AH-64D Exported Display Images Look Very Dark

[Sn8ke]

13 minutes ago, Hammer1-1 said:

I dont know about you, but my TADS export looks good. Granted the resolution of the monitor isnt greater than 600x800, but the actual monitors in these aircraft dont have to be high definition LCD. Unless someone knows better, Im fairly certain there isnt an aircraft out there that has resolution beyond 1080p. And to be fair, 1080p was high tech resolution back when the majority of these aircraft came online and NASA wasnt even using that to watch recorded shuttle launches. Some people really dont appreciate just how cheap the US govt can be.

 

For me in the Hawg the only time I use this is at night, when the MFDs are set to night in the sim, my exported ones are super dim. This UIMask mod fixes that.

[Hammer1-1]

5 minutes ago, Sn8ke said:

For me in the Hawg the only time I use this is at night, when the MFDs are set to night in the sim, my exported ones are super dim. This UIMask mod fixes that.

Ive been trying to fix that for months, but thats only on the winwing mpcd trash I have in my pit. the brightness on my TEDAC are awesome, its also fairly clear too. my only beef is that the monitor I have has a matte finished screen and just has a nasty glare when the sun hits it.

[Sn8ke]

11 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

Ive been trying to fix that for months, but thats only on the winwing mpcd trash I have in my pit. the brightness on my TEDAC are awesome, its also fairly clear too. my only beef is that the monitor I have has a matte finished screen and just has a nasty glare when the sun hits it.

I guess different per whatever aftermarket monitor we are using for MFDs, TEDAC, etc. This creates an excellent balance for me. The biggest thing was I could just switch the in game MFDs to day, so my exported MFD brightness was appropriate, however when I look around the cockpit w/ TrackIR (On night missions), the in game MFDs are like bright flashlights right in my face. 

[Floyd1212]

13 minutes ago, Sn8ke said:

however when I look around the cockpit w/ TrackIR (On night missions), the in game MFDs are like bright flashlights right in my face

Yeah, this is definitely still a problem for me, as well.

 

12 hours ago, Hammer1-1 said:

the brightness on my TEDAC are awesome

I think you are probably in the minority here.  I'm not sure why your exported displays are not super dark like everyone else's but I'm glad it is working for you.

I suppose if you only use your additional screens for flying, you could jack the gamma up in your display settings for that monitor (maybe to match the default 1.8 gamma in DCS?), but I use my screens for other things when I am not flying.  And, increasing the overall gamma would then wash out the virtual buttons and bezels I have around the exported display using Helios.

Maybe one day ED will pay closer attention to this issue that their hardcore fans are struggling with...

[Hammer1-1]

57 minutes ago, Floyd1212 said:

Yeah, this is definitely still a problem for me, as well.

 

I think you are probably in the minority here.  I'm not sure why your exported displays are not super dark like everyone else's but I'm glad it is working for you.

I suppose if you only use your additional screens for flying, you could jack the gamma up in your display settings for that monitor (maybe to match the default 1.8 gamma in DCS?), but I use my screens for other things when I am not flying.  And, increasing the overall gamma would then wash out the virtual buttons and bezels I have around the exported display using Helios.

Maybe one day ED will pay closer attention to this issue that their hardcore fans are struggling with...

My MFCDs are super dark, Ive been complaining about them since I got them. My TADS is perfect and honestly I couldnt tell you why, I just dont notice it being super dark for me.

[Floyd1212]

Ah, okay.  Good to know in case I ever getting around to building a TEDAC. Right now the two MPDs with Helios is working well for the 90% of the time I am in the back seat.

[Hammer1-1]

you know, come to think of it I dont have a problem with the brightness levels of the MPCDs in the Apache unless Im missing something....I know for a fact though that my display screens are darker than hell in everything else. I wonder why that is, Ive been flying the apache a lot lately but rarely touch the other aircraft now. The F-15E is especially dark!

