Do we want beauty or realism? Arma 3 pretty in pink

[Victim9l3 11]

I don't want to complain, but it seems I have been doing that a lot here lately. But I can't help look at this picture and ask if this is really how we want Arma going. I haven't seen a lot of complaints about the colors in the game and even I have gotten used to it. I think bi has tried too hard to make a beautiful product and has sacrificed some realism for a game that has a pleasing look. If you guys don't know what I am talking about, look at the videos for the AllInArma mod. They moved the OA and A2 maps to Arma 3 and made video showing how they look. Those maps don't look real anymore. There is too much color, or the colors are too loud or too something. For example, the takistan terrain has been a sandy color, in A3 it has more of a yellow or orange color as if someone just turned up the tint knob on a tv. The sky is such a nice deep blue now and so is the ocean. I have complained about the color of the fog in A3. That is a good place to start if you don't know what I mean. The fog that changes when you change the view distance is what I mean. It's blue. Fog is never blue. It should be gray/grey like in reality and like previous arma. But the blue adds to the new beautiful color change.

What really bothers me is that I can't have a sunrise or sunset without everything in the game turning orange for hours. The only time we get to see the normal colors are between 11 am and 4pm. It changes depending on seasons but still there is just too much orange. and now also pink. I only see color changes in my environment for about an hour. Things get a soft orange color, but for a short time and usually when there are a lot of clouds reflecting the color. Not 4 or 5 hours at time.

But this picture was the final straw. This would NEVER happen anywhere.

In the game this is Dec. 8 2036 at 7am.

Overcast set between 40 to 30.

The fog set around 80-70.

video settings near best.

Play with your settings. You will find many, many situations like this. But, if we want beauty over realism then so be it. :(

[progamer 14]

Don't use fog? Or set the fog to a realistic level?

I think the cloud color and fog color are still WIP like rain is.

[Smurf 12]

This type of feedback is welcome here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?153773-Lighting-tweaking/page37

[Beagle 684]

Don't use fog? Or set the fog to a realistic level?

I think the cloud color and fog color are still WIP like rain is.

What is a realistic level? Fog ist often as dense like that with les than 20m view. But it does not take on such colours, in fact it blocks any sunset or Dawn light.

[maturin 12]

You'll never see that fog on Stratis. New lighting and color system needs new maps.

[delta99 34]

Colors look good to me. I haven't seen any overly blue fog like you describe or anything orange or pink. Especially not like your screen shot. Perhaps your settings are all buggered up.

[sqb-sma 66]

Colors look good to me. I haven't seen any overly blue fog like you describe or anything orange or pink. Especially not like your screen shot. Perhaps your settings are all buggered up.

Overly blue = sunlight hours between 9am and 3pm (I'd argue that the fog is too blue in general though, but it's worst during high sunlight hours)

Pink = Sun is half risen. For default date config that is ~4:55am and to a far lesser extent at sunset ~7:10pm

It really is a kind of toxic pink.

Why is this unrealistic?

Ok, so fog, by its very nature, is opaque. It blocks light. Because of this when the sunlight hits fog you should get a very brightly lit area, the same as a solid object. At some hours this brightly lit area would be pink. HOWEVER the light wouldn't make it far into the fog, and the light colour inside the fog is given by the total ambient light near the surface with a small inverse square falloff as you go deeper in (i.e. the change in fog colour between 10cm and 1m is huge when the fog is directly lit, but between 10m and 100m it's not giant, though certainly is noticeable)

At sunrise the fog should be almost grey (with blue influenced by the sky's relative brightness and pink/red/orange from the dim sun at sunrise almost balancing eachother out).

During midday the fog should still be grey (if thick enough, remember the inverse square).

To summarise: Fog should be grey.

Also, during midday the sun's light is almost white, the lit fog should be white in colour, you wouldn't have blue clouds so why have blue fog!!!??

For reference:

Thin fog lit by morning sunlight:

Later in the morning, thick fog

Picture showing surface lighting of fog vs light inside (the colour we currently have inside the fog during sunrise is closer to what the surface lighting should be. Because in this game you spend more time with your boots on the ground I think it should be biased towards the inside fog lighting if biased either way)

http://photos.nsmb.com/files/3/vancouver_fog.jpg (104 kB)

This still of Arma should show how wrong the current fog colour is during daylight hours (credit to dslyexci, it's the tumbnail for his fog editor)

http://blightgaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/fog2.png (592 kB)

It needs a lot of work.

[Matt@RS 10]

Very atmospheric i know is not exactly the same, but ive noticed the clouds do not mask the planes yet in arma 3.

[purepassion 22]

Actually, realism is the most beautiful thing in that regard :)

I absolutely agree that these color values are a big problem and do not reflect reality!

However, please continue the discussion in this thread. Thank you!