Skybox color banding

[Bucic]

It's really weird. I don't recall another game porking skybox this much. I used to think people are just bad at video encoding (while watching DCS vids on youtube) but it's all there during actual gameplay. There's even an elipse of a certain color shade clearly visibe when you point the camera vertically up. Are there any plans to fix this? After the amazing clouds update this stands out like a sore thumb.

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/318540-ugly-color-banding-on-objects-at-low-sun-conditions-ob-28235759/?do=findComment&comment=5138896

Edited July 19, 2023 by Bucic

[Hiob]

I don't know exactly, what the video is supposed to show, but regarding the colour banding of the sky - yes that is a thing. I don't like it either. I'm not completely sure though, how much of it is on the graphics engine of DCS and how much on my settings....

If it is solved at some point, regardless of the cause, consider me happy!

[Bucic]

With changing camera angles the issue is even worse than what static screenshots could convey. And when some people use video bitrate on a bit more conservative side... Man, it looks like proper 90's
https://youtu.be/gZKtah6-5yU?t=197

 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Bucic

[draconus]

20 hours ago, Bucic said:

it looks like proper 90's

It is still modern gfx problem that needs smart programming, like anything else.

https://loopit.dk/banding_in_games.pdf

[Bucic]

@draconus Dude! That's some good read!

Also, my instinct frightens me I actually suspected gamma has to do something with it. Namely I thought (I was wrong) that banding occurs when you view something "intended to be viewed at much lower gamma."

I also crawled DCS config and lua files for "sRGB". Found nothing. Maybe I'll try again with shader files.

[Bucic]

@admin

Requesting this to be moved to 2D video bugs.

[YSIAD_RIP]

I have not noticed the color banding problem recently in my DCS setup. However; now that I read this post I am sure I will start seeing it.

• Does DCS Graphics Engine take advantage of 10 bit colour? (I currently have my display Colour Depth set at 10 bpc - default was 8 bpc.  
• There are some other discussions that mention Reshade.me Deband.fx and other fx shaders have helping others. 
• Gama, brightness and other monitor settings can certainly make banding look very noticeable and even worse at night. 
• @draconus - great link you provided above! Thanks  

Edited February 3, 2024 by YSIAD_RIP

[Bucic]

35 minutes ago, YSIAD_RIP said:

I have not noticed the color banding problem recently in my DCS setup. However; now that I read this post I am sure I will start seeing it.

• Does DCS Graphics Engine take advantage of 10 bit colour? (I currently have my display Colour Depth set at 10 bpc - default was 8 bpc.  
• There are some other discussions that mention Reshade.me Deband.fx and other fx shaders have helping others. 
• Gama, brightness and other monitor settings can certainly make banding look very noticeable and even worse at night. 
• @draconus - great link you provided above! Thanks  

 

There are 10 year old games that have no banding issues. Reshade is duct tape hacking. 10 bpc is like multicore support in 2005. Yeti stuff.

[Insonia]

1 hour ago, YSIAD_RIP said:

• Does DCS Graphics Engine take advantage of 10 bit colour? (I currently have my display Colour Depth set at 10 bpc - default was 8 bpc.  

No, just 8 bits of "depth" per color. The Desktop Window Manager (DWM) restricted windowed apps to output content at only 8 bits per color channel, even if the display supported a higher bit depth. To output 10 bpc/30bits , the software must use specific APIs (directX games also must work under exclusive fullscreen) and is very difficult to implement because the Windows color system is a total disaster. Aside from production software like PS, almost no sane person bothers to support such things. Only 1 game I know natively supports 10 bpc is alien isolation.

Quote

here are 10 year old games that have no banding issues.

It can never fundamentally resolve the banding problem. Those are "working around" solutions through shaders and artistic "tricks," called "dithering," an optical illusion that breaks up the posterization and blends them together. IT just "hacks" that worked well enough. but both(provide 10bpc support or good dithering algorithm) required efforts that they probably do not really want to.

