It's Impossible to See at Night! - Other threads will be locked/deleted!

[fluttersnipe 0]

WOW

All the "lol don't play" and "to hardcore for you lol" comments make the ARMA community look kind of pathetic...

I just don't play the game at night.

[lewisuk 38]

(ive played for 35hrs in this mod now. Ive YET TO SEE A CAR!!! Not a single one. (ive seen a chopper and heard car honking though.) but i sure as hell dont want them to become more common cuz then they wont be special when i find it.

I have played for 110 hours now and i have a team with 3 cars and a truck!

[lunaraitic 0]

Gamma up with hdr very high and brightness jacked up works fine for me i use night time servers to find good loot.

[Kellas (DayZ) 0]

I wont play on a night server now. It's ridiculous. I've lived in some pretty remote places, and it does NOT get that dark. Like that little buttfuck town in the middle of nevada, barely big enough to have its own gas station. No street lights, barely any houses, and zilch light pollution at night. Sure, it got dark. But there was plenty of starlight to see by, and if the moon was out then it was practically daylight.

I've also lived out in the middle of the Smoky Mountains, with some of the thickest forest still left in this country. It's pretty dark, in the woods. But once again, starlight and moonlight filter in through holes and clearings. The only time it's too dark to literally be unable to see your hand in front of your face is if it's completely overcast, raining, or you've wandered into a cave.

Fact is, it's actually harder to see at night when there IS more light pollution. Your eyes adjust to the brightest lights and have difficulty making out anything in the darkness. Now, I know I have better lowlight vision than pretty much anyone I know, but these DayZ nights can't possibly be what the rest of you see when you walk outside at night. Your ancestors would surely have been eaten by something they couldn't see long ago, and thus you would not be here.

Seems to me, the pitch black nights in DayZ are not here to be realistic. They're here to force people to use flashlights, flares, and glowsticks, which is completely counter-intuitive in a game that rewards stealth and punishes Public Displays of Existence. Staying alive in DayZ is an in depth study in How Not To Be Seen. Forcing you to broadcast your location if you even want to see whether or not you still indeed have feet, or hands, or a body at all, is a dick move.

Real moonless nightime means I can't make out small details, colors, or similar shade gradients. I CAN see object profiles, large details, and contrasting shade gradients.

[MrBloodworth 1]

Not many people play on server that are night time.

[superior_bob@hotmail.com 0]

I'm all for more realism in Day Z but I feel like the new "dark night" overdoes it quite a bit. Nighttime is pretty much unplayable at the moment without NVG's. I'm not sure why I should bother playing a game when I am literally unable to see even an inch in front of me.

My usual timeframe for playing is 10:00pm - 1am local time. Since the "fix" I just don't play on local servers anymore; it's too dark. Instead I'll join a foreign server where it's actually daytime.

[daish 11]

think about any new player who logs into a server at night and cant see a thing and has no gun

DayZ will lose its growth and die off thats not good for anybody

---

Gamma up with hdr very high and brightness jacked up works fine for me i use night time servers to find good loot.

you dont have the new patch then watch the videos

[gizm0 96]

What killas has stated :D.

I don't know what is causing the extreme darkness, but i'm guessing something with either dayz or how overcast effects light and visibility. I just tested in editor and overcast and clear skies are perfectly playable at night, however raining and thunderstorm, is like playing dayz currently.

[DigitalPsycho 1]

its to dark, sometimes i come on servers with mone up and u can see perfectlie but sometimes it is so dark i could walk 1 hour aginst a building and did not see it.

[CosmicOsmo 1]

It's not too dark, it makes sense that you need a light source to be able to see stuff.

The issue I have is that the new blacks-crushing changes to tone mapping have resulted in really glitchy behavior at low light levels. For example, holding a chemlight while standing next to a wall and turning back and forth will cause the wall to suddenly pop back and forth between being well lit with a soft blue glow and being totally pitch black.

Change tone mapping back to how it was, then lock down the client brightness/gamma settings imo. It seems the newest beta patches support this.

[asharon 0]

I gear up on night time servers' date=' can practically tap dance through elektro gear up and head up to stary this patch rocks, anything that keeps out kids and action gamers gets a thumbs up.

An example of this is EvE online has a learning curve so hard the average player age is 27. Brilliant.

