Night Time is Unplayable

[Irenicus (DayZ) 289]

Even if you dont turn off the clouds, use your flashlight.  It does need to be tweaked a bit but it works.  Find yourself a gas lamp and that really works.  I like the fact that they are somewhat forcing you to use light at nighttime.  Until the clouds off gets patched, i'm assuming it will, this is the only way.  I do see them tweaking these to make it more realistic.

Turning off clouds makes things darker btw :)

[Irenicus (DayZ) 289]

Maybe if some of you get off your fat asses and go hiking you'll realize the darkness isn't "unrealistic". 

1) I am not fat

2) I have lived in places so remote you wouldn't even believe me if I told you. Probably been out in the dark in the middle of nowhere far more than you ever have or will in your life.

3) eyes adapt, but you have no gamma hack. We need a better balance so eyes adapt.

 

 

 

Also a good tip which will help a lot is disabling clouds .

Nope. Deliberately they have made it so disabling clouds makes things darker. Confirmed by hicks already to prevent ppl exploiting this fact :)

Edited January 23, 2014 by Irenicus

[Jex 1104]

You HDR levels will play a significant role in what you can see at night (At least they do in the mod). Saying that though, why the hell do you want to be going out in the pitch black of night? A zombie could just grab you and bite you and you're done for. Much better to go when you can see. Whenever I play dayz, when it comes to night I put a sleeping bag on the floor and go to sleep but not before I turn my speakers up really loud in case zombie comes in night and scares me.

[RestlessLegs 15]

night is awesome in a group or with 1 other

[Highlander007 249]

A gas lamp does a amazing job. You can have it in your backpack and it illuminates everything arround you.

 

The only problem at night is that someone with a light source is a easy target for anyone with a gun. So i think night should be darker that anyone need to use lights even the campers.

They wouldnt need them. Jump from another server onto this darkened one in front of Balota jail and just count your kills-

[Highlander007 249]

night is awesome in a group or with 1 other

haha, scary for u when ur alone? i almost get scared a little and I'm very familiar with the map and have over 200 hours of playtime on SA. When I see a guy with a flashlight I dont go after him/her to shoot them. I follow so that I can scream and hovel into direct chat behind them.

Edited January 23, 2014 by Highlander007

[1S1K-Airborne 148]

Night time is stupidly unplayable.  Standing in the middle of an open field not being able to see jack squat around you.

 

I imagine they took the light levels from inside a closet, door closed, light off.

 

You can't find loot, you can't see squat, not even fun.  You could turn on your "beacon of death" and see a small area around you, then get AXED to death by the first person that sees your light.

 

We won't play on night servers until they balance it out.  You should be able to "somewhat see" regardless of where you are.

 

IN REAL LIFE YOUR EYES ADJUST TO DARKNESS LEVELS SO YOU CAN SEE.  ASK SOMEONE IN THE MILITARY WHO DOES SHIT ALL NIGHT LONG WHILE YOUR DUMBASSES ARE SLEEPING.

[UbuntuFoo 40]

The realism of night is a draw for me. But I can hardly see lootable objects during night play without a flashlight. Players aren't too hard to see,  and I can navigate reasonably well but all i can do to loot is walk around a house and spam TAB hoping to see anything in the vicinity window, because tuna fish is completely camouflaged in the solid black shadows. Same with items in tents, hangars. And cars... forget it. Its BSOD inside cars. I can wing it in some buildings where im familiar with some of the loot spawn points but I know im missing most loot in certain buildings. The screenshot posted earlier that's as black as the margins on the sides of this forum page.... that's my DayZ night time experience indoors. I cant find a battery for my head torch, I tried lugging a gas lamp around and dropping it in rooms I want to loot, but the lamp has stopped working entirely.

 

Ive tried gamma and brightness adjustments both in game and via monitor; i have tried clouds off and on; HDR is set to low; Object detail is set to high; shadows set to very low. All of my other settings are low-medium for a palatable frame rate at 1280x720. Dell 21 inch monitor.

 

See the staircase in front of me.... neither do I.

 

Here im looking at a pair of jeans on the floor in the corner of the bar room.

 

So, its an issue for many.

 

 

 

 

[autoloon 285]

I am on Team Unplayable. We have decent enough night vision at night in real life.

Immersion be damned, it should never be darker than full moon in the mod or dusk in the SA. That's plentyy dark enough.

No matter how dark it is you will never have a 2D zero contrast darkness.

[The-MCV- 149]

The time filter doesn't work. All of them are night regardless. I want to play DayZ after 8 PM without being forced to walk around blindly in the darkness.

[sdry 2]

Is it night on every f*cking server this time of day? My character is stuck on some building and it's so dark I cant find way out =D Had checked out 4 servers and its all night. Think I get char reset for such "server hopping" soon. 

Anyhow, if you run server, will you piss off whit night? Disable it if you can and make your server way less sh1t. 

 

(no, I dont have batteries for flashlight and not going to wank brightness/gamma settings)

[blueleader 18]

I HATE NIGHT SERVERS YOU CAN SEE   "SWEET FA"

 

In a game based off realism, i don't have a problem with the low visibility of night time.

lol ,,,dont believe some peeps !, why buy the game, when you can just sit there with your monitor turned off,, it seems guys like you would have just as much fun LOL

 

Of course the night is dark lol. Have you ever been to a rural area without so much as a streetlamp for at least 5 miles in any direction? Try it, you wont be able to see your hand in front of your face, unless you hold it up to the sky and see the outline against the slightly brighter sky. You wont be able to see the floor, or whats on it, not even the path that you are trying to follow.

