New lighting

[Old Duck]

When it's turning the Milky Way into a gigantic stellar skid-mark, however, the benefit is, erm, questionable.

This, to me, is the most disappointing part of ED's otherwise [heart]amazing[heart] rendition of the Milky Way Galaxy.

LOL, I accidentally typed Galazy, but perhap's that is appropriate for describing the brown "stellar skid-mark".

 

[babelfisch]

i have ran high fov's in most games the last 20 or so years and i cant think of any that exaggerate objects at the far sides of my view as much as ED does

That's probably because most games don't draw almost exclusively spherical objects in their corners.

 

[babelfisch]

You guys cant even decide for yourself if you like it or not... In some cases yes in some cases no...

I didn't buy 3.3 neither. And yet here we are with ugly HDR bloom from the 2000s and recycled asteroid fog from the beta impacting game perf. Such improvement, much wow.

Yes, I like some stuff and I don't like other stuff. There is nothing weird about it.

 

[babelfisch]

Hey Babelfisch – these post-processing GLSL shaders are capable of a wide variety of things, including bloom effects like the one shown in your image. I don’t know what people are referring to with the instagram thing, but their fundamental limitation is that they’re applied post rasterization (once the 3D scene has been converted to a 2D image), and so only work on pixel data in 2D space. That’s why we see the changes to the HUD etc. Take a look into the differences between Vertex and Fragment shaders and so on.

I’m working on an arty application using the same tech, and the video below shows the kind of things that I do with it (skip to the 3 min mark), so they're not necessarily "simple". This example actually gives the illusion of depth in places, but it’s just working on pixel data using 2 jpgs as source material. I guess that we can all be thankful that I’m not in charge :



P.S. I think that they’ve also made changes to the 3D lighting system proper, with better volumetric effects and so on.

Thanks for the interesting post.

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

Yes, I like some stuff and I don't like other stuff. There is nothing weird about it.

It's totally weird dude. You and Eagleboy, you preach the game looks better. Then you proceed to say it's better at some places and worst at others. Why posting an apology over ugly postprocessing then?

So much work went on this graphical update, they just forgot to add sliders and checkboxes in the menu like in any other decent game. You know, for those who dont like seeing games with a drunk mode filter, now you got to tweak the ini... Great.

I say to you. This game is bloomed.

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

Ah here is another great screenshot from reddit where a guy find Voyager in Sol reaching critical mass and going supernova.

Spoiler

We are all bloomed.

Spoiler

 

[iBR0WNY]

Also the stations in extraction systems look so much worse now. Before the update they were one of the best looking places you could go. ;(

 

[Red Rocket]

OP I see your picture of ringed planet all lit up, but all the Gas Giants under 3000 ls from main star I have found after the update are in shadow.
I am getting tired of the new lighting, Starports super bright less detail and full of screen door effect, Gas Giants and rings in dark shadow.
Inside of ship cockpit full of purple or just odd colors like living inside of kaleidoscope.

Coming up on planets in a system they look fuzzy and out of focus like looking at lit up cotton balls then when you get within 80ls they just go dark like the light switch got flipped off.
Everything is overdone and just wrong. ED use to so Beautiful now after the new lighting it’s just looks broken.

Below is how normal ice rings looked before update

Spoiler

Below is after update Gas Giant with ice rings in full view of star at Ross 775

AFTER Ice Rings

Spoiler

 

[thistle]

The above photos of the rings prove that the change to the lighting is not - I repeat not - a simple filter. The lighting itself has changed.

(this is a good change overall imo, obviously there are edge cases)

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

The above photos of the rings prove that the change to the lighting is not - I repeat not - a simple filter. The lighting itself has changed.

(this is a good change overall imo, obviously there are edge cases)

how can you tell that that is not a filter?
both screens are missing the cockpit for comparison,
one is an uncompressed PNG, the other one is compressed jpg with lots of artifacts

i don't see how the lighting was changed in the later at all.
its just a dark blue filter being applied

 

[Red Rocket]

(this is a good change overall imo, obviously there are edge cases)

1) Starports are Hideous
2) Inside cockpit looks ridicules with all the goofy lights
3) Once beautiful Gas Giants now no color and in shadow
4) All the fake background colors are laughable
5) Distance stars fuzzy little cotton balls

This is the worst change Frontier has done to Elite Dangerous, They have totally made a beautiful Game laughable.
Every review I have read before the update had nothing but praise on how beautiful Elite Dangerous is or now WAS

 

[Imo]

The new lighting is nice but I wonder why the light color of the sun affects the color of my HUD that much which is an own light source. When the sun shines onto me monitor at home it does not missmatch all colors that much!

 

[Trepidor]

I'm one of the many who don't like the new washed and pale lighting of the game, i would like the option to choose between this ugly look and the old one. if someone found the way to modify the look by change any config. file will be my hero.

