katulobotomia

USA light pollution map Everywhere where it isn't the darkest shade of black, is light polluted. Yellow and green is where it is at least twice brighter than natural light at night. Most of the entire area of USA is light polluted as well as noise polluted. There remains only few places in the entire country where there isn't any light pollution. Did you know? Even NVG's can become useless and blind on the darkest nights. That is how dark it can get in real life. On those ungodly dark nights, you use infrared with infrared lights or the expensive thermal vision. TL;DR: It gets even darker than in DayZ. I had the fortunate (or the unfortunate, depending on how I want to remember that time) chance of camping in the army in the middle of nowhere for three weeks. Nights got so dark you couldn't see the ground you were standing on nor where the sky started and ended. The human eye is completely blind on moonless, cloud covered nights. If there is light that you see in the night and the moon isn't up, that is light pollution. A full moon in none light polluted areas is 76 times less bright than a full lit candle. So in other words: DayZ nights are incredibly bright compared to the real thing...

Man I miss those stars :( I can barely even see the planets at night where I live, let alone the stars. It is such an overwhelming experience when all you've seen is maybe twenty to thirty stars in the sky at night, to suddenly being able to see thousands upon thousands of stars filling up every inch of the sky combined with the galaxy. I was a bit disappointed that I seemed to be the only one enjoying the view at the time, no one really cared for some specks of light on the sky. >:(

Can't or can run through a city? ;) Yea zombies are extremely easy to handle at night. This is why I love looting towns at night. It is so much more rewarding sneaking into the night than running in broad daylight. Plus the players wearing night vision can be blinded with flares or chemlights if you are lucky.

Because you have human eyes which don't have very good night vision...even if you still see the same pitch black it can be twice as dark than it was when you first saw just pitch black. I'm not sure why I need to explain this though... In fact, it can be so dark that even wearing night vision goggles can't help you see....yet you still see the same black picture when you take them off.

Yes! I could see the galaxy we are in perfectly on those nights that didn't have clouds. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen since or before that. I never believed the galaxy was so visible to the naked human eye. I could even see passing satellites in the sky flickering in reflected sunlight. I literally spent hours staring right up in the sky admiring our galaxy, all the stars and occasional meteoroids that burned up in the atmosphere. The galaxy looks like a fine mist with millions of stars dotted around it, with groups of stars somewhere and it reaches the other end of the sky to the other. You would never imagine how amazing the night sky is with absolutely zero pollution and a perfectly clear sky. It is phenomenal. I'm just glad I didn't get caught staring up in the sky instead of guarding the fox holes :)

Exactly. The first time I saw my night vision goggles show only static at night instead of illuminating the night, I couldn't believe it. It was so dark we had to start using infrared lights and thermal to navigate around. We were told that even the nocturnal predators don't usually roam around much in those dark times. :S

Video showcasing the difference: http://youtu.be/TwWA65BCLGQ Guns in vanilla DayZ have literally no echo and no reverb. This makes them feel a bit underpowered and one dimensional. Dynamic sound mod used: @HARCP also known as DSS (Dynamic Sound System) puts real environmental effects on rifle shots and has virtually no impact on your FPS. @JSRS mod used in video for the better rifle sounds. Echoes, reverb and environmental effects provided by @HARCP. I would pay money to see this mod (or even JSRS) implemented in DayZ<3

I don't know if anything has changed, but the fullmoon nights are extremely bright now. I loved the realistic dark nights in DayZ before 1.7.5. Played last night on a night server and wanted to use the cover of the night for my advantage, but the entire world was lit almost like it was broad daylight. The dark nights where you need a light source to move around were really atmospheric and reminded me of wilderness in the LapLand where I grew up in, nights that get so dark you are practically completely blind without a torch and no cities to light-pollute the sky. The fullmoon light intensity at most is 0.27 lux, while a candlelight is around 10-20 lux. A full bright moon should illuminate the environment 74 times LESS than a candle would illuminate a room, currently the full moon at night is like a second sun. I miss realistic dark nights.

Make NVG's and thermal to consume battery, and batteries rare.

have tried this mod out and the game feels like a completely new experience. Actual echoes from explosions and gunshots. They feel loud now.

I keep hearing about "bandit heartbeat". What is it, how does it work and where can I read about all the current features in DayZ and what is planned, patched and/or on the way?

...and for the fact that road flares have a realistic lighting radius that doesn't fade out almost instantly at a certain distance like in every other game in existence. When you light a fire, the light doesn't just illuminate, it travels.

I have been in a lot of situations where I've been tracking someone for quite some time and not taken the shot because I didn't need anything to survive and they weren't a threat. I use extreme stealth measures and I've not been seen in 4 days even though I've been around in a few towns and in between a firefight among two other people. I am proof that there is some form of consideration and empathy in the game, but I agree that the threshold for it to make anyone spare a life is extremely high. There should be more incentive not to pull the trigger, because you aren't actually ending anyone.

Most weapons that I've fired and used really shined in their usability and handling rather than power and awesomeness. It is really hard to simulate how a gun feels on your hands, how it recoils (the force applied to you not just the aim displacement), how the parts move and feel, the shape it has, the sights and the overall balance etc...etc...etc. It is really hard to describe, but when I was using the RK-62 I found it to be infinitely superior to the more modern RK-95 counterpart that was lighter, had a fold-able stock, railings, a "better" barrel and interior design. Sure it was older and heavier, but the way it felt and handled was amazing despite the bulkier design. Dismantling that old sucker was almost like sex too, the parts moved so gracefully and oil was very easy to clean off before using the gun. I got to the top three best marksmen in my country with that beauty. I guess I'm just saying that even if some gun is considered "better" in real life, in a game the same weapon might very well perform worse just because there is only so little that you can simulate with a keyboard and a mouse.