Focused Feedback Thread - Cockpit Brightness

[Lyamecron]

All ships with older horizons style cockpits suffer from aggressive exposure/gamma/HDR adjustment. This leads to situations where the cockpit becomes completely black when looking at a brightly lit object like a plant or starport. Lakon ships are a prominent example.

Repro:

1. Use a lakon ship (i.e. one without cockpits with turned-up brightness in odyssey
2. Look at a lit up object like a planet or starport
   1. observe your cockpit turn completely black
3. Look away, especially to a darker region without such an object
   1. observe cockpit brightness get restored

Making cockpits brighter is actually not the solution, because the current auto-HDR implementation in odyssey makes everything else darker because of the cockpit.

For example, the primary (white) star is in view on the lower right if the hud (towards the collector ammo indicator):

The problem is the auto-HDR. It was not there in horizons (or at least, not remotely as aggressive). It has to go.

This is what I observed as well. The lighting per se is alright in Odyssey, BUT the auto-exposure is so sensitive that the light in your cockpit is enough to darken the rest of the screen.

Here are 2 sets of images from the same location. In both sets I first look straight ahead and get "blinded" by the dashboard and in the following image I look a bit up, so the auto-exposure locks on the background. (These shots are ALL from Odyssey) Please have a look at the result:

(Straight ahead)

(Looking up)

(Straight ahead)

(Looking up)

With this issue fixed there would be a much better baseline to balance overall cockpit lighting on.

Please have a look at this @sallymorganmoore

Thank you so much!

 

[Wargrum]

After update 6 I've seen rapid lighting changes in a Keelback cockpit above Ross 1047 B 1 A, video below.
I've experienced the same rapid change in the SRV and Asp Explorer on/close to other worlds, no video.

I've also seen slower but similarly extreme lighting changes when flying close to the dark side of worlds. Horizons does a similar slower change but not through as extreme a lighting range.

AMD 6800XT, drivers are up to date.
Most settings are high/max with Directional and Spot shadow quality at Ultra.

Video evidence:

Source: https://youtu.be/dLfGshIApv8

Hey Sgurr - I'm getting exactly the same issues in my Keelback. Is there an Issue Tracker item logged that I can add my feedback too? I did a quick search but didn't see anything similar.

 

[sallymorganmoore]

This is what I observed as well. The lighting per se is alright in Odyssey, BUT the auto-exposure is so sensitive that the light in your cockpit is enough to darken the rest of the screen.

Here are 2 sets of images from the same location. In both sets I first look straight ahead and get "blinded" by the dashboard and in the following image I look a bit up, so the auto-exposure locks on the background. (These shots are ALL from Odyssey) Please have a look at the result:

(Straight ahead)

(Looking up)

(Straight ahead)

(Looking up)

With this issue fixed there would be a much better baseline to balance overall cockpit lighting on.

Please have a look at this @sallymorganmoore

Thank you so much!

Grabbing a bunch of these to keep topped up on lighting feedback. Thanks.
Especially after that thread that opened up recently.

 

[Thoragon]

The lighting is too bright now, it's like driving my truck at night with the interior lights on. If you're going to make drastic changes like this(my Python went from a relaxing/cozy lighting to why is it so bright in here?) at least make it optional. We can turn on/off the exterior lights so why not the interior lights?

 

[Arioch]

The Cobra Mk3’s dash is very bright when in hangars that feature strip lighting - mainly because there are a pair of strip lights sat directly above the cockpit:

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gOkNfmcrtbs&feature=emb_imp_woyt

The Krait also suffers from over brightness - the sponsons are glowing, possibly due to a pair of side hangar lights that look to be lined up with our point-of-view.

There is also a VR bug relating to excessive cockpit brightness (https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/41282) when using the Squadron or Codex displays, though I’m not sure if it’s related to the feedback you’re after here.

The Cobra is massively improved in Update 8 and is no longer such an eye-burner:

Thanks for the change

 

[Orvidius]

I haven't had a chance to compare in Update 8 yet, but a few ships that I finally had time to try during Update 7 were a bit disappointing. The Python is/was way too bright. I always used to consider that one of my favorites, because of the "night driving" sort of feel. But with it brightly lit, and no shadow/ambient occlusion happening under the console (even with those settings turned up to max in the graphics settings), it looks flat and lacking detail or depth. The painted stripes on steps behind the seats look fluorescent. Again, speaking from Update 7.

