Horizons Dark side of Planets not dark when using a HDMI monitor/TV? Check your graphic driver RGB range!

You would easily be able to see on the dark side of a planet unless that planet was in a dark nebula with few visible stars. Much the same way anyone with reasonable vision can see quite well just using starlight. Even easier when there is moonlight.

Have you even been outside on a starry night (no moon) in an area with no street lights or light pollution from nearby populated areas? It's dark. Seriously dark. A moonlit night, certainly you will have plenty of ambient light depending on the phase.

If it lit up like it does due to a nearby moon, that would actually be cool...and realistic. Right now some of these planets look dark and once you get near it some diety turns up the dimmer switch slightly. Though like I said, I'm also finding planets that are pitch black. So that inconsistency seems like a bug. I'm hoping dark sides stay dark.
 
The cockpit window is imbued with strong magic that keeps us from turning blind / being fried when scooping from a star at a distance where the radiation is likely strong enough to melt iron. The sun, when viewed from as far away as earth's orbit without the protection we have through the atmosphere or through a well-made helmet visor would cause blindness after a relatively short time (if you could stand the pain without closing your eyes). Yes, it's obviously magic.

I assume that the same magic will also brighten the cockpit view to fit into our perception range, assuming that there is any light at all. This apparently works much faster than waiting for your eyes to adapt. Maybe they are realistic when checking if ambient light exists, maybe they are very quick-and-dirty about it. Lighting-in-space is a notoriously difficult topic so the developers have probably decided on some sort of compromise.

Making the brightening effect be less noticable would probably be a good idea for "atmosphere", but the developers would have to deal with some problems: Since the monitor's dynamic range is much smaller than the dynamic range your eye can see even without adaption, a very dark scene is quite difficult to render in a way so it will work well on "most" monitors.

Compromises generalls work rather well: Noone really needs black ships to overheat quicker while scooping than white ships. Making the stars fade while scooping looks fine even though the solar atmosphere we are in may not actually be dense enough to cause scattering of light to "swamp" out their signals (There is a thread about this somewhere).

After all, I love the sounds the other spacecraft make when flying by.

TLE
 
Hello everybody,

Heads up!

Just want to say that the dark side of planets ARE dark. If you use a HDMI monitor/TV then nVidia drivers default to limited RGB output - this means *NOT* dark planets. This is a known problem with HDMI connection. When I finally fixed this, Elite Dangerous (Horizons) looks MUCH better, the sky/universe is BLACK, and the dark side of planets are pitch black (good movie by the way).

Check under nVidia display settings for you monitor and ensure the the RGB range is set to full. For me the 359.xx drivers refuse to set full RGB, so I have to use 358.xx drivers. To be honest, I have played with limited RGB colors for a long long time.

EDIT: Remember also to not set the GAMMA in driver layer (e.g. nVidia controll panel) to high. For ED I recommend to tick the 'Let the program set' these setting (gamma). Sure, you can tweek this, but if you KNOW you are using full RGB and still get grey and not black, then perhaps you can try to lower the gamma on the driver layer.


Hi I tried your tip for my hdmi monitor but it made to much black space looked good but ship interior and srv interior was to black where it should have been a grayish metallic and you couldn't make out the tread in the srv tyres thay were just solid black I appreciate your tip and it's good it works for others but I prefer it limited
 
I dont think its hard to see why ED does this.. They just over do it a little. The brightness increase tends to wash space out a lot. And as the planet has no shadows on the dark side it looks pretty dull. We would be better off seeing it sparsely lit. It would be great if bases projected light not unlike the srv headlights. Ship headlights could finally be made useful too if they added some range

On another note does anyone else find ED to be a bit too dark in general? I know u can increase the gamma but it tends to wash things out. I think filling a game with lots of black isnt a great idea though given how poor current display tech is in those ranges. Hard to avoid if you want realism i guess
 
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Thanks very much for this info, the difference is amazing. It makes a lot of difference in other games too (I noticed the most on Witcher 3).
 
Incredible!! Thank you!!!

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I dont think its hard to see why ED does this.. They just over do it a little. The brightness increase tends to wash space out a lot. And as the planet has no shadows on the dark side it looks pretty dull. We would be better off seeing it sparsely lit. It would be great if bases projected light not unlike the srv headlights. Ship headlights could finally be made useful too if they added some range

Seeing the lights from a planetary port piercing the darkness at night during approach would be quite a sight.
 
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