CONTROL - HDR+Ultrawide+DLSS+RT Patch

2 hours ago, filoppi said:

Do a fresh install please. 

I did that 4 times now. No joy.

BUT

I just did a full restart and it works!

56 minutes ago, fragment shader said:

Fantastic mod, thank you. Even without using RT or HDR, the mip fix for DLSS alone is immediately evident and a huge improvement.

This is not an issue related to the mod, but this is a problem that Control in DX12 mode has had since release, and that is with microstutter in DX12 mode and vsync. I've seen this across 3 systems over the years so pretty sure it's not my system, it's likely only exhibited on fixed refresh rate displays and the fact it's intermittent is perhaps why it's not more widely experienced - that and I'm using a gamepad where the linear camera motion makes this microstutter more obvious as opposed to using k+m.

Video that demonstrates the differences between DX12 and DX11 mode here.

As I mention in the video description, I can temporarily alleviate these incidents by resetting some graphics settings, such as raising/lowering the internal resolution. Doing so will then give properly paced frames in that area, but it won't last - it will rear its head in another random room eventually. I've also noticed than a potential trigger for this is when encountering an area that lowers the framerate below 60fps, if I keep my settings low enough so I'm never GPU bound at any point, this seems to reduce the chances of this occurring. Rivatuner, when it's enabled from the game launch also seems to reduce the frequency of these microstutter rooms, but it isn't perfect either.

DX11 mode does not exhibit this problem at any point with or without rivatuner, alas no DLSS in DX11 mode, as well vsync affects loading times. 

Just potentially something to look at for a future update? 🙂

 

Thanks for the info. At the moment I don't have any intention of fixing this, but I'll write it down for the future. 

6 hours ago, Zat0ichi said:

another crash to desktop after intro credits.

reinstalled 3 times.

vanilla game runs. (steam)

Overwrite files from mod  - wont get to main menu.

Redownloaded mod.

tried swapping about exe's didn't help.

Only scene one other person reporting this, we prob have the same issue. some darkside issue causing our computer Skid off the tracks.

 

Could you record a video of this happening? I'm assuming you don't have any other mods installed? 

7 hours ago, moeburn said:

After playing the game for about an hour with this HDR mod, I encountered a game-breaking bug that does not allow me to progress:

https://streamable.com/u206m4

Because this is not a known-bug with Control, because I had just recently installed this mod, and because this mod specifically fucks around with your save game files and does not work with GOG saves and requires you to convert them to Epic saves even on the "No-DRM version", I'm going to assume this mod is the reason my save game got corrupted, and I'm going to uninstall it. 

You can assume anything you want. This mod doesn't have a single change around gameplay code, all changes are exclusively in the renderer. There's no changes to the save files as well. I'm sorry you are stuck, just restart the game if you can, but there's no point in giving up the mod.

1 hour ago, filoppi said:

You can assume anything you want. This mod doesn't have a single change around gameplay code, all changes are exclusively in the renderer. There's no changes to the save files as well. I'm sorry you are stuck, just restart the game if you can, but there's no point in giving up the mod.

I have a similar problem. After installing the DRM-free version of the mod the game started using a different save folder and save format than the GOG version normally does, as described earlier in this thread. I followed the instructions previously linked here and converted the save files to the .chunk type in order to continue my playthrough using the mod. I encountered weird glitches like having to cleanse control points after fast traveling to them and being able to pick up collectibles I already had, but it was playable. Until after playing a couple of hours and fast traveling to a location that had previously had a scripted fight around the control point - this time I was unable to re-cleanse the control point and became stuck.

I don't know why the mod changes the save location and format but it 100% does. And unfortunately this makes it unplayable on the GOG version, unless someone figures out a completely bug free method of converting the save files.

Great mod though, if you're not using the GOG version.

I apologize for the disparaging comment on the mod, I have been told that the GOG version of the game is just prone to corrupting save files exactly like mine.  It was just a coincidence that it only happened one hour after installing the mod, and the mod happened to involve non-standard access to save files. 

Here's a couple of .bat files I wrote to make things a little easier.  This one will automatically copy the GOG saves over to the Epic save folder, provided it exists, provided the save you want to copy is slot 00, and provided you copied over your preferences file as well already.   First step copies the files, second step adds ".chunk" to the end of the filenames, third step removes "savegame-slot-00_" from the beginning of the filenames. 

