SEUS PTGI E6 Dev News (Patreon)

Whew, sorry it's been so long, everyone! I feel like E6 has been perpetually in a state of "it'll be done tomorrow" for weeks. So, what's the struggle all about?

I decided to redesign the GI filter. The design I've been using works well when all sources of light are around the same intensity, but it fails when a light is brighter or darker than other lights. When too bright, denoising isn't aggressive enough and noise gets through. When too dark, denoising is too aggressive and doesn't preserve detail.

After a lot of struggling, it's really nearly there, and the benefit is that denoising just "works" no matter how bright or dim light sources are. This means that torches no longer have to be as bright as sunlight, which really helps the feel of mixed lighting scenes during the day time. 

The one remaining problem that has been really tough to fix is hiding the problems that disocclusions can create (disocclusions happen when a new part of the scene is revealed on-screen due to movement of the view or dynamic scene changes). The old filter design handled this really well, but the new design is falling short, and it's quite distracting visually.

The good thing about all of this experimentation is that I was able to apply some of these new techniques to the reflections denoising filter, so reflections are looking quite a bit better.

I just hate that it's taken so long to get a new update out for you guys. I try to make each update feel like an upgrade, and with these few distracting issues, I don't feel that way yet about E6. 

Unfortunately, developing within such tight restrictions (limited by the functionality of OptiFine) combined with the fact that each new improvement is totally uncharted territory can make progress unpredictable, and there are many failed attempts. NVIDIA's questionable drivers of late haven't helped, either!

So, that's what's going on. I'm sorry to keep all of you waiting, thank you for understanding!