Visual Upgrade – Feedback

[mickeymen 322]

Googlava already commented on this and he said he's created a config which makes dark clouds dark again, probably even more than before.

As seems to me not only the brightness/darkness of sky is the problem. 

The height of the cloud must be taken into account. If we have bad weather, then the clouds must be located low.

However, in the visual update this detail is not noticeable. The clouds still all highly placed.

In the old game, clouds in bad weather were significantly lower. This created a better effect.

[sqb-sma 66]

 

As seems to me not only the brightness/darkness of sky is the problem. 

The height of the cloud must be taken into account. If we have bad weather, then the clouds must be located low.

However, in the visual update this detail is not noticeable. The clouds still all highly placed.

In the old game, clouds in bad weather were significantly lower. This created a better effect.

 

 

 

Agree! I was just testing this and the cloud cover is VERY high up, cloud cover on overcast days where I live is usually between 300-1000 meters ASL in altitude. During storms and rain it can be as low as 200 meters ASL.

 

Regarding brightness/aperture and contrast (range) in dev lighting. And some general notes

 

Day time sunny looked fine - used this to calibrate the others.

 

• Night time clear sky looked best to me at 4.6 aperture (contrast was *ok*, I think the range could be expanded a little to reduce the sharp falloff from lights). This also gave a great effect on a full moon. Perfection!

• Day time cloudy/overcast was also too highly contrasted in the mid-range (i.e. clouds to light, ground too dark. Normally biased towards everything being too bright) and could do with a higher aperture (darker image). 
• Sunset at partial overcast it seemed the sky was too bright including clouds, lessening the interesting sunset colours and lighting on the clouds.  (Clouds and sky look best at aperture 16.15 pre-sunset for example, current aperture is fine for the ground/objects)

 

General notes:

 

• Shadows were great on ground (midday, sunny) but were strangely bright on buildings leading to an obvious cutoff between shadowed building and shadowed ground.

• Likewise, on a moonlit night, buildings were lit up but similarly coloured concrete road were strangely dark.

This leads to the weird "over-HDR'd" effect where the whole scene looks poorly shaded.

 

• The lack of specularity on some object is very strange, e.g. leaves and palm fronds. The lack of white highlights on these objects makes them look very muted. 
• All forms of Ambient Occlusion are far, far too dark during daylight hours. HBAO+ High is the worst offender!

It still look amazing though :)

[Guest]

-off topic-

About visual stuff

[toysoldier 35]

-off topic-

About visual stuff

 

It is even on stable so nothing new...

[Guest]

It is even on stable so nothing new...

:o I've never noticed it! I should maybe shoot at trees more often.

[Fushko 60]

Right now my pet peeve with the visuals is the lack of specularity with certain objects.

Things like roads have absolutely no specular, which holds back the graphics a lot. I think it's a very important effect in giving the scene a more believable 3D look.

You can see this problem in the official comparison:

Compare the brightness of the in-game road and the real one. Not very visible, but you should notice how much more bland and poorly shaded the in-game road looks.

What's not happening right now in the game is this:

Most objects in the game have specularity, but not everything for some reason. Look at this video shot in Kavala pier:

The video is a bit compressed, but notice how the pier properly reflects the sun through the shadows, giving a nice 3D feel, but once you get to the sidewalk and road, there is not even a slight hint of reflection. Which leads to situations like this:

The sun is directly shining on the road, but does it seem like it at all? It's like the road is almost shadowed, when it really isn't. Big problem in my opinion.

[road runner 4344]

Bad examples of roads to compare as those are constructed from Tarmacadam which has a semi glossy/smooth surface in between the size of grain used in its construction , I live in Thailand where we have strong sunlight in abundance, and have both concrete and dirt roads outside of my house, and not once have I ever seen it "shine" or have any sort of sheen, other than when it's been raining and then the sun comes out.

Rough Concrete structures rarely shine either unless they have been given a smooth coat where sunlight can naturally reflect off the almost flat surface, 

It all comes down to what would reflect natural light better, tarred roads do, hence why get that optical illusion that the road is wet, when it isn't, it's how the light bends to reflect the light,  concrete roads dont, dirt roads don't, as there's very few objects that would cause the light to reflect off them. Granite reflects the sun well, due to the natural crystals.

