Arma's lighting.

[Heatseeker 0]

..hopefully.

I have come across many situations in Arma where the lighting wont let me see properly when it should, i find the hdr effect overdone in some situations (even at night) and i believe it would be good to have it toned down and improved. The lighting transitions are too sudden and agressive, all this compared to RL. When the sun is low (sundown/sunrise) its most noticeable.

At sunrise, night fall and night everything is too dark, a little brighter when the moon is full but still way too dark, i should atleast be able to see my own hands, rifle and a limited view of my surrondings but everything is sometimes black to a point i cant even see and follow my own men. I remember this happened in OPF too after some nvidia driver came out so it could be a video driver related problem...

Artificial lighting (light poles) is poor and doesnt cast enough light, even vehicle lights provide better lighting and effects (though a little erratic). The light poles found in Sahrani can be compared to very small candles for the poor light they cast imo.

The current lighting system in Arma is "candy", gameplay wise its not realistic and lacking, it affects the gameplay in a way that it shouldnt compared to RL and the a.i. seems unaffected.

Imo Arma needs more realistic lighting overall, there are some good effects with the nvg's and depending on day time and settings but it needs improvement.

*Also i have come across a specific setting where the graphics become "flashpoint" alike (september 7th, 19:00 hours), like the shadders arent there?

*<span style='color:red'>Update from page 2.</span>

Pic taken at 18:00 hours!

The shadders look ok and so does the lighting, sun is setting so everything looks darker than usual.

Pic taken at 19:00 hours!

One hour later everything looks wrong, sun is set but everything is now brighter (notice the ai even turned on the BRDM's headlights), the shadders arent working and Arma looks like OPF at 15:00 hours.. this happens during day/night transitions and is easy to recreate.

Note: Both pics taken at the same date (sept 7th) with the same settings (shadders high, shadows normal), Arma version 1.5, both pics scaled down to 800x600 res and converted to jpeg only.

<span style='color:red'>Please note:</span>

I would like to hear others opinions about this, preferable in a constructive, informative and polite fashion... trolling for the sake of it will be reported.

[max power 21]

On the whole I like the lighting in ArmA. I have not yet noticed the dramatic transitions you're talking about. With this ATI card, the HDR seems quite nice and I've got no complaints there. I think the sunlight has a really nice feel to it, and I think ArmA does a very nice job of showing bright sunlight and also sunrises and sunsets. I do agree with you, though, about the darkness of nights with the moon up. You can't see anything! And the lantern standards really don't provide much light at all. I think that they look good, and they really do look like squinty, limited spectrum electric lights, but I think that they over-represent them. Another thing that I noticed regarding lighting is that, often if the sun is low in the sky and is blinding you, you can clear your vision by just zooming in- likewise with NVG being messed up by other lightsources. I don't know if anything can be done about that, but it does allow you to trump those disadvantages in certain situations.

[JimLad 0]

I really thought that HDR works so well at night, when you take the night vision goggles off you can't see anything but gradually your night sight returns. However I would agree it was still too dark at least when the moon is out. The enemies also seem to be much better at seeing than I am, even with night vision

[andersson 285]

I really like armas HDR. It works smooth and realistic on my GF8800gts. I wonder though if AI are affected?

[paragraphic l 2]

Came across a really big problem last night.

With NVG on with the light-house at your back your view gets darkened and lightend very unrealistic, I think the NVG should never be able to get darker, lighter offcourse but darker seems strange to me.

The rest, well would love to have the transitions a bit faster, feels 'slow' now.

[ThePredator 0]

Yes, this is what I really hate about the HDR effects. Nightvision is completely messed up. I used NOD's myself at night and I remember lights create a flare effect, like flares in ArmA, it does not get dark at all.

Firing the Miniguns w/o night vision will reduce your night vision which is cool, does work for all weapons.

But with nightvision HDR will blind you too, no advantage there.

We need sunglasses...some nice O*kleys for the SF and R*yB*ns for the pilots

[Heatseeker 0]

I noticed the "bad" hdr effect in the sweat, blood and tears mission, assaulting that town (pita? ) as part of the mech infantry squad, when i looked to my left i couldnt see very well, in RL i could... this is what makes me think that the hdr is overdone when the sun light is low.

[frederf 0]

I don't like how the HDR state "resets" when entering and exiting vehicles with NVGoggles on.

Getting out of a M2staticMG with NVG on at night shouldn't flash my screen bright green!

