reported Overly dark when flying in shade under a cloud

[Ala12Rv-watermanpc]

On 4/15/2021 at 5:02 PM, Glowing_Amraam said:

It's on the "to-do" list of things to improve, just ran out of time for this before release.

 

Honestly, I'm worried about changing this, specially for monitor users. The darkness below the thick clouds layers looks stunning and realistic, I would NOT touch that, at all. 

 

Exactly, what is the problem with this?:

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Ala12Rv-watermanpc

[Canada_Moose]

2 hours ago, Ala12Rv-watermanpc said:

 

Honestly, I'm worried about changing this, specially for monitor users. The darkness below the thick clouds layers looks stunning and realistic, I would NOT touch that, at all. 

 

Exactly, what is the problem with this?:

 

 

 

nothing.....because that’s how it looks to your eye when you are in sunshine and flying OVER the cloud shadows. The issue is the contrast when you fly UNDER the clouds in the shadows.

It doesn’t look like that in real life. When I fly on a partly cloudy day and I go into a cloud shadow it doesn’t look like I’m about to be hit with a thunderstorm as I do it!

 

 

[Ala12Rv-watermanpc]

1 hour ago, Canada_Moose said:

nothing.....because that’s how it looks to your eye when you are in sunshine and flying OVER the cloud shadows. The issue is the contrast when you fly UNDER the clouds in the shadows.

It doesn’t look like that in real life. When I fly on a partly cloudy day and I go into a cloud shadow it doesn’t look like I’m about to be hit with a thunderstorm as I do it!

 

 

Maybe you should look twice the pictures because all of them, except the last one, are flying UNDER the clouds. Not sure what you mean with flying in "sunshine"?, are you expecting shadows without a sun/moon casting light?

 

I would love to see some screens showing what is so wrong btw. I provided some supporting my point but havent seen any supporting the "too dark" argument which is quite curious...

Edited April 18, 2021 by Ala12Rv-watermanpc

[Canada_Moose]

57 minutes ago, Ala12Rv-watermanpc said:

Maybe you should look twice the pictures because all of them, except the last one, are flying UNDER the clouds. Not sure what you mean with flying in "sunshine"?, are you expecting shadows without a sun/moon casting light?

 

I would love to see some screens showing what is so wrong btw. I provided some supporting my point but havent seen any supporting the "too dark" argument which is quite curious...

 

I don’t really need to post pictures. There are many people reacting the same way and the developers agree that the balance is not right. I don’t need to post pictures to satisfy your curiosity.

It’s a simulator. The lighting is supposed to be reality not Art Deco Cyberpunk overly done HDR effect for an FPS shooter.

 

I don’t see any of your pictures at lower levels trying to pick out ground objects.

In fact, the way it is now, if you attempt to land on a runway in a cloud shadow it’s so dark that in real life I would be asking for approach lighting to be on if it wasn’t already.

 

I have no idea what you mean about “what do I expect”.

 

it’s quite simple. Put a partly cloudy scenario up and find a cumulus cloud casting a shadow over a town or airfield. Go and fly under that cloud in the shadow area and it looks like it about to be a thunderstorm kicking off because it’s so dark you can barley make out buildings or ground features.

That doesn't happen at an airfield every time a cloud passes over!

It has to be a very gloomy day for that.

 

Yes, you can alter the gamma setting but then the sunlit areas are way too blown out.

 

Also, note the comments previously in the thread about seeing airfield strips under the cloud shadows on the Channel maps. Same issue.

 

It’s a little better on my calibrated CAD monitor but still not great.

VR is way too dark. Maybe that’s more a Rift S problem though but it’s hard to tell.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Canada_Moose

[XPACT]

Long story short he is trying to tell you that human eye doesn't work quite like a camera. I am currently typing this under cloud shadow, it's day and I see everything it's not dark at all plenty of light is here but from above it would look much much darker due to exposure of the eye.

[Canada_Moose]

Couple of people and myself tried to explain it this way as well on Friday  but that didn’t help either apparently.

[Jester2138]

On 4/15/2021 at 11:51 AM, Ala12Rv-watermanpc said:

 

a correctly exposed picture (that looks close enough to what the human eye looked at a particular image) is absolutely fine and representative of how a human eye  would see.

 

I'm a professional cinematographer and lighting designer in Hollywood. You are incorrect. A "correctly" (in a technical, not artistic, sense) exposed image is one that best translates the dynamic range of a scene into the latitude of the distribution medium. Note: dynamic range and latitude are NOT the same thing, though they are often confused by less-informed people including some professionals. The resulting image will not be anything close to what the human eye actually sees unless you are viewing it on a very high dynamic range monitor. The fact that you think they are the same is merely a testament to how good the art of photography/cinematography has gotten at fooling you.

The immediate example is that if you take a picture of cloud shadows while exposing for the areas lit directly by sunlight, the shadows will look very dark and less detailed than they do if you focused on them in real life. On a quality HDR monitor they should retain the detail. Your computer monitor is most likely not a quality HDR monitor, and so games generally dynamically adjust their "exposure" level to mimic something similar when the shadow is the majority of the viewed scene. Except for DCS.