[hreich]

I am using this uimask file from my attachment, but i have 2 white dots on the right lower portion of my monitor in-game (picture2) which i can't find out from where are they...It looks like 2 dead pixels and however i change my uimask.png file cant seem to get rid of them..Please help me

 

null

Edited October 30, 2024 by hreich

[Floyd1212]

It does indeed look like you have two black pixels in your uimask file.

[hreich]

17 hours ago, Floyd1212 said:

It does indeed look like you have two black pixels in your uimask file.

Thanks for suggestion, i was focused on black part of image, didn't even noticed that on white part there were 2 black spots!

Edited October 31, 2024 by hreich

[Bigity]

Outstanding, finally got around to doing this because ED apparently isn't going to address anything with multi-monitor issues anytime soon. 

[Hammer1-1]

On 10/31/2024 at 7:28 AM, hreich said:

Thanks for suggestion, i was focused on black part of image, didn't even noticed that on white part there were 2 black spots!

how could you? looks like dust on your monitor.

[PacFlyer23]

On 5/1/2022 at 10:54 AM, Floyd1212 said:

I spent some time working on this yesterday and got a fix I am mostly happy with.  I came here to write up a post, but found this thread, so I will post it here.

The solution I am using is to use ReShade to adjust brightness/contrast/gamma on the exported region of my displays only, without effecting the rest of the game's rendered regions.  To accomplish this, you need to use a UIMask in ReShade, which then applies the shaders to the "masked" regions only. (More on this later.)

Follow this tutorial for how to install and setup ReShade.  (You can choose to use the shader settings he is showing or not, that's up to you.)

The next step is to create a "mask" for the regions of the screen you want to make adjustments to.  This feature is normally designed to mask elements of the user interface in a game that you don't want to change the look of, like maybe the minimap at the bottom of the screen, or the health bar, etc., but in this case we want to mask the majority of the screen from being effected, exposing only our display export regions to effect those.

Take a screenshot of your game with your display exports, and open it in your favorite image editing program. Fill in everything white, except for the display export regions, which you fill in black.  The shader effects we apply will only effect the regions of the screen that are black.  Save that black-and-white image as "UIMask.png". <-- very important

nullHere is my setup with two exported displays, and what the corresponding UIMask.png looks like:
 

Save your UIMask.png file to the location on your machine where ReShade is expecting to find it.  This is within the DCS install folder, equivalent to:

G:\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta\bin\reshade-shaders\Textures\UIMask.png

Now open the ReShade controls after launching DCS, and enable the 4 shaders highlighted in the red box, and reorder them by dragging them so they are in the order shown below.  ReShade will process the "Tonemap" and "Levels" shaders only to the areas specified by our mask.

You now have real-time sliders for Black Point, White Point, and Gamma that you can adjust to tweak your external displays to suit your needs (red arrows).

It needs to be said, however, that this is not a complete solution for night missions.  You will still have a problem with the displays in the cockpit getting super washed out before you have anything usable on your export displays.  It does help a little, but you will still be blinded by the in-cockpit displays.  ED, please fix this!  In the meantime, this may help...

If you are in a mission and resize or adjust your screen via zoom or head-tracker movement towards the screen, does this mess-up the masking or this fix? 

[MAXsenna]

If you are in a mission and resize or adjust your screen via zoom or head-tracker movement towards the screen, does this mess-up the masking or this fix? 

Main screen? Absolutely! On a second screen for exports, the FOV is constant, no zoom etc. as it's not treated like a "viewport". You don't see parts of the cockpit, world etc. The mask is only applied to the second screen.
I hope I understood your question correctly.

Edited February 2 by MAXsenna

[PacFlyer23]

2 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

Main screen? Absolutely! On a second screen for exports, the FOV is constant, no zoom etc. as it's not treated like a "viewport". You don't see parts of the cockpit, world etc. The mask is only applied to the second screen.
I hope I understood your question correctly.
 

Okay, thanks for the information. I don't use VR, so the main display is how I see the "world" in and outside the cockpit of my F/A-18C. The YT video seems pretty straightforward now that I've watched several times - really wish it explained a little bit more as to what Reshade (I do use it already) is doing to the MFDs and why it works. I'm basically an old neophyte when it comes to PCs and programming.

