Improved tone mapping for 1.61 proposal

[-=seany=- 5]

Just wanted to post that I am finding 93825 a bit too dark. It didn't seem too bad on Takistan, but when I was playing on Chernarus today with a world time of about 15:00-16:00, I got overly dark lighting when looking toward forest edges and also when looking toward the sun direction. It was similar to that first "Hunter" vid OMAC posted, although obviously not as extreme as it was around 15:00- 16:00. But it still caused that distracting effect where you keep wanting to lower the "camera"/view so that the sky is not in the picture and the scene lightens so you can actually see clearly.

I think small tweeks to the Tone mapping are ok I guess, but I have to ask is there really much point? I find the Brightness and Gamma controls given are quite effective, I usually set brightness to 0.9 and gamma close to 1.1 to give brighter colours and less of a "washed out" look. These Tone changes just seem to kind of highlight the flaws that exist with the Arma2 lighting system, particularly on Chernarus.

It has been a long time gripe of mine, the extreme/inaccurate exposure of the player camera. The way you get blinded by out-side light when in a building, they way you feel like moving your view to an odd position to stop the Sun unrealistically overwhelming your view etc (these things do happen in real life, but in Arma I think it's a bit over done). But I have just put up with these things as it is a current engine limitation. I think that first Video OMAC put up perfectly highlights some of the things that are wrong with Arma2s lighting. I don't think it would be a good idea to exasperate it too much with the Tone changes.

On a side note, are the problems with player Camera Exposure part of engine limitations or would it actually be possible to tone it back a little bit? Doing that combined with these Tone changes might actually work quite well.

But some times I think requests like this fall on deaf ears (like the many requests to alter PP options and tone back Bloom) due it being "artists impression" and said artist not really wanting to change their vision of how the game world should look? :lookaround:

PS I do appreciate that the Devs revisit things like this in an effort to improve how the game looks and the fact they ask for our opinion on them. So thanks!

Edited June 18, 2012 by -=seany=-
added title

[OMAC 254]

^ ^ Excellent post. Well said. My vids were meant to highlight exactly what seany described, that the "sun glare" effect that alters brightness relative to how much of the sky is in your view (relative also to how bright the sky is and sun position) is a much larger factor regarding game appearance/tone than the new tone mapping. Given the extreme nature of the sun glare effect, altering the default tone mapping so that it is significantly darker overall than in 1.60 vanilla may not be a good idea for most situations. It is fantastic to include the new mapping for cutscenes, intros, outros, and specific mission needs, however. :)

Pretty much any of the tone mapping settings look fine in Takistan, where less deep shadows exist, even in Zargabad, as many, including seany, have said. But Chernarus is where I, and DayZ people, want to be much of the time.

[maturin 12]

I take it you guys are aware that nighttime is now unplayably dark in Chernarus?

Instead of a single hour of pitch darkness, we have six or seven. And you can bet your ass that this little tweak doesn't affect the AI. Beta patches introduce glitches, I know, but could we not knowingly break the game, please?

If you don't believe me, I'll post comparison screens. Moonlight no longer exists, taking the lighting on open spaces from near-daylight to absolute black. Shadowy evenings now look like midnight.

[OMAC 254]

I take it you guys are aware that nighttime is now unplayably dark in Chernarus?

Instead of a single hour of pitch darkness, we have six or seven. And you can bet your ass that this little tweak doesn't affect the AI. Beta patches introduce glitches, I know, but could we not knowingly break the game, please?

If you don't believe me, I'll post comparison screens. Moonlight no longer exists, taking the lighting on open spaces from near-daylight to absolute black. Shadowy evenings now look like midnight.

I've heard about it, but haven't tried it myself. I will try Eye for an Eye now. Please post those comparison screens!

[On_Sabbatical 11]

That's why it's a "milsim" and not a damn zombie game ... when soldiers can't see during night they use NVGs :S

Damn it man,shitload of very important bugs are lying down there on the CIT,and bis is mobilizing all their power on a damn tone mapping thing -.-

Edited June 20, 2012 by On_Sabbatical

[maturin 12]

Shit, now I'm having repro problems. Stand by.