Some materials still look weird to me. The AspX for instance looks like the floor rim, and the canopy frame interior are now made of concrete (flat grey) instead of a metal. The Courier has areas that used to be black matte or black gloss surfaces that are now a shiny light grey, losing their contrast.

Ironically in the two Kraits, the metallic floor areas looked less metallic. The Mk2 green is more green and less metal than in Horizons. The Phantom became a dull dark red, instead of a deeper red painted metal look.

I'll compare in Update 8. But I wanted to get some of these thoughts in. Clearly not everything is "finished".

 

[TrithemiusD]

Greetings Commanders!

Thank you for your feedback on the first Issue Report table that we released last week. We've heard your thoughts relating to lighting in Odyssey and would like to gather some more information so we can look into this further.

We've made note of multiple lighting-related queries that you have raised and the development team are now investigating. One piece of feedback that we'd like Commanders to expand upon is the cockpit brightness issue.

We're looking for information to answer the following questions:

• Is this affecting all ships or just specific ships?
• What is the exact issue you're experiencing?
• Is this happening in all lighting, or just certain situations (certain star types, extremely dark locations)?
  • If so, please provide locations / screenshots.

Any other information you can provide around cockpit brightness will also be appreciated, but the above questions are our primary concern. The information will be useful to help us narrow down the specifics of this issue, and a potential cause.

As always with a focused feedback thread, any replies to other comments or off topic/non-constructive posts may be removed to keep the thread as practical and useful as possible. This thread is not the place to discuss other lighting issues. For unrelated discussion, please find or create other threads over in Dangerous Discussion.

o7

For all ships, the cockpit is too bright. It happened after the update that changed them from being darker. Lights should be customizable so we could choose the intensity of our cockpit lights. It’s so bright that you see little from the dark parts of planetary systems.

That customization would be great.

 

[Terry Daniels]

For all ships, the cockpit is too bright. It happened after the update that changed them from being darker. Lights should be customizable so we could choose the intensity of our cockpit lights. It’s so bright that you see little from the dark parts of planetary systems.

That customization would be great.

I have a feeling that like the orange UI being locked-in as changing one colour element changes all other colours on the screen, the lighting is the same, so brightening / darkening the cockpit changes the light in the entire scene and all the light values have to be manipulated to change one aspect.

DISCLAIMER: Not a programmer.

 

[TrithemiusD]

I have a feeling that like the orange UI being locked-in as changing one colour element changes all other colours on the screen, the lighting is the same, so brightening / darkening the cockpit changes the light in the entire scene and all the light values have to be manipulated to change one aspect.

DISCLAIMER: Not a programmer.

Honestly, I have no idea either. I just remember the first release of Odyssey, with the cockpits darker and I liked it more. I guess they adjusted them manually but it would be great to have some presets to chose from. Just wishing

 

[Sakashiro]

In Odyssey the Imperial Courier's dashboard is too reflective and makes the scanner display impossible to read when illuminated by a star. This image was taken next to Jameson Memorial, at a distance of 334 Ls to Shinrarta Dezhra:

For comparison here's the dashboard of a Mamba at the same location and at an angle of maximum illumination:

Of course the problem gets worse when the star is really close. Here's the Courier's dashboard just outside scooping range from Shinrarta Dezhra. Situational awareness is severely reduced because other ships are hard to see and impossible to distinguish between NPCs and other players.

Again, here's the Mamba for comparison. Note there's no reflective surface below the scanner. The display remains readable. No matter how you turn the Mamba towards the star, the dashboard never gets brighter than this:

Today I reinstalled Odyssey because I was curious. Turns out 11 weeks later the problem still isn't fixed. This picture was taken today:

 

[ebbrell]

To bright when flying.
Feels like you are driving a car with the internal light on.

Why does the cockpit darken giving us the led lights we had when odyssey launched while engines are on. When engine off on a planet or in a station the light returns to the bright level it is now.