[Floyd1212]

This post is talking about how to boost the brightness/gamma of the MFDs on a second monitor with exported displays. It doesn’t sound like you are using a second monitor.

You can certainly use ReShade to enhance the visuals of your game, but you won’t be able to isolate the MFD screens with a UI Mask, unless they are exported to a static location, typically on another monitor. 

[MAXsenna]

33 minutes ago, Floyd1212 said:

This post is talking about how to boost the brightness/gamma of the MFDs on a second monitor with exported displays.

Thanks! Exactly what I tried to write.

 

55 minutes ago, PacFlyer23 said:

I don't use VR,

Me neither. This is not for VR. Like Floyd writes. This is ONLY for additional screens where you export the MFDs.

53 minutes ago, PacFlyer23 said:

The YT video seems pretty straightforward now that I've watched several times - really wish it explained a little bit more as to what Reshade (I do use it already) is doing to the MFDs and why it works.

He does actually. If you pay attention he shows how it works on his MFDs, which are 3 individual physical extra screens. (His WinWings). Nothing happens on his main screens. Because they can be adjusted in game already. 

Are you saying the in game MFDs are too dark for you? 

Cheers! 

[skypickle]

I found that the brightness control axis affects the mfd in game and the video control axis affects the brightness of my little panel. This way i can adjust both to parity

[TBarina]

3 hours ago, skypickle said:

I found that the brightness control axis affects the mfd in game and the video control axis affects the brightness of my little panel. This way i can adjust both to parity

Hi, could you elaborate you post a little further. I don't exactly understand what you mean and I'd be interested on this matter. Many thanks in advance.

P.S.: apart from using reShade I've never been able to reach the parity in any aircraft (especially at night)

Edited February 3 by TBarina

[skypickle]

7 hours ago, TBarina said:

Hi, could you elaborate you post a little further. I don't exactly understand what you mean and I'd be interested on this matter. Many thanks in advance.

P.S.: apart from using reShade I've never been able to reach the parity in any aircraft (especially at night)

look under axis controls for the apache. you should find one for brightness and another for video for each mpd. you need a device with two analog axis controls for each one. The total controls frames have these. or you can make your own. after binding these controls you will discover that turning the brightness knob changes the brightness of the mpd the game renders on your main display device. turning the video control changes the brightness of the exported mpd on your secondary display device.

[Floyd1212]

Yeah, it's a little janky, but you can get your exported displays to dim down a bit for night missions that way.

You don't need to bind anything, just use your mouse to adjust the knobs on each MPD in the cockpit and see the results.

[SirWoofer]

Floyd1212, OMG! Thank you so much for coming up with this solution. I was so disappointed when I got these setup and they were so dim I didn't even use them.  With your solution they look great! Thanks again for you time and effort getting this issue fixed!

Lynn  

Edited February 24 by SirWoofer
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[LynxD]

So the MFDs on Apache have two knobs - BRT and VID, the VID changes brightnes for the underlaying video from TADS or MAP if its a TSD page selected, BRT knob adjusts the overall brightness of the dispaly including the overlaying symbology so to speak and all works fine untill I set up the export of MFDs to another monitor. BRT knob stops doing anything - the brightness of the displays stays the same and I only can change the VID brightness. Is it another bug in this pile of code called DCS or am I doing something wrong?

[MAXsenna]

5 hours ago, LynxD said:

So the MFDs on Apache have two knobs - BRT and VID, the VID changes brightnes for the underlaying video from TADS or MAP if its a TSD page selected, BRT knob adjusts the overall brightness of the dispaly including the overlaying symbology so to speak and all works fine untill I set up the export of MFDs to another monitor. BRT knob stops doing anything - the brightness of the displays stays the same and I only can change the VID brightness. Is it another bug in this pile of code called DCS or am I doing something wrong?

Old "bug". Can't remember the reason for it being like this. The workaround is the make a mask and using reshade to brighten the second monitor.