[Fushko 60]

Bad examples of roads to compare as those are constructed from Tarmacadam which has a semi glossy/smooth surface in between the size of grain used in its construction , I live in Thailand where we have strong sunlight in abundance, and have both concrete and dirt roads outside of my house, and not once have I ever seen it "shine" or have any sort of sheen, other than when it's been raining and then the sun comes out.

Rough Concrete structures rarely shine either unless they have been given a smooth coat where sunlight can naturally reflect off the almost flat surface, 

It all comes down to what would reflect natural light better, tarred roads do, hence why get that optical illusion that the road is wet, when it isn't, it's how the light bends to reflect the light,  concrete roads dont, dirt roads don't, as there's very few objects that would cause the light to reflect off them. Granite reflects the sun well, due to the natural crystals.

Still, I don't think 0 specularity is any realistic. What I'm asking is just a very slight reflection at least, because what we have now is none at all with some objects. I don't think there's any object that is able to absorb all specularity.

I get what you mean, when there's a dirt road I don't see a huge reflection like in the examples, but I can still clearly make out little pebbles that reflect the sun.

 

Same with the sand, it's not a very reflective material, but how many times have we noticed little grains of sand reflecting sunlight as we walk on the beach..

[2nd ranger 282]

These games have always looked their worst around 8am-2pm. Lack of specularity might have alot to do with that. Everything looks very flat in the game's brightest sunlight, and also in overcast conditions (or, god forbid, overcast during those hours I mentioned). I don't know anything about game lighting but it's as if there isn't enough post-processing going on during those hours. The light is very harsh. The recent upgrade improved it a little, but it's still quite noticable. Units and vehicles don't look too bad because their materials tend to have some specularity, but vegetation and other map objects don't look so good.

 

It's kind of a shame because it seems like 50% of mission makers on Steam don't bother changing the time and date, so there are alot of missions that take place on July 6 at 12:00, which is the absolute worst time of day as far as visuals go.

 

EDIT: On the subject of specularity, in my wildest dreams for Arma I hope we'll one day have specular surfaces in wet weather. That would be a massive immersion booster, especially for a jungle terrain. Oh, and maybe we'll get raindrops back on the ground someday.

[road runner 4344]

Still, I don't think 0 specularity is any realistic. What I'm asking is just a very slight reflection at least, because what we have now is none at all with some objects. I don't think there's any object that is able to absorb all specularity.

I get what you mean, when there's a dirt road I don't see a huge reflection like in the examples, but I can still clearly make out little pebbles that reflect the sun.

 

Same with the sand, it's not a very reflective material, but how many times have we noticed little grains of sand reflecting sunlight as we walk on the beach..

Yep, I also get what you mean, but these reflections are only present at certain times of the day as the angle of the natural light changes, and only for limited periods too, what cast a sheen one minute can be gone in the next.

[I give up 152]

The sun light needs to be toned down.

[x3kj 1247]

The lack of specularity on some object is very strange, e.g. leaves and palm fronds. The lack of white highlights on these objects makes them look very muted.

 

lack of specularity on certain objects is not an issue of the light setting... it's a matter of the smdi texture /the material settings. It's just NOW that you notice the discrepancies on the assetts, because with the old setting there was almost zero specularity for ALL models due to the extremely poor light setting. So it didnt really matter during creation of those assetts.

[I give up 152]

A picture from today (forget the small tornado, which is real) just look at the rest. This is the real stuff.

 

Also I suggest you to look at SBK race in Assen (netherlands) from yesterday and then look at Renault 2.0 race in Jerez (south spain), You will see how the real sky looks no matters where.

[domokun 515]

A picture from today (forget the small tornado, which is real) just look at the rest. This is the real stuff.

 

 

Also I suggest you to look at SBK race in Assen (netherlands) from yesterday and then look at Renault 2.0 race in Jerez (south spain), You will see how the real sky looks no matters where.

Real maybe but highly unlikely. If we start using exceptional weather as a basis for tuning lighting then I fear we're off to a non-starter

[jumpinghubert 48]

The tornado sky is definitly at eyelevel with the example a few pages back with the lighting of the thunderbolt :blink:

 

edit: I meant of course the exceptional aspect like domokun.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

domokun has a point. Certain kinds of weather don't exactly prove lighting is a certain way. You can have cloud cover, and it can look a variety of ways IRL. Lower clouds, higher clouds, a mixture of both as you can see in the picture with the tornado, and it's obvious that weather like that won't be implemented because of the complexity of have multi-layer cloud support to begin with, much less the impact to gameplay.

