Dynamic Lighting?

[ThorBrasil]

Are there plans to add dynamic lighting to DCS? I don't mean third party technology as I know ED likes to make their own technology. The video is just an example. Thank You!
 

 

[cfrag]

There already is dynamic lighting in DCS: Your landing light reflects off other objects like the runway and other vehicles. That is dynamic lighting.

The problem with lighting in today's 'standard' (painter-algorithm based) graphics engines is that individual light sources are computationally costly, and thus are kept to a minimum. Many lights that we see merely look like lights; they are in reality 'baked-in' or painted-on lighting that is not taken into consideration when luminosity/brightness of a pixel is calculated (i.e. these things that look like lamps or brightly lit advertisements don't cast shadows, it very clever fake). 

So DCS has dynamic lighting, and the number of real-time light sources is kept to an absolute minimum for performance reasons. Hopefully, advancements in GPU and graphics engines will allow us significantly more light sources, making the world look so much better (just thinking some about light fog and volumetric lighting in a city at sunrise makes me salivate over my keyboard - as a whirly-driver we see the shortcomings of DCS's current light model all too clear).

 

[Rapierarch]

On 9/10/2022 at 1:01 PM, cfrag said:

Hopefully, advancements in GPU and graphics engines will allow us

How much more gpu power do we need to get such lighting in DCS?

[Hotdognz]

The lighting under the current clouds doesn't feel dynamic to me as we fly under them its gets' really dark, and in real life your pupils adjust to this which is dynamic, in DCS it just stays dark.

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Hotdognz said:

The lighting under the current clouds doesn't feel dynamic to me as we fly under them its gets' really dark, and in real life your pupils adjust to this which is dynamic, in DCS it just stays dark.

My eyes do adjust to what I see, either on monitor or in VR. Yours don't? IRL the cockpit stays dark too so why in DCS it should change?

[MAXsenna]

41 minutes ago, draconus said:

My eyes do adjust to what I see, either on monitor or in VR. Yours don't? IRL the cockpit stays dark too so why in DCS it should change?

Yeah, but still he has an interesting point, which I never thought about TBH, because your eyes will never adjust to the color black. Which is what we get from a flatscreen, whether if it strapped to your face or not. Which at the same time is emitting light to those same eyes.

I play in the dark, so I really don't have any issues except in the F1, but that gets better everyday, as I get used to the where things are and how they look in the dark.  

Would be interesting to see if "night sight" would ever be simulated. Maybe we could eat some virtual carrots.

[draconus]

There used to be HDR rendering tech a while ago but it was fake and unrealistic. Depending on the led display the black is still more or less a light while it is lack of light IRL, so it never is that dark on a screen. Remember also the eyes take over 20 minutes to fully adjust to the darkness.

If you need to see more in your cockpit just use the actual lighting knobs and switches.

[MAXsenna]

True that. But I always compare with how things work in my car. (or in my cabrio).

31 minutes ago, draconus said:

If you need to see more in your cockpit just use the actual lighting knobs and switches.

That really depends on the module. Anyway, the future is brilliant! 

[Rapierarch]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

My eyes do adjust to what I see, either on monitor or in VR. Yours don't? IRL the cockpit stays dark too so why in DCS it should change?

 

He is talking about bloom. When you are at dark and outside immediate vicinity or further away is extremely bright and you focus head down in your cockpit your eyes adjust the focus point so outside the cockpit becomes extremely bright in your vision but you start seeing the cockpit. When you look up your eyes adjust to the high exposure area and cockpit becomes dark. 

Bloom when implemented simulates this look at MSFS ir IL-2.

In DCS it is just a shader which adds halo around the bright object which smears it around the dark shadow area which also does the same thing at night in cockpit lights smearing it around with halos. So since it is not correctly implemented everyone especially in VR immediately turns that off.  (watch all optimization videos every single one of them advises to turn that off)

[Nealius]

On 9/20/2022 at 4:00 PM, draconus said:

My eyes do adjust to what I see, either on monitor or in VR. Yours don't? IRL the cockpit stays dark too so why in DCS it should change?

The terrain, not the cockpit. Underneath clouds in DCS it gets so dark as to be unable to identify unlit runways, trees, or terrain.

[draconus]

5 hours ago, Nealius said:

Underneath clouds in DCS it gets so dark as to be unable to identify unlit runways, trees, or terrain.

Got a screenshot?