Upgrade your Virtual Sailor NG simulation experience with modern effects

Virtual Sailor is quite outdated, originally being developed in 1999. That does not however mean that it in any way is bad, quite the opposite – VS has under the years evolved into a capable simulator. One thing that has been missing though, are modern graphics effects such as Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field. In this blog post we’ll explain step by step how you can upgrade your simulation experience with these effects using the software ReShade. These details really brings the immersion to a new level.

I hope you enjoy this tutorial – Erik SIM3D

Table of contents

1. What is ReShade?
2. ReShade install
3. LUT (color correction) install
4. Ambient Occlusion install
5. Depth of Field install
6. Anti Aliasing install

1. What is ReShade?

ReShade is a post-processing injector for games and video software. It allows users to apply a variety of visual effects and enhancements to real-time rendering, often improving the visual quality or changing the aesthetic of a game or application.

2. ReShade Install

Visit ReShade.me and download the latest version of ReShade. Follow the install instructions and chose DirectX 9 when asked, as Virtual Sailor uses DX9.

3. LUT (color correction) install

Now when we’ve got ReShade installed we need to install what is called shaders into this software, these are different effects you can load. We start with a simple color correction shader.

Press your Home key on your keyboard to bring up the ReShade settings. Find LUT (lut.fx) in the menu. Enable it. You can tweak your color correction manually but the easiest way to bring out more natural colors is to download my own LUT settings here. Place this lut.png in your ReShade installation folder, usually for us who use Virtual Sailor – the following path

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Virtual Sailor NG\reshade-shaders\Textures

Overwrite the old lut.png (create a backup if you wish). Click Reload in game to see it take effect.

4. Ambient Occlusion install

For this we need to install some extra shaders. They are called Marty’s Mods Epic ReShade Effects (iMMERSE) which is a collection of several shaders (we’ll be using the Anti Aliasing too later). Download these and install them in your ReShade folder (click Code>Download ZIP).

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Virtual Sailor NG\reshade-shaders\Shaders

Enable iMMERSE: MXAO in the simulator and chose the following settings:

If you are having some issues at this stage, first off, go into the game video settings and turn off Anti Aliasing there (we’ll turn on Anti Aliasing again at a later stage using ReShade instead). In ReShade under settings, select this:

This gives ReShade access to the simulator depth-buffer.

5. Depth of Field install

Download and install OtisFX the same way as earlier. In the ReShade list, find and select Cinematic DOF. These settings work pretty much like a real camera – and can be tweaked as such. Here are however my settings if you are lazy (like me).

6. Anti Aliasing install

We had to disable the in-game Anti Aliasing since we do not get access to the depth-buffer otherwise. It’s no problem though as we can add Anti Aliasing again through ReShade. Find iMMERSE Anti Aliasing in the list and activate it. Nothing really needs to be changed in the settings here – but you can ofcourse tweak it if you wish.

Let me know how you are enjoying this upgraded look of Virtual Sailor by joining our Discord server and sharing some screenshots! – Erik SIM3D