[Download] SEUS PTGI E9 (Patreon)

UPDATE (AUGUST 22nd): The change from the use of geometry shaders to instancing for E9 has caused some performance issues on the CPU side for some users, and some AMD users aren't reporting any performance benefits from this change, which was the main purpose of it. I have uploaded a test version ("SEUS PTGI E9 Geometry Shader Test", attached to this post) where the only change is the switch back to using geometry shaders. 

If you have the time, please check the pinned post in the #instancing_vs_geometry_shaders_test text channel in the SEUS Patrons Discord server for instructions on how to provide performance feedback. Thank you! 

PLEASE READ THE REQUIREMENTS FOR USAGE, AS THEY HAVE CHANGED SINCE E8!

SEUS PTGI E9 has arrived! If you're curious about the details on what's new, check out the two dev news posts about E9: https://www.patreon.com/posts/seus-ptgi-e9-dev-28423723 https://www.patreon.com/posts/seus-ptgi-e9-dev-29024031

In short, E9 brings proper ray tracing of non full-cube shaped blocks! Since these have to be hard-coded, and each additional considered block shape adds to the cost of ray tracing, as I mentioned in the first E9 dev news post, E9 only accounts for what I considered to be the most important blocks in their vanilla shapes. The blocks included are all variants of stairs, slabs, doors, fences, trapdoors, snow (including all buildup layers), carpets, and pressure plates. More will be added in the future, and I will try to put more time into optimization of this new feature as well in the coming versions.

There are three settings for this feature. 0 will disable it and mimic the old behavior of SEUS PTGI with the familiar broken lighting on unique blocks. 1 will consider stairs, slabs, doors, and fences. 2 will enable all of the rest. The higher the setting, the higher the cost. The default setting is 2, so if you're wondering why out-of-the-box performance has dropped from E8, it's due to this.

To help make up for this, I've added back the "GI Filter Quality" option in Raytracing Options. The default value is High, which is the quality you're used to. You can choose Low for a significant speedup at the cost of some artifacts in diffuse lighting.

The next big thing is AMD graphics card support! There are still a few little bugs here and there, but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting even longer for this release.  If you're using an NVIDIA graphics card, you don't have to worry, everything should still work just fine.

However, sometimes I still experience crashes on my RX 580. Sometimes it takes several attempts to get into the game. Crashes only appear when the shaders are recompiling, so once you're in and you've got your options set, running the shader should be fine. I couldn't figure out why this was happening. Perhaps something on the driver side.

If you have tried E8 with an AMD graphics card, you may have been disappointed with the performance. AMD GPUs struggle with geometry shaders, which has been used to enable ray tracing. Well, there's a new feature of OptiFine that allows me to use instancing instead of geometry shaders for voxelization, and at times the speedup on AMD graphics cards is 2x! There is a very slight speedup on NVIDIA graphics cards as well.

Due to the use of this new feature, this version of SEUS PTGI is only compatible with Minecraft 1.14.4 and OptiFine HD U F3 until this feature is ported back to older versions.

Also, using resource packs with custom models is even more prone to cause broken lighting with this version. This is due to limitations of avoiding the use of geometry shaders. I am working on a solution for this. So please, don't use any resource packs with custom block models!

Here's the changelog:

Proper ray tracing of stairs, slabs, fences, doors, trapdoors, pressure plates, snow, and carpet blocks!

Improved AMD graphics card compatibility (though some bugs still remain)

Improved performance on AMD graphics cards significantly by using instancing instead of geometry shaders

Added Raytracing Options > Geometry Trace Quality option, for controlling the ray tracing of non-cube geometry

Added Raytracing Options > GI Filter Quality option. Set this to Low for a decent speedup at the cost of lower quality diffuse indirect lighting

Fixed unpowered redstone lamps and torches giving off light

Fixed black sky from underwater bug

Fixed sunlight specular not showing on metallic surfaces

Fixed metallic surfaces going black when Full Raytrace Reflections is Off (Screen-space reflections still show issues on metallic surfaces though)

Fixed issue where voxelization would sometimes break and cause lighting bugs when high resolution resource packs were used

Fixed normal maps changing appearance/depth based on resolution of resource pack

Fixed ray traced reflections not considering atmospheric scattering

Fixed atmospheric scattering causing lighting bugs during rain

Improved color accuracy of secondary GI bounces (and gives slight reduction in "disco floor" effect)

Added ReinhardJodie tonemap operator

Implemented proper ACES tonemap color transformations

Fixed errors caused by some combinations of post processing settings with boosted saturation

Tweaked sunlight colors, should be more natural now

Fixed auto-exposure adjustment reading from the wrong screen position

Added new (custom and not physically based at all) algorithm for converting kelvin color temperature to RGB, used for Torchlight Color Temp setting

Added much more granularity in many adjustable shader options, and many have been converted to sliders

Fixed bug where reflections were sometimes brighter than the thing they were reflecting

Better depth-based rejection for GI filter, so edges of blocks are much cleaner up-close, and far away diagonal surfaces aren't as splotchy

Improved shadow appearance, spots of sunlight no longer look like little targets, but like full-shaded discs.

PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING REQUIREMENTS FOR USING THIS SHADER PACK!

Minecraft 1.14.4 (older version compatibility isn’t possible until new OptiFine features are ported back)

OptiFine HD U F3 or newer

Options > Video Settings > Details > Alternate Blocks: OFF

Options > Video Settings > Details > Trees: Fancy or Fast (Smart may break lighting)

Options > Video Settings > Quality > Natural Textures: OFF

Options > Video Settings > Shaders > Shadow Quality: 1x

Options > Video Settings > Shaders > Old Lighting : DEFAULT

Resource packs with custom block models will probably cause  lighting glitches!!!!!!

Some of the currently known issues are as follows:

Block texture alpha is not considered in diffuse GI tracing, so doors and trapdoors don't let any light through their windows currently.

Being underwater in ravines/caves shows some light leaking, and “glowing” water fog. This is unavoidable currently.

Some artifacts on edges of water shadows (will improve in the future)

"Disco Floor" flickering artifact mostly seen in reflections (the new Secondary GI Samples option can help with this)

Secondary GI bounces (2nd bounce and onward) can take a while to adapt to lighting changes

Blocks which are not a full-sized cube in the world aren't considered properly in lighting and reflections (causes artifacts with half slabs, stairs, and the like)

Issues with the rendering of semi-transparent/translucent materials

AN IMPORTANT NOTE ON GRAPHICS DRIVER ISSUES AND GPU COMPATIBILITY:

Since different GPUs can compile shaders differently than others, you may experience compile errors (causes "[Shaders] Error: Invalid program..." messages to appear in the in-game chat). 

If you experience compile errors and you're using an NVIDIA GPU, you can help me fix them by following the steps on this page, in the "How to Report a Compile Error" drop-down section and sending me the log!

Compatibility with AMD GPUs is being actively worked on. You will still experience some minor visual bugs, and you may experience random crashing.

Compatibility with Intel GPUs is not possible at all!