Tweak default environment and graphics settings in new Godot 3.6 projects

[Calinou]

Describe the project you are working on

The Godot editor 🙂

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

Godot's default 3D scene setup was significantly improved in 4.0, resulting in a much better appearance out of the box.

At the same time, Godot 3.x's default 3D scene setup has remained identical since 3.1. The most notable drawback is that shadows look very blue as a result of the sky's colors, and shaded areas don't look as dark as they should be when no GI is used. The use of linear tonemapping also blows out highlights, which is commonly seen with DirectionalLight or with emissive materials when glow is enabled.

At the same time, we need to preserve compatibility with existing projects by not changing the default values in those projects.

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

The following changes from Godot 4.0 could be applied to newly created projects in Godot 3.6.
As a bonus, since these changes follow 4.0's default visuals more closely, it makes upgrading from Godot 3.6 to 4.0 easier.

These changes have little to no performance impact:

• Tweak default ProceduralSkyMaterial and PhysicalSkyMaterial appearance godot#57993
  • Done in [3.x] Tweak default sky appearance to avoid blue tint in shadows in new projects godot#62825 for 3.x.
• Tweak the fallback 3D material's appearance godot#62756
  • Resolves Default spatial material has too extreme parameters godot#27082 (which is already resolved in master).
• Tweak the editor environment defaults and its interface godot#49736
  • Most importantly, use ACES Fitted tonemapping by default with a whitepoint of 6.0.
• Tweak Glow defaults for a more visually pleasing appearance godot#52227
• Backport new 3D point light attenuation as an option (3.x) godot#52918
  • Already present in 3.4 and later, but disabled by default.
• Enable FXAA by default for better visuals out of the box #4832 (if accepted in 4.0)
• Decrease default AudioStreamPlayer2D/3D panning strength godot#64077
• [3.x] Decrease shader TIME rollover to 30 seconds on mobile platforms godot#59991 for mobile platforms

These changes potentially have a larger performance impact, so they would only apply to desktop platforms using a feature tag:

• Use PCF13 shadow filtering instead of PCF5 for smoother shadow maps, and better stability for dynamic object shadows.
  • The performance impact in GLES3 was greatly decreased in 3.5 by Use early bailing to improve 3D shadow filtering performance in GLES3 godot#54160, so it may be affordable now.
  • In GLES2, it remains fairly expensive, but since this change would only apply on desktop platforms, it's worth testing anyway. We could also only override the shadow filter mode if the project is created with GLES3.
  • You can see comparison screenshots between PCF5 and PCF13 here.
• Enable anisotropic texture filtering by default. In 3.x, this is done by enabling the Anisotropic import option on textures by default. We can change the import defaults in the generated project.godot file to do this.
  • Disabling anisotropic filtering on mobile is done by setting the anisotropic filter level's mobile feature tag override to 1.

Existing projects created in Godot 3.5 and older will not be affected by this proposal.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

We can change the project.godot and default_env.tres files that are generated by the project manager when creating a new project.

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

No.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

This is about changing the defaults in new projects to improve the out-of-the-box user experience.