Edit: The purpose of this is to prevent DayZ cheaters from turning up brightness at night, correct?

[OMAC 254]

I tried Eye For An Eye, which takes place in moonlight at 6am, and it seems normal, perfectly playable. Default tone mapping settings, beta 93825.

[-=seany=- 5]

Shit, now I'm having repro problems. Stand by.

Edit: The purpose of this is to prevent DayZ cheaters from turning up brightness at night, correct?

I don't believe so, that is separate to this. This is about adjusting/tweaking the tone mapping in an attempt to improve the look of the game.

There was separate fix to do with limiting the amount that players can adjust their Gamma and Brightness (eg entering extreme values) via the name.UserProfile file.

Although, it is indeed this Tone mapping fix that is making the game overly dark when it is still plenty bright out side. I don't mind dark nights (to a certain extent), it's overly dark afternoons and low light conditions that are bothering me at the moment, with these tone changes.

Beta patches introduce glitches, I know, but could we not knowingly break the game, please?

That's why it's a "milsim" and not a damn zombie game ... when soldiers can't see during night they use NVGs :S

Damn it man,shitload of very important bugs are lying down there on the CIT,and bis is mobilizing all their power on a damn tone mapping thing -.-

Maybe not my job to say, but guys.... have some patience, don't bash BIS for looking at some thing that might improve the game, or for all we know help with Arma 3. We have no idea how the divide their time and it's not for us to say that they are "wasting time" fixing this(or whatever else) and they could be doing some thing else.

I feel embarrassed for the community and bad for the devs when i read stuff like that^

Edited June 20, 2012 by -=seany=-

[maturin 12]

I tried Eye For An Eye, which takes place in moonlight at 6am, and it seems normal, perfectly playable. Default tone mapping settings, beta 93825.

I am getting inconsistent repros for this issue.

Could you try testing midnight and noon at the following date?

August 11, 1991

If not, try downloading the Ambush mission from my sig. This is how I'm getting the issue, but not in a plain editor mission. Could old mission sqms be incompatible with the tweaked tone mapping?

[OMAC 254]

Midnight on that date is PITCH black. Zero visibility with default tone settings, clear, moonless sky. Noon is ok, but the tree shadows are also pitch black unless you get the sky totally out of your view, and zoom in. Then the pine trees in shadow come into view. Quite playable, of course, but I'd move the histogram up a few notches to reduce the tree shadow blackness. bright/gam 0.9/1.1.

[maturin 12]

So do you see the problem?

Noon at the default date looks perfectly normal. Noon on August 11, 1991 has the new tone mapping settings making the shadows too dark, and the night unplayable. I have had pitch black nights EVEN with the moon up.

I don't exactly understand how the date is changing the lighting system (I know that the moon cycles affect darkness), but it's a drastic difference. The presence of the moon shouldn't be changing how sun shadows render.

[MavericK96 0]

After a bit of actual play time with the new tone mapping, I have to say that, while I like the deeper contrast in general, I agree with many here that think it is too dark at night. Even with the moon out it is extremely difficult to see, which is not all that realistic if you're in open air (I've been outside in darkness other than the moon and the moon, if 1/2 or more full, is actually really bright).

Even if there's no moon, and no ambient light, you will still be able to see fairly well due to starlight (if it's not cloudy of course). It should never really be pitch black unless you are in a cave or something.

[orcinus 121]

Maybe not my job to say, but guys.... have some patience, don't bash BIS for looking at some thing that might improve the game, or for all we know help with Arma 3. We have no idea how the divide their time and it's not for us to say that they are "wasting time" fixing this(or whatever else) and they could be doing some thing else.

I feel embarrassed for the community and bad for the devs when i read stuff like that^

+1

Anyone who follows this sub-forum alone must surely realise the devs have been working really hard (including late evening & weekends) and making some superb improvements to the game.

The recent new commands are allowing community members to fix what are IMHO more important issues than Q's list, e.g., we now have a superb suppression addon, & effective suppression for the first time.

I don't feel bad for the devs though - I think they're all far too intelligent to be bugged by the more OCD-type posters.