Edit because I posted this before reading the rest of the thread: Some posters are claiming that the human eye does not in fact have a very high dynamic range, and that the reason it appears that we do is because the eye's iris rapidly adjusts. This is half true. The iris takes noticeable time to adjust; you can see it happening if you want from a dark room to a bright sunlit outdoor environment. It may take more than 30 seconds to adjust. The reason why you subjectively experience a greater dynamic range than photographs in timeframes under 30 seconds is because the human eye DOES in fact have a greater dynamic range than photographic mediums; most research puts it at well over 10 stops but probably over 15 stops and possibly over 20 stops (lots depends on how exactly you define it, how it is timed, how you are quantifying what can be seen, etc. There are also issues with how the eye may discern detail in dark areas better than bright areas, or vice versa, and that also differs in camera technology... It's complicated). But it's hard to pin down, and there's probably a lot of variation between people.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Jester2138

[Ourorborus]

This looks closely related to the common "cockpit is too dark" issue. I am one who (in VR) has to have all cockpit lighting on max in the middle of the day as unless the sun is beaming directly on my dash it is too dark to be readable. (Not the MFD displays, the physical labels etc.) If I turn Gamma up to compensate, the outside world is completley washed out. I have noticed this is because the shadows on my cockpit are too "intense" for want of a better word. 

 

It looks like the new clouds are casuing this same effect. The shadows are too "intense". i.e the delta between in and out of shadow is too great. Since it is not a problem for everyone (different hardware), a great fix would be a shadow intensity slider.  In the mean time I'll stick to Release version until it is fixed.

[Nealius]

I thought fundamental high-school biology classes covered how eye pupils work.....just knowing that it should be obvious that our virtual pilots in DCS have non-functioning pupils. 

[dali]

I'm talking about flying at dusk, when sun has already set below the horizon. First of all, usualy the western sky should be much more vivid blue (google dusk blue sky). Next, when flying at higher altitude and descending towards ground, the horizon is quickly turning darker and darker untill it is completely black, which is not correct. It gets slightly darker, but not black. And I'm talking even about Persian gulf map, where sun sets into the sea, so it should be quite a lot of dusk light after sunset.

[PLUTON]

+1

[Weta43]

Where are you comparing to ?

The amount of dusk you get depends on where you are in the world and the time of year

[NightMan]

The light changes suddenly, going from shadow to lit and back to shadow, as if God is flipping a switch on the wall.
It's very annoying.
It is most noticeable when we are looking down into the switches, because it appears something has exploded nearby and we are seing the flash. It is somewhat disruptive.

[NineLine]

This is reported, thanks.

 

[JimmyWA]

I’m pretty sure it is the general shadows setting. Turn it off and the darkness goes away.

https://youtu.be/x3E-ygd4Vpo

[Crouz]

they will never get there to update their engine

[Nedum]

On 4/18/2021 at 12:42 PM, Ala12Rv-watermanpc said:

 

Honestly, I'm worried about changing this, specially for monitor users. The darkness below the thick clouds layers looks stunning and realistic, I would NOT touch that, at all. 

 

Exactly, what is the problem with this?:

 

 

 

The guys talking about -> flying underneath <- the clouds, and you show up some Pictures from above the clouds?

The shadows underneath the clouds are all a way too dark, if you are flying in those shadows. I don't know if you are a RL aviation guy, but hey, did you ever flow underneath a light cloud layer? You will miss some extreme cockpit reflections which would make your eyes hurt, but it's by far not a tiny little bit as dark as it is in DCS. It's still bright, not as bright as without the clouds, but not dark, not a bit. In DCS, it's in most cases 90% too dark. On a light cloudy day, you can't even see any colors anymore if you fly in a cloud shadow cast. How is that possible? But right next to the "Darkness" the Buildings and the Grass shines like a Christmas tree, because there is no Cloud Shadow. That's miles away from the RL.

You do not even need to be an Aviation Guy to show up, that the current Shadows in DCS are a way too dark. At a really sunny day, went behind a house with a full shadow cast and look around, and after that don't tell me that the RL Shadows are only a tiny little bit as dark as the DCS ones, so you can't even see any color anymore.

And why are all the trees begin to shine if they are in a shadow, If you look from above? If you are at the same height, they start to get "invisible". That will only show up during the twilight. Before and after that, a Forrest is the darkest part of the environment. Not in DCS.

DCS is miles away from showing this in a way that is near the RL behavior.

 

I am so happy ED is on it.

 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Nedum

[Dragan]

We all have the same problem, for example in A-10 shooting the cannon and acquiring the target with the eye before attacking in dark terrain is a big problem, we are waiting for the promised fix without having to turn off the shadows in the options and fly constantly in clear and sunny weather, I trust the DCS team -and problems were reported for the stable version 2.8...

[TAIPAN_]

Will this be included in 2.9?

Running the mod that fixes the cloud shadows is getting a bit tedious, because of the pure client IC now including shader changes, and the recompilation taking a long time whenever adding/removing the mod for pure client servers