 

xcopy %UserProfile%\Documents\"My Games"\Control\Saves\savegame-slot-00_* %LOCALAPPDATA%\Remedy\Control\Default-Generic-User\savegame-slot-00\*.chunk

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

set sourceFolder="%UserProfile%\Documents\"My Games"\Control\Saves\"
set backupFolder="%LOCALAPPDATA%\Remedy\Control\Default-Generic-User\savegame-slot-00\"

for %%I in (%sourceFolder%\savegame-slot-00_*) do (
set filename=%%I
set newFilename=!filename:savegame-slot-00_=!
set newFilename=!newFilename!.chunk

go

copy "%%I" "%backupFolder%\!newFilename!"

)

Setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

Set "Pattern=savegame-slot-00_"
Set "Replace="

For %%# in ("%LOCALAPPDATA%\Remedy\Control\Default-Generic-User\savegame-slot-00\*.chunk") Do (
    Set "File=%%~nx#"
    Ren "%%#" "!File:%Pattern%=%Replace%!"
)

Pause&Exit

Just save that to a .bat file and run it and it will copy your GOG saves over to the Epic location so you can run this mod.  Again provided your saves are in slot 00, and the Epic saves directory exists, and you've already copied your preferences file to the other directory.

 

This little guy is for me and anyone else running the GOG version, it will make a backup of all your saves to c:\_temp\savesbackup (or whatever you edit this to) every 30 minutes while it is running.  Leave it running while you play the game, and if you encounter any game-breaking bugs like I did (which are NOT the fault of this mod) then you will have a save game to return to:

@echo off
:loop
xcopy /s /e /y %UserProfile%\Documents\"My Games"\Control\Saves\*.* C:\_temp\savesbackup 
timeout 1800
goto loop

 

58 minutes ago, someguy said:

I have a similar problem. After installing the DRM-free version of the mod the game started using a different save folder and save format than the GOG version normally does, as described earlier in this thread. I followed the instructions previously linked here and converted the save files to the .chunk type in order to continue my playthrough using the mod. I encountered weird glitches like having to cleanse control points after fast traveling to them and being able to pick up collectibles I already had, but it was playable. Until after playing a couple of hours when I fast traveled to a location in maintenance - this time I was unable to re-cleanse the control point and became stuck.

I don't know why the mod changes the save location and format but it 100% does. And unfortunately this makes it unplayable on the GOG version, unless someone figures out a completely bug free method of converting the save files.

Great mod though, hopefully this issue can be fixed in the future.

I never encountered cleansing control points after fast traveling to them, or picking up collectibles I already had.

But I fast travelled to central executive and then became stuck - the control point was no longer accessible.  And also the room was corrupted and people were walking through walls.

So now I don't know who to believe.  You're describing almost the exact same glitch as me.  I read that the GOG version is prone to save corruption, but upon further reading it appears what they meant was unloadable saves, as in the game just refuses to load.  Not bizzare glitched saves like you and I are experiencing.

filoppi insists this game doesn't modify any code but it is obviously not the same DRM-free executable that the GOG version uses, and so while HE didn't modify the code, it is clearly modified from the version we are using.  Combined with the fact that we have to mess around with save file locations to get it to work, and I think it is a possible explanation of our problems.

I still have not encountered any of these bugs with the mod removed/uninstalled.  Only with the mod installed.  And now that you're describing a very similar bug to what I got... I'm not sure it isn't the mod anymore.

filoppi I don't know where you got that "DRM-free" version of Control, it appears to be the Epic version stripped of its DRM, and not the GOG version, but I suspect that version mismatch is the cause of our troubles.  Until this mod is built from the actual GOG version of Control, I would consider it unsupported/use at your own risk for GOG version players.  

4 minutes ago, moeburn said:

I never encountered cleansing control points after fast traveling to them, or picking up collectibles I already had.

But I fast travelled to central executive and then became stuck - the control point was no longer accessible.  And also the room was corrupted and people were walking through walls.

