A Long Post on Lighting Issues

Deleted member 182079

D
Old Duck said:
One of the problems I have with this new PBR system is that it seems to give very little in regards to visual improvements compared to the major hit in performance that it has contributed to. Personally I think Frontier should have just stuck with Horizon's lighting / texture rendering system. If they wanted to implement an entirely new and different rendering system, they should have saved that for an entirely new game (which in many ways Odyssey feels like anyway). Horizons might not be the best graphics out there, but it made up for it with pretty amazing performance, something I've always been impressed with until Odyssey released. As a VR player, I'll take "not quite PBR but pretty darn good nonetheless" over Odyssey's "Slightly better, sometimes way worse, and definitely performance murdering" PBR system.

But what's done is done. I'll just keep my fingers crossed that this PBR never gets back-ported into Horizons, unless Frontier can perform a bonafide miracle and make it both look and perform just as good if not better than Horizons.
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I actually think that Horizons is still better looking, from a pure "looking at it with my eyes" layman perspective. Sure, some surfaces might look better in Odyssey, but it's very inconsistent (as if they updated some bits, but not others, which is probably exactly what's happening, see paintjobs for example). Horizons looks smoother, and by that I mean less jaggies, fewer visual glitches, and of course performance without those mental stutters that happen during transitions and in general planetside.

Where Odyssey has the edge is planet tech, IF you catch a decent planet, no glitches, and everything stands still - good for promotional screenshots, but it all falls apart again when things move. I'd rather take the (admittedly) inferior looking Horizons planet tech over Odyssey's looks as a whole tbh. I mean, if they manage to eventually make Odyssey look like Horizons in the spaceship areas, I'd be fine with that, but after so many updates and still waving that carrot (patch 9 being mentioned without patch 8 getting a date even!) I kind of lost hope it'll ever happen.
Frop said:
I doubt they put it in to simulate our eyes adjusting to light levels, I'd wager they're in there to mitigate some of the contrast issues. Horizons might look a bit washed out compared to Odyssey, but I agree that the overall experience is much, much more pleasant and strains my eyes significantly less.
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I actually find Horizons more crisp/sharp and more "warm" and less "bland" which also has to do with the missing effects (for example burning stations, but elsewhere too) and lighting issues that continue to plague the game. There's very little visually speaking that I prefer in Odyssey over Horizons. Even the 'fog' in Horizons on some planets is missing in Odyssey.
 

Terry Daniels

Terry Daniels
CMDR Sheehy said:
I don't flip flop between the two and rarely have these issues to the scale that they are presented here.
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I haven't gone back to Horizons once since getting Odyssey and I've seen all these lighting issues and more - circular colour around the SRV driving on the planets surface which feels like it's connected to the lighting and move your head 1 cm to the left and the planet is suddenly in darkness, then bright again.
As for the shimmering shadows I don't understand how they passed quality control as they're truly awful and immediately apparent - slightly less bad when in ultra but still noticeably there.
 

CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
Terry Daniels said:
I haven't gone back to Horizons once since getting Odyssey and I've seen all these lighting issues and more - circular colour around the SRV driving on the planets surface which feels like it's connected to the lighting and move your head 1 cm to the left and the planet is suddenly in darkness, then bright again.
As for the shimmering shadows I don't understand how they passed quality control as they're truly awful and immediately apparent - slightly less bad when in ultra but still noticeably there.
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I didn't say I did not see these things - just not to the scale they were presented with. I.e. It doesn't bother me as much as it is bothering others, but I don't exaggerate the issue to try and get attention - it's counter productive.
 

Crank Larson

Crank Larson
CMDR Sheehy said:
I didn't say I did not see these things - just not to the scale they were presented with. I.e. It doesn't bother me as much as it is bothering others, but I don't exaggerate the issue to try and get attention - it's counter productive.
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Do you play in VR? As all the lighting issues are exacerbated massively in VR, and it's really noticeable.
 

GJ51

GJ51
FD - If you fix nothing else...

PLEASE get rid of the orange splotches all over the dashboard in EDO

The one on the lower center of the target screen is so annoying it sometimes obscures a bogey on your 6
 

Northpin

Northpin
Crank Larson said:
Do you play in VR? As all the lighting issues are exacerbated massively in VR, and it's really noticeable.
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I dont play in VR and i find the lighting issues quite disturbing. Up to the point that i'm reluctant to log into Horizons since that will make my Odyssey experience waay less pleasant

Not sure if people are familiar to the sentiment of driving an older car, premium type, nicely solidly built, comfortable, well noise proofed - a genuine pleasure to drive.
Then buying a new car but... less premium... Slamming the doors gives a louder noise, the car does not feel as solid and carefully built, the ride is noisier - but you have some of the newer tech gadgets that you love. While still hating the car itself.
And each time you drive the older car makes you hate the newer one even more.
That's me, Horizons and EDO

And mostly because of the lighting issues.
 

