Why aren't the darkside of planets dark anymore?

rennarda · Jun 6, 2017

CylonSurfer said:
It should look like this:
http://i.imgur.com/v0OcQh5.png
But instead is a high contrast mess.

That would make me very happy! Visiting the night side of a planet would be pretty scary, especially in VR!

WE have been promised some tweaks to the surface colouring (the beige-ification), but not sure if that will address this lighting issue.

CylonSurfer · Jun 7, 2017

Roybe said:
Just a question...have you tried to calibrate your gamma setting on the video card? I was always complaining about my output in D3 being much different than my wifes...and finally realized my gamma setting was the problem.

Also...make sure, with an nvidia card you have set the Output dynamic range to 'full'..under the display/change resolution option in the Nvidia control panel...and reset it every time you update your drivers! Without this setting, the output will be 'chopped' of the darker blacks and whiter whites...because of televisions being used rather than monitors.

It's not the NVidia settings - the game artificially lightens the scene, its almost like a light switch is turned on when you get so close to the surface. Interestingly enough, if you quit the game and reload while on a planets surface, for a moment or two when the scene first loads its pitch black (if you are on the dark side thats is) as it should be, then the light is switched on again and everything looks almost the same as it does on the light side.

Fliposide · Jun 7, 2017

Just a question...have you tried to calibrate your gamma setting on the video card? I was always complaining about my output in D3 being much different than my wifes...and finally realized my gamma setting was the problem.

Also...make sure, with an nvidia card you have set the Output dynamic range to 'full'..under the display/change resolution option in the Nvidia control panel...and reset it every time you update your drivers! Without this setting, the output will be 'chopped' of the darker blacks and whiter whites...because of televisions being used rather than monitors.

What's the best way to calibrate the Rift's (DK2) gamma?

[VR] Frank_G · Jun 7, 2017

StiTch said:
Basically this.

I could ridicule the lighting on the dark side of planets in ED until the end of time itself, and still be able to ridicule it some more. It'd be nice to get that pitch-black "what in the name of mercy is actually going on down there" level of lighting, but improve the lights on the spacecraft to something a little more potent than I could reproduce using a glow in the dark t-shirt stuck to the front of my ship.

Precise long range pixel lighting - aka more potent ship lights - is still a performance hog these days. It wouldnt be a problem to do that with one or two players in the instance, but with several ships, correct lighting could convert a game into a slideshow. For each pixel light in the scene, any geometry hit by it has to be rendered again... any instance with more than 8 players can get pretty laggy on a mid range system. Instead of amplifying ship lights, the internal solution using light amplification on a screen in your ship would totally work around that, as each player computer handles nothing but its own lighting solution. Regardless... We need dark planetsides first.

Orvidius · Jun 7, 2017

I forget where I found it, but I've been using some custom graphics tweaks to darken out the bottom end of the color scale, so that space and darker areas on planets look a bit darker. It makes it more comparable to how the game looks on a monitor. The changes are subtle, but effective.

Here's an example, with a section for custom GUI/HUD recoloring that is set to the default orange:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\GraphicsConfigurationOverride.xml

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GraphicsConfig>
  <HDRNode_Reference>
    <ToeDenominator>0.2050</ToeDenominator>
    <ToeStrength>0.2300</ToeStrength>
  </HDRNode_Reference>
  <GUIColour>
    <Default>
      <LocalisationName>Standard</LocalisationName>
      <MatrixRed>1, 0, 0</MatrixRed>
      <MatrixGreen>0, 1, 0</MatrixGreen>
      <MatrixBlue>0, 0, 1</MatrixBlue>
    </Default>
  </GUIColour>
</GraphicsConfig>

Cliché · Jun 14, 2017

I just had the exact opposite thing happen. I was approaching the light side of a moon and at about 1000km it faded to a pitch black hole in space, and it stayed that way until I was about 22km above the surface port. Then it lightened up like it was on the dark side, not back to full daylight. I suppose there was a chance the moon went into eclipse, but there was no shadow marching across the surface. Of course, it could have just been my HUD filter malfunctioning (I was pretty dinged up).

CapuchinSeven · Jun 14, 2017

ebbrell said:
I have posted on this subject before. We want it real, this game is a sim after all and not an arcade game.

FD seem pretty clear on this, it is more game than sim.

Cliché · Jun 14, 2017

CapuchinSeven said:
FD seem pretty clear on this, it is more game than sim.

To be clear, whether FD says ED is more game than sim or not, it used to get dark and stay dark. And I'm not sure they changed it on purpose. FrankG says it's not working properly, and I believe him.

For those that have never see it dark, here are some pics I uploaded about a year ago:

Violet Rascal · Sep 27, 2017

Sorry for posting this here. I don't have VR but it was the only relevant thread I could find about this problem.

This is what the darkside of planets look like after the 2.4 patch

there is no need to use the ship and SRV lights.

In the 2.4 beta the darkside of planets where really dark. I was having to use the ship and SRV lights to see. What's happened ?