Improved tone mapping for 1.61 proposal

[Dwarden 1125]

yet i don't like the ARMA settings, for some reason ... ;)

anyway i just realized I'm missing TwilightOrDusk to detect when sky starts get backlit by haze, cause atm SunOrMoon kicks in after like half of the glow time ...

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Dwarden:

Since I'm playing in windowed mode, gamma is not possible to change in game.

You can use my script for what you want, as you can define where you want the limit values to occur. I.e. sun elevations from -20° to +42° gets translated into a 0-1 range. Or help me ask for sceneBrightness (and getExposure) for those who want to experiment with new auto exposure system :) The moonOrSun being clipped at 0-1 makes it not all that user friendly for me.

[mr_centipede 31]

Isnt twilight and dusk are the same? or you meant dawn?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Hehe, probably. Since twilight is both dusk and dawn :) But easy to distinguish between the two in game by comparing to time. Only problem would be if at high latitudes during season you define them large enough so that they are overlapping and want to have different effect on them.

[Dwarden 1125]

Dwarden:

Since I'm playing in windowed mode, gamma is not possible to change in game.

You can use my script for what you want, as you can define where you want the limit values to occur. I.e. sun elevations from -20° to +42° gets translated into a 0-1 range. Or help me ask for sceneBrightness (and getExposure) for those who want to experiment with new auto exposure system :) The moonOrSun being clipped at 0-1 makes it not all that user friendly for me.

it's not just 0 or 1 it smoothly increases from zero to one

but the value start rise only when units begin to be lit by light ...

that's why it don't catch the early sky backlit ...

[Li0n 10]

Well I compared previous tonemapping and the new one, and what I `ve discovered - the scene became even more darker ( although previous was too dark compared to reality ). Now sometimes in a forest I fell like the day becomes night. I don`t understand what was improved, but it become worse.

[Maystor 10]

Don't really like the new default tone mapping. It's too dark in general and the loss of detail is pretty bad when coupled with the standard HDR effect behaviour in ARMA. I was showing Day Z to a friend of mine yesterday and he kept asking why does the brightness of my monitor keep fluctuating so much! I do realize HDR and tone mapping are two different things but these new changes do make the perceived brightness fluctuations a lot more noticeable to the eye when the goal should be the complete opposite. It's not so much that darker nights bother me but rather afternoons that feel way too dark now. It really does feel like day becomes night at times in some areas.

[Grease 1]

While the above poster linked a screenshot with an overly blue colorfilter, the fact of the matter is that there is very little blue going on in the shaded areas during daytime in Arma2. Shadows aren't black in reality, ya know -- only in photos does this happen as cameras are bad at picking up contrast levels.

Also as it stands now the game is woefully under-saturated. Anything the sun hits gets quite a bit more color than what is portrayed in this engine at the moment. Desaturated+high contrast =/= realistic.

Here we go:

(screenshot from ArmA2oa betapatch 93825 / DayZ / 10am in-game)

I'd just like to repeat: The human eye isn't a camera. It can pick up a lot more contrast levels and don't convert any shade into black just because there's a little sun around. So don't use photos as reference for designing tone mapping ingame if you're shooting for realism.

Now I can turn up digital vibrance in nvidia settings, which does add some more much needed color to the game, but it does not take care of the shadows and strongly fluctuating gamma levels depending on where I'm standing/looking.

Reducing the ammount of detail lost in shadows (lowering dynamic contrast levels) would be a step in the right direction. :)

I really liked it the screenshots, looks awesome!I love the coloration.

And talking about this, do you gus recommend any color filter/color mod?

[sprayer_faust 0]

Don't really like the new default tone mapping. It's too dark in general and the loss of detail is pretty bad when coupled with the standard HDR effect behaviour in ARMA.

Do you have HDR set to high? I notice a loss of picture quality if HDR is set below high.

[Maystor 10]

Do you have HDR set to high? I notice a loss of picture quality if HDR is set below high.

I usually have it set to normal. Anything higher than that and I experience a pretty big performance hit with very little visible difference. I'll experiment some more but so far the tone mapping in 1.60 looks a lot better to me from the gameplay point of view. In these betas, I find myself resorting to using "tricks" to fool the hdr implementation such as moving the camera around until no sky is in the view just to see something which I should be seeing at that time of day. I do have a properly calibrated monitor with a decent IPS panel so that's not the reason for the loss of detail either. Hopefully more tweaks will be made before the 1.61 patch is out.

[OMAC 254]

I usually have it set to normal. Anything higher than that and I experience a pretty big performance hit with very little visible difference.

