Adding Ambient Occlusion to GTA IV

[Gummy]

Does anyone know how to inject AO into IV? I know it works on way older patches, but it doesn't work on the latest versions. I've tried to inject it using NVIDIA Inspector, but nothing appears. I'm also not keen on using ENB's because it adds too much stuff (most of which can't be disabled) I'm only interested in AO, maybe FXAA too.

 

Upon further inspection (heh..) it seems like the AO does work with the Inspector method, however it's only visible when stuff is extremely close to the camera, so I wonder if it's possible extend it

Edited October 30, 2019 by Gummy 

[HunterCZ122]

You should try ReShade. It includes AO called MXAO and FXAA (but I recommend SMAA).
Download ReShade from reshade.me, install it to GTAIV.exe and select Direct3D 9.
Ingame press Home button on your keyboard, select MXAO and it should work.
If it doesn't work, look in something called global settings and make sure that IS_DEPTH_BUFFER_RESERVED set to 0!
If it still doesn't work, then try XLiveless which removes GFWL overlay.

[Gummy]

Is it possible to just enable the AO? I don't want to alter the look of the game with color correction, bloom, and all that. Especially since I've just realized that it DOES work through NVIDIA Inspector, but only when I objects are close to the camera, or when the camera is not in my control (Cutscenes and stuff)

Edited November 2, 2019 by Gummy 

[HunterCZ122]

4 hours ago, Gummy  said:

Is it possible to just enable the AO? I don't want to alter the look of the game with color correction, bloom, and all that. Especially since I've just realized that it DOES work through NVIDIA Inspector, but only when I objects are close to the camera, or when the camera is not in my control (Cutscenes and stuff)

All other shaders/effects are optional. You can just select MXAO and that's all.
When installing ReShade, you will be prompted to select shaders, so choose only what you want.
Also I forget to mention that MXAO is highly customizable, so you can adjust distance, intensity, quality etc..
EDIT: https://imgur.com/a/AFpPSMZ
This is ReShade configuration menu when pressing Home button on your keyboard.

Edited November 2, 2019 by HunterCZ122
Show him settings

[Gummy]

Alright then, thanks. Any noticable framerate drops?

[HunterCZ122]

8 hours ago, Gummy  said:

Alright then, thanks. Any noticable framerate drops?

Depends on your hardware. For me it's around 20fps less. GTA IV is very unoptimized, so results may vary. I also noticed huge lags in interiors when applying shaders (GFWL anti-debugger checks maybe?), alt-tabbing fixed the problem.

[B Dawg]

If it was GFWL checking things, it would just crash your game instead.

[D T]

Could you post some screenshots of how your game looks now? I'm really curious to see.

[boomboom5950]

On 11/4/2019 at 6:37 PM, D T said:

Could you post some screenshots of how your game looks now? I'm really curious to see.

Agreed

[Gummy]

I know this is a year late, but I had a HDD crash and lost my IV install. I've only just gotten around to reinstalling again and here is how it looks. I haven't played with the MSAO setting much.

Without AO:

[D T]

That looks incredibly nice! Is there a way you could share your files by any chance? I'm not too familiar with how reshade works and I'd love to do a new playthrough with this.