Crank Larson

Crank Larson
CMDR Sheehy said:
No and there is no mention of VR in the OP! If it had - I would have passed by and left it.
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If not playing in VR, they are a lot less intrusive (because the lights aren't flashing in your face all the time), was my point. But they are still there on flat-screen, as the OP shows.
 

CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
Crank Larson said:
If not playing in VR, they are a lot less intrusive (because the lights aren't flashing in your face all the time), was my point. But they are still there on flat-screen, as the OP shows.
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Yeah - elsewhere someone posted a highly contrasted screenshot of the mailslot. I searched through my screenshots and though I had around 20 shots of the same thing, not one of them was as contrasted as the one presented.
 

Pigletslastand

Pigletslastand
20210928131025_1.jpg
20210928131916_1.jpg

same station.. just Ody/Hor difference, note the lighting and how it affects the cockpit.
 

Northpin

Northpin
Might be too much CAS - that is if either FSR or stand-alone CAS were used.
I found the default value of 0.5 (cursor in the middle of the bar) giving waaaay too much contrast

Edit: and iirc there is no contrast bar for FSR, only a setting hidden in the config files
 

Pigletslastand

Pigletslastand
Northpin said:
Might be too much CAS - that is if either FSR or stand-alone CAS were used.
I found the default value of 0.5 (cursor in the middle of the bar) giving waaaay too much contrast

Edit: and iirc there is no contrast bar for FSR, only a setting hidden in the config files
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I've kept everything deliberately at default settings because with each change they may get it right so I thought best to assess default side by side for comparison. Either way they need to adjust the default settings if that's what it is.
 

Pigletslastand

Pigletslastand
Another lighting issue.. Not that important but annoying. When running out to your ship there is a light (shown centre of the picture) that has a wrong affect attached to it that rotates around as you move.. the light emitted is in the shape of a blade instead of a cone.

20210930180350_1.jpg
20210930180353_1.jpg
 

Ninjitsu

N
CMDR Sheehy said:
There is a point that the Physical Monitor Gamma and Brightness requirements differ from both Games - so trying to post screen shots when switching from Horizons to Odyssey can be misleading. For example - a lot of posts with the cockpit blacked out cannot be replicated when the screen is adjusted to match Odyssey's requirements. If you use the same settings for both games, you will end up with these horrible contrasts.

I don't flip flop between the two and rarely have these issues to the scale that they are presented here.
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So i didn't want to respond to this because i didn't think it was relevant to the post or the discussion, and the difference in gamma requirements was controlled for. But since other people engaged with you and you seem to think this is a made up issue / user issue, I will have to address some things.
  1. You're implying that the same gamma settings were used in both games. This is not the case, gamma was explicitly set and i have posted my gamma settings in the OP for both horizons and odyssey.
  2. You're suggesting that switching games causes the same gamma settings to be used or something, however this is not the case, both games maintain their settings configurations separately. Flip flopping has no cross-impact on the gamma settings [you are welcome to demonstrate and prove otherwise].
    1. In my case, i first noticed the issues after continuously playing odyssey only and was not switching, so your assumptions about flip-flopping do not hold anyway.
  3. You claim the cockpit blacked out can't be replicated when the gamma is adjusted to match odyssey requirements. However in practice it happens despite the gamma being set as per the gamma calibration tool provided in-game. Moreover, the base gamma setting is irrelevant to the auto-HDR effect, which happens regardless, and is the cause of the cockpit becoming black/very dark.
    1. You claim that it cannot be replicated - please provide evidence of the same, because i can replicate it consistently with the specified types of cockpits.
  4. If you feel that you do not experience these issues, then that's great but so far your experiences appear to be the exception to the rule. So i'm not sure what this claim adds to the discussion. If you can provide evidence of your settings and images or (ideally) videos to prove your claims then that would be helpful in figuring what is going wrong for everyone else, and where/why.
    1. However this is reliant on you replicating things in similar ways (e.g. looking at bright objects/planets in the scene and not just anywhere in space).
 

Florelit

Florelit
For me the lightning looks completely broken in Ody. The game became much darker because of the on foot gameplay needs. And now devs are trying to step by step reconfigure the lightning to make the affected places less noticeable.
Like the cockpit lightning... Cockpit became much darker (as everything) after the Ody release. But later it was patched to look brighter. Now it looks brighter even in situations where it shouldn't.
May be this is not the best example, but check the video please.


And I'm really really sad about all these changes. It, you know, looks like, for example somebody applied the green filter to some photo, and afterwards a lot of people try to fix this by applying white, green, blue etc. filters to different parts of the photo, to make it look a bit like before.
But it would not happen until the green filter is removed completely.
 
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