Graphics improved?

[Pville_Piper]

I updated a bunch of stuff this morning and jumped into the game... It looks better and seems to be very smooth as well. I'm not sure why but the game looks really good all of a sudden.

I did update to the latest Nvidia driver and also install the new Nvidia app that is in beta and will replace the G-Force Experience (and eventually the Nvidia control panel). I didn't run the optimizer with it, but it was already at what they consider optimized... It may have done that on install, not sure.

The new Nvidia app is a huge improvement over the G-force experience, I recommend it highly!

 

[Morbad]

I haven't noticed any graphical improvements outside of the bug fixes mentioned in the patch notes. No performance changes either.

 

[Pville_Piper]

I didn't see anything in the notes either... Might have been that I've been gone for the last 2 weeks and looking at it for the first time... But it does look better to me.

 

[CMDR Janusz]

The lighting is different, there is more bloom and colour, and materials look less cheap. There was definitely a change. It is somewhat smoother too.

 

[Pville_Piper]

The Nvidia app did change my settings... I normally use borderless and it was set to full screen. Changing it to borderless didn't affect the performance or look.

 

[lefty1117]

Space is still too dark, try booting up the Legacy Horizons client and you'll see what I mean. They messed it up with Odyssey launch and it's never been fixed. They've put some weird filter on that is blocking out the dust and the color variation it creates - you can tell this by turning Gamma all the way up.

 

[jojon]

Well... I mean... There were people who used injection tools to turn off shaders, in order to get rid of the bright space, which they had some choice words for... :7

...but there is severe crushing, no doubt about it - both at the top and bottom end. This actually makes several things look more realistic in space -- one side of an outpost distinctly in deep shadow, whilst the other is blazingly illuminated, as it should be; But does come with its own problems -- Especially when the tonemapping, and its associated pupil dilation effect constantly, and often contrary to how actual eye adaption works, varies the brightness all of space up and down wildly, like a child playing with a dimmer switch... (not to mention what it does in VR, where the left- and right eye images each gets their own histogram, instead of sharing one, so that you often find the whole view dark in one eye, and bright in the other.)

 

[Shurimal]

Space is still too dark, try booting up the Legacy Horizons client and you'll see what I mean. They messed it up with Odyssey launch and it's never been fixed. They've put some weird filter on that is blocking out the dust and the color variation it creates - you can tell this by turning Gamma all the way up.

You mean there were people who liked that milky layer over the void? Space should be blacker than the blackest black. Glad I don't have to mess around with Reshade tonemapping as much anymore as I had to in Legacy. Also glad that this Legacy star-dependent color filter that turned the whole skybox blue in systems containing a neutron star is gone for good.

 

[lefty1117]

Well... I mean... There were people who used injection tools to turn off shaders, in order to get rid of the bright space, which they had some choice words for... :7

...but there is severe crushing, no doubt about it - both at the top and bottom end. This actually makes several things look more realistic in space -- one side of an outpost distinctly in deep shadow, whilst the other is blazingly illuminated, as it should be; But does come with its own problems -- Especially when the tonemapping, and its associated pupil dilation effect constantly, and often contrary to how actual eye adaption works, varies the brightness all of space up and down wildly, like a child playing with a dimmer switch... (not to mention what it does in VR, where the left- and right eye images each gets their own histogram, instead of sharing one, so that you often find the whole view dark in one eye, and bright in the other.)

Yes this is a good description of what I see as well. In summary it's botched up and looks worse than horizons.

 

[Valorin]

Space is still too dark, try booting up the Legacy Horizons client and you'll see what I mean. They messed it up with Odyssey launch and it's never been fixed. They've put some weird filter on that is blocking out the dust and the color variation it creates - you can tell this by turning Gamma all the way up.

Ah! Here we are again!
I love that space is dark in Odyssey! It's perfect! There's no "too dark" when it's about space.

 

[Schmack]

Ah! Here we are again!
I love that space is dark in Odyssey! It's perfect! There's no "too dark" when it's about space.

If there is I've never seen it. aaaahhhh?

 

[Morbad]

Still can't find any good examples of graphics improvements introduced in U18.

Anyway, crushed blacks are still problem, even if the end result is subjectively superior to some tastes. It's lost information that has implications beyond the skybox. If it's luminance is not zero, it should be visible, not clipped.

They've put some weird filter on that is blocking out the dust and the color variation it creates - you can tell this by turning Gamma all the way up.

The problem is more complex than that and not all the information lost can be recovered.

Much of this still seems to apply:

Odyssey space has "too much contrast" - breaking down the rendering of a frame

I, as some many other people got appalled by the hideous luminance distribution and color saturation issues exhibited by the Odyssey renderer. Since I'm a computer graphics developer myself and do consulting work for critical graphics systems (think medical imaging, CT, MRI, and such) I took a...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Anything that is illuminated should be visible, unless the user deliberately chooses to clip those values, or certain other effects are at work. Having the values come pre-clipped-- creating an uncorrectable, ultimately less detailed, image--is not good.

Space should be blacker than the blackest black.

