Lighting Tweaking (dev branch)

[Variable 322]

I'm just repeating what a developer said. ;)

I'm just answering that developer :)

[bigpickle 0]

I was on a server last night and the MP time was 6pm there about.

I have to say it looked bloody stunning save for one thing, the actual sun. Its like a super nova in the sky, too much glare and so much so that we now have permanent "god rays" 24/7 off most objects.

Surely the effect is best balanced in small doses so as not to over-kill the feature?

[Fushko 59]

I was on a server last night and the MP time was 6pm there about.

I have to say it looked bloody stunning save for one thing, the actual sun. Its like a super nova in the sky, too much glare and so much so that we now have permanent "god rays" 24/7 off most objects.

Surely the effect is best balanced in small doses so as not to over-kill the feature?

Probably the devs wanted to simulate the blinding effect from the sun, but that is not really the most elegant way to do it. Instead of making the sun look like a supernova, I suggest an appropriate increase in brightness when looking directly at the sun. It's already there it seems, but if you made the sun smaller(while still looking a bit bigger), and increased the brightness more to balance it out (only when looking at the sun directly-ish, don't freak out), I think it would be a much better solution than what we currently have.

[artisanal 22]

One thing still buggs me... Why aren't all rendered shadows taken care of by the GPU ? Why has there to be these 2 types of shadows (stencil-CPU, soft-GPU) ? I'm sorry if this matter has been answered before, but I could not find anything relevant

[jgbtl292 0]

the problem is i cant see the enemy now ..... i mean in real i have my helmet ,caps my hands or I screw up my eyes together, sunglasses and can good see in the sun direction.

this feature kill somtimes the gameplay and is only good with a functioning glare protection

[johnnygitarr 7]

hi,

any ongoing news for us devs?

dynamic lights are much much needed and a increased shadow distance (contolable settings like the view distance in the menu)

[GranolaBar 10]

hi,

any ongoing news for us devs?

dynamic lights are much much needed and a increased shadow distance (contolable settings like the view distance in the menu)

There is also many problems on the front light of the chopper with NVG vision since the first Operation Flashpoint...

Also, in arma 3 there is a limit of number of lights, maybe a day, we have more info about why and how it's possible to solve it or not.

I can understand that the engine was old.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Certain lights don't give off light as they did in earlier versions of Arma 3, like Alpha or Beta. For example, Collision lights used to be an actual light source, and you could see light on the vehicle and ground, and it really looked good. Same with Police Light Bar on the Offroad and Police Boat.

[nodunit 397]

Aww not again, they had navigation lights as actual lights at the start of Arma 1 and then they changed them to just be the light particle.

[Smurf 12]

And the cockpit lights of the Ghosthawk that never came back :(

[bigpickle 0]

Too much bloom from the sun, it destroys the entire horizon. Also just a ridiculous amount of "God Rays" from almost every object, I know its a beautiful feature but along with bloom its so heavily over done it destroys the features.

[miketim 20]

I like to have a small amount of bloom, helps hide the aliasing on the horizon.

You realize you can turn it down right.....

[Gudsawn 93]

Will we ever get any documentation/reference on the new lighting config? I'm referring to LightingNew.

[xendance 3]

hi,

any ongoing news for us devs?

dynamic lights are much much needed and a increased shadow distance (contolable settings like the view distance in the menu)

Every single light in the game is dynamic, none of it is static.

[blackpixxel 53]

Another big problem with the current lightning:

When there is a bad and cloudy weather, there aren't any shadows. But this is unrealistic. When there is no direct sun there are still shadows, they are just a bit less visible and very very blurry.

But in the current build they just disapear. This make the scenery look very bad and flat.

Is there any way to improve this? It is badly needed!

[2nd ranger 282]

That's been a problem since Flashpoint - ugly lighting in bad weather. Pretty much the same effect can be seen just by having the time at 12pm. It's like there isn't 'enough' lighting - as if you're just seeing the bare textures without any lighting applied.

[Azzur33 1]

Well, the way it was in Arma 2 was a Lot worse. There wasn't a "bad weather" at all. You could always see the shadows like there was sun shining, even when the sky was fully overcast. Now it is more realistic.

But sure, it is realistic to have "blurry" shadows at bad weather under vehicles for example, too.

Ambient occlusion does help a bit, but making "realistic" shadows under larger objects, depending how high they are from the surface below, won't be that easy I would guess.

[fabio_chavez 103]

this parameter seems to be broken: skyColorInfluencesFogColor = 1;

-any other entry than 1 (spotrep is implying its a boolean parameter), will result in the fog becoming completely black! i was hopeing to get rid of the forced interpolation of sky and fogcolor because it created a lot of problems with things like sunrises and dusty haze or any occasion when fog has to differ from sky color a lot

can you confirm or elaborate on how its supposed to work?

only info available is from the introduction in the spotrep from april 20 2014

Added: World parameter for sky / fog color influence (skyColorInfluencesFogColor - default true)

created a ticket:

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=20962

Edited September 30, 2014 by Fabio_Chavez

[Gutsnav 13]

Anyone notice that the flares are still really dim? They should be blinding but they are worse than a campfire.

[the_demongod 31]

Anyone notice that the flares are still really dim? They should be blinding but they are worse than a campfire.

Yes, they are unbelievably dim. In fact, they don't even light up the ground at night. They're hardly visible at night, actually. They should look like

.

And that's a handheld one. The 80mm mortar flares should light up an entire valley.

[das attorney 858]

this parameter seems to be broken: skyColorInfluencesFogColor = 1; [/url]

Hi, I just had a quick check and the VR terrain uses this set to Zero and I could make changes to fog without it turning black. Maybe there's something else in the config or there's some sort of alpha issue.

[fabio_chavez 103]

Hi, I just had a quick check and the VR terrain uses this set to Zero and I could make changes to fog without it turning black. Maybe there's something else in the config or there's some sort of alpha issue.

thats interessting, ill try to investigate

---------- Post added at 13:39 ---------- Previous post was at 12:49 ----------

confirmed, fogcolor needs alpha if skyColorInfluencesFogColor = 0;, when fogcolor has alpha, that brings some other problem though... anyway thanks for the hint, lets see what can be done with it :}

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

Yes, they are unbelievably dim. In fact, they don't even light up the ground at night. They're hardly visible at night, actually. They should look like

.

And that's a handheld one. The 80mm mortar flares should light up an entire valley.

Well that needs to be fixed too, I agree. Also, it would be nice if the DEV'a can bring back some of that light glare effect where the light actually looks shiny. Not over done, but to loo really good instead of a dull circle coming from a flashlight or something.

[nodunit 397]

Well that needs to be fixed too, I agree. Also, it would be nice if the DEV'a can bring back some of that light glare effect where the light actually looks shiny. Not over done, but to loo really good instead of a dull circle coming from a flashlight or something.

I think that is due to the light update that came a long time ago, where all lights including aircraft suddenly became very dim and some hardly noticeable, they had their values tweaked but flash lights did not.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

I think that is due to the light update that came a long time ago, where all lights including aircraft suddenly became very dim and some hardly noticeable, they had their values tweaked but flash lights did not.

I think your right. The Collision Lights on aircraft for example, those actually had light at one point, and it looked beautiful. Now everything seems... Dull, and no real light is being produce from some things.