[l mandrake 9]

It seems to me that AI see too well in the dark when not wearing NVG's. I would prefer to see enemy soldiers using torches to hunt for intruders rather than magically 'seeing in the dark'...

[stainer 0]

It irritates me when, having had your NVGs on for quite some time at night, you take them off and it's impossible to see even vehicle headlights for about 5 seconds. While I appreciate that there is a period of adjustment when taking off NVGs, surely you would be able to see headlights and other sources of intense light instantly?

[martinovic 0]

I'm thinking lightposts need to either increase in numbers or in radiance because right now walking into a "lit" city at night isn't really a treat.

[KeyCat 131]

I agree that the lighting (along with tracers) at night could benefit from some tweaks to up the atmosphere (regarding the HDR at day I never had any problems and looks great here).

As already said nights with clear sky and moon, should be a bit brighter. Street lamps doesn't light up to much at all and still have the "cones". That being said one thing BIS got right IMO is the camp fires! They make very nice lightsources but it feels a bit wierd to sprinkle them all around in a city etc. to get some good light in a dusk/night mission.

Ohh, one thing that improved things a tiny bit on my end was

to spend some time with brightness and gamma settings.

Just my 0.20 SEK

/KC

[dirtylarrygb 0]

I'm thinking lightposts need to either increase in numbers or in radiance because right now walking into a "lit" city at night isn't really a treat.

I agree at night, ligthing could be better (well less sparse), lit windows, glow effects and more street lights etc (neon signs?). I suspect it's a hardware performance issue as to why there are not more. I remeber how many PC's could not run the night time missions in BF:2 Special Forces.

In this thread might be best to state what video card and shader/shadow settings you run they seem to effect the HDR the most.

Also there are vast differences in the 8800 drivers, as to how they see HDR verse's the 7series nvidia cards and below. And ATI drivers verses the nvidia ones. So we may all be seeing different levels HDR just from our drivers. For instance barring HL2, I can't name another game HDR and AA would work on with HDR enabled. I have no idea if this applies to ARMA. The 8800's fixed this.

I noticed in 1.04 flying a chopper towards the sun had a very profound strobe effect on the HDR this has almost gone with 1.05.

Things to try,

Run shadows at low/normal/very high in fog and watch how at very high they are correct.

Has anyone else noticed that some leaves on trees and bushes allow diffuse sunlight through on all vhigh settings?

Nightgoggles off, well sit in the drak for 30 mins then notice how good your nightvision is, close one eye turn on a light then off and see how long before you can see out the eye that was light exposed. The delay we have is very fast ;}

I'm going to post some screengrabs of pretty stuff I've seen ARMA do asap.

Spec: 8800GTX, everything very high, bar terrain when trying to shoot ai units.

[Heatseeker 0]

I found this lighting/shadder/day to night cycle transition problem, i think its a bug .

Set the editor to september the 7th, 19:00 hours and preview...i dont see any shadder effects or shadows and the colours are all bright and weird, normal maps gone?

At 18:00 hours everything looks ok, at 20:00 hours also...

Can anyone replicate this? I might post a couple screens later.

It might be due to lack of lighting (sun/moon).

edit:

I guess we can all agree that those lamp posts are pretty useless...

What i dislike in the HDR is that when the sun is setting it shouldnt cause such an exagerated blinding effect..

[Undeceived 392]

With NVG on with the light-house at your back your view gets darkened and lightend very unrealistic, I think the NVG should never be able to get darker, lighter offcourse but darker seems strange to me.

Yes, at night it's pretty disappointing, also when you move your sight and suddenly all gets dark... Moving the mouse some pixels back, sight gets clear again.

I really hate this and hope, that BIS will get this corrected.

And at the day, I sometimes feel, like if a total solar eclipse is occouring and I have missed it on the news...  

Same case like at night, you move your sight and it gets dark, you move it back and the sun shines again.

[max power 21]

I found this lighting/shadder/day to night cycle transition problem, i think its a bug .

Set the editor to september the 7th, 19:00 hours and preview...i dont see any shadder effects or shadows and the colours are all bright and weird, normal maps gone?

At 18:00 hours everything looks ok, at 20:00 hours also...

Can anyone replicate this? I might post a couple screens later.

It might be due to lack of lighting (sun/moon).

edit:

I guess we can all agree that those lamp posts are pretty useless...

What i dislike in the HDR is that when the sun is setting it shouldnt cause such an exagerated blinding effect..