[/quote']

Come on show me a video of you clearing cherno with your screen turned off I am curious... lol

[deepfried 95]

It is too dark rly, I mean for the most part it is darker than it actually gets in real life. I was walking though some woods in the dark only a couple of weekends back (irl), ok it was damn dark, but once my eyes adjusted i could just about see where the path was. In DayZ when its fully dark its pitch black, like literally having your monitor turned off.

I have no problem with realistic night being in the game, but its just silly dark at the moment.

[dealman 3]

There are a lot of issues with DayZ(And ArmA 2 in general), of course. Such as vehicles getting stuck on tin cans, and blowing up because you popped a fucking tire. But come on.

The biggest gamebreaking thing in DayZ is the nighttime. It's not realistic at all, in 1.7.0 it was annoying - but somewhat doable. In 1.7.1 it's just impossible, it's not even the slightest realistic.

Try to go into the middle of the forest, you won't see for shit but your eyes will adjust. It will take a long time, but you'll be able to see a little.

Now you can't see anything, only the sky and even then, barely the sky. The Flashlight is a pain in the ass to use, it takes up way too much room, it uses the sidearm slot so you'll have a hard time defending yourself.

All you can do now is to haul ass through buildings and then try to lose their aggro through glitchy Line of Sight. This isn't fun, only annoying.

It was way more fun to start out with a Makarov and sneak your way through a city, and if you got zombies on your ass then you could actually try to kill them while still risking to get more zombies on your ass.

What's bugging me is that sprinting in daytime attracts more zombies than some fucking gunfire, I mean come on Rocket, this isn't realistic, it doesn't make sense and it's not fun. It sucks, it's an utter piece of shit system.

Please, revert back to 1.7.0 and work further on 1.7.1 before releasing it, please!

Edit:

Though I'm glad to see that the Zombies are more open about their sexuality.

Zombies having fun...

And more fun...

[racecar 0]

I was not on the side of night being too dark before the latest beta patches (and it is the beta patches that are responsible for the gamma changes, not Day Z) but with the new changes my gamma is being forced to that of the server. This results in everything but the sky being pitch black. It looks like a cardboard cutout is floating in front of me, resulting in a complete lack of a sense of depth.

Unless there is a light source wrecking your night vision, you should be able to at least make out basic outlines of objects that are a few feet in front of you.

[adanteh 2]

When looking at authenticity.. Well, it just doesn't get that dark anywhere. There's no light pollution blocking out the moon, so that can't be it. It just seems that even if there's one tiny cloud (Not even in front of the moon) all light is just gone.

Besides that.... Flashlights work freaking terrible. LIGHT REFLECTS!I guess this is fucking hard performance-wise and Arma doesn't render light like this, but if you can't get flashlights to work normally.. then don't make the night that dark either. It's just hella annoying that I need to throw down chemlights to actually light up a room.. while I'm carrying a freaking flashlight! But yeah.. alpha.. I know, I know. Flashlights would just be a lot more helpful if the light would actually reflect. If I point my flashlight at a grey wall (Like in fire station), shouldn't it reflect enough light for me to at least have some vision in the entire room? Try using it in the tower of fire station.. it's even worse then. If you're looking at a wall you only get that tiny portion of the wall lighted up.. and the rest is just completely black...

[dealman 3]

Not to mention the light is rendered through walls, so the flashlight always gives away your location even if the other player is like 200m away.

A player that is far away and using a flashlight will light up the entire building for other players when it's pitch-black.

I read that the .2 hotfix will have some fixed tone-mapping to adjust the darkness ingame, so I'm kind of interested to see that.

But still, I'm so god damned sick of dying all the fucking time because I can't see anything but a few clouds and I have no ways at all to defend myself against zombies or other players.

[Adonis 0]

This is a zombie SURVIVAL simulation, if that happend IRL power would be out nation wide, and it would be pitch black. Don't change a thing, bitches can use flashlights if dey scared. If you scared motherfuka go to chuch.

[mariush 50]

This is a zombie SURVIVAL simulation' date=' if that happend IRL power would be out nation wide, and it would be pitch black. Don't change a thing, bitches can use flashlights if dey scared. If you scared motherfuka go to chuch.

[/quote']

No offense, but it sounds like you never got out of a big city.

Especially since it's a zombie infestation and there's no longer power stations working and electricity, that means there's no longer any light pollution so your eyes will adapt very fast to the light the stars give you. Not to mention that big rock up there called the MOON or shooting stars leaving a streak of light which can temporarily lighten up the ground a bit.

