Overview
This guide will tell you how to remove the fog and therefore how to make the graphics of Elex look a lot better.
Introduction
At first, Elex’ graphics don’t look very impressive. I figured it was because of the constant fog, which blurs the whole view. So I went looking for a way to reduce the fog or to remove it altogether. When I stumbled upon a way to disable the fog, simply by changing a few values in a configuration file, I was amazed at how much better the game looks.
To each his own, of course. Some people may prefer the fog as it casts a veil of mystery across the game world, but I didn’t like it. When the fog is lifted, you clearly see that Elex’ graphics aren’t perfect (which is most likely why the devs opted to go with the fog), but I do think the graphics and Elex’ world look a lot better without the fog.
Screenshots
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After:
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How to do it
If it’s running, you need to close the game first.
By default, it’s in the following folder on the drive your Steam games are installed to:
SteamSteamAppscommonELEXdataini
Note: if you like to play things safe, you may want to make a backup of ConfigDefault.xml by copying the file to any other location on your computer before going to the next step.
Right-click the file ConfigDefault.xml and select ‘Edit’ from the dropdown menu.
Press Ctrl + F to open the search bar and enter the word ‘fog’. Press the Enter key. This will take you to the relevant section of the file. It looks something like this (your values may vary, depending on the Fog Quality and View Distance you have selected in the game’s options menu, but it doesn’t matter, really):
<Fog Quality=”High”>
<Low Depth=”96″ SizeFactor=”12″ MaxViewRange=”4800.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
<Medium Depth=”128″ SizeFactor=”12″ MaxViewRange=”4800.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
<High Depth=”192″ SizeFactor=”12″ MaxViewRange=”6400.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
<Ultra Depth=”256″ SizeFactor=”8″ MaxViewRange=”6400.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
</Fog>
You need to change 8 values. I marked them in bold:
<Fog Quality=”High”>
<Low Depth=”1” SizeFactor=”12″ MaxViewRange=”128000.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
<Medium Depth=”1” SizeFactor=”12″ MaxViewRange=”128000.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
<High Depth=”1” SizeFactor=”12″ MaxViewRange=”128000.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
<Ultra Depth=”1” SizeFactor=”8″ MaxViewRange=”128000.0f” ExpDistributionBias=”256″ />
</Fog>
So change whatever value you see after “Depth =” to 1 four times, and change whatever value you see after “MaxViewRange=” to 128000 four times.
Close the file. When asked whether to save the changes or not, press ‘Yes’. Start the game. Be awed.
Final note
I tried playing around with the values a bit, especially to try and get a very slight fog in the far distance only, but I never achieved any setting that looked better than having removed the fog entirely. But if you find values for the fog that you think other players may want to try out, don’t hesitate to post them in the comments section below!