So now I don't know who to believe.  You're describing almost the exact same glitch as me.  I read that the GOG version is prone to save corruption, but upon further reading it appears what they meant was unloadable saves, as in the game just refuses to load.  Not bizzare glitched saves like you and I are experiencing.

filoppi insists this game doesn't modify any code but it is obviously not the same DRM-free executable that the GOG version uses, and so while HE didn't modify the code, it is clearly modified from the version we are using.  Combined with the fact that we have to mess around with save file locations to get it to work, and I think it is a possible explanation of our problems.

I still have not encountered any of these bugs with the mod removed/uninstalled.  Only with the mod installed.  And now that you're describing a very similar bug to what I got... I'm not sure it isn't the mod anymore.

filoppi I don't know where you got that "DRM-free" version of Control, it appears to be the Epic version stripped of its DRM, and not the GOG version, but I suspect that version mismatch is the cause of our troubles.  Until this mod is built from the actual GOG version of Control, I would consider it unsupported/use at your own risk for GOG version players.  

The No DRM version is not the epic store version without DRM (none of them actually have DRM afaik), but it's also not the GOG version. I am unable to release that at the time, so please either start a new save or don't use the mod. I don't know about how the GOG save files work, but they are likely the same and conversion shouldn't bring bugs, but I can't confirm that.

12 minutes ago, moeburn said:

I never encountered cleansing control points after fast traveling to them, or picking up collectibles I already had.

But I fast travelled to central executive and then became stuck - the control point was no longer accessible.  And also the room was corrupted and people were walking through walls.

I actually encountered this same bug the first time I tried converting the saves - it was because I had missed a file, preferences_data, or data.chunk in the Epic version. See https://youtu.be/O76c09bVy4Y?t=281

However, even with this file correctly converted your game will probably still be buggy and will almost certainly soft-lock sooner or later. It seems like the states of various progress-related triggers are not read correctly when GOG save files are ported over to the modded version. Although I guess you could try moving over save slots other than 00 and see if that helps. Maybe I'll try it at a later date but for now I'm done with the game.

Amazing patch/mod! Thank you. Playing the game one more time because of great optics on Samsung super ultra wide 32:9 CRG9 with great 1000nits HDR.

 

I just tried the GOG Version, and can confirm the issues.

The save file location suddenly changes to the Epic path "Default-Epic-User".

After moving my latest savegame from the Steam Version I had the exact same issue. On my first try when I was renaming files to .chunk files I had the cleansing control point issue as well.
Only as I was using 01 savegame files, not 00 files from my steam folder, this was fixed, as 00 was missing a file. With that savegame I was able to cleanse like 5 control points and the game plays normally, seems to be a minor issue with the wrong GOG save game location.

A suggestion for this and future game releases.

Please make your HDR brightness settings in "nits" if possible (Edit: I do see the description to the side, I missed that so good on ya still tho), or provide a visual indication of the peak brightness the setting is using. For example a cube with some absurd brightness level, and then another cube around it representing the games max brightness. That way you can set the value to where your displays brightness starts to clamp. 

A lot of games (Death Stranding) have this issue where their brightness settings are ambiguous (using a landscape or some other non-objective value) and don't communicate if you'll encounter a clamping issue or not. Having raw nits as the value is important cause some displays like mine reach 1500nits easily or potentially higher, or have weird numbers like 1100nits or 750 even. But it's hard to determine what that is based on an ambiguous 0-100 number (is "50" 1000nits? 500? What my OS determines to be my peak brightness?).

I see this problem so often and i always appreciate games with a simple nit value or objective indicator.

Also please future proof the peak brightness numbers. At least to something like 4000nits...

 

EDIT2: I typed this before loading the game up and i see now 50 is based on the calibration. I can see this makes thing simpler, but sometimes the calibration is wrong, windows reads my display as 1500, but it can reach higher depending on the size of the window. Some kind of manual override might be appreciated. Also some peoples display calibration is just wrong at default. 

33 minutes ago, sacb0y said:

A suggestion for this and future game releases.

Please make your HDR brightness settings in "nits" if possible (Edit: I do see the description to the side, I missed that so good on ya still tho), or provide a visual indication of the peak brightness the setting is using. For example a cube with some absurd brightness level, and then another cube around it representing the games max brightness. That way you can set the value to where your displays brightness starts to clamp. 