This is a simulation of the 'magic hour'. I think it might be a local colloquialism (I can't find much on the web about it), but it's mentioned in the movie 'Reign of Fire'.

And I'm not sure where you live, but if I stare into the sun I get pretty blinded by it. I live on the 49th parallel.

[Heatseeker 0]

errr... no. I dont get sun blind at sunrise or sundown and there is no magical hour that makes the world look dx8 over here .

In this "magical hour" car headlights also get me blind although its still perfectly bright, its a graphical bug.

Another time you can witness this is default editor date (june, 27) at 04:45 hours, i hope it will be fixed .

[TheReddog 0]

I think at dusk and early morning it is at it's worse. Classic example is the cleaning up SF single mission at dusk. Looking at the sunset everything brightens up incredibly, looking the other way it goes extremely dark and looking at the ground at your feet it starts to brighten up?!?!?! (in fact at all times and states looking at the ground at my feet it starts to brighten things up)

Then there are the many other instances where looking at the sun gives you the correct 'glare out' but if you shift your view half a degree or actually aim into the glare it completely disappears. Which overall makes it look very dodgy.

In general the changes in lighting are much too aggressive and abrupt, in reality the change is there but the way it happens it is almost imperceptible, in games (and I mean all games with HDR not just ArmA) the light changes look unrealistic and sudden. Which is one of the reasons I am not a big fan of HDR in any game.

All I can say really is the light in ArmA sure doesn't behave like any lighting I've ever seen in the real world.

[blackdog~ 0]

<span style='font-size:15pt;line-height:100%'>HDR SUCKS TOTAL BALLS IN ARMED ASSAULT</span>

doesn't matter whether it's day, night, mid-afternoon, or late-morning -- it's a fact...

It is most definitely worst at night though... check out this video... there's probably some background text that I should add to it but it just kind of demonstrates the horrid night-HDR effects.

http://www.surfacezero.com/span/hdrnvg.wmv

[william1 0]

well , and what is the problem with that video ? if you mean the blackout after taking off the NVg's , it's just the simulation of the period that the eyes need to get used to the darkness , i think it's quite reallistic

[max power 21]

errr... no. I dont get sun blind at sunrise or sundown and there is no magical hour that makes the world look dx8 over here .

In this "magical hour" car headlights also get me blind although its still perfectly bright, its a graphical bug.

Another time you can witness this is default editor date (june, 27) at 04:45 hours, i hope it will be fixed .

There isn't?

http://www.photos-of-the-year.com/image....med.jpg

[blackdog~ 0]

Have you ever worn NVG's in your life? No? Then why are you even arguing? I've worn NVG's and that DOES NOT HAPPEN.

[whisper 0]

Well, for me the blinding effect of the sun is rendered very good in ArmA. Having the sun in your DOES blind you, the more the sun is centered, the more you're blinded. Like what I witness in ArmA.

There are some transitions that are a bit too sudden, but overall, in daylight, it's quite good. Definitely not "sucks donkey balls" written in bold and big caracters, with a nifty "it's a fact" written after, like it would give more weight to an argument

[TheReddog 0]

Well, for me the blinding effect of the sun is rendered very good in ArmA. Having the sun in your DOES blind you, the more the sun is centered, the more you're blinded. Like what I witness in ArmA.

There are some transitions that are a bit too sudden, but overall, in daylight, it's quite good. Definitely not "sucks donkey balls" written in bold and big caracters, with a nifty "it's a fact" written after, like it would give more weight to an argument

I don't know which game you're playing, but on my machine in ArmA there is no middle ground between the sun glare being there and not being there. It's like you look at the sun, it's there, you move you viewpoint 1mm and it instantly disappears with the whole scene abruptly darkening, like flicking a light switch. It does this irrespective of the HDR precision setting (ie. at the highest or lowest).

Looks very unnatural and stupid.

[Heatseeker 0]

errr... no. I dont get sun blind at sunrise or sundown and there is no magical hour that makes the world look dx8 over here .

In this "magical hour" car headlights also get me blind although its still perfectly bright, its a graphical bug.

Another time you can witness this is default editor date (june, 27) at 04:45 hours, i hope it will be fixed .

There isn't?

http://www.photos-of-the-year.com/image....med.jpg

Cant see your picture.

Have you tried to replicate it?

Set your editor to june, 7 at 4:45 or september, 7 at 19:00 then one hour later or earlier and compare.

Its not just everything turning bright, its the graphics/shadders, messing up. I think its because of the lighting in the day/night transition.