AgX - New alternative SDR tone mapper

[another_commander]

Following up on the discussion regarding SDR tone mappers here, I just wanted to let you know that a new and improved over ACES tone mapper is undergoing testsing and has been included in the latest pre-release build 033832b. It is the AgX tone mapper and, more specifically, its Punchy variant, designed for higher contrast and saturation over the default standard AgX, which sometimes feels somewhat washed out, especially when compared to the typical filmic tone mappers we have been exposed to until now.

AgX is more recent than ACES and although not as contrasty, it has better color accuracy representation. ACES tends to shift red hues to orange and yellow at high intensities, but AgX maintains hues regardless. It also has a gentler ramp-up to highlights color desaturation for a more pleasing aesthetic. Right now AgX is present but dormant in the Oolite shaders. To activate it for your own testing, open oolite-final.fragment in the Shaders folder and change the line #define OO_TONEMAPPER_AgX 0 to #define OO_TONEMAPPER_AgX 1.

And since we can't possibly talk tone mappers without images, here are some comparison shots. First is ACES followed by AgX Punchy.

Test Pattern:



In-game:





















In the last shot you can see ACES shifting hue to yellow when very bright reds are shown. This is not the case with AgX.

This tone mapper is available for both Windows and Linux, as it is SDR-only.

[Redspear]

Subtle but significant. Good work and thanks!

[Cholmondely]

Just to say, a_c, I'm utterly convinced that your incessant plugging away, improving the graphics over the past few years, is the main reason why there are now some several thousand people who have watched Phkb's new film on Reddit.

It will be interesting to see how many downloads are generated! There has already been one who confessed (the chap who discovered that Oolite works with SteamDeck).

I've still a few more to do - posting on Reddit is pretty laborious.