A lot of games (Death Stranding) have this issue where their brightness settings are ambiguous (using a landscape or some other non-objective value) and don't communicate if you'll encounter a clamping issue or not. Having raw nits as the value is important cause some displays like mine reach 1500nits easily or potentially higher, or have weird numbers like 1100nits or 750 even. But it's hard to determine what that is based on an ambiguous 0-100 number (is "50" 1000nits? 500? What my OS determines to be my peak brightness?).

I see this problem so often and i always appreciate games with a simple nit value or objective indicator.

Also please future proof the peak brightness numbers. At least to something like 4000nits...

 

EDIT2: I typed this before loading the game up and i see now 50 is based on the calibration. I can see this makes thing simpler, but sometimes the calibration is wrong, windows reads my display as 1500, but it can reach higher depending on the size of the window. Some kind of manual override might be appreciated. Also some peoples display calibration is just wrong at default. 

Seems like you didn't read my documentation at all... m_fHDRMaxNitsOverride does exactly that.

22 minutes ago, filoppi said:

Seems like you didn't read my documentation at all... m_fHDRMaxNitsOverride does exactly that.

Ah yeah I saw some ini file edits, I was mainly talking about on a UI level. But at least the option is there. 

2 hours ago, sacb0y said:

A suggestion for this and future game releases.

Please make your HDR brightness settings in "nits" if possible (Edit: I do see the description to the side, I missed that so good on ya still tho), or provide a visual indication of the peak brightness the setting is using. For example a cube with some absurd brightness level, and then another cube around it representing the games max brightness. That way you can set the value to where your displays brightness starts to clamp. 

A lot of games (Death Stranding) have this issue where their brightness settings are ambiguous (using a landscape or some other non-objective value) and don't communicate if you'll encounter a clamping issue or not. Having raw nits as the value is important cause some displays like mine reach 1500nits easily or potentially higher, or have weird numbers like 1100nits or 750 even. But it's hard to determine what that is based on an ambiguous 0-100 number (is "50" 1000nits? 500? What my OS determines to be my peak brightness?).

I see this problem so often and i always appreciate games with a simple nit value or objective indicator.

Also please future proof the peak brightness numbers. At least to something like 4000nits...

 

EDIT2: I typed this before loading the game up and i see now 50 is based on the calibration. I can see this makes thing simpler, but sometimes the calibration is wrong, windows reads my display as 1500, but it can reach higher depending on the size of the window. Some kind of manual override might be appreciated. Also some peoples display calibration is just wrong at default. 

You can calibrate Windows HDR as you wish, it doesn't matter if Windows reads your NEO G9 at 1500nits when you calibrate it for higher peak brightness with the calibration tool. You may just set m_fHDRMaxNitsOverride to 2000.

Would it be possible for the mod to enable surround sound?

I know, there's, like, 5 people out there who actually use surround sound on PC, but given that it's supported on console and can apparently, according to the wike page here, be enabled on Windows with a tool called Special K, it might not be that difficult to do. The tech seems to be fully implemented, just not surfaced to the user. And it would be hugely appreciated by me, and maybe even several others as well, since I haven't played the game further than the lobby area where years ago I put the game down to wait for a patch to this issue.

5 hours ago, nameforpcgw said:

Would it be possible for the mod to enable surround sound?

I know, there's, like, 5 people out there who actually use surround sound on PC, but given that it's supported on console and can apparently, according to the wike page here, be enabled on Windows with a tool called Special K, it might not be that difficult to do. The tech seems to be fully implemented, just not surfaced to the user. And it would be hugely appreciated by me, and maybe even several others as well, since I haven't played the game further than the lobby area where years ago I put the game down to wait for a patch to this issue.

I think the game supports surround sound by default, without the need of Special K. I try it on my 5.1.4 system and get discrete directional sounds from all 5 floor speakers. Still, would like a confirmation from the dev of course.

On 5/16/2023 at 3:35 PM, nameforpcgw said:

Would it be possible for the mod to enable surround sound?

I know, there's, like, 5 people out there who actually use surround sound on PC, but given that it's supported on console and can apparently, according to the wike page here, be enabled on Windows with a tool called Special K, it might not be that difficult to do. The tech seems to be fully implemented, just not surfaced to the user. And it would be hugely appreciated by me, and maybe even several others as well, since I haven't played the game further than the lobby area where years ago I put the game down to wait for a patch to this issue.

