Alpha Piscium’s post-processing pipeline transforms the raw high-dynamic-range scene into the final image displayed on your screen. Working in linear light, the pipeline applies cinematic depth of field with physically-modeled aperture bokeh, a multi-pass bloom with highlight compression, auto-exposure using both average luminance and highlight/shadow metering, the Purkinje effect for realistic dim-light color vision loss, and AgX tone mapping with full per-channel color grading. The pipeline concludes with Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) that accumulates sub-pixel jitter samples across frames and applies AMD FidelityFX CAS sharpening to recover detail.Documentation Index
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Depth of Field
Enable and Lens Settings
Enable and Lens Settings
Enables depth of field. Blurs objects outside the focal plane, simulating the lens characteristics of a real camera. Disabled by default to preserve game clarity; enable for cinematic screenshots or immersive gameplay.
Simulated focal length of the camera lens in millimeters. Valid values: 18, 24, 35, 50, 75, 100 mm. Shorter focal lengths (wide angle) produce subtle blur even with small f-stops; longer focal lengths (telephoto) produce much stronger background separation at equivalent apertures.
Aperture f-stop. Valid values: f/1.0, f/1.4, f/2.0, f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6, f/8.0, f/11.0, f/16.0. Lower f-stops (wider aperture) produce stronger blur; higher f-stops (narrower aperture) produce sharper background detail.
Shape of the bokeh discs produced by out-of-focus point lights.
0 = Circle, 1 = Hexagon. Hexagonal bokeh mimics the typical 6-blade aperture of many real camera lenses.DOF Quality
DOF Quality
Quality of the depth of field blur. Range: 1–5. Higher values increase the number of samples used for the bokeh kernel, producing smoother blur at the cost of GPU performance.
Maximum blur radius in pixels. Valid values: 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24. Should be matched to the chosen aperture — too low clips the bokeh disc at large apertures; too high introduces artifacts on sharp in-focus edges.
Controls the strictness of foreground/background separation during blurring. Range: 0–32. Higher values more aggressively prevent foreground blur from bleeding into background elements, reducing the “double vision” artifact at near-field object edges.
Focus Control
Focus Control
When enabled, focus distance is set manually using the controls below instead of automatically focusing on the crosshair target.
Coarse-coarse focus distance in meters (increments of 100 m). Range: 0–10000 m. Only active when Manual Focus is enabled. Use for large initial distance changes.
Coarse focus distance in meters (1 m increments). Range: 1–100 m. Added to the coarse-coarse value to set the primary focus distance.
Fine-tune adjustment added to the coarse distance. Range: −1.0 to 1.0 m. Allows sub-meter precision when placing the focal plane on a specific subject.
Speed at which the autofocus transitions to a new target distance. Range: 0.0–10.0 seconds. Lower values produce snappy instant focus; higher values create a slow cinematic focus pull effect.
Bloom
Enable and Basic Settings
Enable and Basic Settings
Enables bloom. Simulates the physical phenomenon of bright light bleeding beyond its geometric boundary on a camera sensor or the human eye, creating a characteristic glow around light sources and bright surfaces.
Overall bloom intensity as 2^x. Range: −8.0 to 8.0. A value of 0.0 produces a neutral ×1.0 bloom strength. Increase for more dramatic glow; decrease for subtler bloom.
How far the bloom glow spreads from bright sources. Range: 1.0–5.0×. Higher values create wider halos; very high values can make the entire screen appear hazy in bright outdoor scenes.
Number of iterative bloom blur passes. Range: 1–10. More passes extend the glow reach and smooth it across multiple scales, creating the multi-layered lens flare appearance of real camera optics.
Extra bloom intensity multiplier applied when the camera is submerged underwater as 2^x offset. Range: 0.0–8.0. The default of 2.0 (×4.0 boost) creates the dreamy, diffuse glow characteristic of underwater photography.
Highlight Compression
Highlight Compression
Highlight compression prevents bloom from becoming overwhelming when extremely bright scene elements (like the sun disc) contribute unrealistically large amounts of bloom energy.
