Not liking the new lighting at all.

Stealthie

Stealthie
I think I've figured out what the problem is.

The ambient lighting seems to have an effect on how things like text, orbit lines and the HUDs look.

When I first started playing I thought the lighting had been improved.
Everything looked pretty and all the lines were smooth and the text was, erm, legible.

Then, as I travelled around, I realised the cockpit HUDs looked awful.

The problem is, if I go to a system where there's a red giant, producing a lot of red light, the orbit lines, text and HUDs also become very red.
They look massively oversaturated and blurred to the point where most of the text is just a bright red "blob".
So, I increase the gamma setting and reduce the HUD intensity and it all looks nice again.

Then, if I go to a system where there's a bright yellow or white star, the orbit lines, text and HUDs become very white.
They look massively washed-out, colourless and (again) blurred to the point where they're unreadable. Again.
So, I dial back the gamma and increase the HUD intensity to restore some contrast and colour again.

And then I end up back in a system with a red star again....

A lot of people seem to think the new lighting works well so I guess it's something that I'm just going to have to get used to, unless FDev can implement an option to disable the new lighting.
 
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Mengy

Mengy
I think the problem is they are applying the new gradients to everything on the screen rather than selectively applying it. For example, star color should not be tinting the Milky Way itself in the background, but it does in 3.3. Similarly it's tinting our ship's interior and HUD too, even when the star isn't shining on it.

It feels like a one step forward and two steps back kind of thing. Or maybe one step forward and one step back. If the gradient had just been applied selectively it would have vastly improved the look of the game, as it is it's a tad unsettling some of the time.
 

Micha

Micha
Nope, you're not the only one. Overall the dynamic lighting can add to the atmosphere, but the way it's implemented is cheap; it appears to just be a filter over the entire scene which means it affects stuff it shouldn't (such as HUD elements and the background). It makes some things and situations look great, and others not so great. On average, I'm not a fan either.

This was all commented on in the beta too, to no avail. The Devs like it in their test systems/situations, the "special guests" ooh'd and aah'd, so that's what we got.
 

Cheops1975

C
The insides of some stations, high tech in particular, look like someone smeared vaseline all over my monitor. In space and especially in a ring system things look pretty damn good.
 

Furnace

Furnace
Yeah, I'm with you.

Well, I can somewhat live with the washed-out effect near stars as it's just temporary when you're near them, but not with constant brightness tweaking. Thanks to this new lightning all the interiors of spaceports are now downright terrible looking. I feel like my vision is hindered with a weird filter, it's even present down inside the ship hangar. Gone is the crisp look we used to have notably in Hi-tech, agriculture, and industrial stations.

Also last but not least, all those random seizure moments which take place when exiting FSS / Galaxy / System Map. To some people it can cause migraines, because when staring at a screen that's mostly dark, and then suddenly FLASH - transition to overkill brightness / saturation for a brief second make you nearly go blind. I'm not even joking, it's really bad.

I didn't like them in beta, sad to see they're still in the live build.
 
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Rafe Zetter

Banned
Rafe Zetter
Mengy said:
I think the problem is they are applying the new gradients to everything on the screen rather than selectively applying it. For example, star color should not be tinting the Milky Way itself in the background, but it does in 3.3. Similarly it's tinting our ship's interior and HUD too, even when the star isn't shining on it.

It feels like a one step forward and two steps back kind of thing. Or maybe one step forward and one step back. If the gradient had just been applied selectively it would have vastly improved the look of the game, as it is it's a tad unsettling some of the time.
Click to expand...

This was an issue with NMS - where planet atmo colours were also being displayed in space and inside space stations, regardless of planet position, night / day etc.

To fix it a modder just removed the problem - seems FDev have fallen into the same trap of just adding a universal filter without really taking into account the differences of peoples display systems, AND to make matters worse haven't included an option to disable it either.

For a game that relies on it's graphical loveliness so heavily to draw people in and keep them logging in, FDev seem to not really grasp some fundamentals. (no change there then)
 

Andro

Andro
Adding on to this, I can't believe objects are still only lit by the main star only. Seems weird to overhaul lighting without supporting multiple star sources.
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Regarding distant stars getting tinted by the ambient light, I'm honestly not sure what to make of that.
I've never been to a solar system where the star is, say, a Red Giant, so I'm not sure what effect it'd have on distant light-sources.
"Common Sense" (and I put that in quotes deliberately) suggests a star that's giving off white or blue light would still appear that way but space is full of particulates and a solar system full of stuff that's reflecting red light might, for all I know, have an effect on what we see.

In practical terms, it sometimes looks a bit lurid but it isn't NMS levels of trippy so I'm not that bothered by it.

The issue with the ship's HUDs etc, is much more apparent though.
It's not going to matter what colour light I have in this room - the display of my monitor IS going to look the same.
Granted, my perception of it might change slightly as a result of changes to the ambient light but not to the extent where things displayed on my monitor seem to change colour.
Hell, in the 21st century I've got a stereo in my car that adjusts the volume to suit ambient noise and I've got a dashboard that can adjust it's illumination to suit ambient light levels.
Seems like, in the 34th century, where everybody's using holographic displays, it should be possible for those displays to adjust to suit any ambient lighting conditions.