Pretty much every single first person shooter made in the past 10 years supports surround sound on PC.  They just don't all mention it in the menus.  Some games like Battlefield V will let you choose 5.1 surround sound in the menu, but most games just automatically detect whatever you have configured in the Windows sound control panel (mmsys.cpl).  As long as you let Windows know you have 5.1 surround sound, Control will detect it and you'll get the full experience with sounds that occur behind you playing out of your rear speakers, and dialogue playing out of your center speaker, etc. 

Still using the HDR mod despite the previous messed up save, because it's just SOOOO MUCH BETTER.  Honestly this was by biggest beef with Control, was "why does this game look so weird?"  The lighting always looked off, like viewing HDR content on an SDR screen, how it makes everything grey.  And that film grain noise on everything, wtf was that?  This mod fixes all of that and I love it.

So I'm happy to say I haven't had a single weird occurrence since then.  That bug occurred at the beginning of the Containment section, that trapped me in a room unable to progress and only fixed by recovering a backup of my save file - I've completed Containment and not seen a single other bug yet.  So I'm still unsure if it was caused by this mod or something else.  But no more issues since then!

56 minutes ago, moeburn said:

Pretty much every single first person shooter made in the past 10 years supports surround sound on PC.  They just don't all mention it in the menus.  Some games like Battlefield V will let you choose 5.1 surround sound in the menu, but most games just automatically detect whatever you have configured in the Windows sound control panel (mmsys.cpl).  As long as you let Windows know you have 5.1 surround sound, Control will detect it and you'll get the full experience with sounds that occur behind you playing out of your rear speakers, and dialogue playing out of your center speaker, etc. 

Thanks, but I have the game and I have tested it. I have my PC hooked up through hdmi to a home cinema receiver set to 5.1. Surround sound works for me in every game I've played that supports it, except Control. In Control, I only get stereo, with my rear speakers being silent.

This is not a problem that only I have. There's posts on reddit asking about this issue, with people commenting to say it doesn't work for them either. And again, pcgw itself says there is no native support either. Whether right or wrong, whoever contributed that information seems to have had the same experience I had. I have a hard time doing much research beyond that given the game's generic name and vanishingly small PC surround sound userbase.

So if surround sound is actually supported in the PC version, then my theory is that it tries to detect your speaker setup but some problem makes this detection fail for some users and give you stereo instead, with no way to manually correctly configure the game.

4 minutes ago, nameforpcgw said:

Thanks, but I have the game and I have tested it. I have my PC hooked up through hdmi to a home cinema receiver set to 5.1. Surround sound works for me in every game I've played that supports it, except Control. In Control, I only get stereo, with my rear speakers being silent.

This is not a problem that only I have. There's posts on reddit asking about this issue, with people commenting to say it doesn't work for them either. And again, the pcgw wiki itself says there is no native support either. Whether right or wrong, whoever contributed that information seems to have had the same experience I had. I have a hard time doing much research beyond that given the game's generic name and vanishingly small PC surround sound userbase.

So if surround sound is actually supported in the PC version, then my theory is that it tries to detect your speaker setup but some problem makes this detection fail for some users and give you stereo instead, with no way to manually correctly configure the game.

That's really weird... definitely works for me.  I turned my head to the side to make sure they weren't duplicates (stereo on both front and back) and they weren't - dialogue was coming out the front, effects out the back, and if I spun the view around with the right stick, the sounds spun around me. 

I also output via HDMI to a TV, TV outputs to home cinema receiver thru the ARC port, mine only supports Dolby Digital so there's a tiny bit of lag, but it works. 

You've got your sound system configured properly in mmsys.cpl?  There's two 5.1 options there, one for where the two extra speakers are used on the sides, and one for where they're used as rears.  I'm using the rears one, maybe that makes a difference?

Also the in-game setting Speakers vs Headphones - I have it set to speakers, not sure if that affects things either.

Or maybe the fact that my sound system is forcing Windows to output in DD only - maybe this game can't support an LPCM output or something?  Not sure how that is handled. 

