over-saturated greens again

[twistking]

I'm very excited for Kola map, but on many of the recent screenshots, it looks like it would -again- suffer from the over-saturated greens, that are common in DCS.
Normandy had it (not sure if the devs tuned it back, or if it is only an issue with certain lighting conditions) and i think the South Atlantic map has it too.
For me it looks as if the DCS engine would somehow push the saturation of greens, giving trees a very saturated, heavy look and making lighter grassy areas appear like poisonous neon green.
It's a rather unpleasant look and i hope it can be dialed back.

[zerO_crash]

Not really sure what you mean. Where exactly do you see those oversaturated green?

 

Latest development screenshots: 

[twistking]

16 hours ago, zerO_crash said:

Not really sure what you mean. Where exactly do you see those oversaturated green?

In_Dev_26.04.2024.4.jpg

The trees are very dark and very saturated. Compare it to both the trucks in the foreground. I'm talking about nuances. A little bit (!) less saturation (and contrast) on the trees would make the image look more realistic. It's a little bit difficult to judge, because the image is rather dark (low gamma setting maybe). The fact that the trees are so dark, make them appear less saturated to the untrained eye perhaps. If you'd brighten the tree in photoshop, you would realize how saturated they actually are. I'm not expecting them to match colours with the trucks of course. The trucks are still a valid reference i think.

*edit* I deleted that image, because it does not really show the issue very well. I think the issue might have to do with the blue tint of atmospheric modelling, as @zerO_crash pointed out. The blue tint in combination with generally high saturation colours would explain the "lime" green appearance.

 

This is a good example of the "issue". Look at the areas where the sun hits the grassy areas. Top left at the mountain slope i would already call it oversaturated, but it's still a natural tone, so i would not complain. Top middle of the image (start at the pilots visor and "walk" upwards) where grasslands are partially occluded by the clouds, the green is oversaturated and creates an unnatural colour.
 

This may seem nitpicky and i agree that this are nuances, but there are a lot of other images (from other maps as well) where greens can have that unnatural tint. There are older images of Kola that show this and also examples from other maps, by other developers. I assume that this is an issue of the DCS engine or the tonemapper.

Another example:

Here, the lighter green grassland areas at the coast have a slightly unnatural tint to them. With all greens in the image being well saturated.

Edited April 27 by twistking

[zerO_crash]

As someone who lives in Norway - Oslo (among other countries), and has travelled around the country (business), I can tell you that the scenery looks pretty spot on. Granted, we don't have photorealism yet, but we are getting closer. With that said; there are so many factors that play in on the picture reception, that it's worth its own topic entirely (photography). Everything from the type of camera/lens, through weather/angle to the light source (sun)/haze, further on to the settings of the camera (ISO among others), PC monitor/TV/VR, color calibration of all the media, etc... It is ridiculous how making a picture from one place with x amount of cameras, would yield x amount of results. Point is, it depends on far too many factors. Even our human eyes will percieve images different. When one sees green, another sees blue, a third will see cyan. It's difficult to judge a picture based on that. I haven't even mentioned retouching photos/videos, which is something one has to be aware of, especially when checking photos/videos online. 
 

Notice the maps that we have in DCS, which are based on professional satellite imagery/topography. Take for instance the South Atlantic map. While from high up, it looks authentic and eye-watering realistic, albeit the closer to the ground you get, the more you notice it is off. It's still great, no doubt, but the point is - a satellite/high altitude source, will percieve the color gamut/shading/shadows different, than when you stand on the ground.

 

In Norway, if it's cloudy, and the sun doesn't shine on a specific spot, there are areas which will seem pretty dark, even during the day. This isn't only exclusive to Scandinavia by the way, in central Europe (Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech republic, and more), you have even darker terrain features than what can be seen around here. You could walk into a forest in the middle of day, and if your conscious self allows, stop at some point and wonder where the daylight went. Orbx's pictures looked to feature sun at shallow angles (mostly), thus if you set the time to noon, with less clouds, the colors should become more pronounced.

 

You'll see, give it a week

 

Examples:

Norway

Kola peninsula

Poland

Germany

 

Notice when you zoom in, the colors are actually resembling the scenery from above, and that, incredibly well:

Edited April 27 by zerO_crash

[twistking]

56 minutes ago, zerO_crash said:

As someone who lives in Norway - Oslo (among other countries), and has travelled around the country (business), I can tell you that the scenery looks pretty spot on. Granted, we don't have photorealistic scenery yet, but we are getting closer. With that said; there are so many factors that play on on the picture reception, that it's worth its own topic entirely (photography). Everything from the type of camera/lens, through weather/angle to the light source (sun)/haze, further on to settings on the camera (ISO among others), PC monitor/TV/VR, color calibration of all the media, etc... It is ridiculous how making a picture from one place with x amount of cameras, would yield x amount of results. Point is, it depends on far too many factors. Even our human eyes will percieve images different. When one sees green, another sees blue, a third will see cyan. It's difficult to judge a picture based on that. I haven't even mentioned retouching photos/videos, which is something one has to be aware of, when checking photos/videos online. 
 