Again, in practical terms, the lighting makes it flat-out impossible to read the displays under certain lighting conditions.
I set it so it's bright enough to read in a dark system and it becomes over-exposed to the point of invisibility in a bright system.
I set it so it's dark enough to be legible in a bright system and it becomes oversaturated to the point where text becomes a "coloured blob" in dark systems.

I kind of want to like the new lighting because of the dramatic effects.
I'm flying in space and it's dark and then I land on a sunlit planet or station and it really makes you aware that you're now in a brightly lit area.
Trouble is, it doesn't just create that "feeling".
It genuinely makes it impossible to function in that new environment - without going back to the settings and adjusting the gamma again.

And then, of course, there's the issue of our cockpits having "reactive glass" in the canopies.
They can, apparently, allow us to fly close to a star without being blinded and/or cooked but then they aren't capable of attenuating the light so we aren't dazzled when we enter a brightly lit station?

To me, it seems like if our reactive-glass canopies are doing their job, the lighting inside the ship should never change (or, perhaps, just by a small amount for the sake of ambience) and the HUDs should never change either.

I'll have another go tonight (obviously) to see if I can find a compromise where the HUDs are bright enough to avoid being oversaturated in dark plaaces while also being dark enough not to be washed-out in bright places but, right now, I'm finding it incredibly disappointing.

I've been playing ED for >3 years.
When I first started playing I turned the HUD intensity down to something like 25% because I don't like it to be intrusive.
Since then, I've never felt the need to adjust any of the brightness/colour settings.

Now, with the arrival of 3.3, I have to adjust the gamma in almost every system I visit, simply so I can read the text displayed by the HUDs. [sad]
 

JonesTheFilm

JonesTheFilm
I really like the new lighting overall, but I've got to agree with Stealthie when it comes to HUD elements.

In the short couple of hours I managed to play last there were a number of situations where I couldn't easily read cockpit HUD information, even in one instance couldn't clearly see the cargo scoop radar to pick up mats in a signal source because it was blown out by the blue star's lighting.

Lets be honest HUD elements have one job ... to be legible.
 

TheSisko

TheSisko
I'm sure its effected the background of the galaxy map too. Space is black. But in the map its.......not black. It looks weird.
 

dm06

dm06
Andro said:
Adding on to this, I can't believe objects are still only lit by the main star only. Seems weird to overhaul lighting without supporting multiple star sources.
Click to expand...

I agree with you at some point: Planet lit by several stars should look fantastic.
Another point is that my mind is not ready to buy 2x1080Ti.
 

NeilF

NeilF
Mengy said:
I think the problem is they are applying the new gradients to everything on the screen rather than selectively applying it. For example, star color should not be tinting the Milky Way itself in the background, but it does in 3.3. Similarly it's tinting our ship's interior and HUD too, even when the star isn't shining on it.

It feels like a one step forward and two steps back kind of thing. Or maybe one step forward and one step back. If the gradient had just been applied selectively it would have vastly improved the look of the game, as it is it's a tad unsettling some of the time.
Click to expand...

Oooh! That sounds wrong!
 

DaveB

DaveB
Stealthie said:
Regarding distant stars getting tinted by the ambient light, I'm honestly not sure what to make of that.
I've never been to a solar system where the star is, say, a Red Giant, so I'm not sure what effect it'd have on distant light-sources.
"Common Sense" (and I put that in quotes deliberately) suggests a star that's giving off white or blue light would still appear that way but space is full of particulates and a solar system full of stuff that's reflecting red light might, for all I know, have an effect on what we see...
Click to expand...

If there was enough of it for that to be a factor, space wouldn't be black. We get that in ED to a limited extent in nebulae of course but even that's a significant "enhancement" over reality -albeit a good one for a space game.

But that's just reflected light. Distant stars EMIT light, which is a whole different ball of wax. Suppose a dusty system illuminated by a red giant. Enough dust that there's a noticeable "red haze" everywhere. A distant blue-white star would be harder to see over the red haze but it would still be blue/white. The blanket color gradient now applied in ED actually tints the distant stars as well as other emissive sources. Like your thruster plumes, for example. The smoke trails are lit by reflected light alone and the local star would definitely tint them but the hot plumes themselves, from your main drives and attitude thrusters are ALSO tinted by these filters just like your HUD and interior lights are.

If the filters were only applied where they should be and weren't implemented as a post-processing color gradient to the entire frame, they'd look great. As it is, literally EVERYWHERE you look in ED now there is so much that just looks stupidly wrong on your screen.
 

CMDR Carbo

CMDR Carbo
Has somebody else experienced sudden lighting changes when entering a station?
Like from one second to the next everything in the station gets brighter after passing the mail slot.
 
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