That looks weird in general - how come your energy bar is green instead of yellow, and your O2 bar is yellow and not blue?
A Long Post on Lighting Issues
- Thread starter Ninjitsu
- Start date
sallymorganmoore
Senior Community Manager : Elite Dangerous
'OLD BOBBLE BRABEN' CAN WE JUST CALM DOWN
Ohhhhh my gosh it's been SO MANY WEEKS in only TWO (it feels like), but this has tied me up in a ribbon this afternoon, as I look to end my absolute day.
Regardless of things and stuff and tricky bits - I would be SO flipping sad and lost without you lot around here - no matter what I'm scurrying about with you all for and blurbing out repeats of things you don't wanna hear
Obsessed with Commanders. IDST.
Have a good weekend, please o7
'OLD BOBBLE BRABEN' CAN WE JUST CALM DOWN
Ohhhhh my gosh it's been SO MANY WEEKS in only TWO (it feels like), but this has tied me up in a ribbon this afternoon, as I look to end my absolute day.
Regardless of things and stuff and tricky bits - I would be SO flipping sad and lost without you lot around here - no matter what I'm scurrying about with you all for and blurbing out repeats of things you don't wanna hear
Obsessed with Commanders. IDST.
Have a good weekend, please o7
Good on you Sally!
Sorry for the silliness, but at least you enjoy a good laugh in difficult conditions, for the plan is to lighten up your day!
Have a great weekend Sally and take it easy. Don't forget to check in on the progress of the Hoff weekend, if we remember to get it started tonight!
UI color can be changed by editing graphic config xml file.
That I know, but is there a possibility that doing so since Odyssey can things up? (I'd thought the recommended way of doing it now was with the mighty EDHM:
Release - Elite Dangerous HUD Mod (EDHM)
Hi CMDRs, As you know, Elite has a default orange HUD. Over the years, CMDRs found a way to alter their HUD via an XML modification. However, the XML method has widespread unintended effects on many other important elements, such as the colour of friends/foes on the radar, and pilot portraits...
Yup in fact I used EDHM. However it was for EDH, the EDO one seems not totally compatible and stopped development awhile.That I know, but is there a possibility that doing so since Odyssey can things up? (I'd thought the recommended way of doing it now was with the mighty EDHM:
Release - Elite Dangerous HUD Mod (EDHM)
Hi CMDRs, As you know, Elite has a default orange HUD. Over the years, CMDRs found a way to alter their HUD via an XML modification. However, the XML method has widespread unintended effects on many other important elements, such as the colour of friends/foes on the radar, and pilot portraits...forums.frontier.co.uk
The color you saw was part from my EDH theme. Some color setting already lost in EDO so I also hacked the graphic xml to offset the color a little to my taste.
Thanks a lot sally, appreciate the acknowledgement <3
So FWIW I can't see the left-most symbol on my primary monitor (Dell U2412M) and maaaybe barely on my my secondary monitor (Dell S2240L). In the latter case it may well be placebo - i can't say whether i can actually see some bright pixels or whether i'm imagining it. I tried both at their default brightness and contrast too (75/75).
Dell U2412M is an IPS display with a matte screen, connected via DP. The S2240L is an IPS display with a glossy screen, connected via HDMI. One thing to note is that Nvidia drivers by default limit the colour dynamic range over HDMI. This for HDTV compatibility, and should be changed to "full" dynamic range on monitors.
The set gamma point will also change according to how bright your monitor is set. I set it to low brightness so that it doesn't hurt my eyes, and hence my gamma is set higher in Odyssey, but according to the tool's calibration. I do set it a bit higher than the technical "barely visible" limit though, but that's also because i find the game too dark in space (i mean, i find it too dark despite that). Seen a lot of people say that they crank up gamma in odyssey all the way to the right, and indeed before patch 5 or 6 maybe, i had to do the same.
Still, it shouldn't impact the auto HDR thing and the lighting occlusion thing, as those are going to happen regardless of what you set the baseline gamma to.
Hey sally, please pay attention and make acknowledged to this issue(the 8th issue of this title):https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42691 It's greatly affects the exploration experience
Extremely grateful for you.
@sallymorganmoore @Arthur Tolmie @Zac Cocken i know you're all swamped with stuff but I'll try and make this worth your while. I really want to go back to Odyssey but fact of the matter is that Horizons just does lighting in space better at the moment. This post should hopefully end up pointing out where the issues are in a consolidated way, although much has already been said about this everywhere else.
So first, the issues from the feedback tracker:
There are scores of others, mostly expired. Just searching for "lighting", "gamma", "contrast", "brightness", "exposure" on the issue tracker will turn up results.
- Illumination of background planets is tied to illumination of player ship by the illuminating star https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/41371[aka incorrect occlusion]
- Duplicate issue created: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/43184
- Incorrect brightness/contrast adjustment depending on angle between camera, ship and star https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/41372[aka faux-HDR effect]
- Very similar and likely duplicate: https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42565
- Exposure adjustment when standing in shadow at night time is over darkening the screen. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/26848 [expired]
- Flickering shadows on planetary surfaces https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/41717 [also on and around ships, in hangars, etc.]
