I have also been here from the very beginning.
I do know what you mean, but for me, it's not that important. Sure Horizons may have looked better (very subjective), but I have no issues with the way it works at the moment either.
Is Oddessy darkness fixed? I dont think so
- Thread starter rcdcce
- Start date
I do know what you mean, but for me, it's not that important. Sure Horizons may have looked better (very subjective), but I have no issues with the way it works at the moment either.
That's cool, and maybe if ED had always looked like that in space, it wouldn't be an issue for me either. But for me it's a visual downgrade, a more boring look, and it's frustrating to me to play this game feeling like I'm looking at a lesser version of what used to be. So I'd just like clarity from FD if that is a design decision or a bug that they're actively working on.
For those who like to solve problems with an axe. There is a way to restore the dynamic range of Horizons in GraphicsConfiguration.xml
<HDRNode_Reference>
<ToneMapType>0</ToneMapType>
(original value 1)
There is a big caveat here. This more or less disables all tone mapping as far as I can tell. The game will look terribly washed out. Although what is immediately apparent is how much detail is restored to the galactic backdrop and generally how little clipping there is in the image. This is a solid starting point for some Reshading
No Reshade
Re shaded (to my personal preferences.. more neutral horizons def possible)
Re shaded planetary shot, just to add some credibility
I would guess EDO's issues can be largely solved with tweaked HDR tonemapping parameters. But im not willing to experiment when every parameter change involves a game restart..
<HDRNode_Reference>
<ToneMapType>0</ToneMapType>
(original value 1)
There is a big caveat here. This more or less disables all tone mapping as far as I can tell. The game will look terribly washed out. Although what is immediately apparent is how much detail is restored to the galactic backdrop and generally how little clipping there is in the image. This is a solid starting point for some Reshading
No Reshade
Re shaded (to my personal preferences.. more neutral horizons def possible)
Re shaded planetary shot, just to add some credibility
I would guess EDO's issues can be largely solved with tweaked HDR tonemapping parameters. But im not willing to experiment when every parameter change involves a game restart..
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The horizon skybox is still there. If you set the gamma very high, you see it the way it was. Obviously, everything else is over saturated and terrible looking.For those who like to solve problems with an axe. There is a way to restore the dynamic range of Horizons in GraphicsConfiguration.xml
<HDRNode_Reference>
<ToneMapType>0</ToneMapType>
(original value 1)
There is a big caveat here. This more or less disables all tone mapping as far as I can tell. The game will look terribly washed out. Although what is immediately apparent is how much detail is restored to the galactic backdrop and generally how little clipping there is in the image. This is a solid starting point for some Reshading
No Reshade
View attachment 258942
Re shaded (to my personal preferences.. more neutral horizons def possible)
View attachment 258944
Re shaded planetary shot, just to add some credibility
View attachment 258945
I would guess EDO's issues can be largely solved with tweaked HDR tonemapping parameters. But im not willing to experiment when every parameter change involves a game restart..
For some reason, they set an internal gamma for the skybox much lower than the rest of the game. Don't know how that work exactly, but you get the idea.
You can have the horizon skybox back, but it's at the price of everything else.
Different render-passes using different compositors, and thus different gamma settings (or possibly a double application of gamma?)
I have no clue what the wizard talk mean^^ I just know that Odyssey skybox is essentially Horizon, but with gamma already set very low.
I don't know how that works, just the end result.
That confirm this mess is still here.For those who like to solve problems with an axe. There is a way to restore the dynamic range of Horizons in GraphicsConfiguration.xml
<HDRNode_Reference>
<ToneMapType>0</ToneMapType>
(original value 1)
There is a big caveat here. This more or less disables all tone mapping as far as I can tell. The game will look terribly washed out. Although what is immediately apparent is how much detail is restored to the galactic backdrop and generally how little clipping there is in the image. This is a solid starting point for some Reshading
No Reshade
View attachment 258942
Re shaded (to my personal preferences.. more neutral horizons def possible)
View attachment 258944
Re shaded planetary shot, just to add some credibility
View attachment 258945
I would guess EDO's issues can be largely solved with tweaked HDR tonemapping parameters. But im not willing to experiment when every parameter change involves a game restart..
I would agree, as turning the gamma to max does not restore the dynamic range. But I also suspect the problem is easier to solve than all that 'deep in the pipeline' stuff. Not to say it isn't correct. I'm not an expert on color space conversions or rendering pipelines. But I think they could solve most of it with better tone mapping which does not require any real pipeline fiddling.
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It continues to baffle me how the issue was quite literally discovered by a forum user, down to the render pass layers, and yet FDev never even acknowledged it, and more than that claimed that they are only modifying cockpit brightness over "vocal commander expectations" because I guess to them everything is working as expected.
Like...someone went through the trouble of profiling it and identifying the source of the imbalance, meaning tracking down the code to fix it becomes that much easier, and FDev just went "nah, the only problem is you, not us, and we only fixing it cuz you complained."
I don't like the reshade.
What I have noticed is that there is variation based on what artificial light is visible. Lift you eyes up from the radar, and the light changes.
Same sky - same time - but the inclusion of a torch makes the sky darker.
What I have noticed is that there is variation based on what artificial light is visible. Lift you eyes up from the radar, and the light changes.
Same sky - same time - but the inclusion of a torch makes the sky darker.
Just my two cents, yeah I know darker is more realistic but I much prefer the galactic background from horizons. I don't see any need for realism given that there is sound in space (and I know the canon explanation). I don't see any reason the ship can't present brighter and false color representations of the universe. Hell I don't see any reason that I couldn't switch to a microwave background radiation view or 100 other visualizations.
