FromSoftserve on YouTube posted a preview of his upcoming Dark Souls 3 lighting engine mod on July 6, showcasing an in-depth look at DS3 re-imagined with vastly improved lighting and textures.
FromSoftserve's mod is built on top of the DS3LightingEngine, which allows for deep customization of light mechanics. DS3LightingEngine is also a work in progress, but the modder, Ragevitamins, said in an update that it will be finished in Q4 of this year.
FromSoftserve's mod isn't available just yet, but they previously released several other mods for the Souls games, including an extensive Dark Souls: Remastered overhaul and a similar visual overhaul for Dark Souls 3. Each has garnered thousands of unique downloads on NexusMods.
If those are anything to go on, FromSoftserve's next DS3 mod is sure to impress. At least, the near 40-minute demo of it does. The mod also features upscaled textures with models that have been manually updated for improved reflections and shadows.
FromSoftserve also revised Dark Souls 3's level of detail (LOD) system, noting that they "basically just turned it off" so the game loads high detail models by default. The use of LOD may have made more sense when DS3 launched nearly 10 years ago since it helped improve performance (at the expense of graphics quality), but, as FromSoftserve points out, graphics cards have improved enough that it isn't really necessary anymore unless you're using an older GPU.
The demo looks great so far, but it's still a work in progress. FromSoftserve noted in the video that there's still work to do fixing bugs (like the player lantern, which currently doesn't show up) and getting the improved lighting to mesh well with the game's built-in lighting mechanics, among other things. The mod doesn't even have a name yet. So, you may be in for a wait if you're itching to try it out.
FromSoftserve mentioned in the video that they are working on mods full-time, so you can support them on Patreon or Ko-Fi if you want to contribute to this project. In the meantime, you can also check out their other Dark Souls mods on NexusMods.