 

Most people live in built up areas, or within a less than a mile from some form of light pollution. I remember an old episode of the X files, where they are in some woods miles from the town. Mulder turns to Scully and says, "you know what....living in the city so long i had forgotten how.....dark....night is". Me and my missus laughed because we had the same feeling when we climbed a mountain for new years. Thats something that has become tradition....and we never leave without a headtorch each, and a backup in our bags lol :)

yes and were is the fun in that dude, this is a game its not real

Edited January 23, 2014 by blueleader

[Jewtown 0]

I wish there was a chest mounted tourch, like maybe strapped to your backpack strap? That way you do not have a worry about pulling out the flash light and pointing it. 

 

I personally do not like night time, cause I get so damn stressed out at all the sounds!

[Jewtown 0]

I wish there was a chest mounted tourch, like maybe strapped to your backpack strap? That way you do not have a worry about pulling out the flash light and pointing it. 

 

I personally do not like night time, cause I get so damn stressed out at all the sounds!

[Artophwar 42]

The clouds setting seems to have a large effect on how your nights look. I tried turning them off as other people suggested but that didnt work. So I tried turning them to Very High and that actually fixed it. Now I can see, the ground isn't black, and it looks more like a normal night. This is with default gamma and brightness.  So I would suggest others try all the cloud settings till you find one that works. Hopefully they will fix nights so it works on all cloud settings.

[enlgma 16]

Gas Lamp -> Mole nest

[Mojojoejoe_91 25]

I'm not too concerned with the visibility of night-time as it stands.  Although I wouldn't mind if they made it a bit lighter.  What's making it unplayable is the flashlight issue.  As it stands, using a flashlight = asking to be killed.  Once they fix it so they don't shine through buildings, then flashlights can be used sparingly (although still with high risk) and looting will be easier.

 

Stating the obvious I know, but this is the more important issue imo.

[Blaaaaaaag 75]

I quite like night just how it is. IRL, I've been in the middle of the woods on a moonless night away from city lights, and couldn't see my hand in front of my face without a torch. Stepping out of the woods and into a clearing, I could then see my hands, but not my feet, still too dark for that. I'd say it's pretty accurate. Presumably, like in Arma II, there's a full lunar cycle? If so, then on a full moon, you'll be able to see just fine, outside at least.

 

If they make the nights any brighter, then what reason would anyone have for carrying a torch, or any light source for that matter? It adds another layer to the survival, one that I enjoy. First thing I did when the new patch hit was find myself a hardcore server with a low ping, turned out to be pitch black, so I rolled with it. Spent my first half hour, maybe hour, running scared. Couldn't see zeds without my torch raised and pointed at them, couldn't fight them with the torch in my hands. The first few zeds that I killed had to be lured near to those faint little streetlamps you see on poles occasionally dotted around Chernarus, so I could see them and fight them at the same time. I've never been so enthused to find a headtorch. I was even more enthused when I found some weapon flashlights. Dark nights give these items so much more value.

 

Oh, and a protip for those that think the torch illuminates too small an area: Firstly, it's a weeny little department store torch, of course it's going to be crap. Even Maglites and other reputed industrial or professional instruments don't do a whole lot better. Second, when it's pitch black and you need your torch to see, try turning your f.o.v. way down, you won't need all that unlit blackness on your screen anyway, you're not gonna see anything there.

[rydekk 250]

Nighttime in this game is a headscratcher like OP said. what most people forget is that they're living in illuminated areas overnight. Forgetting how bright a night can actually be when there are no clouds blocking the moon from giving off his light. Just go camping to a place in the forrests where there is no artificial light around. You can actually see the stars, something you can't when living in illuminated areas. Light polution is a polution, and the devs should lighten up the night a bit.

[indian the hawk 2]

to play at night just

 

turn clouds - off

Shadows - high

HDR - low

Brightness up full

leave gamma default

 

game is very playable and atmospheric

 

To those that say "yeah, but wait until you are killed by some asshole with their gamma cranked!!" I say "so Fuck?" there are 10 thousand random glitches you can die to, mysterious character wipes, and other ways to die, you are going to die eventually, i'd say I've at least 80+ hours played in night time and I have never been killed by another player once that whole time, I've fallen to my death, died climbing up ladders, been mysteriously thrown through walls, but not one bullet has ended my life, but my heart has nearly stopped a few times from shock, to not play at night in a "horror zombie apocalypse" and only run round like it's a perpetual summers day is just sad really, you are missing out on so much!

 

 

Man, I do not know how you can get such vision at night. What I get with your suggested settings is:

Edited January 23, 2014 by Hawk the Indian

[irl-calibre 744]

you now have to have clouds on at least low at night, to get the effect you used to get with them turned off before this new patch..

 

i've just come off a server right now and this is what it looks like to me -

 

settings in game -

AA - off

AF - off (running at 16X in NVidia control panel)

textures - high

clouds - high

Shadows - high

objects - high

terrain - high

HDR - low

Brightness up full

gamma - default

no fxaa / postprocessing

AO - on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my biggest gripe is it really doesn't look to me like ads with head torch has been fixed, grrr..

 

Edited January 23, 2014 by Calibre

[Amitymelon 0]

Well all I know is most the time it is dark now in Dayz. I logged on last night black as night. Today, 4 out of 5 times dark. Something appears to be off with night time that needs serious tweaking. I never had this problem till yesterday.

[gorillaCHEEZ 19]

Night time wouldn't be so bad if the lighting from light sources were realistic.  Anyone else annoyed by the phony night sky?  Get the stars right!

[Judopunch 523]

Spacebar to 'ready' and 'aim' the flash light :) Make sure you put a battery in it and turn it to on

[kevsta545 451]

Doesn't seem low visibility to me, flashlight do come in handy, also I like the overwhelming darkness, adds to the atmosphere, you hear a shot in the distance at night.. Good stuff.