I would be fine if there were options or just modes (like NV, lights, etc) that allowed for different visualizations of the universe but I would settle for the nice look of horizons that I fell in love with.
I would be fine if there were options or just modes (like NV, lights, etc) that allowed for different visualizations of the universe but I would settle for the nice look of horizons that I fell in love with.
Another dev update has come and gone, and there is no mention of this issue. So I decided to see if a bug was logged specifically for this and didn't see one. I've created the below issue, please upvote if you want to see this fixed:
The problem isn't that Odyssey is too dark, that's just a symptom. The problem is that when it's brightened, you cannot recover information that should be there, because it was destroyed. It's like a poorly mastered piece of music.
Legacy tuned to look like Odyssey doesn't destroy this information because the bug responsible isn't in Legacy. Odyssey is apparently still clipping the skybox's range, before we have any control over the image.
Does this brightening symptom you mention include when the game segues from a dark to a bright area, or only when someone is trying to custom adjust the visual settings outside of the game? I mention that as I haven't seen any issues with Odyssey in bright areas, or when moving from dark to light that I'm aware of. Or is this something I need to look for to see?
The issue I'm talking about (the one in that issue tracker link) is Odyssey clipping the brightness range of the skybox to map it to a wider range, presumably for the purpose of increasing apparent contrast, which it does. The problem is that clipped range, which was not empty, is then baked into the image before we have any control over it, destroying the information it contained.
When players try to recover that information, by any means (turning up the brightness of the display, changing the in-game gamma setting, manipulating the tone mapping in the configuration files, or using third party tools), they find they can only washout the image, or make what's already there brighter. The darkest parts of the skybox that would have been visible in Legacy are gone.
See this post for a comparison I made just a few days ago.
The first image is Legacy, the second Odyssey. The Odyssey sykbox has both higher contrast and less detail, because there is a tonemapper stage somewhere in the render pipeline that does something like this:
I opened my Legacy screen shot in GIMP and then adjusted the color levels until they closely (though not exactly) matched Odyssey. You can see that by omitting anything darker than "8" and brighter than "224" then mapping them to a new 0-255 output we get 'more contrast', but throw away nearly half of the image and lose tons of darker details.
Some people like this result because it makes space blacker and gets rid of those questionable clouds. Some people are more concerned about the loss of detail. I'm firmly in the latter camp, despite feeling like much of those illuminated gas/dust clouds are out of place. Problem is, that the way FDev has done this was largely unnecessary...just turning down gamma in legacy, or altering the game's tone maps in the config files, achieves much of the same effect, and there is no corresponding way to reverse the effect in Odyssey and get that detail back.
I understand better now. I'm assuming that the intention of the gamma setting is to get to the overall brightness to the threshold intended by Frontier rather than a creative way to tweak the look of the game, as is using Reshade. I'm not saying that trying to adjust the default levels to something that is more pleasing to one's eye is wrong but the thread title is a bit misleading, if that is the case.The issue I'm talking about (the one in that issue tracker link) is Odyssey clipping the brightness range of the skybox to map it to a wider range, presumably for the purpose of increasing apparent contrast, which it does. The problem is that clipped range, which was not empty, is then baked into the image before we have any control over it, destroying the information it contained.
When players try to recover that information, by any means (turning up the brightness of the display, changing the in-game gamma setting, manipulating the tone mapping in the configuration files, or using third party tools), they find they can only washout the image, or make what's already there brighter. The darkest parts of the skybox that would have been visible in Legacy are gone.
See this post for a comparison I made just a few days ago.
The first image is Legacy, the second Odyssey. The Odyssey sykbox has both higher contrast and less detail, because there is a tonemapper stage somewhere in the render pipeline that does something like this:
I opened my Legacy screen shot in GIMP and then adjusted the color levels until they closely (though not exactly) matched Odyssey. You can see that by omitting anything darker than "8" and brighter than "224" then mapping them to a new 0-255 output we get 'more contrast', but throw away nearly half of the image and lose tons of darker details.
Some people like this result because it makes space blacker and gets rid of those questionable clouds. Some people are more concerned about the loss of detail. I'm firmly in the latter camp, despite feeling like much of those illuminated gas/dust clouds are out of place. Problem is, that the way FDev has done this was largely unnecessary...just turning down gamma in legacy, or altering the game's tone maps in the config files, achieves much of the same effect, and there is no corresponding way to reverse the effect in Odyssey and get that detail back.
I could be misunderstanding but I would be curious that the 'baking in', or flattening of the layers might serve some purpose, possibly performance/memory related, if it's taking multiple tone map layers and condensing them down to one and then not using those layers in real-time. If that is correct then it seems that this intentional change has had the side effect of borking reshade? If so, then it doesn't sound like this is a bug, rather it's a change that closes a hook into the color system of the skymap generation that Reshade used. Again, I'm not saying that is a good thing or bad, I don't use Reshade and I have nothing against anyone who uses it, just that a change in a program that makes a mod break isn't neccessarily a bug in the game.
Alternatively, would there be a possible solution if Reshade was able to interject between the flattening of the tone map layers? That way it could apply it's adjustements that then get baked into the skybox?
This may already have been mentioned but I think the "flattening" being referred to was identified in this thread in more detail. It does seem to just be a bug/oversight, such a change wouldn't have any significant performance impact anyway (I mean, Horizons managed it just fine and Odyssey runs worse)