How to prevent gamma correction from ruining nighttime play (somewhat technical)

[Slamz 6]

Currently, I can turn the nighttime into the day by going into my nVidia control panel and setting my gamma up to about +2.5. It's a tremendous advantage over anyone not doing this. I can literally walk into a barn at night with absolutely no lighting and shoot you in the head the second you walk in -- that's how much difference it makes.

(Edit: for a screenshot of how it looks with gamma turned up, see page 3 here.)

Gamma correction works because the game is drawing shades of gray that normally you can't see. There's "black" and there's "black+1" that's so close to black that normally you can't tell the difference, but the difference is there.

With gamma, black is black and black+1 is an entirely visible shade of gray, far removed from "black". It's like playing during the daytime with all the color washed out, but you can distinguish features that previously you couldn't.

(This is easily demonstrated here: http://www.colorserver.net/articles/info_fs595_calibration.htm Look at the grayscale and play with your video card's gamma setting. Whether you see a lot of black on the right side or just 1 bar of black and a lot of gray depends on your gamma setting.)

So one solution to this would be to set a threshold below which everything will simply be drawn as "black". If it's supposed to be "too dark to distinguish" then don't draw it as a really really dark gray -- just draw it as "black".

For example, in computer terms, colors can be represented with a hexadecimal number (for 24-bit color) --

#000000 is black

#FFFFFF is white

#101010 is a shade of gray a tad away from black. If I put #000000 and #101010 on the screen next to each other you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference -- unless you turned your gamma up.

So currently the game draws a lot of shades of "almost black" that really can't be distinguished without turning your gamma way up.

The solution, therefore, is to set a point, say, #303030, below which nothing will be drawn. #2F2F2F will be rendered as #000000. It won't matter how much you turn the gamma up because everything under "normally visible gray" would simply not be drawn at all.

I don't know that Rocket can do this in the mod, though. It might require a patch to the base game to change the way night works, but it would be one way of ensuring that gamma correction can't be used to create unfair advantages in the game.

Until then, "NVG" just stands for "nVidia Night Goggles" to me.

[Rico (DayZ) 99]

Thi is something to consider!

Play with the Nvidia settings is "like" cheating, provides an advantage over those who play by the rules. do not tell me that anyone can do it, although they all can not justify it.

Great topic! Rocket is looking for realism so i hope will soon find a solution.

[Guest ragequitalready]

.

Edited October 25, 2012 by ragequitalready

[RaymondThorne 0]

I like this. Not sure of feasibility but I hope at some stage this finds it's way in.

[Krisko 2]

Good suggestion.

If it gains some traction here, rocket may be able to float it by someone at BI for the next patch.

[ezdaroth 1]

I don't support this, even if I hate the exploitation.

Night isn't supposed to be black, there's never total darkness outside, or in any space where even a little light can get in.

Because majority of the people don't have calibrated IPS-panels, but instead crappy TN-stuff that isn't capable of showing the difference between "black" and "black+20", you'd have to take out a ton of dark shades, which would make the game look almost cartoony, or extremely "stylished".

I vote for summer nights that aren't as dark. A slight blue tint and just a little bit of darkness is enough to give you the idea it's night.

Edit: Did a quick tweak of Chernarus screenshot to illustrate my point better: http://imgur.com/gKCdP

It wouldn't be nearly as good as the nights now, but I'd still rather play like that than max gamma to not be in a huge disadvantage at night, or take a ton of dark shades completely out of the game.

[siryouhavefailedhard 0]

Consider the fact that time and date is not fully synchronized which leads to random advantages for those whom have a full moon night.

[Eiskrem-Kaiser 54]

Hmmm, difficult topic. But quite relevant. This problem needs to be adressed, one way or another. It can not go on like this.

The game is much more atmospheric at dark night. However, it is also kind of annoying, which is why I increased gamma. Now I can see quite well, but light is no longer a concern. Flares and chemlights are pretty much useless now.

I got no solution for this problem :(

[Rico (DayZ) 99]

I don't support this' date=' even if I hate the exploitation.

Night isn't supposed to be black, there's never total darkness outside, or in any space where even a little light can get in…[/quote']

You always lived in a City?

The picture you posted, suggests the evening.

The map is not illuminated in readiosity, so no electricity and no moon, means total darkness objects can't be illuminated without light.

[tiri 21]

We can talk about server occupation.

Right now, everyone tries to connect to the European servers, because it is daytime.

In 10 hours, everyone will try to connect the US servers because it will be daytime.

That's really how it is: when a server is restart so that night can kick in, at least 15 players leave because they wanted daytime.

I really think that the night should be less completely dark (at least in towns) and with a more changing weather (clouds hiding the moon), so that it is possible for a player without NVG to enjoy playing on a night server.

[Rico (DayZ) 99]

We can talk about server occupation.