Notice the maps that we have in DCS, which are based on professional satellite imagery/topography. Take for instance the South Atlantic map. While from high up, it looks authentic and eye-waterinf realistic, the closer to the ground you get, the more you notice it is off. It's still great, no doubt, but the point is - a satellite/high altitude source, will percieve the color gamut/shading/shadows different, than when you stand on the ground.

 

In Norway, if it's cloudy, and sun doesn't shine on a specific spot, there are areas which will seem pretty dark, even during the day. This isn't only exclusive to Scandinavia by the way, in central Europe (Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech republic, and more), you have even darker terrain features than what can be seen around here. You could walk into a forest in the middle of day, and if your conscious self allows, stop at some point and wonder where the daylight went. Orbx's pictures looked tto feature sun at shallow angles (mostly), thus if you set the time to noon, with less clouds, the colors should become more pronounced.

 

You'll see, give it a week

[...]

Look, i'm a professionally trained photographer and worked many years explicitly doing color stuff (soft proofing etc.). It's an absolutely moot point, if we perceive colours differently. This is about reproduction. In reproduction objective truth should theoretically (or ideally) be possible, even for someone who is colorblind.

Be assured that i know about the pitfalls of photography though. That's why i would generally not use photos as reference in such a discussion. Some of the photos you posted are grossly oversaturated and look in a way less natural than the screenshots. Your first and fourth image on the other hand look natural while demonstrating my point: The greens have a different tint. It's a warmer (and slightly less vibrant) green. Quite the opposite to the poison green from parts of the screenshots. But let's ignore the photos. We both know how deceitful those can be.
Take the last picture i posted (the screenshot with the Work-In-Progress-Watermark). Look at it on a well calibrated monitor. Ask yourself if it looks natural to you and what features give away that it's CGI. Then open it in a graphic processing program like photoshop. Try slightly desaturating the green channel and/or pulling the hue slightly towards a warmer green. Make very small (!) modifications only.
You'll end up with a more natural looking image.

You could make the argument that DCS does not try to be 100% naturalistic, but that it goes for a hyper-realistic look or whatever. Fair enough. I'd still think that the poison greens are not intentional but some sort of oversight and/or a quirk of the DCS engine. Again, some other maps also show this. The opposite example would be the Caucasus in DCS. Ingame it looks really muted. The whole map is green, but it's not overly saturated. It's also not the greatest map (visually). That's not the point.

Edited April 27 by twistking

[Qcumber]

I find that DCS in general is oversaturated so I use open XR toolkit in VR to reduce the saturation slightly. This might be the reason others use reshade!? An integrated tool in DCS would be useful for this. 

[Hiob]

5 hours ago, zerO_crash said:

As someone who lives in Norway - Oslo (among other countries), and has travelled around the country (business), I can tell you that the scenery looks pretty spot on. Granted, we don't have photorealistic scenery yet, but we are getting closer. With that said; there are so many factors that play on on the picture reception, that it's worth its own topic entirely (photography). Everything from the type of camera/lens, through weather/angle to the light source (sun)/haze, further on to settings on the camera (ISO among others), PC monitor/TV/VR, color calibration of all the media, etc... It is ridiculous how making a picture from one place with x amount of cameras, would yield x amount of results. Point is, it depends on far too many factors. Even our human eyes will percieve images different. When one sees green, another sees blue, a third will see cyan. It's difficult to judge a picture based on that. I haven't even mentioned retouching photos/videos, which is something one has to be aware of, when checking photos/videos online. 
 

Notice the maps that we have in DCS, which are based on professional satellite imagery/topography. Take for instance the South Atlantic map. While from high up, it looks authentic and eye-waterinf realistic, the closer to the ground you get, the more you notice it is off. It's still great, no doubt, but the point is - a satellite/high altitude source, will percieve the color gamut/shading/shadows different, than when you stand on the ground.