Not from most vantage points in the galaxy it shouldn't. There is a lot of dust and gas that scatters light and is illuminated by stars. Even through our relatively thick atmosphere on Earth, long exposures reveal that space anywhere near the plane of the Milky Way is not black. Indeed, if any arbitrarily long time lapse of a section of the sky shows any luminance above zero (e.g. even a single photon in the visible spectra struck the film or sensor from that direction) then it's not blackest black.

If you go to the edge of the galaxy and look away from the galaxy, space is appropriately black, in 3.8. If you are well within the galactic disk and/or looking at the galactic disc, large portions of the skybox are above zero luminance, which is also accurate. It should never have been obtrusive, if one's settings and display were correctly calibrated.

 

[Morbad]

3.8 top, 4.0 bottom, same in game location, all default ultra settings, other than shadow tables (which aren't visible here anyway):

Even 3.8 appears very nearly black over most of the image on a display with no black crush and accurate sRGB gamma. One can see vaguely illuminated gas/dust over about 2/3rds of the image, if one looks for it, but it's quite subtle on an accurate display. 3.8 also retains some details that are lost due to black crush in 4.0, which is, to my eyes, a more obtrusive change than barely illuminated clouds of tenuous material.

These are the same images (though scaled down a bit) in GIMP, with the totally black areas selected in each:

In Legacy Horizons, there is a strip across the lower area of the image that is true black (0,0,0). In Odyssey, the same totally black area fills all but the stars, nebulae, and the brightest portion of dust/gas along the very upper (especially top right) of the image...because the black floor has been raised by about 3.5 points.

The space dust/gas is clearly there in both versions, it's just clipped out of view in Odyssey. If they wanted to make space totally black, they should have stopped rendering this stuff, not clipped away the lowest brightness levels of everything.

Black level - Lagom LCD test

www.lagom.nl

If you view that page in full screen (F11) in a dark room, the entire first row should be very dark, but even the first box should be just barely visible against the background. If you can't distinguish the first box at all, or if it's more than barely visible, your display's calibration is off.

 

[Shurimal]

Even through our relatively thick atmosphere on Earth, long exposures reveal that space anywhere near the plane of the Milky Way is not black

Long exposures is the key here. I've spent a lot of time under moonless clear night skies far away from light pollution. It is black to human eye, even after hours of eye adaptation, blacker than any display can correctly recreate--even OLED blacks are not as black. You don't see any grey "space dust".

And sure, near the Galactic plane there is a lot of dust that Odyssey renders, too. But at the edge of the Galaxy, looking into the intergalactic void, Legacy still had this clearly visible grey blotchiness which looks just wrong. For example (cropped from a hi-res screenshot):

If you view that page in full screen (F11) in a dark room, the entire first row should be very dark, but even the first box should be just barely visible against the background. If you can't distinguish the first box at all, or if it's more than barely visible, your display's calibration is off.

My monitor has been set up using this site, so it's not that.

 

[Morbad]

Long exposures is the key here. I've spent a lot of time under moonless clear night skies far away from light pollution. It is black to human eye

Not all human visual systems are equal:

People can sense single photons - Nature

Experiment suggests that humans are capable of perceiving even the feeblest flash of light.

www.nature.com

I personally could never see distinguish a single photon--I see quite a bit of visual noise (phosphenes) even with my eyes closed in a pitch black room. I can't ever recall perciving the complete absence of light, and probably couldn't even if someone gouged the eyes from my head, optic nerves and all. That's all beside the point though.

Odyssey is removing this visual information at the wrong stage of rendering and it takes stuff that should be seen along with it.

If the game is trying to simulate what our CMDRs see (which could well be far beyond typical 21st century human limits, or could be augmented by canopy/helmet optics) the exposure histogram that handles the eye adaptation stuff would be the place to do it.

even OLED blacks are not as black

OLED blacks, in ideal conditions (no matte finish to scatter light from nearby pixels and a dark enough environment to eliminate reflections), are the exact same zero nits as if the display were off. You can't get darker than zero.

And sure, near the Galactic plane there is a lot of dust that Odyssey renders, too. But at the edge of the Galaxy, looking into the intergalactic void, Legacy still had this clearly visible grey blotchiness which looks just wrong. For example (cropped from a hi-res screenshot):
View attachment 386077

You're right, that probably shouldn't be there. However, I'd much rather see that than loose details that should be elsewhere. The workaround to hiding what's shown here is moving the gamma slider a notch over...but moving it the other way can't recover information that's already been destroyed.

If the intent had been to address excess haze in the skybox, adjusting the galaxy map render that is used as a template to generate it would be the way to do that. Odyssey botching a tone mapping stage and globally crushing skybox blacks is almost certainly an oversight.

 

[Shurimal]

OLED blacks, in ideal conditions (no matte finish to scatter light from nearby pixels and a dark enough environment to eliminate reflections), are the exact same zero nits as if the display were off. You can't get darker than zero.

Only if you have a light controlled room. If you have ambient light, OLED is not pure black--it's very close, but it still reflects a small percentage of the ambient light back. Especially noticeable on my AMOLED phone screen outdoors.