[ceeeb 147]

I agree with many people here that the new default settings are a bit too dark and highly contrasted, especially in the second setting (exposure contrast??). The loss of detail within shadows and dark areas is too severe.

After some experimenting, my preferred settings are quite a subtle change from the "Arma" setting:

"reinhard" setToneMappingParams [0.85, -0.0004]

[Dwarden 1125]

feel free to prepare better settings for Reinhard or Filmic, which will work at:

all times of day (i use increments by 30 minutes)

avoid overbright sky when pitch black night or sky being glown before surise / after sunset

sun and moon above horizon ( i test with full moon, half mood, quarter moon, lil moon, no moon)

low altitude sun or moon

shadows not being too bland or too strong

keep shades of grey

keep color vibrance

avoid being too grainy, grey or dark or bright

avoid black sky turn blue when at night

avoid other color weirdness or cutoff

etc.

if it was so easy , i would make better one already

or find (be) someone with expertise on coloring and image toning / photography

to talk about correct values for each daylight hour and variety of possible lighting scenarios

i'm open to discussion e.g. on skype

p.s. nice try ceeb not bad but sadly not good enough either

Edited June 24, 2012 by Dwarden

[maturin 12]

I know that very few of us want to bash you for experimenting with a difficult feature. But between Day Z and SixUpdater, the betas are fast becoming mandatory for online play.

If you could somehow wrestle with the issue without introducing any more game-breaking blackout times at night, that would be much appreciated.

[Kyorikei 1]

Agree with -=seany=- and OMAC on most points. I'm fine with dark nights in Chernarus but when it "dark" even at day... let's just say it sux. What's more unnatural is that when you are trying to avoid looking at skies lighting seems fine. When you get some sky on your screen even if there's no sun on it it becomes darker and very frustrating to play. Hope you manage to tweak lighting settings right as it was just fine few beta patches ago.

[maturin 12]

Any change in our ability to see at night breaks the game. Period. Unless the AI are adjusted accordingly.

[OMAC 254]

As I wrote before, this

setToneMapping "Reinhard"; "Reinhard" setToneMappingParams [0.9, -0.002]

is fairly nice as a default. -0.001 is even lighter with less shadow cutoff.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

feel free to prepare better settings for Reinhard or Filmic, which will work at:

...

if it was so easy , i would make better one already

I haven't played much with the new tone mapping, but I did a system where the post processing coloring changes with sun elevation and overcast, causing blue nights, yellow days, and less saturated colors during overcast, all blending seamlessly and continuously together. I'm expecting something similar is possible for blending tone mapping parameters by these varying conditions.

Some of the functions:

fnSelectByLast:

private ["_first","_second","_weight","_ret"];
_first = _this select 0;
_second = _this select 1;
_weight = _this select 2;
_ret = (1-_weight)*_first + (_weight*_second);
_ret

fnInterpolate (should be same as the simple expression version):

private ["_in","_xfrom","_xto","_resfrom","_resto","_out"];
_in = _this select 0;
_xfrom = _this select 1;
_xto = _this select 2;
_resfrom = _this select 3;
_resto = _this select 4;
_out = (1-((_in-_xfrom)*(1/(_xfrom-_xto))+1) min 1 max 0) * (_resto-_resfrom) + _resfrom;
_out

fnNormalize (parameter checking removed):

private ["_normalized","_min","_max","_failsafe","_clamp","_s"];
_normalized = _this select 0;
_min = _this select 1;
_max = _this select 2;
_clamp = if (count _this > 3) then {_this select 3} else {true};	//Optional parameter, default true. If false, answer may be outside 0-1 range.
_failsafe = if (_min == _max) then {0.0001} else {_min - _max};		//Avoids division by zero errors in the event of equal inputs.
_normalized= 1 - ((_normalized - _min) * (1 / _failsafe) +1);		//Scales the input parameter to 0-1.
if (_clamp) then {_normalized = _normalized max 0 min 1};			//And clamps outside values if not actively set to false.
_normalized

fnSunElevation (without parameter checking I use for testing, untested in this copy&paste version):