Edited February 3, 2024 by Insonia

[Bucic]

48 minutes ago, Insonia said:

No, just 8 bits of "depth" per color. The Desktop Window Manager (DWM) restricted windowed apps to output content at only 8 bits per color channel, even if the display supported a higher bit depth. To output 10 bpc/30bits , the software must use specific APIs (directX games also must work under exclusive fullscreen) and is very difficult to implement because the Windows color system is a total disaster. Aside from production software like PS, almost no sane person bothers to support such things. Only 1 game I know natively supports 10 bpc is alien isolation.

It can never fundamentally resolve the banding problem. Those are "working around" solutions through shaders and artistic "tricks," called "dithering," an optical illusion that breaks up the posterization and blends them together. IT just "hacks" that worked well enough. but both(provide 10bpc support or good dithering algorithm) required efforts that they probably do not really want to.

 

Obviously I didn't mean the devs of the old games solved the problem completely and forgot to pick up their Nobel prizes in mathematics. I meant banding was not visible. In DCS it looks attrocious.

[Hiob]

2 hours ago, Bucic said:

There are 10 year old games that have no banding issues. Reshade is duct tape hacking. 10 bpc is like multicore support in 2005. Yeti stuff.

True. Reshade is just a workaround fix. However, depending on how annoying banding is for you, the deband filter of reshade is a relief and does a rather decent job, given you tune it properly.

[Bucic]

15 hours ago, Hiob said:

True. Reshade is just a workaround fix. However, depending on how annoying banding is for you, the deband filter of reshade is a relief and does a rather decent job, given you tune it properly.

Is there a "do not @#%g touch a bit of image unless explicitly slidered to do so for a specific effect" preset in ReShade? To me ReShade is "the spinners of gaming" and I can't say I'm really open to change my mind

[Hiob]

59 minutes ago, Bucic said:

Is there a "do not @#%g touch a bit of image unless explicitly slidered to do so for a specific effect" preset in ReShade? To me ReShade is "the spinners of gaming" and I can't say I'm really open to change my mind

Ok, if being closed-minded worked out for you in the past - be my guest.

I like reshade and it serves me well.

[Bucic]

I didn't say I won't try it

[Bucic]

https://blog.frost.kiwi/GLSL-noise-and-radial-gradient/

Debanding section. I might be one of those guilty confusing Reshade with SweetFX...

I'm going to try it one day for sure but the problem is there for ED to deal with. In what essentially is a sky game

Edited February 8, 2024 by Bucic

[Bucic]

The novideo_srgb tool required on wide color gamut monitors to clamp the color space to what games use has dithering settings built in. Just for information - there's a possible alternative to Reshade deband. Bad news - it doesn't seem to work on DCS's heavy banding.

More info https://github.com/ledoge/novideo_srgb/issues/21

https://github.com/ledoge/novideo_srgb

On to test the Reshade deband. For reference, some DCS-ers have posted their settings here

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/310469-color-banding-night-sky-and-sea/page/2/

 

Edited February 26, 2024 by Bucic

[Bucic]

Marking the article posted by @draconus as a solution to point any reader to the article explaining the problem and possible solutions programmers may employ, to at least avoid mute discussions about the existence of the problem in DCS.

[draconus]

I rarely see it in the sky, mostly at night if ever but what really bothers me is F-14 red HUD at night - it's always ugly banded.

[Bucic]

On 10/4/2024 at 1:44 PM, draconus said:

I rarely see it in the sky, mostly at night if ever but what really bothers me is F-14 red HUD at night - it's always ugly banded.

It literally causes loss of situational awareness if only plain water is in the view. Examples aside, this has no place in 2010's.

Cross-referencing a thread with actual workaround attempts:

https://forum.dcs.world/topic/207154-3dmigoto-vr-mod-for-dcs-label-masking-color-enhancement-sharpen-fxaa-copypaste-of-radio-msg/page/60/

 

 

Edited November 16, 2024 by Bucic

[Bucic]

Just maybe this gives a glimmer of hope something is being done "around the atmosphere"