More fixes for Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree

Release 12.5.0 of the R.E.A.L. VR mod, attached at the bottom, brings the following improvements to the Elden Ring + DLC experience:

HDR and washed-out colors: When Elden Ring is run on a system that includes one or more HDR monitors or TVs, and even if the HDR displays are all turned off and/or support for HDR is disabled both in Elden Ring and in Windows, the game will configure its internal buffers to render in HDR mode. I didn't expect that, as usually the switch to high color depth (with the slight loss of performance it incurs) is done only when HDR is actually activated both in Windows and in the game itself.

For this reason, previous versions of the mod would display washed-out colors in the headset whenever you played Elden Ring in VR with an HDR display connected to the PC. Release 12.5.0 fixes that bug on my side, although the previous workaround of disconnecting all HDR monitors is still viable (and it's actually the only known solution that also avoids the slight FPS drop due to the game erroneously activating high dynamic range support).

DLSS support: Several of you have been asking me for a way to make my mod compatible with the third-party Temporal Supersampling mod. Release 12.5.0 offers that capability, although the usual caveats apply: you will encounter some bumps along the road; I cannot guarantee that mixing mods will work for you, or will continue to work in the future as the mods (and the game itself) evolve; and perhaps most importantly, my tests showed no consistent improvement from the use of DLSS or other upsampling techniques in Elden Ring, as the game is mostly CPU-limited especially in large outdoors areas.

Anyway, here is an installation procedure that works for me at the time of this writing. Go to https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/4513 and download the "Main Files" archive. Unpack it directly into the same folder where you put my mod (usually "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\ELDEN RING\Game"), preserving the folder structure and without creating an additional subfolder level. In other words, both the "ERSS2" folder and the "ERSS2.dll" file must end up in the same place as "eldenring.exe". Delete the "dxgi.dll" file that comes with the ERSS2 mod as it would conflict with mine.

Now launch the game as usual. You should notice that the window on the desktop no longer gets resized to fit the monitor height (that is because otherwise the third-party overlay would be too small to read). Now you can press "Home" on the keyboard to bring up the small blue overlay for ERSS2. You might notice however that the overlay is not navigable (it doesn't respond either to mouse clicks or keyboard input). If that happens to you, you'll need to perform this additional step: quit the game, use Notepad to open the "ERSS2.toml" file that was generated in the ERSS2 folder, and change the line "ImGuiUseGamepadNav = false" to "ImGuiUseGamepadNav = true". This will allow you to navigate the blue ERSS2 overlay with your gamepad (although you'll still need to use the "Home" key on the keyboard to bring it up).

Note that the overlay itself will probably be outside your field of view in VR, although it should be accessible on the desktop (and it can be dragged to a visible area by keeping the "X" or "Square" button on your gamepad pressed while you move the overlay with the left thumbstick).

Please let me know about your results! My own experiments using a 4090 and a Quest 3 showed that the internal TAA implemented by Elden Ring still gives the most stable image compared to DLSS or other techniques, and the small FPS gains brought about by upsampling do not justify the quality loss in my opinion. But YMMV.

If you like the third-party mod and it gives you good results, please support the creator on his Patreon or PayPal!! Instructions for doing so are at the bottom of https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/4513?tab=description.