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Water is too dark and horrible


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The water is VERY dark now! Very black-ish. It was WAY better before. The water was something that I used to LOVE in DCS. Land always looked horrible, but the water used to be incredible beautiful. I've hit the water several times when trying to fly low because I can't see very well (specially in VR flying aircrafts with the strong reflection (e.g. A-10A and SU-25T). Regardless the aircraft, the see looks VERY dark!  

In this link I posted several screen shots. New ones that I took just now and some old ones with the old sea. See for yourself and you will see a BIG difference. It does NOT look natural now, at all!!! 
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PYTrRg4q8Aoe6_tTCQN4ZSGnQJonkY-Y?usp=sharing

This is how I'm running DCS:
Gama is at 2.0
I use Oculus Rift CV1 (pixel density set to 1.3)
GTX 1080
i5 8gen
16Gb of ram

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HARD disagree. The old water was much too bright as were the fresnel reflections at distance. It certainly wasn’t convincing to me, in VR or otherwise, and had a distinct videogamey look that it didn’t quite shed. One particular thing that just wasn’t there in 2.5.6 was how dark sea water can look but never did in the game. I certainly would NOT want to go back.

Sure, it can be further improved, but comparisons against photographs and videos CLEARLY show that the new water looks MUCH closer to reality than before 2.7, both close up and out to the horizon.

I will say for what it’s worth, my water doesn’t look as dark as your screenshots seem to show. It’s a dark blue on maps like Caucus, and a proper dark blue-green on PG, but not quite so black up close. Could it be something to do with your settings or needing to refresh the shader cache?

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I partially agree...I mean, the old water was TERRIBLE in waves size and distance detail, as well as the reflections were waaaayyy too sharp and clear. However,I agree it looks now too dark when flying low (it looks good at certain height), almost black. Something I have noticed is that the too dark water is only taking place when setting a clear sky at noon. Other than that it doesn't look so dark and it actually looks quite similar to the old one in terms of color and brightness.

 

example:

 

Screen_210416_130358.jpg

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5 hours ago, SundownSix said:

HARD disagree. The old water was much too bright as were the fresnel reflections at distance. It certainly wasn’t convincing to me, in VR or otherwise, and had a distinct videogamey look that it didn’t quite shed. One particular thing that just wasn’t there in 2.5.6 was how dark sea water can look but never did in the game. I certainly would NOT want to go back.

Sure, it can be further improved, but comparisons against photographs and videos CLEARLY show that the new water looks MUCH closer to reality than before 2.7, both close up and out to the horizon.

I will say for what it’s worth, my water doesn’t look as dark as your screenshots seem to show. It’s a dark blue on maps like Caucus, and a proper dark blue-green on PG, but not quite so black up close. Could it be something to do with your settings or needing to refresh the shader cache?

As you said in the last phrase, your water doen't look so dark. Here it's crazy dark! lol Are you using VR? Refreshing the shader folders was one of the first things I did after installing the 2.7. Anyways, also in reality the water is not that dark and also, very important, this is not reality, we are using screens, we don't have the real world resolution, everything is more difficult, specially with VR. The quality in VR is not that great, the fov is not a bit close to real life. Everything in VR is already difficult, we need to easy in some points to be able to fly. Like all that crazy reflection with the SU-25T and A-10A, absolutely not realistic and doesn't help. In real life it would be much easier to see things. An extra option in the settings menu with the option to activate/desactivate/increase/decrease reflection would be nice. I know ED has a lot to do and the guys are doing a great job. But the dark water and the reflection are giving a real hard time to some VR users. 😕 

 

 Ala12Rv-watermanpc  I will definetely try different times and weather conditions! Thanks a lot for the heads up. I'll post here if it worked better. Cheers! 😃
But, that is still a temporary workaround, not a solution. 😄


Edited by Fabiano-VIKING
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As you said in the last phrase, your water doen't look so dark. Here it's crazy dark! lol Are you using VR? Refreshing the shader folders was one of the first things I did after installing the 2.7. Anyways, also in reality the water is not that dark and also, very important, this is not reality, we are using screens, we don't have the real world resolution, everything is more difficult, specially with VR. The quality in VR is not that great, the fov is not a bit close to real life. Everything in VR is already difficult, we need to easy in some points to be able to fly. Like all that crazy reflection with the SU-25T and A-10A, absolutely not realistic and doesn't help. In real life it would be much easier to see things. An extra option in the settings menu with the option to activate/desactivate/increase/decrease reflection would be nice. I know ED has a lot to do and the guys are doing a great job. But the dark water and the reflection are giving a real hard time to some VR users.  