I could point you for example to this Youtube video, jump at about 2:25 and you can see photos made without any lightning in the desert:

This video also shows quite a bit of footage in complete darkness:

Point is, nights are not STUPID DARK anywhere, they're just... dark. A player should be able at a minimum to see the horizon and notice stuff like bushes or when it moves from grass to roads.

Maybe something more realistic is what you can experience in STALKER SOC with the STALKER complete mod

[InsXicht 2]

This is a zombie SURVIVAL simulation' date=' if that happend IRL power would be out nation wide, and it would be pitch black. Don't change a thing, bitches can use flashlights if dey scared. If you scared motherfuka go to chuch.

[/quote']

do you realy think all the light come frome the light bulbs?! did you ever seen the moon or the stars?! were you even beed out for camping?!

irl it is never pitch black if you are outside and you see some stars or the moon!

[SneakyZombie 2]

To make it realistic, the night should look like a photo printed in low-res grainy grey tone. Not enough to see heaps of detail like you would in the day but enough to slowly navigate around forest and city. Lets be honest. The total pitch black can be a huge turn off for alot of new players. Here in Australia, there are few servers set with different timezone. You don't have to log in to see which server is running day or night environment. All you have to do is see the number of players playing as the night time server is guaranteed to have less players.

[ActionManZlt 160]

N.B. For all those who haven't realised yet, the Arma moon follows a realistic cycle. When I played the other day, it was a new moon, meaning it's very dark.

On nights where it's a full moon, then you *can* see at night, just like you should be able to by moonlight.

[daish 11]

N.B. For all those who haven't realised yet' date=' the Arma moon follows a realistic cycle. When I played the other day, it was a new moon, meaning it's very dark.

On nights where it's a full moon, then you *can* see at night, just like you should be able to by moonlight.

[/quote']

for you who has no idea what hes talking about

the new patch caused this it has nothing to do with the moon or its cycles

[Slamz 6]

1) Sort by most populated server

2) Retry til you get in

3) Never play at night again

or

1) Open up your video driver's control panel

2) Set gamma up in there. Goes MUCH higher than in-game gamma (still works with the latest beta patch)

Really, though, they need to address a few things like:

* Flares and glowsticks in your hand blind you more than they help you see anything.

* Torches (flashlights) cast a magical beam of non-reflective light that only illuminates a tiny cone in front of you, totally unlike how real flashlights work. I think they could simulate a real flashlight better if it cast 3 light sources: bright, narrow cone; dimmer, wide area cone; much dimmer circle around you.

That would look more like what I see when I turn on a flashlight in the real world.

[wand3rer 0]

If its totally ARMA 2 based, isn't it using real-time star and moon positions? So we have a compounded issue with near New Moon dark sky right now, huh?? Mmm just a thought. New Moon night is very dark. I kinda actually know the science of it fellas, so um, stop saying you should be able to see with starlight, its just not like that, unless you're a nacturnal creature ;) .

Pitch black is actually correct for certain moon cycles, especially New Moon. People are deluded if they think 'starlight' adds much to help a human eye adjust in shadows (Pro Cinematographer and Amateur Astronomer here). Those videos earlier in the thread of the 'Photographers of the Night' is all long-exposure imagery, even the time-lapse. Sorry but that's not even close to human eye at night. If someone says they see the milky way like that I would love to meet them... you'd be a wonder worth studying. :p

What I think though is that the Devs need to accept the fudge factor not for "fun reasons" but just because the engine can't do man-made light very well at all. I like that on dark nights we need flares and chem-lights, but they aren't doing what they do IRL as there is no realistic bounce-light conditions most notably in exteriors/terrain. The engine lighting is already fudging things pretty severely, for frames or tech limits or whatever reason. So faking something to at least be able to make out the edges of a house against the treeline is surely warranted? We do it in Movies... This is a game with films as inspiration as well as delusions of realism, right. Sounds like the Film Industry ;)

[stryker211 10]

My friend and I loaded into a server, pitch black. We didn’t have any flares, chem-lights, flashlights.

Luckily I was in the forest so I gathered wood and made a camp fire. We made a trail of campfires to a nearby town and fought off zombies we ran into while we pierced the darkness to light another fire.

40 minutes of running back to get more wood and maintaining our trail we managed to make our way to the supermarket and find some flares.

Without a doubt the most difficult thing I have had to deal with in game lol. I’m just glad that nobody happened to see our highway of campfires and come end our adventure.

It was a fun experience, one I wish to never have to repeat.