So, how did jackfrags pull this off? Well, according to the YouTube descriptor, another user named “Owen Wilson 2” introduced Jack to a program called SweetFX, a “shader injection mod” that combines a suite of post-processing shader effects for your games. By allowing you to add SMAA anti-aliasing, and sharpening, as well as manage the color, gamma, exposure, and more, SweetFX gives users control over the way their games look. And, in Jack’s case, that’s pretty damn good.
In fact, it’s so good that there is now an entire Reddit thread devoted to praise for the Battlefront graphics mod.
“Could you imagine if you could go back to the ’70s when Star Wars first came out and show people this,” one user pointed out. “This game looks better than the movies lol.”
SweetFX is a relatively straightforward package to employ. Just download it from here and then add it to your mods folder. Once that’s done, you will be able to add a complicated overlay to the game’s visuals, without changing the actual assets in the game.
It’s not clear exactly what configurations were made in jackfrags’ viral YouTube demo, and equally hazy is the type of hardware required to get this “real life” Star Wars mod running at a steady 60fps. Obviously, it must have been immensely demanding on his GPU. Given the ubiquitous, and universally positive media response, however, I doubt he really cares.
