Viewport features for readability of the objects

Hey,

Is it maybe possible to add some features to the viewport renderer for increasing the readability of the objects? Especially, if starting to work with a lowpoly objects the shading sometimes does not give the ability to proper see the object in space. Like for example ,faces that are looking in the same direction, are blending into each other visually. It is also hard to see the depth of the objects, if they are behind each other, from the viewer perspective..

The current way to see the objects better is to enable hardedges. But hardedges, dont change the value depending on the lighting angle. And they "destroy" a bit the overall readability. Matcaps are great, but they also dont increase the readability on lowpoly objects.

What i have in mind could be realtime ao, depth shading, realtime shadows, or hardedges that changing the value depending on shading of the object. Even distance fog would help. Its not about the shader quality of the rendering, its about to see objects better in space.
Maybe there are some other "cheaper" ways to do this..

As soon as objects gets detailed and chamfered, there are much more readable. So this features can be turned off if needed, to save framerate in the late phase of the project.
Thanks in advance

One thing i wantet to ask too.
In 3dsmax ,it is possible to "fake" rounded/chamfered edges during rendering. You can set the shader effect that chamfers the edges without adding them in geometry.Since in real life edges are not perfect sharp this improves greatly the realism look. I think that would be a dream for a lot of hardsurface modelers..

Is it maybe possible to fake this effect in realtime shader? That would mean that during modelling lowpoly it would fake the rounded/chamfered edges in a shader without having it in geometry. That would greatly help for creating lowpoly hardsurface stuff and see meshes better in space, and it would make the mesh totaly edit frendly too.More better would be to have this effect on hardedges only.
It would be also cool to have the ability to apply this chamfer effect to the mesh after modelling process.

Thanks in advance

Try this
http://www.digitalfossils.com/Download/NVil-Apr-06-18.rar

  * View > Fog Enabled.
  * Edit > Preference > Colors > Viewport Colors > Fog.
  * 3 new basic streamline tool, Adjust FogStart/End/Intensity.

IStonia, the fog is acting strangely. If I zoom in - it shows up on distant objects, but if I zoom out a lot, it disappears from all objects.

EDIT:
Ok, NVM. I even like it because there's no point of having all objects obscured by the fog in "overview" (zoomed-out) mode.

You can also test this
* A new basic streamline tool, Adjust Static MatCap UV Scale. A static matcap can be set by assigning a cube matcap to an individual object. This tool is used to set the uv scale for selected objects by dragging cursor in viewport.

You don't have to provide all 6 images for cube matcap, you can only input only one image.
 

Can any one test this
http://www.digitalfossils.com/Download/NVil-Apr-10-18.rar

  * View > AO Enabled.

Once this option is on, FPS will drop dramatically due to multiple off screen rendering, even with very simple scene. On my side, I have 0.3 frames per second. My graphic card is very old. If you have a better graphic card, you should have better FPS.

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To get good render, use this feature. AO and shadow options are available.
View > Snap Shot > Take Snapshot.

Oh yes this is amazing!!!Thanks a lot Istonia!

I have tested it with a male basemesh around 100k faces and have around 12fps on GTX1080.
It is a bit low, but its already very nice to check from time to time the overall shape flow of the  model. Really cool!!

FOG works also amazing!!

here also some comparison shots! 14 FPS with 18k faces

Awesome! Very nice for previewing models, although slightly on the slower side.

Performance on my machine is relatively constant and not dependent on scene polycount, with frame rates at 8-12 on GTX660 Ti, while my average frame rates without AO are usually around 100 fps.

Fixed a selection bug which can crash the program.
http://www.digitalfossils.com/Download/NVil-Apr-24-18.rar