 

In Norway, if it's cloudy, and sun doesn't shine on a specific spot, there are areas which will seem pretty dark, even during the day. This isn't only exclusive to Scandinavia by the way, in central Europe (Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech republic, and more), you have even darker terrain features than what can be seen around here. You could walk into a forest in the middle of day, and if your conscious self allows, stop at some point and wonder where the daylight went. Orbx's pictures looked tto feature sun at shallow angles (mostly), thus if you set the time to noon, with less clouds, the colors should become more pronounced.

 

You'll see, give it a week

 

Examples:

Norway

Kola peninsula

Poland

Germany

 

Notice when you zoom in, the colors are actually resembling the scenery from above, and that, incredibly well:

 

Your post is spot on! you are completely right.

But I also always thought that default DCS is a little over saturated in general. Maybe the „synthetic“ colors are just a tiny bit off.

Anyhow, picture adjustment to the personal taste is the easiest problem to solve luckily. 

[MAXsenna]

What's that poisen green you're talking about? That Disney or something?
From Fargo the TV series. Why is it that people see more shades of green than any other colour? Is this why we can't agree on this?

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[zerO_crash]

10 hours ago, twistking said:

Look, i'm a professionally trained photographer and worked many years explicitly doing color stuff (soft proofing etc.). It's an absolutely moot point, if we perceive colours differently. This is about reproduction. In reproduction objective truth should theoretically (or ideally) be possible, even for someone who is colorblind.

Be assured that i know about the pitfalls of photography though. That's why i would generally not use photos as reference in such a discussion. Some of the photos you posted are grossly oversaturated and look in a way less natural than the screenshots. Your first and fourth image on the other hand look natural while demonstrating my point: The greens have a different tint. It's a warmer (and slightly less vibrant) green. Quite the opposite to the poison green from parts of the screenshots. But let's ignore the photos. We both know how deceitful those can be.
Take the last picture i posted (the screenshot with the Work-In-Progress-Watermark). Look at it on a well calibrated monitor. Ask yourself if it looks natural to you and what features give away that it's CGI. Then open it in a graphic processing program like photoshop. Try slightly desaturating the green channel and/or pulling the hue slightly towards a warmer green. Make very small (!) modifications only.
You'll end up with a more natural looking image.

You could make the argument that DCS does not try to be 100% naturalistic, but that it goes for a hyper-realistic look or whatever. Fair enough. I'd still think that the poison greens are not intentional but some sort of oversight and/or a quirk of the DCS engine. Again, some other maps also show this. The opposite example would be the Caucasus in DCS. Ingame it looks really muted. The whole map is green, but it's not overly saturated. It's also not the greatest map (visually). That's not the point.

Even in reproduction, you have to consider who the end-user is. Most professional photographers operate off high-quality cameras and 12-bit color screens. If you adjust the commercial market, needles to say, you need to edit it for best representation on 8-bit screens (average). That 4-bit loss in the color code string, is pretty significant.

 

I notice it mostly on the lack of details in the amount of objects drawn, this projects the topography as rather slender (stretched). That said, it is still really good for a digital representation. As to the color, which again - could be photorealistic (graphics engine will evolve, I'm sure), I find it to be one of the elements which actually give the picture a more authentic look, which doesn't mean it couldn't be even better.

 

DCS does use a blue'ish hue, you can see it the most when at higher altitudes in lower atmosphere. If we are to nitpick, the haze should really be less "cold", when approaching ground. That, however, is a question of technology. The effect we are talking about, is typically tied to the graphics engine. To this date, I have never seen a digital representation where such advanced effects are considered. To simulate a varied gas composition of the atmosphere, raytrace a whole region properly from the sun (with light penetrating and reflecting off each layer in the ozone cover) and finally have a graphics engine which will allow to alter the hue altogether (projecting correct results in noon/day/evening/night scenarios) - yeah, we are simply not there technologically, I'm afraid. Consider something as basic as night. Even with the best hardware on the market ((TV/monitor/VR), we are unable to represent a perfect pitch-black night. The black is either "lit up" from the background, or, if you have a Apple XDR/Eizo (e.g.), everything is too visible (the graphics settings in DCS are insufficient to calibrate proper shading at night). You have to chose between not seeing anything at all, or seeing more than what you would IRL.

 

Remember that we have available the color filters in DCS now. You could try the "warmer" one there. But tell you what; take one of the pictures you mentioned (e.g. the last one), edit it to your liking, and upload. Let me have a look at your version of it.

 

I will add these for comparison:

 Completely stock photos. They are fairly close.

Edited April 27 by zerO_crash

[twistking]

15 hours ago, Hiob said:

[...] But I also always thought that default DCS is a little over saturated in general. Maybe the „synthetic“ colors are just a tiny bit off.

