Non-blinding sun mod

[bravo 6 0]

I was using it with GDTMod_HDR and with RH heli sounds 1.01

[VictorFarbau 0]

I like it. It makes the game much more enjoyable for me. Realism is nice but not to an extent where the game blinds me half of the time. I would swallow that if the AI would react to this - but since this is not the case it's just a cosmetic bother for me. Different story in all-human MP games, obviously.

Cheers,

VictorFarbau

[Alex72 1]

EDIT: Wrong section. Was guided here from Armaholic...

Alex

[zeep 3]

Nice mod. I was guided here from Armaholic too, apparently their link is wrong.

One question for the author, or anyone else for that matter; Why do you use mediafire.com to share the files? Mediafire has horrible fullscreen popups that preach Casino and what not.. It's a shame to have that at the door for such good effort :/

[sakura_chan 9]

really? I never got popups because of my popup blocker. It was free and I didn't even have to make an account/get trash emails from them. I'll find something more appropriate.

[.kju 3240]

dump.no or ifile.it or best http://www.arma-creations.com/ .:)

[SeaVee 10]

Sorry I'm going to have to call bullshit on your comment. In real life the sun glare doesn't cover 50% of the sky, and at night when looking at oncoming traffic you can still see the car or at least tell where the headlights are, it isn't just one giant ball of light.

Agree 100%. I'm an avid boater/fisherman and live in Miami Florida. I fish in all hours of day or night including extensive time in the Bahamas - we are over here in a subtropical area. I'm very often ON the WATER where the sun's effects are amplified by the ocean's reflection and this is in the southern latitudes generally closer to the equator than in Europe and most of the rest of the USA.

The "real life" sun does not have anything near to the effects "stock" Arma2 has - especially in terms of blinding roughly 3/4 of ALL of your field of view when looking in the general direction of the sun, as opposed to looking directly at it (in which case it can be blinding of course).

Thanks for this mod!

Edited April 8, 2010 by SeaVee

[sparks50 0]

All I can say, in Airsofting or PBing, the sun is a big gameplay element when it is low on the sky.

Especially in the northern winter(thats when the sun is low), defending or attacking with the sun behind you often gives a big advantage(and with cold weather people rarely wear sunglasses either).

I will agree the effects is not exactly perfect though, and unlike AA it isn't strong enough to affect gameplay(other than coloring 1/3 of the sky white)

Edited April 8, 2010 by sparks50

[kremator 1064]

This mod should be standard for everyone ... not optional.

[Defunkt 431]

No thanks.

[icewindo 29]

No thanks.

Yep. Maybe my eyes have a rare genetic defect, but if I take a direct look into the sun at a clear day (that's what sunglasses were made for, afaik) or watch directly into headlamps at night I can't see shit. Also, the pictures posted earlier are a crappy argument, a camera linse doesn't react to sunlight like a human does.

"Full" Blinding is dependent on the angle for me in RL, as it does in ArmA2. If you move only a few ° away from the initial 0° position facing the headlights the blinding effect will decrease, RL or ArmA2.

Edited April 8, 2010 by Icewindo

[CarlGustaffa 4]

No I'd say your genetics are fine. The photos are exposed for the sky, making the ground dark to black and you can't pick out any details there. In Arma it seems to expose for the ground, leaving the sky overexposed. Too much? Dunno, but fighting into a low sun is extremely problematic. You will be blinded by it. Depending on the atmospheric conditions at the time, you might even be "blinded" by the atmospheric glow.

Also consider we don't get any reflections from i.e. wet surfaces making the matter worse in real life. Try driving uphill into the sun on a wet road. It actually hurts!

Realism is nice but not to an extent where the game blinds me half of the time.

Not a problem if you take lightsource position into account during planning. Always try (sometimes it is unavoidable, and then it should hurt us) to attack with the sun or moon behind you. Are land features easier to take advantage of when facing the sun? It is up to you what disadvantage you want. If you're facing the sun 50% of the time, I'd say there is something missing in the planning phase.

War is hell. No reason to make it more convenient if it's not realistic.

I'd "allow" it as a sunglasses effect though (i.e. using ACE) because sunglasses help. Make them polarized and it helps even more with wet surfaces. Not sure I'd go to this level though.

But as a freebie? No way :)

[Minoza 11]

+1

Have to agree with this on Carl. I've read all the arguments on these 7 pages. Since I'm using ACE too, where you can put on different glasses (and which are used IRL too) I don't see a problem with blinding.

Actually, even without sunglasses I rarely experience problem with blinding since my squad plans before going into battle. As for the pilots - how hard is to attack from different angle?

I will not go into discussion if the effect is right or not, you would get blinded IRL most of the time when facing sun and it would make it harder for you to spot details on ground. Maybe the effect in A2 looks overdone but actually it does it's job - it is preventing you to see details on ground (or air) when facing sun - there is nothing wrong with this!

Of course, it is great to have this optional in terms of addon. Since ACE will maybe feature (I'm not representing anything or anyone it's just what I read on dev-heaven) this through sunglasses you can try that when you play online. I'm mentioning this because some people complained they can't use it in MP.

[Sarastro 10]

Each to their own I suppose but I really don't understand, isn't it more realistic/immersive without such a modification? Making the game easier doesn't necessarily make it a better game. But then I liked the head bob and motion-blur only it's now disadvantaging oneself to enable those. :confused_o:

Problem is, it isn't more realistic. Head-bob / motion blur don't happen because your body compensates. Look to either side as fast as you can - your eyes focus on what you are looking at before your head moves. Similarly, your muscles steady your head when running while your brain adjusts for most residual movement.