Strength of highlight compression before the bloom pass. Values:
0 = Off, 1 = Low, 2 = Medium, 3 = High, 4 = Hard Clipping. Higher levels progressively limit how much extremely bright pixels contribute to the bloom accumulation.Method used to apply highlight compression.
0 = RGB (compresses all channels equally, reducing saturation in highlights), 1 = Luma (compresses based on perceived brightness, preserving hue and saturation in highlights).Purkinje Effect (Night Vision)
Purkinje Effect Settings
Purkinje Effect Settings
The Purkinje effect is a perceptual phenomenon where the human eye shifts from cone-based color vision to rod-based monochrome vision as light levels drop. Enabling this setting simulates that shift for a more realistic night experience.
Enables the Purkinje effect simulation. When active, colors gradually desaturate and shift toward a bluish monochrome as scene luminance drops below the threshold range.
Luminance below which the scene is fully desaturated to monochrome, expressed as 10^x cd/m². Range: −10.0 to 1.0. The default of −10.0 (10^−10 cd/m²) means even very dim environments retain some color unless extremely dark.
Luminance above which color vision is fully restored, expressed as 10^x cd/m². Range: −10.0 to 1.0. The default of −2.0 (0.01 cd/m²) means colors return in dim indoor or moonlit environments.
Red component of the night vision monochrome tint. Range: 0.0–1.0. The default value slightly reduces red, contributing to the blue-shifted appearance of night vision.
Green component of the night vision tint. Range: 0.0–1.0.
Blue component of the night vision tint. Range: 0.0–1.0. The maximum default blue value, combined with reduced red and green, creates the characteristically blue-grey tones of dim-light scotopic vision.
Exposure
Manual Exposure
Manual Exposure
Locks exposure to a fixed EV value instead of using automatic scene metering. Useful for consistent screenshots or when auto-exposure behavior is unwanted.
Coarse manual exposure adjustment in integer EV stops. Range: −32 to +32. Negative = darker; positive = brighter. Only active when Manual Exposure is enabled.
Sub-stop fine-tune for manual exposure. Range: −1.0 to 1.0 EV. Added to the coarse value.
Minimum EV that auto-exposure is allowed to reach. Range: −32.0 to 32.0. Prevents the image from becoming excessively dark in very bright scenes.
Maximum EV that auto-exposure is allowed to reach. Range: −32.0 to 32.0. Prevents the image from becoming excessively bright in very dark scenes.
Exposure Metering Weights
Exposure Metering Weights
Weighting multiplier for emissive block pixels in the exposure meter as 2^x. Range: −5.0 to 5.0. Reduce to prevent torch and lava blocks from dominating the meter and causing the rest of the scene to go dark.
How much the distance of a pixel from the player influences its metering weight. Range: 0.0–5.0. Higher values give more importance to nearby scene elements when computing exposure.
How much the center of the screen is weighted relative to the periphery in the exposure meter. Range: 0.0–8.0. Higher values bias exposure toward whatever is directly in front of the player.
Sharpness of the center weighting falloff. Range: 1.0–8.0. Higher values create a tighter focus on the very center; lower values produce a more gradual falloff toward the screen edges.
Average Luminance Metering
Average Luminance Metering
Blend weight of the average-luminance metering method. Range: 0.0–1.0. Higher values make exposure track overall scene brightness more aggressively.
Temporal smoothing time constant for average luminance adaptation in seconds. Range: 0.0–10.0. Lower values produce faster eye adaptation; higher values create a slow, cinematic transition.
Target display value (0–255 scale) for dark environments such as caves and night. Higher values brighten dark scenes.
Target display value (0–255 scale) for bright environments such as outdoor daylight. Higher values allow brighter output.
Highlight / Shadow Metering
Highlight / Shadow Metering
Blend weight of the highlight/shadow metering method. Range: 0.0–1.0. Higher values weight exposure corrections toward protecting highlight and shadow detail.
Temporal smoothing time constant for highlight/shadow metering in seconds. Range: 0.0–10.0.
Maximum number of EV stops that highlight/shadow metering can darken the scene. Range: −4.0 to 0.0.
Maximum number of EV stops that highlight/shadow metering can brighten the scene. Range: 0.0 to 4.0.