Anyhow, picture adjustment to the personal taste is the easiest problem to solve luckily. 

I think that's the wrong solution, because this is not about personal taste. If there's something off with the colours, it should be fixed through the engine or the assets. On top off that, picture adjustment could help user to finetune for their taste or to overcome limitations of their display hardware. Those "synthetic" colours are definitely NOT INTENDED by the artist who made the map. Of course, you can make the point, that the issue is not big enough to warrant more dev time, but declaring it an issue of "personal taste" is wrong, IF we can agree that the artist was going for a realistic or natural look.

15 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

What's that poisen green you're talking about? That Disney or something?
From Fargo the TV series. Why is it that people see more shades of green than any other colour? Is this why we can't agree on this?

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk
 

I just translated colournames from German to English to be honest. German Giftgrün is literally poison green. Just came up with a better descriptor: "Lime green". I also like @Hiob's "synthetic" colours.

10 hours ago, zerO_crash said:

Even in reproduction, you have to consider who the end-user is. Most professional photographers operate off high-quality cameras and 12-bit color screens. If you adjust the commercial market, needles to say, you need to edit it for best representation on 8-bit screens (average). That 4-bit loss in the color code string, is pretty significant.

I notice it mostly on the lack of details in the amount of objects drawn, this projects the topography as rather slender (stretched). That said, it is still really good for a digital representation. As to the color, which again - could be photorealistic (graphics engine will evolve, I'm sure), I find it to be one of the elements which actually give the picture a more authentic look, which doesn't mean it couldn't be even better.

DCS does use a blue'ish hue, you can see it the most when at higher altitudes in lower atmosphere. If we are to nitpick, the haze should really be less "cold", when approaching ground. That, however, is a question of technology. The effect we are talking about, is typically tied to the graphics engine. To this date, I have never seen a digital representation where such advanced effects are considered. To simulate a varied gas composition of the atmosphere, raytrace a whole region properly from the sun (with light penetrating and reflecting off each layer in the ozone cover) and finally have a graphics engine which will allow to alter the hue altogether (projecting correct results in noon/day/evening/night scenarios) - yeah, we are simply not there technologically, I'm afraid. Consider something as basic as night. Even with the best hardware on the market ((TV/monitor/VR), we are unable to represent a perfect pitch-black night. The black is either "lit up" from the background, or, if you have a Apple XDR/Eizo (e.g.), everything is too visible (the graphics settings in DCS are insufficient to calibrate proper shading at night). You have to chose between not seeing anything at all, or seeing more than what you would IRL.

Remember that we have available the color filters in DCS now. You could try the "warmer" one there. But tell you what; take one of the pictures you mentioned (e.g. the last one), edit it to your liking, and upload. Let me have a look at your version of it.

I will add these for comparison:

[...]
 Completely stock photos. They are fairly close.

Again, i know how professional photography works. I feel you're just trying to derail this with discussion-bait, because what you say about 12bit to 8bit conversion is wrong (in the context of what this discussion is about) but also not wrong enough, that i would want to argue against it. It's a moot point anyway.

I could see that the combination of DCS having saturated colours by default in combination with the blue tint from the atmospheric modelling could result in the weird colour shift, that manifests in the "lime" greens. However you would not need complex raytracing to correct for that. You could simply do a PP colour effects to adjust the green channel slightly, or you could apply some effect to the ground textures depending on altitude. The simplest solution would just to slightly desaturate the whole image, but that would change the whole look, pushing it more towards naturalism. I'd be ok with that, but it would not solve the real issues. Greens would technically still be off, only less noticeably now.

Another aspect of the "problem" is the fact that the way DCS maps are built, grasslands are often quite monochromatic and even, which makes potential colour shifts more visible. Basically DCS grasslands often look like perfectly groomed English lawn. That gives the world a bit of a model railway look, which can be nice, but is even more jarring when the hue is off.

I agree that your examples match the screenshot relatively close, but my issue is with screenshots from altitude. Yes, i included that ground screenshot in my initial post, because i wanted to make my point based on the screenshots you provided. I think the screenshots from the ground look decent (great even, if not focusing on the colours).

Maybe i'm sounding more harsh in my critique than i intend, because English is not my native language. I would honestly think that a lot of players would not even notice if the issue was corrected, NOT because "all colour is subjective", but simply because an untrained eye is less likely to catch slight differences in hue (There are standardized test for this by the way).
Not everyone noticing it, does not mean there's not an issue.

