MERGED: Night time, darkness, gamma

[Grey508 17]

Just to show how different it is when the moon is out, here's a slightly more scientific comparison. DayZ loaded via SU, four shots taken from the same location and heading, 0000 hours -

Clear sky, full moon:

Clear sky, new moon:

Foul weather, full moon:

Foul weather, new moon:

The difference is pretty startling when the sky is clear. With weather, visibility is restricted, but baseline visibility is actually better as everything silhouettes against the clouds/fog.

This weekend is the new moon, so yes, it's dark at night. In a week or so, nights will start to get brighter.

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I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned' date=' but turning up your HDR from 'Normal' to at least 'High' improves the way nights look, at least on my system.

Things went from being a pitch black blob, to being able to see tiny details on grass and light parts on buildings.

[/quote']

Awesome, I'll give it a try. I don't like any post-processing setting above very low, because the motion blur hurts my head...

HDR and post-processing are two different things. Crank up the HDR with no worries.

[Skydancer 0]

Yeah I also wondered why nobody talked about HDR earlier. I guess not many people tried trinketing with the video options. HDR on very high makes night dark but playable, it highlights bright stuff but leaves the rest pitch black, as it should be. You CAN and WILL be ambushed by zombies appearing 1 meter in front of you and you will not be able to see him until it's too late if you're not in what would be a bright spot.

[Torian (DayZ) 2]

Obviously nighttime servers are full up with people using either gamma hacks or nvgs, so to prevent people from making use of the gamma bit, have a check implemented ingame that detects if a user ups their gamma/hdr/brightness on a nighttime server and gives the player a glow around their body, thus making them as easy to see as we are to them.

[That Lamer 0]

And how do you propose they detect such an action? Even if they can detect what your gamma is set to (they can't), what if my monitor is extremely dark? They're not all made the same.

[Legacy (DayZ) 1091]

There is programs, settings, and controls for changing your brightness for monitors and screens.

Example: http://darkadapted.en.softonic.com/

[Sgt.Spam 42]

Night time in the game is practically unplayable as it is and now you want to penalize players that just want to be able to play the game?

:dodgy:

[That Lamer 0]

There is programs' date=' settings, and controls for changing your brightness for monitors and screens.

Example: http://darkadapted.en.softonic.com/

[/quote']

Programs like your display driver control panel. What separates whatever you're linking from those? What keeps the suggestion in the original post from singling it out and lighting you up at night? If it doesn't, whats the point?

Let it be clear I fully support actually being able to see in the dark without any sort of punishment like proposed in this topic.

[hexik 1]

Tweaking gamma is not a hack. Stop calling it that.

[Land Squid 22]

Eh. I'm kind of ambivilant to the gamma thing right now, but if the devs really did want to ensure that players without NVG's were limited in some manner they could just cause the server to invoke a 200 meter visibility distance via fog or somesuch. They probably have more important stuff to work on currently though.

[Torian (DayZ) 2]

Tweaking gamma is not a hack. Stop calling it that.

Gammahacking is just slang for people who max both gamma and brightness ingame in order to see everyone around you/your enviroment.

@Sgt. Spam:This isn't some casual as fuck game built for casuals to enjoy, stop playing it like such.

[mosscd13 0]

Tweaking gamma is not a hack. Stop calling it that.

Gammahacking is just slang for people who max both gamma and brightness ingame in order to see everyone around you/your enviroment.

@Sgt. Spam:This isn't some casual as fuck game built for casuals to enjoy' date=' stop playing it like such.

[/quote']

+1 for Torian

[mattressi 3]

HDR and post-processing are two different things. Crank up the HDR with no worries.

Damn, I missed that; must have been thinking of another game, so I never tried it, lol. Thanks :)

[Krack 0]

Maxing Gamma and Brightness aren't hacking, but it does kill the game for those who want to play it correctly..

@Sgt.Spam - The game is designed around that, it's the decision to take the risk of using a flare or running blind.

[zekez 4]

ya someone finally said it, I only can play at night since I work all day and I used to hate it, but if you put HDR to Very High and put the gamma / brightness up, you get basically a ghetto version of NVGs that makes the game very playable, I haven't used flares or chemlights in a long time

[Napoleon Solo 10]

The game can force view distance. With the next game patch they should add a command for forced brightness/gamma.

[That Lamer 0]

Maxing Gamma and Brightness aren't hacking' date=' but it does kill the game for those who want to play it correctly..

[/quote']

How exactly does it do that? If you want to play it correctly, stumble around in the dark. Just pretend everyone else has night vision.