 

[Red Rocket]

OP I see your picture of ringed planet all lit up, but all the Gas Giants under 3000 ls from main star I have found after the update are in shadow.
I am getting tired of the new lighting, Starports super bright less detail and full of screen door effect, Gas Giants and rings in dark shadow.
Inside of ship cockpit full of purple or just odd colors like living inside of kaleidoscope.

Coming up on planets in a system they look fuzzy and out of focus like looking at lit up cotton balls then when you get within 80ls they just go dark like the light switch got flipped off.
Everything is overdone and just wrong. ED use to so Beautiful now after the new lighting it’s just looks broken.

Below is how normal ice rings looked before update


Below is after update Gas Giant with ice rings in full view of star at Ross 775

AFTER Ice Rings

I did not change the above pictures at all.
Just go out and see for yourself, fly out to a Gas Giant with Ice rings and Has-Res or Ext-Res and as you get close you will see it lit up and around 80ls away it will suddenly go dark. I do miss the White ice rings and doing combat in them.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

I'm one of the many who don't like the new washed and pale lighting of the game, i would like the option to choose between this ugly look and the old one. if someone found the way to modify the look by change any config. file will be my hero.

i think morbad found a way to deactivate the filters
the downside is, you will also get back bright night sides of planets

 

[Old Duck]

The new lighting is nice but I wonder why the light color of the sun affects the color of my HUD that much which is an own light source. When the sun shines onto me monitor at home it does not missmatch all colors that much!

No, you're wrong. I took a red flashlight outside the other night, and all the stars in the sky turned red. No joke! I don't know why they don't teach this stuff in high school anymore...

 

[CMDR NightsLong]

I love the new lighting system a lot, I've had no odd visual experiences so far, for me everything looks amazing, a massive improvement over the previous system. Perhaps my calibration of the monitor was really good when I purchased it..

 

[nanite2000]

No, you're wrong. I took a red flashlight outside the other night, and all the stars in the sky turned red. No joke! I don't know why they don't teach this stuff in high school anymore...

I’m going to play devils advocate here and point out that our HUD is actually *not* a light source. If you look closely at the side panels, you’ll see it’s actually a projection on to a very fine mist.

I believe anything reflected within this mist would be subject to interference, and hence colour tinting would be seen.

I am prepared to be proven wrong on this though.

 

[A D]

I actually agree with you, specifically because of the word "just". I do think one of the aspects of lighting is a post-processing filter applied to the skybox, which is my biggest complaint (the color of distant stars should remain constant regardless the color of the system's main star). There are aspects of the new system I like - the bright, washed-out look when near a star, for example, feels much more realistic than the old "dim" star lighting. Planets (minus the ones that are bugged on PS4) look spectacular since this update, and I think that is at least partially due to the lighting. IMO many stations look better since the update, though some are too bright. This is probably just a variable that needs tweaked.

All that said, I suspect many of the people who don't like the new lighting specifically don't like the post-processing filter part of it. I want the old skybox back, but I'm happy with the rest of the changes (though I wouldn't mind a slider for color saturation, similar to our gamma slider) . I realize not everyone agrees with me, so I speak for myself alone in regards to this preference.

* note - the lighting seems to make good things look better and bad things look worse, so it's actually made shadows on PS4 (my infamous signature) look worse, but that's not the lighting system's fault.

In fact I have been one of the critics of the new lighting system, mainly because it doesn't work that well in VR IMO. Some objects have way too much exposure and others not enough. That being said, there are good aspects. I like the planet colour variation and the fact that the dark side of the planets are now dark. So I agree with the sentiment of the above post i.e. it's more a matter of adjustments. I'd also like to see some more in game tools to adjust the graphics. Colour saturation and brightness sliders are the obvious choices.

However, the big thing for me is the lack of detail on planet surfaces which, for some reason, has taken another hit since 3.3. It's so poor in some cases it's doing my head in. I would like FD to really take a good hard look at planet detail. I'm running ultra settings with 8k textures, and the bland featureless cartoon landscapes are still there!! Sorry FD. love ED, but this lack of fidelity on planet surfaces is really killing my enthusiasm for the game, particularly when I remember back to when I first started playing ED just before Horizons dropped. The colour and lighting were reasonably well balanced back then except for the pop in light when approaching a planet surface. As to detail it was better despite some crazy procedurally generated topographical glitches on planets from time to time (which were actually kind of fun to visit post Horizons).

 

[A D]

TL;DR was they didn't just tint our screen. Anyway, apart from multiple lightsources (which have been ruled out for 3.3 earlier), what did you expect from the lighting update? Telling me might help to better understand your disappointment.

Not sure it really matters, but just on this point, it's not a tint - the default graphics configuration file shows that FD is running ACES which is tone mapping (i.e. mapping colours through the curve) Still a bit borked for me though for the reasons in my above post.