Feature request: Shaders for bloom and lens flare

[MirceaKitsune]

Pioneer already has beautiful graphics, with quality models and textures as well as normal and specular maps that respect light sources. This would be even further improved if at least a few basic shaders were added. I presume GLSL support exists in the engine or is easy to add.

I'm primarily thinking of two effects: Bloom and lens flare, possibly a dirty window to go with it. As you mainly see just the star skybox and objects are viewed from afar, I don't believe filters like Depth of Field or Motion Blur are worth bothering with in our case... however you see bright stars and other lights all the time, be it looking straight at a star through your window or seeing its light shine on your ship (3rd person view) and into your cockpit (1st person view): For this reason HDR with iris adaptation would be a logical effect, as well as lens flares coming from bright stars as you look into them.

Obviously such effects should be optional and provided as settings in the menu. Both for reasons of performance and compatibility, as well as people who would find them distracting especially the lens flaring as it can cover and disrupt your view. For those of us who love added realism and a photorealistic environment, this would be a beautiful addition if you could please consider it.

[bszlrd]

Until this happens, you could use ReShade for these effects.
Bloom works, I tried that, don't know wether it can do lens flare though. I also tried SSAO, but it did not work.

Be aware that bloom does not work with the native screenshot function, it will burn the whole screen out, so use ReShade's screenshot functionality instead.

[MirceaKitsune]

I heard about Reshade but never used it myself albeit it's a nice concept: Would rather wait for this to be added by default.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b99mYg_9MlY

This video added some bloom in post-process. While it's not an engine feature, it gives a view of how pretty it would look like with a proper shader!

[bszlrd]

Yup, shadmar used ReShade for that video