#dxvk faq

[pictureamoebae]

ReShade question for Simmers who use it

Simmers who use ReShade, you must be aware by now that there are some shaders that don't work in dx9 games (and TS4 is a dx9 game). You can use DXVK to convert it to Vulkan, which lets you use them. Do you think this is something worthwhile encouraging people to do?

I've avoided it for a while now because it's an extra step that might confuse people (even though it's very simple), among a user base who frequently don't even really understand what a regular ReShade installation is.

There are quite a few nice shaders people are missing out on, and development of others is being held back a bit by having to account for dx9.

For example, shadows in the latest upcoming ReLight version are a lot better in dx11+/Vulkan, and there are weird artefacts for dx9. That's a limitation of the api, not much to be done while continuing to improve the shader.

Now, not everyone uses these types of shaders, so DXVK would be largely unneeded, but I'm starting to think it's worth talking about DXVK a bit more, getting people used to the idea of using it.

Maxis seems to have no intention to update TS4 to dx11, so as shaders continue to advance and improve this is only going to become more of a problem, with people increasingly locked out of using really nice ones.

I'd appreciate hearing your thoughts.

[To be clear about what DXVK is: it's a dll file that you drop in your Bin folder that (more or less) turns TS4 into a Vulkan game (or at least makes ReShade think it's using Vulkan). Once you've put the dll in your Bin folder, you have to reinstall ReShade selecting Vulkan as the api instead of dx9. Other than that, it all works exactly the same as usual, just now you get to use all the nice shaders.]

I've also asked this over on twitter if you'd prefer to reply there.

[pictureamoebae]

Hey! I just wanted to say thanks for all the information you share regarding reshade. You've been my primary resource when it came to me making my own presets. Just wondering how the new relight performs differently in the game. You said it now works? It already seems to work great as is so it's hard to imagine it working even better but that's exciting!

Hi! I'm glad I've been able to help you along your ReShade journey!

qUINT_ReLight worked absolutely fine in TS4, but the one released in December, MartysMods_ReLight, wouldn't compile under dx9 (this was a compiling problem on Marty's end, he didn't realise it didn't work until I told him). He's put heaps of work into it since then, and now it does compile under dx9 (although needed a couple of last minute fixes the past couple of days - he doesn't have many dx9 games so relies on testers to spot things!).

The way ReLight's settings look changed between qUINT_ReLight and December's MartysMods_ReLight, and they've changed even more for this release. Basically the only settings that look the same when compared to the shader guide I made for it are how to position the point lights and that there are sections for 4 lights. Everything else has changed.

There is now a new light option, which creates a directional light that you can't move in terms of where it's placed but it casts shadows in different directions uniformly across the screen. There is SSS (sub-surface scattering), and the way you choose the colour of lights has also changed (instead of a colour picker now there are two sliders for temperature and tint).

I'll write a new guide at some point, once I've had more time to play around with it and can do it justice.

This latest ReLight does have a few little quirks in dx9 games. The shadows can sometimes be a little noisy, and it also suffers from some lines at the edges of cast shadows (similar to MartysMods_MXAO in dx9). This is a dx9 limitation unfortunately, and as Marty continues to iterate on his shaders to make them more powerful and better quality, dx9 implementation simply won't be able to keep up with it.

That's why some people may decide that for TS4 they prefer to stick with the older qUINT_ReLight version. It still works perfectly well, and doesn't have those little quirks that the newer, more advanced version has introduced.

However, you can choose instead to use DXVK to simulate TS4 running with the Vulkan api instead of dx9, which will banish those quirks, and let you use all of the various shaders that don't work at all or don't work very well under dx9.

To use DXVK, remove ReShade first (back up your ReShade installation beforehand in case you need it), and then just drop the correct DXVK dll file into your TS4 Bin folder. Then, you'll need to reinstall ReShade using the installer, and this time choose Vulkan as the api instead of dx9. ReShade will install as normal, and you can go ahead and use it as you normally would, but now with access to more advanced and fun shaders.

[pictureamoebae]

Anon with windows 11 here! Thank you for answering my question!! So the crashing happens when I try to use a preset from other creators in the game and when I enable certain shaders (like SMAA). Loading reshade itself doesn’t crash the game. This is my first time using windows 11 because I wanted more space for my mods.

Hey anon,

idk if you're the person who came into my discord last night about this, but if not they found a possible reason why smaa is crashing for some people. Apparently their graphics card uses an Intel driver, and that driver converts the dx9 api of TS4 into dx12, which for some reason causes smaa to crash.

The answer is to either switch to using fxaa instead (and remove smaa from your shaders folder so it can't accidentally get enabled if you try a new preset), or you can try wrapping the ReShade api with DXVK, which essentially turns the dx9 api into Vulkan instead.

The first option is the easiest, and tbh I think fxaa looks better in TS4 than smaa anyway so you're not losing out there.

The second option is a bit more involved, but it does come with the added bonus that you'll also be able to use some of the other shaders that don't work in dx9 games.

[pictureamoebae]

Hi! Maybe you could help me better u sweat and this. At first I had Reshade 5.9.1 and I downloaded relight and everything was working fine at first. But then shaders that didn’t have problems compiling before started not compiling. So I thought I move to 5.9.2 and I still have the same problem. I went to a discord server to ask what was wrong and they said the shaders that were not compiling didn’t work for dx9 but they work for dx11 and apparently I had been running sims 4 on dx11 which is why it worked before. This confused me considering I’ve always been told sims 4 runs on dx9. Do you think you can help?

Hi! I think I saw your questions in the discord. Do you need any of those shaders? Do you use them? If not, just dump them or ignore the errors. All the errors do is stop those specific shaders from working. If you don’t need them, it doesn’t matter if they don’t work.

idk why they would have worked for you previously, it’s difficult to know for sure because each of us have different set ups on our computers. They were right though that TS4 is a dx9 game and certain shaders require a dx11 game to work.

If you do need any of those shaders for your preset you have two options:

1) Find other shaders to substitute for them and configure those to match the look you got from the ones that don’t work anymore. There are so many shaders to choose from, most shaders have at least 1 or 2 others that do something similar. You’ll have to experiment to find what you need.

2) Use DXVK to essentially fake-convert the dx9 api into a Vulkan api. This will let you use dx11 shaders. Only do this if you absolutely can’t live without those shaders.