keep this one in the toolbox!

 

[Wesker]

Wow, haven't known about this tool.
Will definitely check it out.
Thanks for posting!

 

[TeenageFBI]

I'll keep this in mind for when Bloodborne appears on PC.

 

[canderous]

I'm usually cool with post processing the devs want to use but one I can't abide is chromatic aberration. Ugh. Will keep this in mind next time there's a game I play without the option to remove. I imagine removing all color grading before doing your own reshade could have benefits as well.

But that Tsushima shot is hilarious.