- Gamma balance is off which causes details in space to be lost https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42493
- Outside lighting still shines inside FC https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/43147 [i have seen this in station hangars too, but from passing by ships]
- Station lighting is still too bright in places https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42876 [seriously axe the faux-HDR effect, it will solve/reduce a lot of issues]
- Broken Atmospheric Lighting https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42691
- Lighting: windows at a station flicker every second https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/42519 [lacking media evidence but i may have observed it at some point too]
Next, some forum posts created at various points over the last 6 months:
Probably dozens more.
- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/edo-lighting-while-in-space.584867/
- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...t-surfaces-post-patch-6-is-it-just-me.587916/
- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/focused-feedback-thread-cockpit-brightness.588309/
- https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/more-fixes-to-lighting-needed.587128/
And now some fresh media content. First, consider these two recordings of space CZs in the Thauts system. It's the same High CZ. One run is recorded in Horizons, then is in Odyssey. This is the complete run from the station, to the CZ, and back to the station.
Horizons:
Source: https://youtu.be/79xEqqtt_U8
Now Odyssey:
Source: https://youtu.be/cD3XndrSf5o
Gamma Settings:
Notable differences:
Images:
- Station hangar departure: brightness is more, colour tones are different.
- Cockpit brightness is more in odyssey, while in horizons it reacts more to ambient light
- Shadows flicker on the ship in odyssety
- Deep space objects like nebulae are much darker when viewed from teh cockpit in odyssey
- CZ is in general much less vibrant and well lit in odyssey
- Engine exhaust is more prominent and visibly clearer in horizons. in Odyssey they're just dark...
- Ships are more visible in horizons. In odyssey you can't see them properly unless the star is in or near the visible scene, or directly behind the player. When ships are in a dark region of the scene they're hard to see.
- Bloom of projectile colours is much more in odyssey, making the scene hard to read
- Colours and brightness of projectiles and lasers of other ships are easier to see in odyssey
- Brightness of background planets and stars in the scene varies a lot more in odyssey. In horizons they're pretty much constant.
- Stars and skybox are more well defined in horizons in general
- The halo around the star is much nicer in horizons, in odyssey there is no halo
- The colour and intensity of light incident on the ship is different in odyssey, where it looks more dull unless pointed directly at the star. In horizons it is consistent. While this is apparent all throughout while in the cockpit, set the horizons vid at 24:00 and odyssey vid at 31:00 to see this very clearly.
- Shadow flickering on the corvette's nose in odyssey while in cockpit. When in 3rd person view (e.g. 32 mins onward) you can see shadows load in and load out and generally behave badly and incorrectly.
- Aliasing is worse in odyssey
- Odyssey makes the hull bloomier/more reflective whereas in Horizons the paint is matte.
- Compare the approach to the station around 27 min (horizons) and 34 mins (odyssey. Look at the visible stars in the background and note the difference.
- Differences in the supercruise trails. In odyssey they are hardly visible (but there are a couple on approach, see if you can spot them). In horizons they are very visible and very pretty.
- The station looks considerably darker in odyssey when looking right at it, although the sun looks like it's starting to set.
- odyssey: Note that the milky way dims and brightness aggressively if the station is in view.
- odyssey: station interior is very bright, almost washed out.
- UI takes time to load in odyssey, because it takes too long trying to load the portrait thumbnails.
- Notice how shadows on the pad appear and disappear even when they shouldn't. (~39 mins)
- [edit]: Performance in odyssey was way worse, as might be apparent in either video. i was doing around 40-50 fps in the CZ and 40-55 fps in and around the station. This was with update 6, update 7 made the station performance better, haven't played a CZ since.
- Horizons meanwhile did a solid 60 throughout (nvidia adaptive vsync) with minor drops to 55-ish on a couple of occasions.
Re: incorrect occlusion
Horizons
And now Odyssey
Now these rings are in Horizons.
In odyssey, these rings would have been completely black.
A lot of these issues are caused by the auto-HDR effect. This makes the cockpit brightness increases extremely detrimental to the space lighting. For example:
Note how dark the planet is, and how dim the star is. The primary white star is slightly to the left of the right hand HUD bracket.
When you go to third person, you see more accurate lighting:
The older unmodified horizons cockpits suffer while in odyssey. Looking at bright objects makes them completely black.
Continuing the theme of HDR issues, the OG scene that made me realise what was going on:
When looking at the star, the ring is well lit, as it should be.
When looking away from the star, the game pretends there is a brown dwarf in the system instead...
Great post! You found some good problems. As a fellow lighting artist in the games industry this was a concern of mine as well. In order to correct many light source problems, they resorted to "Auto-Exposure" an engine post processing FX that tries to emulate the change of light between dark and bright areas in the eyes.