I’m in VR and I definitely don’t feel that the water is that dark, nor does it make things more difficult. If I have any impression, it’s that finally the water looks closer to real life and video footage of carrier ops that I just wasn’t getting in 2.5.6. If anything, 2.7 has given me better spatial awareness, and the times it was more difficult was when I was realistically disoriented from the clouds and water looking too similar and having to go to instruments.

I’ve heard that the somewhat extreme darkness in the screenshots might exist in certain lighting conditions. I haven’t confirmed or noticed myself. I wouldn’t mind any sort of improvement towards graphical realism but 2.5.6 is not some kind of golden standard, with water being much too uniformly light across the board on every map.
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1 hour ago, SundownSix said:

it’s that finally the water looks closer to real life

I agree, and yes I'm an exclusive VR user...

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1 hour ago, Fabiano-VIKING said:

As you said in the last phrase, your water doen't look so dark. Here it's crazy dark! lol Are you using VR? Refreshing the shader folders was one of the first things I did after installing the 2.7. Anyways, also in reality the water is not that dark and also, very important, this is not reality, we are using screens, we don't have the real world resolution, everything is more difficult, specially with VR. The quality in VR is not that great, the fov is not a bit close to real life. Everything in VR is already difficult, we need to easy in some points to be able to fly. Like all that crazy reflection with the SU-25T and A-10A, absolutely not realistic and doesn't help. In real life it would be much easier to see things. An extra option in the settings menu with the option to activate/desactivate/increase/decrease reflection would be nice. I know ED has a lot to do and the guys are doing a great job. But the dark water and the reflection are giving a real hard time to some VR users. 😕 

 

 Ala12Rv-watermanpc  I will definetely try different times and weather conditions! Thanks a lot for the heads up. I'll post here if it worked better. Cheers! 😃
But, that is still a temporary workaround, not a solution. 😄

 

 

Yeah!, definitely woth a try. Maybe something about 09h or 17h, about 16knots winds plus some slight clouds...it seems to make a difference, specially when not looking the water too vertically and/or too low.👍

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I mean.... Guys... The problem is not just waves. After the update water looks like an oil spill... fC7Y8bA.jpg

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1 minute ago, LaFleur said:

I mean.... Guys... The problem is not just waves. After the update water looks like an oil spill... fC7Y8bA.jpg

That is a great example of what I’m seeing as well. The water in 2.5 is not perfect, but it’s definitely better than that! Just out of curiosity, is that with your water settings on High?

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1 minute ago, bigalsunit said:

That is a great example of what I’m seeing as well. The water in 2.5 is not perfect, but it’s definitely better than that! Just out of curiosity, is that with your water settings on High?

correct. it's on high.

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3 hours ago, bigalsunit said:

That is a great example of what I’m seeing as well. The water in 2.5 is not perfect, but it’s definitely better than that! Just out of curiosity, is that with your water settings on High?

The gamma is without a doubt set way too low in that screenshot. 

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This is much closer to reality.  That shot above of the dark water and shoreline... that could be reality in much of the world.

 

The water in 2.5 looked like a cartoon.  I get that people like bright and pretty water... but most of the world's seas don't look like that.  We don't have a map in DCS today where the water should look like that.  Now that'll be a different story for some areas of the Marianas map... but even on that one, not everywhere's Fiji.  😉

 

The new water looks pretty darn good to me.  Only criticism I have is that it's a little too glassy in light winds - there's almost always SOME riffling in open water.  But even with that, it's less distracting to me than what we used to have. 

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10 hours ago, bigalsunit said:

Got it. Thanks. If you change the water settings to Low or Medium, does the look of your water change? 

 

From the little I fiddled around with settings, I didn't see any difference with High, Medium or Low in the water settings.