...and as for the way that the sun affects vision in the game, it just doesn't happen. My entire screen gets darker to the point of not being able to see anything when I look towards the sun - in reality, the sun and area around is blinding, but you squint your eyes and adjust pretty fast.

The things which make real soldiering hard are physical, and can't be replicated in a game. I understand the aim to make the game harder and more realistic, but making it more annoying isn't really a good substitute.

[oktane 0]

Problem is, it isn't more realistic. Head-bob / motion blur don't happen because your body compensates. Look to either side as fast as you can - your eyes focus on what you are looking at before your head moves.

Speaking of the silly motion blur, I just released the addon version of the noBlur that allows you to still use the nicer post processing effects without the drunk-o-vision blur.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

The effects of head-bob/motion blur are fairly realistic. Problem with blur has been especially on low end machines creating a mess. Oktane's addons fixes this brilliantly, and I can run with everything else which I like... Which includes a bit of head-bob.

Your body and brain is able to compensate somewhat, but not fully. Go for a jog and try reading the registration plates of cars in the distance. Try picking up where all the movement is happening. Now try the same standing still. You're able to pick up a lot more, and that's what these effects accomplishes.

If you're able to maintain good frames, you can probably increase the head-bob. For low frame users, it's probably best to keep it on the low side. But I wouldn't turn it completely off.

With the new addon, I find that I can increase from 20% to about 30-35, where my frames are about 30 on utes. Might have to decrease a little on Chernarus again.

[Sarastro 10]

Sorry, but this is meant to be a military sim - I've been on ops, and those effects aren't remotely realistic. There are a hundred and one physical and behavioural compensations which you make either automatically or intentionally to minimise the effect of blinding, motion, etc. When I loaded up Arma 2, the headbob was like a seesaw having an epileptic fit. In the game, these effects have a hugely disproportionate effect.

At the same time, in-game tinnitus and disorientation from explosions last for a few seconds, where in real-time they can be disabling or will last for hours. And obviously, there's also getting shot in-game...

The game is never going to be realistic, I'm just saying that the balance could be slightly better.

[ScareCroweb 10]

Actually we have motionblur in real life too even worse than ingame, you also have two huge blindspots in your eyes, yes you are totally blind in those spots, but here is the thing, your brain learns to block out these things so that you cant see those blindspots and fools you to think you can see whats in those blindspots, same goes for the motionblur your brain fools you and tell you that there is no motion blur. Amazing isnt it? now to the question, why have they added something in the game that is not a problem in real life?

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Real world motion blur even tends to be "seasonal". I've noticed the effect tends to be worse late saturday night to early sunday morning. Also there are more such nights during the summer than during the winter... Go figure :p

(Sorry, waiting for my late night pizza)...

[Chumba 10]

Sarastro nails it - and it also goes without saying that BI really need to incorporate a game option slider for HDR to give us officially the same control that GTD HDR mod does.

BTW it's possible to make general coloration more real life like - ie. not so "Saving Private Ryan" desaturated - by editing the missions files... - game looks amazing once that's done and the HDR is brought more or less under control.

[Nikoteen 24]

This mod doesn't work properly on OA.

I miss it so much !

[Ringosis 10]

+1

I will not go into discussion if the effect is right or not, you would get blinded IRL most of the time when facing sun and it would make it harder for you to spot details on ground. Maybe the effect in A2 looks overdone but actually it does it's job - it is preventing you to see details on ground (or air) when facing sun - there is nothing wrong with this!

Excuse the minor thread necromancy and the rant but I really can't stand this particular kind of "realism" argument that is used all the time in discussions about Arma. I'm all for realism, but when adding stuff like sun glare, questions other than "does staring into the sun blind you" need to be asked. Of course the answer is yes but does that mean that being blinded by the sun the way you are in Arma is a realistic representation of how someone would deal with the situation in real life? No.

If I'm trying to see while looking into bright light I can squint, I can avert my eyes, I can shield the sun with my hand, I could wear a cap or I could put on sunglasses. None of these things will completely remove the problem but they will drastically reduce debilitating effect and that is not taken into account by the games engine which means, while the blindness caused by the in game sun is realistic in a visual sense it does not accurately represent the difficulty an actual person would have in the same situation.

It is the same logic I see used time and again to defend limiting the game to first person view. Now obviously I'm not trying to say that third person view is realistic, the problem is that neither is first person. In reality I'm not limited to a 90 degree viewing angle while driving, I can freely move my head around inside the car, if I need to see something close to the car I can move my head towards the wind shield to get a better view, if I want to see something above me I can duck down not to mention that unless you've been in some horrible accident you have depth perception. It is clear that the static camera point inside a vehicle is not an accurate representation of what it is like to drive a car yet the same argument is applied by the same people because cosmetically it appears to be more like reality.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to get across is that when you want to talk about realism in a game, particularly when it comes to visuals, try and take into account the how it would affect you in real life. If you want to make a realistic simulator then visual effects that impair your performance to the same degree as they would in real life will always trump one that just looks accurate.

[styxx42 0]

Sakura_Chan Great mod.

Thanks for the time, the effort and for putting it out there.

Personally I NEVER look directly at the sun, but my TRON for lack of a better word doesn't know how to properly look at the sun so when I sweep my head across a bright light or the sun I am blinded. Much better interpretation IMHO.

Great Job

[Chumba 10]

I think the default blinding oversaturation for sun when it's within a few degrees of the horizon would be appropriate - and then otherwise have it non blinding like this great mod.

[hamis 0]

This mod doesn't work properly on OA.

Sakura,please could you update this mod for OA and CO?