Edited April 27 by twistking

[Hiob]

@twistking by "synthetic" I only meant "computer generated" though. It wasn't meant as judgement. There are so many variables in this chain. I just wanted to point out, that there are possibilities to adjust for any shortcomings, regardless of where in the color reproduction chain (which is quite a long chain....) there maybe a flaw.

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, twistking said:

I just translated colournames from German to English to be honest. German Giftgrün is literally poison green. Just came up with a better descriptor: "Lime green". I also like @Hiob's "synthetic" colours.

Aha! "Giftgrønn" in Norwegian. Gotta come from German.

[zerO_crash]

3 hours ago, twistking said:

Again, i know how professional photography works. I feel you're just trying to derail this with discussion-bait, because what you say about 12bit to 8bit conversion is wrong (in the context of what this discussion is about) but also not wrong enough, that i would want to argue against it. It's a moot point anyway.

I could see that the combination of DCS having saturated colours by default in combination with the blue hint from the atmospheric modelling could result in the weird colour shift, that manifests in the "lime" greens. However you would not need complex raytracing to correct for that. You could simply do a PP colour effects to adjust the green channel slightly, or you could apply some effect to the ground textures depending on altitude. The simplest solution would just to slightly desaturate the whole image, but that would change the whole look, pushing it more towards naturalism. I'd be ok with that, but it would not solve the real issues. Greens would technically still be off, only less noticeably now.

Another aspect of the "problem" is the fact that the way DCS maps are built, grasslands are often quite monochromatic and even, which makes potential colour shifts more visible. Basically DCS grasslands often look like perfectly groomed English lawn. That gives the world a bit of a model railway look, which can be nice, but is even more jarring when the hue is off.

I agree that your examples match the screenshot relatively close, but my issue is with screenshots from altitude. Yes, i included that ground screenshot in my initial post, because i wanted to make my point based on the screenshots you provided. I think the screenshots from the ground look decent (great even, if not focusing on the colours).

Maybe i'm sounding more harsh in my critique than i intend, because English is not my native language. I would honestly think that a lot of players would not even notice if the issue was corrected, NOT because "all colour is subjective", but simply because an untrained eye is less likely to catch slight differences in hue (There are standardized test for this by the way).
Not everyone noticing it, does not mean there's not an issue.

Well, I know it from the business-end. For advertisements, it definitely is true. Regardless, no, I'm not attempting to derail. The point being, it's an ecosystem. You change one detail, you affect many others. Since you agree that the problem isn't as pronounced down low (other than standardized formats for grassland/forest/cities/etc... - which might have a touch of cartooney), I'm glad we got that sorted. 

 

On to high-altitude. Well, precisely because of standardized formats down low (granted, they are exclusive to the regions, mostly), you see it even more exposed up high. Here is a batch of images Orbx posted approx. six months ago (not all are high altitude):

Are you sure that it isn't just a very specific light-setting/area on the latest pictures, which pronounces the vivid feel? The images above are much better as a show-off all around.

 

Again, if that still worries you, show me those professional skills and add a filter or two, move a couple of sliders, and pump out a new version of the latest picture/s. Let me see how you would approximate the current to realism/naturalism.

 

Don't worry, according to Russian standards, you are a mild cat! Feel like at home, German

Edited April 27 by zerO_crash

[twistking]

3 hours ago, zerO_crash said:

Are you sure that it isn't just a very specific light-setting/area on the latest pictures, which pronounces the vivid feel? The images above are much better as a show-off all around.

 

Again, if that still worries you, show me those professional skills and add a filter or two, move a couple of sliders, and pump out a new version of the latest picture/s. Let me see how you would approximate the current to realism/naturalism.

Don't worry, according to Russian standards, you are a mild cat! Feel like at home, German

I'm not exactly sure what it is, but i sure know, that i don't like it. It's probably a combination of a few things. I remembered that i also saw those "lime" greens in MSFS, that got me thinking that it may have to do with satellite imagery. I scrolled through Kola on google maps and noticed that in certain areas the satellite imagery also showed those jarring hues. This were often areas were the exposure was higher. Often there was also a bit of blooming from reflective surfaces in those areas. Areas with lower exposure also had more muted colours. Hard to tell what's going on there.
It might be a combination of the following:
- DCS in general has an highly saturated look to it, which is a question of preference and taste, but not objectively bad. It does however highlight issues with hue.
- DCS terrain often has uniform green areas, because of engine limitations and/or the way the terrain is crafted ("model-railway-effect" / fields looking like English lawn)
- Simplistic atmospheric modelling in DCS gives a blue hue to everything, making greens appear more like lime, sometimes even cyan.
- Satellite imagery often shows grass in a similar way. Maybe those satellite images were used for terrain without CC (which would be a very tedious process if done by hand)

I did not want to do image correction, because i was too lazy, but since being called a mild cat feels like kind of a compliment to me, i did a quick and dirty CC. All i've done was using the archaic hue/saturation tool in Photoshop. Very basic global adjustments only, not localized edits. It took me a few seconds per image. The most work by far was putting my stupid avatar in the corner. If i feel like it, i'll add some more examples, but honestly the images you posted last didn't look too bad to begin with... some color i'm not too thrilled about, but with all the detail in the image, one would really have to focus on those to feel upset about them.