I'd much rather see that than loose details that should be elsewhere

I actually looked at the histogram of my Legacy screenshot--the black level is not 0, but something like 5,5,5. It's very noticeably grey when seen on the pure black background of my image viewer:

I can adjust the image quite a bit darker without crushing the blacks:

I've always left the in-game gamma to default.

Odyssey is removing this visual information at the wrong stage of rendering and it takes stuff that should be seen along with it.

That's highly debatable. IMO there's nothing wrong with crushing the blacks or blowing out the highlights just a bit if it fits the artist's intent--movies do that quite often. I find the Live depiction of the blackness of space much more like I perceive it in real life when looking at the night sky in a non-light polluted area, and that's how it should be.

 

[Frankymole]

But at the edge of the Galaxy, looking into the intergalactic void, Legacy still had this clearly visible grey blotchiness which looks just wrong.

We can't reach the edge of the galaxy. It's not where the last star is. There's the galactic halo which extends well beyond that.

 

[Ozric]

Space is still too dark, try booting up the Legacy Horizons client and you'll see what I mean. They messed it up with Odyssey launch and it's never been fixed. They've put some weird filter on that is blocking out the dust and the color variation it creates - you can tell this by turning Gamma all the way up.

Remember how annoyed/disgusted people were with the 3.3 update and the changes to adaptive lighting that completely changed how the majority of the game had looked for the first few years. It was widely regarded as a terrible change when it happened. (had positive and negatives imo, the falloff from the primary star was nicer but that was about it. Colour tinting from the star was too over the top imo)

It always amuses me how something that was so unliked originally, has now flipped completely in some people's minds since there was another change made. It's almost as if it's just

This is from just after the update, so Before represents prior to Nov 2018, After is what we had until 4.0 (bar a few tweaks along the way)

 

[Morbad]

Only if you have a light controlled room. If you have ambient light, OLED is not pure black--it's very close, but it still reflects a small percentage of the ambient light back. Especially noticeable on my AMOLED phone screen outdoors.

Yes, there are many situations where an OLED won't reach the black levels some might expect, but many where black will be black.

I actually looked at the histogram of my Legacy screenshot--the black level is not 0, but something like 5,5,5. It's very noticeably grey when seen on the pure black background of my image viewer:
View attachment 386085
I can adjust the image quite a bit darker without crushing the blacks:
View attachment 386086
I've always left the in-game gamma to default.

In the screen I took of Legacy above (this is an unedited and lossless capture), some 20% of the screen is 0,0,0. It cannot be darkened without crushing blacks. This is typical.

If the lowest you're seeing is 5,5,5 then something is wrong with your settings somewhere, maybe with what you're using to capture the image. If HDR is enabled in Windows, that can also do this to SDR content.

That's highly debatable. IMO there's nothing wrong with crushing the blacks or blowing out the highlights just a bit if it fits the artist's intent--movies do that quite often. I find the Live depiction of the blackness of space much more like I perceive it in real life when looking at the night sky in a non-light polluted area, and that's how it should be.

I don't believe the end result we see in Odyssey was the result of artistic intent as much as it was a mistake when assigning work to different teams. Despite the radical changes in artistic vision and default settings this game has gone through in the past, the final scenes we were presented with were not crushed in this manner, especially not the blacks. We always had the option to recover and use this information.

I also don't think what I see from the surface of the Earth should necessarily be what my CMDR, or his ship's external cameras, see while in open space. Even if I did, it could be done without breaking anything else.

My issues are less with whatever the artistic vision is, or is supposed to be, if there is one, and more with the sloppy way it's been implemented. It's also comes at quite the performance cost, which makes it even more annoying.

It always amuses me how something that was so unliked originally, has now flipped completely in some people's minds since there was another change made.

I'm not lauding 3.3-.3.8 lighting/tonemapping and my distaste for many of those changes remain. I just think 4.0 was a further net downgrade in this regard. Things can always get worse, and usually do.

In both 3.8, and the older legacy versions, we had much more control. Nothing was crushed out of existence before we could tune things and the prototype lighting balances could be disabled in 3.3 through 3.8.x. This wasn't without serious side effects, but it was an option. If you disable either the new tone mapper or the new lighting system in Odyssey you either get a black screen or a completely unusable image. There is still a lot we can control, but we can't bring back what was in those crushed blacks.

In your example, simply turning down <GlareCompensation>1.3333</GlareCompensation> to some less insane value (1.25 is my upper limit) will fix those overblown highs in the bottom image. Most of the rest of the changes can be handled with the tone mapper settings (removing the ManualExposure offset and increasing the ExposureThreshold will get 80% of the way there, and custom curves even closer). I have no such recourse for restoring dark details in Odyssey.

We can't reach the edge of the galaxy. It's not where the last star is. There's the galactic halo which extends well beyond that.

But is there enough enough light available to illuminate any of it to the point it should be rendered?

I'm inclined to think not, even for augmented vision unobstructed by local atmospheric conditions. However, I do not think the solution is to crush the crap out of the entire image, but rather to not render the galactic halo as a giant glowing cloud that far out.

 

[The Lawful]

As a matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the Sun.*

O7,


*Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, where the janitor of their studio is interviewed on matters of Life and Death.