Make lights come on.... like the light does in your car when you open the door.

 

[Terry Daniels]

Today I reinstalled Odyssey because I was curious. Turns out 11 weeks later the problem still isn't fixed. This picture was taken today:

The lighting is broken and instead of fixing it properly they're just piecemeal fixing different bits. The problem is, change one thing in the Cobra engine and it seems to affect 10 other things.

Disclaimer: Not a programmer!

 

[Sakashiro]

The lighting is broken and instead of fixing it properly they're just piecemeal fixing different bits. The problem is, change one thing in the Cobra engine and it seems to affect 10 other things.

Disclaimer: Not a programmer!

They don't need to change the lights, just assign less reflective shaders/materials to the cockpit. Plenty of other ships in EDO have perfectly readable scanners under the same lighting conditions.

 

[LeoBartlet]

Today I reinstalled Odyssey because I was curious. Turns out 11 weeks later the problem still isn't fixed. This picture was taken today:

Oof that ain't good.

 

[Terry Daniels]

They don't need to change the lights, just assign less reflective shaders/materials to the cockpit. Plenty of other ships in EDO have perfectly readable scanners under the same lighting conditions.

If it's so simple why hasn't it been fixed? The Imperial Courier cockpit issue was one of the ships that got confirmed in the tracker list yonks ago - I added to it as the Courier is (was) one of my favourite ships.

 

[Drelthar]

If it's so simple why hasn't it been fixed? The Imperial Courier cockpit issue was one of the ships that got confirmed in the tracker list yonks ago - I added to it as the Courier is (was) one of my favourite ships.

I have no clue why it was even broken in the first place. It seems like the modified the render pipeline, which obviously (to any graphical artist/engineer) would change the look of most if not all the materials, but then, they don't -seem- to have gone through them all and made sure they look similar to the originals.

It's possible they did though, and seriously thought it was better, but it seems... like they just didn't do it in many places.

Lack of time given to the team, I would guess.

 

[Orvidius]

The lighting has definitely been brightened well above Horizons levels in most cockpits. Not all of the materials transitioned smoothly to the new rendering (PBR?).

But what surprises me is that the HUD is still darker than in Horizons. I have to turn the HUD brightness all the way up to approach what it used to be on the middle setting before.

Award trophy bobbleheads are now super dim, and the flickery projection base isn't glowing at all (black holographic projection? Yick).

The Halloween bat is more brightly lit than in Horizons, while the skull bobblehead lost all its glowy bits.

The glowing Halloween decals on the ship/SRV exteriors are super dim compared to Horizons as well.

 

[Gynxx]

How is this thread still going? Of all the things to get feedback on... You can objectively compare ED:O with ED:B on the EXACT same system the same way anyone in here is going to use: Log in to ED:B take a screenshot. Login to ED:O, take another screenshot. Compare the 2. Are they even remotely similar? No? Keep on keepin' on.

This useless feedback post detracts from ACTUALLY useful queries such as "hey, this new SRV coming what features do you think it should have?".

You do not ask people things like "is 5 > 4? gosh, I don't know, maths is hard" without coming across as patronizing. "Would you prefer 5 of x, or 4?" is a proper prompt.

 

[Sakashiro]

I actually don't care much about how bright my cockpit is. But unreadable scanners I consider game-breaking bugs, especially if some ships are affected while others aren't. It's also unrealistic. An aircraft whose dashboard instruments frequently become unreadable during flight would not be considered fit for purpose.

 

[styles784]

I have no clue why it was even broken in the first place. It seems like the modified the render pipeline, which obviously (to any graphical artist/engineer) would change the look of most if not all the materials, but then, they don't -seem- to have gone through them all and made sure they look similar to the originals.

It's possible they did though, and seriously thought it was better, but it seems... like they just didn't do it in many places.

Lack of time given to the team, I would guess.

My understanding is that they re-wrote the rendering pipeline from the ground up - it's a total replacement, not a modification. And I still maintain that the developers fell behind schedule along with the rest of the world, but the money people insisted on pretending nothing unusual had happened in 2020.