private ["_lat", "_day", "_hour", "_angle", "_isday", "_msg","_input"];
_lat = -1 * getNumber(configFile >> "CfgWorlds" >> worldName >> "latitude");
_day = 360 * (dateToNumber date);
_hour = (daytime / 24) * 360;
_angle = ((12 * cos(_day) - 78) * cos(_lat) * cos(_hour)) - (24 * sin(_lat) * cos(_day));
_angle

fnBlueNightYellowDay (the actual morphing of the post processing parameters):

private ["_ret","_amount","_bgtcontrast","_color","_bgt","_ctr","_a1","_r1","_g1","_b1","_r2","_g2","_b2","_sun"];
_amount = call sunElevation;
if (_amount < 30) then {
_amount = [_amount, -14, -1] call fnNormalize;
_amount = _amount min 1;
_amount = _amount max 0;
_amount = 1 - _amount; //Max effect when sun is -10° below horizon (or lower), no effect when sun is -1° below horizon (or higher).
_bgtcontrast = 1.0 - 0.32 * _amount;
_color = -0.05 * _amount;
_ret = [ _bgtcontrast, _bgtcontrast, 0, [0, 0, _color, _color],[0, 0, 0, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0]];
} else {
_amount = [_amount, 30, 52] call fnNormalize;
_amount = _amount min 1;
_amount = _amount max 0;
_val = (0.5*overcast*overcast) + (0.5*fog*fog);
_bgt = [1.5,0.7,_val] call fnSelectByLast;
_ctr = [-0.015,0.015,_val] call fnSelectByLast;
_a1 = [0.85,1.3,_val] call fnSelectByLast;
_r1 = 1; _g1 = 0; _b1 = -1;
_r2 = 0.899, _g2 = 0.0287, _b2 = 0.04;
_bgt = [1.0,_bgt,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_ctr = [0.0,_ctr,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_r1 = [0.0,_r1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_g1 = [0.0,_g1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_b1 = [0.0,_b1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_a1 = [1.0,_a1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_r2 = [0.0,_r2,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_g2 = [0.0,_g2,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_b2 = [0.0,_b2,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
_ret = [1, _bgt, _ctr, [0,0,0,0], [_r1, _g1, _b1, _a1], [_r2, _g2, _b2, 0.0]];
};
_ret

Yes, ambiance and "feeling" is extremely important to me :)

[OMAC 254]

^ ^ Totally cool. :cool: Do you have any vids?

[Dwarden 1125]

carlGustaffa You may want to use these new script commands like

moonIntensity;

returns 0 to 1 value based on moon position and phase.

It returns how much light you get from the moon. Value can be > 0 during the day, if you can see the moon.

sunOrMoon;

returns 0 to 1, (alue gradually changes during sunrise/sunset), says if scene is lit by sun or by moon...

[EDcase 87]

My opinion as a visual effects artist... (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0203703/)

From what I've seen sofar it looks like the tone mapping is making the image look LESS real and more post processed/fake.

Hopefully when 1.61 is released the settings can be changed to look like vanilla ARMA2:CO

As has been said before, its not your eyes that see, its your brain. The brain adapts to light levels in a scene as you look at different areas so it will look less contrasty overall.

The HDR algorithm is the problem because its 'exposing' for the brightest area even if its tiny.

In other words the whole scene goes dark even if a tiny bit of sky visible. That's not right.

The centre of the screen (the part you are looking/aiming at) should determine the 'exposure' without having to zoom in to remove the bit of sky.

Edited June 26, 2012 by EDcase

[Bouben 3]

I've made a little comparison page for those wanting to see the difference between the patches in a little more detail :cool:

http://www.nomandown.com/arma2/tm_comparison/index.html

Original (before resize) images:

• Current
  
• Beta
  

I think I have a quite well calibrated monitor and I say it is bit too dark with the new contrast setting. It is maybe more visually attractive, but not really realistic.

EDIT:

After reading fraczek's comparison post I think the "Arma" setting is definitely the best one yet (better than vanilla one too).

Edited June 26, 2012 by Bouben

[metalcraze 290]

compensate it by increasing gamma slightly.