Arma 2 - very dark nights bug

[Asharon 1]

I have an issue with my Arma 2 - I don't find articles on it and it is quite annoying. When it becomes night, I can not see anything except silhouettes of trees and sky - and some gras but mostly the whole ground below the horizon is pitch black. At first I thought this was normal due to some new patch (I have Gamma and brightness at full aswell as HDR at very high) however - my friends that played with me didnt have that issue, one using nvidia the other radeon graphics card. Both could see for miles in the night while I was really handicapped to be able to only look maybe 5 meters around me.

I am using a Radeon HD 5800 - newest catalyst driver 12.4 - arma 2 beta patch 96666 - and dayZ mod. Starting it as combined operations.

Also I like to mention that I did not always have this bug - I recently deleted and reinstalled the game and before it did not occur. When I first installed Arma2 and Arrowhead, I did copy my whole folder from Arma2 Addons to Arma 2 OA Addons as I had some bugs. However I didnt do that this time around as I read that the issue i had back then can be solved by starting it as Combined Operations. Also back then after installing the beta my whole interface was badly messed up - all the buttons in strange places, which I don't have this time.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Asharon

[themaster303 22]

there is sometimes the problem that the time is not synced in multiplayer. so some have a good sight with moon, some dont have the moon due to time diffrence.

but if there is no moon, there is pitch black like in real life. so you have to ajust your gameplay. chemlights or roadflare ;)

Edited June 12, 2012 by themaster303

[Asharon 1]

I understand, sadly however - the moon was out later on and the view was still very very bad. If a zombie was somewhere before me I would have died due to not being able to see it. As I said I didn't have such issues before, I know how the game should look like during night. Like when you sneak over NW Airfield and the moon is out you can see almost better than at day. But for me it was all black in black and I really have no clue after maxing gamma, brightness and HDR and updating graphics drivers, what I can do :(

[gammadust 12]

rollback to 93616 for the time being...

quoting dajunka on the other thread:

There is something evil about this patch, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is.

hey, was that my humanity increasing?

[Asharon 1]

I rolled it back to 93616 - I installed it at my fathers PC now aswell. It is identical to my installation and he does not have this issue. What can I do?

[PuFu 4600]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?135667-Improved-tone-mapping-for-1-61-proposal

[gammadust 12]

Edit: removed, there may be some issue here, repro missions, anyone? Wasn't able to get any result of the same kind so far...

Edited June 12, 2012 by gammadust

[Asharon 1]

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?135667-Improved-tone-mapping-for-1-61-proposal

I read that - but it is talking about how to make it darker no? And also didn't quite understand how that would work and how I can make the game brighter with it.

[gammadust 12]

The point is not how to make it darker, is more about how scenes where both very lit and very dark areas coexist. It has most interest to scripters by giving them more control on the general "look" of the game. There is no direct player use for it.

PuFu's point is that it might explain why you are having the current issue as a side-effect, or maybe even a bug.

in this gallery you might compare the actual effect in a dusk situation. In fact how the now default look (image #1) differs from "Arma" (#2)/etc..

so far i wasn't able to reproduce the exact "pitch black" during night. But more ppl is getting the same symptom as you.

[max power 21]

DayZ apparently uses filters to manipulate the appearance of the screen. You might also check to see if it's something DayZ is doing.

[Asharon 1]

DayZ apparently uses filters to manipulate the appearance of the screen. You might also check to see if it's something DayZ is doing.

But how? :(

[fraczek 4]

But how? :(

How about asking on the DayZ forums? :) With the latest betas, mission makers have the ability to set several lighting parameters in the mission file itself. So far all of the screenshots showing "bad lighting" I have seen came only from DayZ. So the forums for a specific mod seem like a good place to ask about the mod. Perhaps Rocket did adjust the parameters in the mission to his taste? If it turns out to be a generic bug in the whole Arma 2 engine, by all means please post it here, but there needs to be ruled out it's not a DayZ feature first, before naming it an engine bug...

[Asharon 1]

I agree but the problem is that if it was a mod "feature" it should impact every player alike shouldn't it? My fathers PC is in the next room and while I was in a pitch black area seeing nothing but the horizon and the sky he had an amazing view and could see me from long distance. Other friends reported aswell that they had no problem seeing everything while I could only see them when they stood right in front of me and even then only barely. I am really lost here :(

[gammadust 12]

I agree but the problem is that if it was a mod "feature" it should impact every player alike shouldn't it? My fathers PC is in the next room and while I was in a pitch black area seeing nothing but the horizon and the sky he had an amazing view and could see me from long distance. Other friends reported aswell that they had no problem seeing everything while I could only see them when they stood right in front of me and even then only barely. I am really lost here :(

consider that servers may have different mod versions installed, players may have different mod versions installed and/or beta versions installed, etc...

I am really starting to believe the "666" beta thing... pure evil!

[EDcase 87]

This may be a bit obvious but I didn't see anything about it.

Have you checked monitor calibration brightness & contrast...?

or an older version of Catalyst?

Maybe better not to use the beta and wait for official

[Asharon 1]

This may be a bit obvious but I didn't see anything about it.

Have you checked monitor calibration brightness & contrast...?

or an older version of Catalyst?

Maybe better not to use the beta and wait for official

I had tried the 66 version and then following someones tipp here switched back to the 616 - no difference.

I have the newest catalyst 12.4 (had 12.3 before and it was too dark aswell). I have tried arround with monitor brightness but it didn't "light up" the dark areas so you could distringuish between things there - just made the dark more greyish. However one option that did help a bit was putting my monitor into "game mode" or Night vision mode. Which kinda worked out and let me see way better than before. However at the moment I am haveing weird blue/violet shades at some points due to switching to this mode. The ground looks like it is covered in grey snow - but at least I can kinda play during the night... still this is surely not how the game is meant to be :(

[fraczek 4]

I agree but the problem is that if it was a mod "feature" it should impact every player alike shouldn't it?

Ok, one important fact to get clear - were your friends running the same A2OA beta version as you, or were you on DayZ server with you running the latest beta and them perhaps still few bets versions behind or on 1.60 vanilla?

[Asharon 1]

Ok, one important fact to get clear - were your friends running the same A2OA beta version as you, or were you on DayZ server with you running the latest beta and them perhaps still few bets versions behind or on 1.60 vanilla?

I can say for sure only for my father that he runs the exact same installation as I do - same beta version. We were on the same server and on the same internet connection when we compared the screens.

[max power 21]

But how? :(

running the game without dayz is a start.