To me this is not a great idea to use auto-exposure so heavily across the board, because as you noted, you create new problems when it comes to rendering brightness and directionality of center of view and angle. I would instead attempt to find a default brightness range in a static mode like ACES standard with Exposure offset value to where the general render was solid first and then focus on light source adjustments with more minimal auto-exposure for adjusting things like looking in shadow compared to bright areas.
I'm not sure if they have the ability to blend between post processing profiles like I do working within Unity but I would most likely create a core space default profile and if possible profiles for either planet or interior adjustments when going from exteriors to interiors. There's lots of ways to do it but I assume they're either blending profiles or adjusting values via triggers aka via ships or transitional spaces. Beyond that if they are using traditional space skyboxes I'd fix some of those issues in the materials themselves adding a slight bit more diffusion (bright blacks) into the default to give the appearance of more volumetric sources. More bloom dirt FX at stars could assist as well with the perception.
It's a big tough job I can only imagine. Their lighting team is awesome and I love their work so I sure hope they find some ways to find a better balance because as you noted many space objects appear too dim due to the heavy bleed of light from the ship GUI into the camera view, therefore darkening the image. Once in third person and no light dominating the camera image space it increases brightness and thus makes the stars or planets look brighter since its below the threshold.
Great job spotting these. I quite love the lighting but I hope they improve some of the space brightness issues with special areas and angles.
I would add :
3. Laser's color doesn't reflect on cockpit in Odyssey.
I can clearly see which side of the mail slot to leave in one of these shots, the other I can't tell. This is an OSHA violation and will be reported by the traders union for endangerment to pilots, ships, and most of all, cargo.
Yesterday's update on the bugs and issues report was a bit discouraging on this front... Basically most of the lighting related issues listed were described as engine limitations. I understand what they mean, that they are potentially not bugs but limitations within the core of the lighting engine that are not caused by code problems or wrong artistic decisions...
But what I get of this is that the Cobra Engine it's showing it's age and honestly I'm a bit pesimistic now about most of the lighting issues that are ruining my exploration experience (broken atmospheric and fog lighting, terrain illumination disconnection from the colour of the star, Illumination of background planets....) The fact that in all these years we don't have multiple light sources, rings shadows on planets and proper star light colour propagaton is a good sign that there are strong limitations indeed that can't be addressed without major structural changes.
As I said, I'm a bit more pesimistic, I appreciate the sicerity of CMs regarding this, but I'm pesimistic though at least in terms of how long will these issues take to be solved or if they will eventually be solved or not...
But what I get of this is that the Cobra Engine it's showing it's age and honestly I'm a bit pesimistic now about most of the lighting issues that are ruining my exploration experience (broken atmospheric and fog lighting, terrain illumination disconnection from the colour of the star, Illumination of background planets....) The fact that in all these years we don't have multiple light sources, rings shadows on planets and proper star light colour propagaton is a good sign that there are strong limitations indeed that can't be addressed without major structural changes.
As I said, I'm a bit more pesimistic, I appreciate the sicerity of CMs regarding this, but I'm pesimistic though at least in terms of how long will these issues take to be solved or if they will eventually be solved or not...
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If that's true, i'd rather have them back to Horizons type of lighting instead the mess that EDO lighting is, which is made even worse by the auto-hdr feature.
But i guess that's not possible
Which is sad
However, i guess that's just the lazy approach (blame it on engine limitations) since adjusting the lighting for each asset and each individual rendering scenario might need more resources than FD want to invest.
I'm with you there, if the upgrade looks worse than what you had, then it's not an upgrade.If that's true, i'd rather have them back to Horizons type of lighting instead the mess that EDO lighting is, which is made even worse by the auto-hdr feature.
But i guess that's not possible
Which is sad
However, i guess that's just the lazy approach (blame it on engine limitations) since adjusting the lighting for each asset and each individual rendering scenario might need more resources than FD want to invest.
But is it possible to leave Horizons alone, allowing us players to chose if we want Horizons lighting or Odyssey lighting? I can live without Odyssey, but if Odyssey's code is back-ported to Horizons someday, well that will likely kill the game entirely for me.If that's true, i'd rather have them back to Horizons type of lighting instead the mess that EDO lighting is, which is made even worse by the auto-hdr feature.
But i guess that's not possible
Which is sad
If Odyssey lighting is backported into Horizons someday, I'll at least see if there's any way to fix it to my liking using 3DMigoto like I did with Horizons (because to be honest, I love MY modded Horizons lighting much more than the default lighting). After all, Frontier says it's inability to customize the HUD is an engine limitation, yet I and others have done just that, so maybe there's hope for Odyssey via modding.
It simply means that they do not want to invest more in their engine. The engine limitation is nonsense in IT.
But i wonder how they did the pre-alpha footage. Or even the pre-launch in-game footage.
It might be a long-shot, but since lighting is so fundamentally flawed and arguably worse than in horizons, I believe "system limitations" mean they turned specific features off because of performance, or because they were not finished when odyssey released. We shall see... but the fact that a huge portion of the optimization (which was mentioned in the dev updates before) seems to have to do with lighting, I am fairly certain that this is not the end of that story.