Suggesting graphic settings for a better gamma

[Realspace]

I know this is place for beta but since you are working on GF memory and such, may I suggest to revisit the GAMMA settings?
Game greatly benefits from reduced gamma to make colors pop up and be more vibrant, but the provided settings also reduce luminosity and do it everywhere. Making the gamma affect only contrast not luminosity would help. Or having a separate slider for luminosity (to compensate).
Also a different slider for background's shaders and close object's shaders (ships, stations) would increase a lot the look of the game. While close objects would be much better with reduced saturation and a slight photo effect, backgrounds on contrary lose vibrance if desaturated, so the various color corrections you provide obtain quite a mediocre change, to my eyes of course (but as a long-time professional photographer I see these things ), it would suffice making f.i. the desaturated correction affect only close objects

[CBJ]

I know this is place for beta but since you are working on GF memory and such, may I suggest to revisit the GAMMA settings?

If you know it's the wrong place, don't post it there. Moved the the main forum where it belongs.

[Daemonjax]

Gamma in this game seems to work just like every other game.

And whether it needs to be adjusted is really lcd panel dependent. Some lcd's just have perfect (2.2) gamma right out of the box.

But if you want to customize it more, I'd recommend using reshade.

[Realspace]

I use reshade and made custom settings even with different effects on close or far objects. But reshade is applied as a superimposed layer, which btw affects also the map's graphics. I wish for a better customization of the various elements. Looking at game's shaders they are different for the different objects in game, it is a pity we can not change those elements separated.
Yes a solution I use now is regaining contrast through the amd interface (monitor is calibrated, don't want to mess with it) but again that is applied everywhere, to map too.
Space games are not as other games which have less difference in ambients to render. Specially the contrast is different, space has high contrast, close ambients have diffuse light.
I know what gamma is for, I use it not for what is intended. Indeed at 100 the gamma and dynamic range is perfect on my monitor. But I reduce it to gain contrast and darker colors. Because there is no other option to do it in-game.

[Daemonjax]

But reshade is applied as a superimposed layer, which btw affects also the map's graphics. ... gain contrast and darker colors. Because there is no other option to do it in-game.

It's very possible to write a shader (two shaders, really) that:
a) adjusts the gamma _only_ for dark pixels (below some defined threshold) -- I think it'd have to be some kind of curve to avoid banding artifacts. Maybe it calcs the luma every frame to adjust the black level dynamically?
b) detects if you're in the map/whatever ui screen, so it disables the effect there (this would be a separate shader that only runs once per frame, not once per pixel, and writes to a single argb pixel shared texture a 32bit value that can tell any other shader whether you're in the ui screen). This would work by simply tapping something like 4 pixels per frame. I wouldn't think it'd be necessary though if shader a is written corectly... something like this is more necessary for stuff like bloom shaders, lens flares, etc.

Shader b would be game-specific... and usually resolution-specifc (or at least aspect-ratio-specific) because the pixel taps usually have to be pixel accurate. I've done it for other games. I could write this for you if you'd like, and put it on nexus. I might do it anyways for fun. What resolution do you play at? Every shader that makes use of it would have to be modified (but it's super easy).

Shader a might already exist... hmmm... maybe prod80_01B_RT_Correct_Color? It has both whitepoint and blackpoint correction.

[Realspace]

Interesting, well of course I'd love to see it in action. In my mod STARS in the nexus I've already added two reshade settings I did that have a depth layer (so contrast is added only on far objects):
https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations/mods/507
We can start from that. Mapping at the level you suggest is well beyond my capabilities
Btw I'd much better do it inside game's shaders directly, do you know about a way to change them?
Those in the game have separated shaders for the various objects, doing for instance only planets and other background elements would highly improve the look of space without changing the others.
I mean the shaders not the materials that I already changed in the mod.

[Daemonjax]

Btw I'd much better do it inside game's shaders directly, do you know about a way to change them?

The last time i bothered to look...

I found all the shaders the game uses (if you extract them from the cat/dat files) are in the path: shadergl\shaders

They're HLSL, and the .f files are fragment files (these are probably the ones you're interested in), and the .v are the vertex files.