Let's talk about light and shadow issues of Odyssey

[TANDKO]

There are a lot of talk about lighting issues with planets and space being dark, and yesterday on stream the issue of darkness was acknowledged by CMs and they said it is being looked at, but it worries me that FDev seems to be talking that it is a problem of planets and space only.
However the lighting issue is much bigger problem, something is wrong with how light and shadows interact, and how shades are generated in the game.
Look at the pic I took for the skin issue comparison of Odyssey and Horizon (just ignore the skin colors for now), everything set to Ultra and Horizon has x1.5 SS, look at the light sources and shadow it is completely wrong, there are strong spot lights but shadow limits are so sharp, it looks like dark matter eats the light there.
And that happens with all the lights in Odyssey. If you have a flashlight in a dark corridor, the border between light and darkness is so sharp, there is nothing in between, the light just completely disappears at short distance, like there is a magic wall.

 

[MacIntoc]

It's like they add light sources right above the cockpit to make it brighter when you're in it.

 

[JSteel]

Yeah, light seems to be fighting shadows, with the shadows easily winning.

 

[Ronzer]

I saw this posted, but also noticed in game, some stars are super bright, while others look normal. Im curious if thats now how it's going to be, or if that is an attempt at a temporary fix. For ships, I've noticed my shiny surfaces, like gold, seem more metallic now, but shading does seem forced, not natural.

 

[Orvidius]

The CMs did comment in one of the other threads about ship skins, and said it's being looked into.

Hopefully that includes SRVs, because they're even more broken at the moment.

 

[FX2K]

I constantly have lighting glitches in Odyssey, that effect where you walk from a dark location into the light and lighting adjusts.. sometimes just goes all wonky.
I've had completely "black screen" moments where everything is still happening around me (flashlight does nothing) and then things like this.

Power room area, was pitch black without torch.

Turn around and back again, now its ...

Jump turn around etc etc and it slightly changes

Torch on ( lights up as expected in area of effect) turn it off no change, still like above, move around, exit room do some stuff and it all comes back to normal, but those are the only screenshots I took. Happens an awful lot, sometimes you walk into a overhanging area with crates what was slighly darker, due to being covered.. and it goes pitch black once inside and stays that way until you find your way out again. Stuff like that.

It's getting annoying now, I quite enjoy the ambience of the settlements, until it goes wrong.

 

[Lone_star]

The renderer is broken - IIRC (there's a detailed thread on it somewhere around here) it's missing an entire pass.

If they actually fix the renderer it should impact just about everything.

 

[dannysquid]

My guess (and it's nothing but an idle, and probably wrong, guess) is that in upgrading to PBR materials, they were suddenly confronted with tens of thousands of textures in the wrong format and so did some sort of automated fix for these and the automated fix missed all sorts of important things out.

(I'm basing this on the fact that the newer materials that have been created for settlements, station interiors and planetary surfaces DON'T seem to have any real lighting issues.)

 

[[VR] Marrs]

I've wanted dark nights on planets since Horizons first launched. I hope they leave them as they are. It's not like we don't have night vision.

 

[TANDKO]

I've wanted dark nights on planets since Horizons first launched. I hope they leave them as they are. It's not like we don't have night vision.

It is not about how dark the night is, it is about the light that is not propagated correctly and shadows that are not in the right places. And what is the point of having dark nights and then run around with night vision all the time.

 

[alexzk]

On stream they said "what you see is wrong, it should not be so", so just wait for incoming fixes of renders.

 

[Burstar1]

I've wanted dark nights on planets since Horizons first launched. I hope they leave them as they are. It's not like we don't have night vision.

It's more than that even. There's something wrong with the 'eye adjusting sim' effect. to see what I mean Look forward in your cockpit, then look straight up. You will see your view quickly darken in this weird 'why' way.