[uk_dayz_player 3]

essentially what you are complaining about is someone changing the gamma for a better output, lol, really guys?

Do people complain when you adjust your tv at home to watch a picture at better quality.

[Torian (DayZ) 2]

essentially what you are complaining about is someone changing the gamma for a better output' date=' lol, really guys?

Do people complain when you adjust your tv at home to watch a picture at better quality.

[/quote']

We can pretend I'm complaining about that, or we can acknowledge this:

This was done on a pitch black server to show the severity of gamma abusing. If you want to adjust your monitor, do so with the monitor's built in options.

[raptorak 2]

I made a thread about this a week or so ago and got flamed a lot, but this gamma restriction has to be implemented for the good of the game. Although admittedly it is not a hack, it is in fact worse than a hack, since everybody can easily go ahead and change their gamma settings.

This game was designed with day and night implemented, the gamma adjustment pretty much overrides the disadvantages of playing at night time.

To hear Rocket speak about his vision of the game, this game was designed to be an experiment, and while players may not enjoy being blind, the darkness is there because it is supposed to be like that.

Gamma adjustment is against the spirit of the game and should be limited.

[Frito Pendejo ☠ 4]

+1 for a gamma/br forced limit TEST.

[mattressi 3]

This was done on a pitch black server to show the severity of gamma abusing. If you want to adjust your monitor' date=' do so with the monitor's built in options.

[/quote']

I have to call BS on this. On a night without clouds and without a moon (I could see stars, but the world was pitch black) I tried turning gamma and brightness to full. It made the clouds look like they were a .gif with 4 colours and the ground was still pitch black.

The picture you took looks like a perfect quality picture, which high-gamma pictures do NOT look like. Either you took that picture on one of the brightest nights and upped the brightness or you took the picture during the day and desaturated (grayscaled) the picture. Or maybe you just photoshopped the hell out of a picture. It looks like you've very slightly upped the gamma (some loss of quality on your pack's texture), but that's it.

There is absolutely no way that a pitch black night looks like that with gamma and brightness increased. It just isn't possible - I've tried it and I still can't see a single bloody thing at night. Seriously, if someone doesn't believe me, go in game at night (or join a server where it's night) and up the gamma and brightness. If it's a bright night, it helps a little, but looks nothing like Torian's picture. If it's a dark night, you still won't see anything.

[Torian (DayZ) 2]

This was done on a pitch black server to show the severity of gamma abusing. If you want to adjust your monitor' date=' do so with the monitor's built in options.

[/quote']

I have to call BS on this. On a night without clouds and without a moon (I could see stars, but the world was pitch black) I tried turning gamma and brightness to full. It made the clouds look like they were a .gif with 4 colours and the ground was still pitch black.

The picture you took looks like a perfect quality picture, which high-gamma pictures do NOT look like. Either you took that picture on one of the brightest nights and upped the brightness or you took the picture during the day and desaturated (grayscaled) the picture. Or maybe you just photoshopped the hell out of a picture. It looks like you've very slightly upped the gamma (some loss of quality on your pack's texture), but that's it.

There is absolutely no way that a pitch black night looks like that with gamma and brightness increased. It just isn't possible - I've tried it and I still can't see a single bloody thing at night. Seriously, if someone doesn't believe me, go in game at night (or join a server where it's night) and up the gamma and brightness. If it's a bright night, it helps a little, but looks nothing like Torian's picture. If it's a dark night, you still won't see anything.

Try putting your HDR to max and it makes it all the more clearer. Disable shadows too.

[oktyabr 53]

I merged these threads with the hopes that some of you might actually bother to read before posting.

How "dark" night time is in DayZ is VERY hardware dependent. I've personally seen this game played on three different machines including my own and it's vastly different between all of them. Vid card, drivers, and even monitor can make a substantial difference.

For what it's worth I run a GTX465 with the latest beta drivers and gamma does almost *nothing* on my machine.

The only solution, in my opinion, is to LOWER the bar. Make nighttime meh, ok, to see in no matter what card/monitor/driver combination you have. This would mean fewer would care to boost whatever settings they can and over all would provide a more even playing field.

[mattressi 3]

Try putting your HDR to max and it makes it all the more clearer. Disable shadows too.

I'll try it tonight. I know that maxing HDR is meant to help, but I literally can't see a thing on clear nights even with gamma and brightness maxed. Surely HDR can't make literally a night and day difference?

[Themovement112 0]

I used to live in Puerto Rico, In the dense jungle under a heavy canopy its not as dark as I have seen in game.in game forests and nothing compared to a night in a rain forest.