Oh... and if someone from OrbX is reading this: All in all the screenshots look very good. I'm excited for the map and wouldn't have made the post, if i hadn't seen that issue crop up with other maps as well. I think it is something you should absolutely investigate, but nothing to despair about! If it's the atmospheric modeling, maybe talk to ED, if it's the satellite imagery, maybe do another CC pass on the source.

Ps: It really bothers me, that some of the promo pictures don't have the correct DCS typography.

Edited April 27 by twistking

[twistking]

I admit, we're getting into territories of pedantry now.

[zerO_crash]

Absolutely, the difference is visible. The points you mention are definitely relevant, and apparent to varying degrees. With the quick edits you do achieve a reduction in the blue'ish global "glow" of the map. One could say that the glow off (from) the surface, is possibly something that represents the terrain wrong. With toning that down, you achieve a more credible surface look (material). The lime-green you mention, while small in change, does become darker, giving it a more authentic look.

 

Generally, the laguna-feel of the recent images, makes it feel like an extension to Mariana Islands. While it isn't far off IRL, it's a very special place to pick for a show, in order to represent a region which, actually, is mostly diametrically opposing in the type of vegetation displayed. Looking past the captial "Work i progress", I personally noticed that the topography in that first edit, was somewhat funny. Again, I attribute it to the completeness of the map, as other maps show proper topography.

 

Tell you what, let's see how the map ultimately releases. I imagine that the hue will still be somewhat overexposed, along with some colors - it is graphics engine relevant afterall. If so, we can open a improvement thread within DCS 2.9, so as to have ED look at the lightning/colors in particular. Colors would be a bigger job, as not all maps are made by ED, but I imagine that if they decided on improvement, then 3rd parties would be informed to make relevant adjustments to their maps.

 

No worries brother, you will be popular with ladies. Speaking from experience. #Pedant4life

 

Reposting twistking's images for those who don't have 20/10 and naturally perfect color perception Changes most expressed at the marks:

You can see the haze across has a different shade, which then changes the saturation/exposure of the ground overall:

Edited April 30 by zerO_crash

[Czar66]

DCS needs options for contrast and saturation values from 0 to above 100 for everyone.

I own a VA and IPS monitors and some tremendous amount of time to calibrate them to look like each other as close as possible, but VA and IPS shows values very differently and they will never look the same.

Imagine how many different setups there are out there with many different monitor calibrations, and this outside color tweaks like the ones found on nVidia control panel and monitor built in 'game mode' options such as found on Samsung LCDs monitors.

Also, above screens were taken from product marketing. Is a probability they are tweaked for be highlighted on a webpage regardless of how DCS looks natively.

Is an argument nobody can win. Everyone perceives colors differently, let alone the atmosphere they want DCS to output.

RAW photography from a camera looks a lot different in color than the real subject. Some want DCS to look like raw photography, some want DCS to look exactly like real life, some want DCS to look like a holywood movie.


DCS needs the contrast and saturation sliders.

[Qcumber]

14 minutes ago, Czar66 said:

DCS needs options for contrast and saturation values from 0 to above 100 for everyone.

I own a VA and IPS monitors and some tremendous amount of time to calibrate them to look like each other as close as possible, but VA and IPS shows values very differently and they will never look the same.

Imagine how many different setups there are out there with many different monitor calibrations, and this outside color tweaks like the ones found on nVidia control panel and monitor built in 'game mode' options such as found on Samsung LCDs monitors.

Also, above screens were taken from product marketing. Is a probability they are tweaked for be highlighted on a webpage regardless of how DCS looks natively.

Is an argument nobody can win. Everyone perceives colors differently, let alone the atmosphere they want DCS to output.

RAW photography from a camera looks a lot different in color than the real subject. Some want DCS to look like raw photography, some want DCS to look exactly like real life, some want DCS to look like a holywood movie.


DCS needs the contrast and saturation sliders.

I agree. I would go a step further and include other tweaks such as white and black points. 

