CptBohno

@Duckmeister 02-22-2011, 10:02 PM Enbseries overrides DirectX defaults and does only that. I have no idea what you're talking about. A game executable first looks for DLL's in its own folder before it checks the default locations like ..\system32. The modified DLL's, libraries, look for the ini file to load settings. It's not exactly rocket science. Whether it works for you and how entirely depends on your GPU, your OS, your CPU, memory and so on, and important the settings you use. Don't expect good results by downloading a random ini file. Forget about it if you don't bother to read instructions. Most GPU's allow you to make game profiles nowadays, this is basically the same thing. Enbseries however is bare to the bone and straight forward. I have far better night graphics now by tweaking a little. Far less saturation, less lamp post ambient occlusion and darker is clearly an improvement. That is: to me. With my settings for my GPU with my monitor and so on. I also use Enbseries with FSX which gives superb results at day and night. Manufacturers and developers go for the average PC configuration. It doesn't make sense for a BI or Microsoft or EA Games to tweak graphic settings for people with exactly GPU X, monitor Y, CPU Z and Windows Q, so some things may be disabled or turned low by default while your gear is perfectly capable. GPU manufacturers have one worry less, they know what GPU you are using, so they can provide templates for you to play with. It's still limited though. Enbseries gives you very basic control over how DirectX should translate things to your GPU. It sits between the in-game graphic settings and the settings of your GPU. It allows you to fine tune things with high precision. For sure it is over-control if you don't know what you are doing. For those who want to test, download enbseries.ini and the DLL's, put them in your game directory. You may need an additional DLL, you can find it online. Now edit the ini file, set 'use effect' under [global] to 1, set all effects under [effect] to 0 and slowly start building your profile with a little bit of common sense and Google. In an hour or so you can do pretty much. Changing this ini-file does not change Arma2 and you can always abandon ship immediately by hitting shift-F12 and/or deleting the ini+DLL's. Enbseries is not a mod but there are settings that may hit your fps like motionblur. Keep it turned off. I tried several ini-files to find one that gave me so-so results and started to edit that one. That may be a good start if you see trash. While tweaking, you don't have to restart Arma2 after every change. Just go to the editor and make a dummy mission with you as a player, some people, some vehicles, a fire, somewhere near a city. Hit preview. Not satisfied, go back to the editor, hit alt-tab and change some settings. Save, go back to Arma2, preview. You may do this for different times of day and weather. Hit shift-F12 to enable/disable to see the difference. If you're fine with your game as it is, good. Don't bother. But don't believe scary ghost stories about viruses and missing DLL's. Enbseries is magnificent if you know how it works, how to use it and spend some time testing. I won't be surprised if it's 'alpha'. The guy adjusted some DLL's to look for an ini file, added some text at initialization and added some hooks for keyboard combinations like shift F12. There's not much more to develop.

The greatest game ever, but some animations are way too fast. In the Arma3 footage again, I see grass moving as if there's a chopper nearby. Please don't do that. I haven't see animal animations yet, cattle in Arma2 seem to be on steriods. I know timing is very hard, but too slow is better than too fast. Bird and insect animations (in Arma2) are great imho. Another thing I would welcome is an easier editor interface for some simple tasks. I've spent half a day to figure out how to spawn friendly/foe AI on certain spawn points, move to the war area ASAP and then do something instead of being sitting ducks. It still doesn't work as I'd like to see. The editor and scripts are very powerful and I think Bohemia is insane of releasing Arma 2 Free for free, but the whole Arma could be much better. Why must I put a SOM on a map and copy-paste jibberish in an init only to be able to walk around and request some support? Arma2 freeplay with only the SOM and ambient combat are a game on its own.

I don't see my posting? The night is a big improvement here. Needs some tweaking, but much more realistic. Street lights looked like umbrellas, now that effect is gone and orange blooms. The moon really shines. Edit: this posting immediately shows up. Something must have gone wrong. My previous posting in short: enbseries depends on your GPU. It basically tells DirectX how to pass things, overruling 'stupid defaults'. There is no set back in fps and quality improvement is sometimes huge, i.e. in FSX. Download enbseries.ini and the DLL files, copy them in your main Arma folder: http://enbdev.com/download_en.htm . There are plenty of examples how to tweak. Enable/disable enbseries with shift-F12. Oh, and make sure the refresh rate settings in enbseries.ini are correct for your monitor.

How Enbseries performs depends on your GPU. It works fine here (ATI Radeon 4850 x2), but there no huge quality shift as in i.e. FSX where the improvement is significant. In Arma 2 Free the contrast is a bit better which adds a little bit extra depth in my opinion. And no, there isn't a drop in fps. This ini file basically tells DirectX how the GPU should render stuff. It just overrides default settings which are used for all engines. Maybe you've seen 'game profiles' for your GPU, it's basically the same thing, though you have more freedom to tweak. You activate and deactivate Enbseries with shift-F12. It doesn't conflict with the default control layout. How to install? Well, I copied enbseries.ini, d3d9.dll, d3dx9_26.dll and d3dx9_40.dll from FSX to the Arma 2 Free main folder and restarted Arma2. I am not sure if you need all three DLL's. There are several different enbseries.ini files around to test and if you have time you could tweak the file yourself. Most settings are quite easy to understand, i.e. shadow amounts, blooming, night darkening amounts and so on. One important thing: make sure the refresh rate settings under [engine] is correct for your monitor. Sorry for bumping an old posting, but Enbseries really improved the quality of some games/sims with little effort. You can download Enbseries.ini and two DLL's here: http://enbdev.com/index_en.html