Did I do someting wrong or are the dark sides of planets not dark anymore?

Heavenly-Hammer

Heavenly-Hammer
Just a quick question to make sure there isn't something wrong with my configuration.

Back in the beta for Horizons, landing on the dark side of planets/moons were really dark. Like, pitch black. You needed to turn on your headlights to see anything at all and even then it was was maybe 15-20 yards in front of you (and of course less if there were hills in front of you).

I took a fairly long break from ED and came back last month. Now I find that as I approach dark sides of planets/moons they are very dark, but after a few seconds everything gets several shades lighter.

Here's an example.

This (which is basically pitch black and what i expect):

WDVku3q.jpg


Becomes this after 5-10 seconds, whether sitting still or getting in SRV:

b6u2vdf.jpg


Is this intentional or something up with my settings?
 

Heavenly-Hammer

Heavenly-Hammer
Niamhy said:
yeah, it does that. I just assumed it was a "your eyes getting used to the dark" effect.
Click to expand...

Okay cool. It didn't do this back in the beta, but I was just kinda "meh w/e" until now. I thought I'd ask. Thought maybe it was my GPU driver or something.

Thanks folks! It would be nice to have a setting. I really did enjoy pitch black being pitch black. Made driving in the dark really neat.

This artificial brightening effect more or less makes the SRV headlights redundant. :-/
 
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Luna Valenwood

Luna Valenwood
Yeah I notice this when dropping down in orbital cruise too it sort of loads the terrain and each load it becomes slightly brighter. I just put it down to the holographic display in the cockpits windows adding a sort of night-vision effect to help the pilot see while they land and drive around. It's 3302 so it wouldn't surprise me if we have gone from bright green/black & white night-vision to full colour in that time.
 
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playfuldreamer

playfuldreamer
It bothers me. A lot of games do this to make sight a bit easier in dark areas, but then I feel it just defeats the purpose of dark areas...
 

VR Morgan Grimes

VR Morgan Grimes
There are still some very dark areas out there but they are quite rare these days, however I like to think it is the HUD making adjustments for quality of life, just as it does when you are staring directly at stars which without some adjustment would leave you blind.
 

Heavenly-Hammer

Heavenly-Hammer
Yea I know we can "role play" a reason, but i mean...I'd like a setting to be able to make it black again. It's nice for immersion. And again, the brightening makes the headlights useless.

Options are always nice!
 

Arry

Arry
Logically: The only place that can be really dark; is under ground.

Even distant star-light, is a light source and then we have reflections from closer bodies. So I don't think it can become totally dark, above ground and out in the open.

Plus; most animals eyes adapt to the dark.
 

peteuplink

peteuplink
I always figured that since some of the HUD elements are displayed directly on the cockpit windows, that the windows themselves have a built automatic light adjustment mode to boost brightness in dark places.
 

Bambi

Bambi
Basically the realistic darkness only appears when the planet you are on is in the shadow of another planet. Otherwise there is magic light from space.
 

Ziljan

Ziljan
You guys are silly. It's not broken, it's darkness adaptation. The light comes from distant extended objects like nebulae and the milky way, in the same way that the moon on earth seems really bright at night, but can be hard to spot in a bright daytime sky. When you go to the "dark side" your vision adapts to take in any possible light sources.

If you park on the dark side of a planet that is facing away from center of the galaxy and there are no nebulae around, you will be in pitch darkness. Likewise, if you park in a shadow on the day side of a planet you will be in darkness, because there is no atmosphere to bounce light scattering around corners.

Science.
 
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[VR] Marrs

[VR] Marrs
I raised this as a bug a while ago. Couldn't hurt to add your own experience to it.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/277841-Planet-night-as-bright-as-day

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Ziljan said:
You guys are silly. It's not broken, it's darkness adaptation. The light comes from distant extended objects like nebulae and the milky way, in the same way that the moon on earth seems really bright at night, but can be hard to spot in a bright daytime sky. When you go to the "dark side" your vision adapts to take in any possible light sources.

If you park on the dark side of a planet that is facing away from center of the galaxy and there are no nebulae around, you will be in pitch darkness. Likewise, if you park in a shadow on the day side of a planet you will be in darkness, because there is no atmosphere to bounce light scattering around corners.

Science.
Click to expand...

That makes sense but if that's true you wouldn't expect the brightness to suddenly 'jump' from pitch black to light. I'd like Frontier to give us a definite answer on what causes this i.e is it working as intended due to in-game technology, is it due to the different light sources or is it a work in progress that will be fixed some time?
 

Carodan

C
I don't really know how accurate the ambient lighting science is being implemented in ED but it seems way over-done to me if that is the reasoning. I buy the idea of cockpit light amplification, but it'd sit better with an option to disable it.

Seems far more likely FD decided it was safer to artificially brighten surfaces than have ppl getting frustrated when thet accidentally fly into a mountain.
I'd much rather have little/no artificial brightening and more powerful ship lights. Would make planet surfaces much more interesting and realistic to me.
 

Carodan

C
Love to hear some actual science guestimation on how much ambient light comes from the galaxy (explained of course for idiots like me) - searching online either gives me spam for a certain mobile phone or equations that mean nothing to me.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
Arry said:
Plus; most animals eyes adapt to the dark.
Click to expand...

Although it will take about 30 minutes for human eyes to reach their highest sensitivity. I wish I could disable the 'night visions', just as 'proper darkness' mods are the first things I look for whenever Bethesda releases something.
 
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