[REDEYE_CVW-66]

Very interesting discussion. I have also been obsessed with color grading in maps, but lack the knowledge or background to critique it as constructively. I was always mind boggled how especially Normandy (Even V.2) looked so wildly un-natural and un-european in it's tones that it needed mods to fix it. I indeed see the point here as well and hopefully it is something that will be tuned out in later Orbx updates.

 

Regarding the leaked vid: I kind of suspect that it was a 'fan trailer' leak made by a tester. The standards were WAY below DCS marketing standards, and the technical aspects of it were sub-par. Multiple super close ups of aircraft and only one shot highlighting the scenery, all done in low light, mostly overcast weather.. Hopefully, and official trailer will come in the quality we have come to expect to give the map a proper showcase.

[Burning Bridges]

I think the effect I am fighting is that many sims look more like a scale model of Earth, with cubes draped on top and not like real things.

Problems in color perceptiuon are a part of it, as are straight lines, repetitive patterns and disjointed methods to represent terrain, buildings, trees and water.

The big problem is that there is a dropoff point where I begin to pay attention to the inaccuracy and it kills immersion. So anything that makes the colors on the whole appear more natural will helps. DCS seems to work better with brown, unpopulated maps, and green + buildings looks strange, so I am also a bit anxious as to how this will turn out. Fingers crossed.

P.S. Can we edit the new color filters ourselves?

[twistking]

On 4/28/2024 at 1:12 AM, zerO_crash said:

Absolutely, the difference is visible. The points you mention are definitely relevant, and apparent to varying degrees. With the quick edits you do achieve a reduction in the blue'ish global "glow" of the map. One could say that the glow off (from) the surface, is possibly something that represents the terrain wrong. With toning that down, you achieve a more credible surface look (material). The lime-green you mention, while small in change, does become darker, giving it a more authentic look.

Generally, the laguna-feel of the recent images, makes it feel like an extension to Mariana Islands. While it isn't far off IRL, it's a very special place to pick for a show, in order to represent a region which, actually, is mostly diametrically opposing in the type of vegetation displayed. Looking past the captial "Work i progress", I personally noticed that the topography in that first edit, was somewhat funny. Again, I attribute it to the completeness of the map, as other maps show proper topography.

Tell you what, let's see how the map ultimately releases. I imagine that the hue will still be somewhat overexposed, along with some colors - it is graphics engine relevant afterall. If so, we can open a improvement thread within DCS 2.9, so as to have ED look at the lightning/colors in particular. Colors would be a bigger job, as not all maps are made by ED, but I imagine that if they decided on improvement, then 3rd parties would be informed to make relevant adjustments to their maps.

No worries brother, you will be popular with ladies. Speaking from experience. #Pedant4life [...]

Took a week off from the forum and now that i'm back, the map has been released. Hooray.
Skipped through a few videos on youtube and didn't notice those lime greens. I haven't yet bought it (want to wait until it's further developed and on sale maybe) but will keep having an eye on preview to check for colours. The greens are still very saturated of course, but this is just how DCS does things.

Again - to those who commented on user control for custom CC: This is not about that! I would appreciate such a feature, but what i was reporting here, is potentially an artistic error or a systemic technical problem of the renderer (or both). It's not as subjective as you make it to be.
If you want to disagree with me on the severity of the issue, this is fine. Maybe it's a non-issue and the problem is already fixed, maybe the screenshots were just showing worst-case scenarios (the video i saw, looked better IMHO). User-customizable CC does not help when there's a fundamental colour issue with the assets or renderer, because you would need to dial in different CC for every map and lighting conditions i assume.

Thinking about the problem a bit more, i remembered that i also noticed similar issues with a lot of ARMA user-made maps. I now think that badly matched satellite imagery is at least a major factor here. This would also explain why it's less visible at low altitude, where the images is more defined by the procedural textures. Notice that the low altitude picture from my side-by-side examples did change only minimally with the colour correction. This is talking only colour (hue). The lower altitude images still don't look perfectly natural, but this is probably the combination of relative high saturation (an artistic decision by ED) and the way that grass and fields often look in DCS (what i described earlier as model-railway-effect, which might be a result of the usual workflow and/or technical limitations in ED's SDK).

Edited May 4 by twistking

[zerO_crash]

1 hour ago, twistking said:

Took a week off from the forum and now that i'm back, the map has been released. Hooray.
Skipped through a few videos on youtube and didn't notice those lime greens. I haven't yet bought it (want to wait until it's further developed and on sale maybe) but will keep having an eye on preview to check for colours. The greens are still very saturated of course, but this is just how DCS does things.