 

6 hours ago, Aarnoman said:

The gamma is without a doubt set way too low in that screenshot. 

I believe I have calibrated the gamma good enough so every surface and reflection looks realistic. Messing around gamma settings to counter the oil-like water look, isn't a fix to the problem, for me at least. Don't get me wrong, I like the new "texture" of the water, even though it lacks waves, but I found it to be unrealistically dark. If it had a little more blue in it, it would be good awesome.

 


jun_jul_15_cover.jpgHornet-vs-Super-Hornet.jpg


Edited by LaFleur
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Never ever take photos as an example of "That's how the color" shall loke like - my recommendation as a photographer for 10 years.

Every foto runs through at least 1 process of color "correction" which is overdone most of the time, because "vivid photos please the most people".

The second picture in the post above is a great example, that's very, very vivid - no water will look like that in reality, it's over saturated.

Even a GoPro is most of the time a better source than pictures if you refer to lights and colors.

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I understand that the photos might be tampered, but from my experience with sea, of which I have a lot, the color looks like exactly like the GoPro footage. 

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in my experience, when looked at from above, water can take on almost every color and texture depending on weather, time of day, its base coloration, reflected surroundings and the angle it is looked at. that being said, every color scene could be realistic, as long as it fits to the overall conditions, i.e. changes as function of the variables above.

so, i wouldn't say the new water is wrong, but to me it doesn't seem convincing in some scenarios, which was also true for the old water. and yes, reflections are way too sharp most of the time.

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My conclusion is that some people are definetely not seeing what we are seeing... a very black-ish water that looks like oil spill. 

Other things... gamma is set to what it has always been. As someone said, it's no use to increase gamma to fix the dark water and then washout everything else unrealistically, that is not a fix. Also changing the Water setting doesn't make any difference, the water is still very black. 

Seriously, if you guys think the water is okay, either our/your DCS have some kind of variation (or maybe even a bug) or you don't know what sea looks like.

And I didn't need to comment this, but since everybody is talking about how realistic the water is... I have been to 28 countries around the world, many of them reaching by plane, I have even worked onboard a cruise ship, I have seen many waters and seas, all of them pretty blueish, but NEVER blackish.  I live by the ocean and last Sunday I took some photos from the top of a hill and I'm happy to share some pics with you. And even having some shade variation, most of the seas waters are blueish indeed. I'm serious.. you guys are probably not seeing what we see. I would ask you guys to take a look at the link again with the new and old screenshots plus the pictures I took last Sunday. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PYTrRg4q8Aoe6_tTCQN4ZSGnQJonkY-Y?usp=sharing

I also think that people who are not seeing a blackish water could maybe ignore this thread, since this seems like a problem reaching only some of us?! Weird. Actually, could you guys post some screenshots so we can try to compare and understand? Thank you. 

By the way, I'm also posting a screeshot of a really "realistic" water in a river in Caucasus.


 

bugged river in dcs.jpeg

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6 hours ago, kreisch said:

Never ever take photos as an example of "That's how the color" shall loke like - my recommendation as a photographer for 10 years.

Yes and on top of that, you need to take into account *where* the picture was taken. An open ocean behaves differently than for example the Black Sea: the waves will be lower in our DCS setting just because of that, and dept also affects the perceived colour of the water.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 4/20/2021 at 12:42 AM, kreisch said:

... my recommendation as a photographer for 10 years...


I'm not a photographer, but I do fly over ocean water a lot. The 2.7 water is way too dark and, perhaps more importantly, completely featureless. It's not realistic. Frankly, it looks pretty silly.


Edited by Jester2138
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22 hours ago, SERGIOABRAZ said:

 

It's like, I particularly prefer it a lot more now. For me she is much more real and beautiful

PS: Gama 1.4

 

 

 

 

 

20210511221708_1.jpg

 


This photo is absolutely NOT natural! NOT AT ALL!  

 

14 hours ago, Jester2138 said:


I'm not a photographer, but I do fly over ocean water a lot. The 2.7 water is way too dark and, perhaps more importantly, completely featureless. It's not realistic. Frankly, it looks pretty silly.

 

Totally agreed!

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