Exactly the same for me. Today I tried a higher HDR setting as an experiment, and I went down 15+ fps in Chernarus with no big visual improvement. Back to normal setting for me.

[twirly 11]

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.

Right on man! You are dead right. The exposure should come from the center of the screen.

[Maystor 10]

Exactly the same for me. Today I tried a higher HDR setting as an experiment, and I went down 15+ fps in Chernarus with no big visual improvement. Back to normal setting for me.

Yep, it literally turns the game from fairly smooth to laggy for me, and yet everything that is annoying about the hdr impementation is still there.

Right on man! You are dead right. The exposure should come from the center of the screen.

I imagine it might not be an easy fix as it sounds but yeah, I completely agree. For example, the whole reason we have a RMB zoom is to compensate for the lack of screen size and resolution vs what it would look like in real life. And yet the difference between normal and zoomed in view is night and day. Literally, because by zooming in you usually remove that bit of sky that made the whole screen dark and now everything is very bright. It just doesn't look right at all. I think we've all been outside and can confirm that's not really how our brain sees things ;)

[maruk 80]

My current plan is to leave the new tone mapping scripting commands available to those interested and revert back to the state of 1.60 in this area. I personally do not like lack of contrast and significant lack of black in it but seems that many users do not mind it that much.

Edited July 4, 2012 by Maruk

[Dwarden 1125]

this doesn't mean we will cease to keep looking for better setting,

also if anyone has good proposals feel free to share,

just take in mind what i posted before about what conditions must be met ...

[EDcase 87]

I just wanted to say that even though I prefer the 1.6 look, I very much appreciate your dedication and constant work to improve ARMA.

Thanks very much ;)

[Smurf 12]

this doesn't mean we will cease to keep looking for better setting,

also if anyone has good proposals feel free to share,

just take in mind what i posted before about what conditions must be met ...

Which are:

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.

Gonna have a look at that...

[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.

Here's an example of that setting:

JObRr3qs26Y

[NoRailgunner 0]

Hmm, imo shadows and lights need more/better color transition especially if you are walking in the woods or in bigger towns. Still don't know why many game devs try to make their games look all time like a picture-postcard book.... don't they have windows at their office or are they just in deperate need of a holiday? :D

[maruk 80]

Hmm, imo shadows and lights need more/better color transition especially if you are walking in the woods or in bigger towns. Still don't know why many game devs try to make their games look all time like a picture-postcard book.... don't they have windows at their office or are they just in deperate need of a holiday? :D

The reason to change tone mapping in Arma 2 is simple: the game is not using effeciently alrady limited dynamic range of graphics card / display. Check histogram and compare it with histogram from common photographs. The dynamic range in real world and what human eye can handle is extreme, no game or computer display comes even close to it.

---------- Post added at 17:01 ---------- Previous post was at 16:43 ----------

After some more testing I believe the main source of problems was the shift in brightness in the Reihnard equation (the second parameter). I tested setting it to 0 and tried all types of setttings and scenes.

So after all my new proposal for default tone mapping in 1.61 is:

setToneMapping "Reinhard"; "Reinhard" setToneMappingParams [0.9, 0];

What is improved in the latest beta with this settings over 1.60:

* slightly reduced bloom

* darker tones are more often present in the resulting image

* display device dynamic range is used more effeciently

* night visibility is slightly improved in very low light conditions

[OMAC 254]

^ ^ This sounds excellent. So this:

setToneMapping "Reinhard"; "Reinhard" setToneMappingParams [0.9, 0];

will be the default setting in the next beta (post-94444)? I tried those settings in 94444 and they are GREAT!

Edited July 5, 2012 by OMAC

[metalcraze 290]

Yes give us a beta with them by default.

[MavericK96 0]

I wonder if this is an issue more for those of us with properly-calibrated IPS displays, which generally have much better contrast/blacks than the TN panels that most people use.

[maruk 80]

I wonder if this is an issue more for those of us with properly-calibrated IPS displays, which generally have much better contrast/blacks than the TN panels that most people use.

For reference, I am using cheap TN panel in my laptop as well as properly calibrated external IPS display. Generally, with wrong gamma things may look pretty strange and it is not easy for all users to set their gamma correctly (not talking about some users using very high gamma on purpose to see more during dark nights).

[Dwarden 1125]

i counter Your Reinhard with my new Filmic :)

"filmic" setToneMappingParams [0.153, 0.357, 0.231, 0.1573, 0.011, 3.750, 6, 4]; setToneMapping "Filmic";

and i know You already like it ;)