Luminance threshold (0–255 scale) above which pixels are classified as highlights. Exposure adjusts to prevent these bright pixels from clipping.
Target percentage of pixels allowed to exceed the highlight threshold before the meter reacts. Range: 0.5–10.0%. Higher values permit more overexposure before darkening.
Luminance threshold (0–255 scale) below which pixels are classified as shadows. Exposure adjusts to keep these dark pixels visible.
Target percentage of pixels allowed to fall below the shadow threshold. Range: 0.5–10.0%. Higher values accept more crushed blacks before brightening.
Tone Mapping & Color Grading
AgX Tone Mapping
AgX Tone Mapping
Alpha Piscium uses the AgX tone mapping operator, which maps high-dynamic-range scene linear light to a display-referred image with filmic color handling. The look presets provide curated starting points while the Custom option exposes the full per-channel grade.
Range of brightness levels preserved from dark to bright in EV stops. Range: 4.0–32.0. Higher values preserve more shadow and highlight detail but can appear more flat; lower values produce a more contrasted, punchy look. Default of 16.5 EV closely matches real-world scene dynamic range.
AgX preset look.
0 = Default, 1 = Golden (warm, film-like), 2 = Punchy (high contrast), 3 = Custom (use per-channel settings below).Custom Color Grading (Lift / Gain / Contrast)
Custom Color Grading (Lift / Gain / Contrast)
These settings are only meaningful when
SETTING_TONE_MAPPING_LOOK is set to 3 (Custom). Each channel can be independently adjusted with a lift (offset), gain (slope), and contrast (power) curve.Red channel lift (offset). Range: −1.0 to 1.0. Adds or removes red from all brightness levels uniformly.
Green channel lift. Range: −1.0 to 1.0.
Blue channel lift. Range: −1.0 to 1.0.
Red channel gain (slope). Range: 0.1–2.0. Values below 1.0 reduce red; above 1.0 boost red intensity in mid-tones.
Green channel gain. Range: 0.1–2.0.
Blue channel gain. Range: 0.1–2.0.
Red channel contrast (power curve). Range: 0.1–2.0. Values above 1.0 increase contrast in the red channel; values below 1.0 flatten it.
Green channel contrast. Range: 0.1–2.0.
Blue channel contrast. Range: 0.1–2.0.
Overall color saturation applied after tone mapping. Range: 0.0–2.0. A value of 0.0 produces black and white; 1.0 is neutral; 2.0 produces hyper-saturated colors.
Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
Temporal Anti-Aliasing
Temporal Anti-Aliasing
Enables Temporal Anti-Aliasing. TAA accumulates sub-pixel jitter samples across multiple frames to smooth jagged edges. Highly recommended — many rendering features including the volumetric atmosphere, clouds, and SSGI rely on temporal accumulation enabled by TAA.
Enables sub-pixel jittering of the camera projection matrix each frame. Required for TAA to collect the sub-pixel information it needs. Disable only if another technique is being used to supply jitter.
Reconstruction filter applied to the current frame before blending with history.
0 = B-Spline (smooth, slightly soft), 1 = Catmull-Rom (sharp, potential ringing), 2 = Lanczos2 (sharp with less ringing than Catmull-Rom, slightly more GPU cost).Reconstruction filter applied when sampling the TAA history buffer.
1 = Bilinear (fast, blurry), 2 = Catmull-Rom 5 Tap (balanced), 3 = Catmull-Rom 9 Tap (sharper, less ringing), 4 = Lanczos2 (sharpest, most GPU cost).Sharpening strength applied after TAA using AMD FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS). Range: 0.0–1.0. Restores fine detail softened by the temporal accumulation process. Higher values produce a crisper, more detailed image.
Miscellaneous
Screenshot and Video Mode
Screenshot and Video Mode
Disables animations and reduces temporal clamping for cleaner, higher-quality screenshots. All temporal effects are given time to fully converge before a capture.
Adjusts temporal-accumulated effects for compatibility with video rendering mods such as Flashback. Prevents frame-to-frame consistency issues that can appear in captured video when the renderer does not run in real-time.
Displays constellation lines connecting bright catalog stars in the night sky. When enabled, familiar star patterns such as Orion and Ursa Major are outlined for identification.