19 minutes ago, moeburn said:

That's really weird... definitely works for me.  I turned my head to the side to make sure they weren't duplicates (stereo on both front and back) and they weren't - dialogue was coming out the front, effects out the back, and if I spun the view around with the right stick, the sounds spun around me. 

I also output via HDMI to a TV, TV outputs to home cinema receiver thru the ARC port, mine only supports Dolby Digital so there's a tiny bit of lag, but it works. 

You've got your sound system configured properly in mmsys.cpl?  There's two 5.1 options there, one for where the two extra speakers are used on the sides, and one for where they're used as rears.  I'm using the rears one, maybe that makes a difference?

Also the in-game setting Speakers vs Headphones - I have it set to speakers, not sure if that affects things either.

Or maybe the fact that my sound system is forcing Windows to output in DD only - maybe this game can't support an LPCM output or something?  Not sure how that is handled. 

I'm a Linux user so, well, anything Windows-specific isn't going to be relevant. But all speakers are working as they should, and in games with a reasonable surround sound implementation I can spin around and have the audio follow accordingly. I do use lpcm, so no compression going on for me. I don't think it really matters, though, or if it somehow does, lpcm should have the least issues.

On 5/14/2023 at 4:03 PM, jademalo said:

The biggest issue is the weird DLC incompatibility, honestly. I can't figure it out 😞

The download that I get strangely doesn't have a build number when checking details of the exe, which is even stranger. It's like I've got some sort of strange build of the game that's extremely weird. I wonder if I can ask Valve to try and remove the weird broken key, I wonder if this has anything to do with me having the Humble Bundle version then upgrading to the full ultimate.

 

EDIT: Fixed it!

I had a copy of the standard edition registered on steam from a Humble Bundle a few years ago. This uses a different depot with an older build, which was taking presidence over the actual ultimate edition depot.

Going through steam support and manually removing the key for the standard edition seems to have fixed it, after reinstalling it loaded my DLC correctly. It seems that the core of the issue is that my DLC wasn't being detected when running through an ultimate edition executable (such as this mod), so saves were incompatible due to them expecting the DLC.

I still can't figure out why ultimate executables wouldn't detect my DLC even if I manually installed the ultimate depot or installed this mod, but at least it's sorted now!

Hopefully that's useful for in the future if someone else has a similar issue!

 

I believe I'm running into this exact issue as I also got the game from humble bundle awhile ago but multiple editions as I wanted the DLC and they seem to have merged. Could you share more info on what you did with support because I don't see any keys listed with the game but do know it was an issue because it said it was the ultimate edition even before I got the DLC as apperantly the original was removed from Steam.

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but all my textures looks really bad. I have the texture setting set to "Max". Have to stare at textures for a good 5 seconds to get them to load (and sometimes they don't load like the big tree in the cafeteria). Final image shows how a texture looks when finally loads. This is my first time playing the game so I have no idea how it is like in vanilla, but this still feels quite bad. I watched the Digital Foundry video which is what got me interested in the game to behind with and their textures looked fine.

To be honest, mine looked fine too in the starting 10 minutes of the game, but once I unlocked the first check point thing where you meet the first people, it just started behaving like this. I'm using the Epic Games version on an RTX 3070 Ti, running at 1440p.

5 hours ago, imarbot said:

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but all my textures looks really bad. I have the texture setting set to "Max". Have to stare at textures for a good 5 seconds to get them to load (and sometimes they don't load like the big tree in the cafeteria). Final image shows how a texture looks when finally loads. This is my first time playing the game so I have no idea how it is like in vanilla, but this still feels quite bad. I watched the Digital Foundry video which is what got me interested in the game to behind with and their textures looked fine.

To be honest, mine looked fine too in the starting 10 minutes of the game, but once I unlocked the first check point thing where you meet the first people, it just started behaving like this. I'm using the Epic Games version on an RTX 3070 Ti, running at 1440p.

The GPU is the problem. 8 GB of VRAM is not enough for Max texture setting. I know, because I had it too with the same issue.

2 hours ago, Terepin said:

The GPU is the problem. 8 GB of VRAM is not enough for Max texture setting. I know, because I had it too with the same issue.

I can confirm. I specified in the instructions that 10GB are needed.