Again - to those who commented on user control for custom CC: This is not about that! I would appreciate such a feature, but what i was reporting here, is potentially an artistic error or a systemic technical problem of the renderer (or both). It's not as subjective as you make it to be.
If you want to disagree with me on the severity of the issue, this is fine. Maybe it's a non-issue and the problem is already fixed, maybe the screenshots were just showing worst-case scenarios (the video i saw, looked better IMHO). User-customizable CC does not help when there's a fundamental colour issue with the assets or renderer, because you would need to dial in different CC for every map and lighting conditions i assume.

Thinking about the problem a bit more, i remembered that i also noticed similar issues with a lot of ARMA user-made maps. I now think that badly matched satellite imagery is at least a major factor here. This would also explain why it's less visible at low altitude, where the images is more defined by the procedural textures. Notice that the low altitude picture from my side-by-side examples did change only minimally with the colour correction. This is talking only colour (hue). The lower altitude images still don't look perfectly natural, but this is probably the combination of relative high saturation (an artistic decision by ED) and the way that grass and fields often look in DCS (what i described earlier as model-railway-effect, which might be a result of the usual workflow and/or technical limitations in ED's SDK).

 

I wrote my main impression after 6 hours of running the map here:

 

With regards to our topic here; I don't see any problem with the hue/haze or colors in person. Videos, depending on how someone has their DCS configured, can change the output of the image. Sometimes, in attempt to edit the picture as more vivid and fresh, one can overdo it. Having tried it with my VR (G2), that's what I believe Orbx might have done with the latest images. One can adjust a fair bit of the abovementioned with gamma, btw. Though there are limits so as to balance the image for all light conditions (day/night). In any case, the colors appear as very good to me. While they are more on the "ideal green" side, what I'm seeing through the VR is definitely something you see often during summer in Scandinavia. The colors do not come as overdone, and the hue isn't as pronounced as in the images. Beyond that, while the map is a very early access release, with much to be fixed/added, I can not recommend this map enough. As I wrote in the other thread, it is absolutely fantastic. The whole theatre is amazing, the sheer size is giving the feeling that you can get lost, the nature is varied, so are the cities, architecture, etc... It makes you want to explore end on end. Again, I cannot recommend it enough!

[twistking]

27 minutes ago, zerO_crash said:

I wrote my main impression after 6 hours of running the map here:

 

With regards to our topic here; I don't see any problem with the hue/haze or colors in person. Videos, depending on how someone has their DCS configured, can change the output of the image. Sometimes, in attempt to edit the picture as more vivid and fresh, one can overdo it. Having tried it with my VR (G2), that's what I believe Orbx might have done with the latest images. One can adjust a fair bit of the abovementioned with gamma, btw. Though there are limits so as to balance the image for all light conditions (day/night). In any case, the colors appear as very good to me. While they are more on the "ideal green" side, what I'm seeing through the VR is definitely something you see often during summer in Scandinavia. The colors do not come as overdone, and the hue isn't as pronounced as in the images. Beyond that, while the map is a very early access release, with much to be fixed/added, I can not recommend this map enough. As I wrote in the other thread, it is absolutely fantastic. The whole theatre is amazing, the sheer size is giving the feeling that you can get lost, the nature is varied, so are the cities, architecture, etc... It makes you want to explore end on end. Again, I cannot recommend it enough!

Noted. I'll still wait though. I don't like EA and this one seems to to be particularly early. I try to avoid buying for a product's potential.

I found another example that illustrates this discussion by the way. This time it's a negative example (so it does NOT show the issue. It's positively good i guess).
Its from today's newsletter. I think it looks very natural. Not a hint of "poison" lime green. But not only the hue is natural, also there is quite a lot of variety in the shades of the greens. A lot of earth tones as well. The grass areas don't have the appearance of perfectly groomed lawn. Nice!
Saturation and contrast are quite high, but - again - this is just the DCS default. I can live with it.

[zerO_crash]

That's basically what I see in VR, with depth perception. It does take breath away. Considering how similar this is to the videos you can otherwise find online of pilots flying. Yeah, one would almost have thought that Orbx read this thread. They have set a new bar, for sure!

 

Colors are particularly important for this map, as the sheer amount of forest/green is staggering. It will likely be the map which has the most forest/green in DCS (except earth). It really comes from low levels of population distributed over large terrain.

 

I'm glad we didn't have to raise this issue further with Orbx. I'll probably do a separate request for 2.9 in general, to correct the hue on the other maps as well.

Edited May 4 by zerO_crash

[YoYo]

Good colours of trees:

Edited May 6 by YoYo