[St. Jimmy 272]

In-game clouds are suitable for shower rain, the rain in the game acts like it and there's usually thunder so bit darker clouds could be more realistic. Cumulonimbus are thick and sun doesn't go through them as easily.

//OK I actually haven't check how high the clouds are. If their height isn't much like only couple kilometers then they aren't that dark.

 

But it's all about compromises and what you want it to look. There are as many cloud and ligthing conditions as there are opinions. We don't have three level cloud system in the game and the weather system like rain is only calculated from the overall overcast is very simple.

[FoxFort 341]

So this is noon,12h, Altis. It looks good, but I feel it's little bit too shiny, too much glow and this was taken on Standard settings.

[jumpinghubert 48]

In the current dev I get really really very good results with the following ingame settings:

 

Display: (don´t use steam screenshot function because the b & g settings aren´t included)

-brightness: 0.95

-gamma: 0.95

 

AA&PP

-bloom: 150 (yes, very much but with new renderers bloom effect is lowered)

-brightness: 115

-contrast: 105

-saturation: 100

 

AO: HBAO+ High (it darkenes grass & ground)

 

Monitorsettings are neutral, no "gaming- or cinematic-mode", rgb-calibrated ips panel.

 

Later I upload 4 screenshots, same spot, 12 o´clock, different weather conditions.

 

edit:

[FoxFort 341]

Don't forget to upload with different visual settings, not everyone use HBAO, FSAA and other high demand settings. Of course for this case HDR must be on/high.

[road runner 4344]

Don't forget to upload with different visual settings, not everyone use HBAO, FSAA and other high demand settings. Of course for this case HDR must be on/high.

This is why people don't see the same issues as everyone else, unless everyone is running the exact same set up, it's only natural there is going to be differences, some only slight, but others more noticeable, and as another poster mentioned, the monitor itself can change the hues and saturations.

[jumpinghubert 48]

Instead of everyone simulates everyone´s others settings everyone can give a detailed documentation of his sweet spot settings so everyone with similar hardware/preferences have an orientation.

 

Don´t forget to force 16xAF in windows driver settings and disable AF ingame. Ingame AF to ultra gives only 8xAF. Put Texturefiltering quality in driver settings  to "performance", it gives a few fps and don´t change the texture quality.

 

[St. Jimmy 272]

OK I've been wondering why the cloud base in the game is 2500m. That's pretty high when low clouds cloud base usually range from 200-1500m. Well in the configs it says cloudBaseKm = 0.85; but seems like it isn't the actual real value in the game. I put cloudBaseKm = 0.1; just to test things and I got the clouds around 550m from the sea level with some small fractus reaching 450m.

 

Red is where the cloud base about is in the game when there is high amount of overcast:

 

 

It's a rough image how clouds are. Of course weather, closer to tropic/arctic and the ground elevations make it bit different in different places.

 

In my opinion cloud base should be lowered. And the more overcast there is the lower it should get, so low overcast maybe cloud base of 1500m and high overcast (so when there's rain clouds) cloud base of 600m could be a nice compromise.

[domokun 515]

OK I've been wondering why the cloud base in the game is 2500m. That's pretty high when low clouds cloud base usually range from 200-1500m. Well in the configs it says cloudBaseKm = 0.85; but seems like it isn't the actual real value in the game. I put cloudBaseKm = 0.1; just to test things and I got the clouds around 550m from the sea level with some small fractus reaching 450m.

 

Red is where the cloud base about is in the game when there is high amount of overcast:

 

...

 

 

It's a rough image how clouds are. Of course weather, closer to tropic/arctic and the ground elevations make it bit different in different places.

 

In my opinion cloud base should be lowered. And the more overcast there is the lower it should get, so low overcast maybe cloud base of 1500m and high overcast (so when there's rain clouds) cloud base of 600m could be a nice compromise.

Added advantage of low cloud base is that it offers a feasible explanation for the use of BI's improved fog!

Howevern I'm wondering if the fact that Altis and Stratis are islands may not have impact on cloud behaviour.

Any geographers out there care to explain the influence of a maritime climate on cloud formation and evolution?

In layman's terms please :D

[2nd ranger 282]

So this is noon,12h, Altis. It looks good, but I feel it's little bit too shiny, too much glow and this was taken on Standard settings.

 

 

If you only noticed that when in the helicopter, it's an HDR thing. Happens in every vehicle in first person. The scene looks much brighter from inside than out.