Right now' date=' everyone tries to connect to the European servers, because it is daytime.

In 10 hours, everyone will try to connect the US servers because it will be daytime.

That's really how it is: when a server is restart so that night can kick in, at least 15 players leave because they wanted daytime.

I really think that the night should be less completely dark (at least in towns) and with a more changing weather (clouds hiding the moon), so that it is possible for a player without NVG to enjoy playing on a night server.

[/quote']

You know where is the problem?

Arma is born as a simulator, and DayZ follow the simulator philosophy

Becoming famous, every arcade players has arrived expecting to find a regular shooter…And now they are all here to complain:

The game is too dark

Night and day have lasted too long

I am dying of hunger

The munitions are too few

Why i am dying for cold?

Why i lose my stuff when i die? :huh:

I'm not blaming you or those who complain, only…

These peoples are trying to change the game, because is not in their schemes of gamplay

These player Should realize that they have chosen the wrong game, if they thought to find an arcade with zombies.

[ezdaroth 1]

You always lived in a City?

The picture you posted' date=' suggests the evening.

The map is not illuminated in readiosity, so no electricity and no moon, means total darkness objects can't be illuminated without light.

[/quote']

I dare you to point one place on earth, outdoors, where it's pitch black. Where you can take a long exposure photo and get only a solid black picture as a result.

My point was that there's always light, there might be very little of it so it's hard to see anything, but there's still light. In ARMA you can increase the gamma, which multiplies the illumination of the surfaces.

The OP is suggesting we take all light away if the surface is very dark, so it's no use to tweak the gamma since all the objects are just a big black block. I argued it's hard to draw the line anywhere when doing that. If you want to make a fair playing field for everybody, you have to take a lot of dark shades away and make the night graphics far worse.

The quick example I did looks more like a very bright full-moon night, but I'd rather make nights like that than be forced to either max my gamma and make the game look absolutely terrible, or have all the dark shades taken away so the game looks like someone is trying to be artsy with a contrast slider.

[Guest ragequitalready]

.

Edited October 25, 2012 by ragequitalready

[TeaLeaf 5]

It wouldn't be such an issue if nights weren't ridiculous.

[ezdaroth 1]

Our eyes are not cameras' date=' they do not work with long exposures. They work closer to video cameras with lots of short exposures.[/quote']

I've always thought it's more like a continuous exposure. Your pupil is the opening of the lens which adjusts aperture, your eyelid is a (rather poor) shutter, back of your eye is the sensor and your brain is the processor.

I know what you're saying in the rest of your post' date=' but when there is no artificial light, only the stars, it is very very dark. Doesn't matter how long you stand there, it is still dark

If you go into a forest, or a desert, or just any wilderness away from a major city, you can see this.

It would be better if you could make it so no matter your gamma settings, it is still rendered as a dark patch because your eyes cannot physically detect the object (we can't even detect colour in such low light conditions).[/quote']

Well, the best I've experienced is walking in a forest in the middle of nowhere, in Finland, during winter.

I stumbled probably hundred times because I couldn't see where I land my foot, but it still isn't the same as putting your head in a box with no light leaking in.

I find the nights in ARMA to be way darker than that, even when playing on IPS with a pretty good contrast ratio. The OP is suggesting making everything even more of a big black blob and I don't support it.

I'd rather take permanent full-moon nights that could be more accurately shown by most monitors and would give less advantage for gamma exploitation.

[Guest ragequitalready]

.

Edited October 25, 2012 by ragequitalready

[tiri 21]

You know where is the problem?

Arma is born as a simulator' date=' and DayZ follow the simulator philosophy

Becoming famous, every arcade players has arrived expecting to find a regular shooter…And now they are all here to complain:

The game is too dark

Night and day have lasted too long

I am dying of hunger

The munitions are too few

Why i am dying for cold?

Why i lose my stuff when i die? :huh:

I'm not blaming you or those who complain, only…

These peoples are trying to change the game, because is not in their schemes of gamplay

These player Should realize that they have chosen the wrong game, if they thought to find an arcade with zombies.

[/quote']

I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that since 1.5.2 (or 3), nights are pitch black and ever since, night times servers are deserted.

In fact, you didn't even read what i wrote. I'm saying that there is a problem in occupation because people rush daytime servers.

Just get the moon back and we'll have a more homogeneous occupation of servers.

[Rico (DayZ) 99]

I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that since 1.5.2 (or 3)' date=' nights are pitch black and ever since, night times servers are deserted.

In fact, you didn't even read what i wrote. I'm saying that there is a problem in occupation because people rush daytime servers.

Just get the moon back and we'll have a more homogeneous occupation of servers.

[/quote']

I read what you said, i took the opportunity to broaden the discussion

If your problem is the long wait before entering in a server, don't worry, all servers will be balanced. When DayZ will be more mature, all the arcade players will migrate on their favorite FPS, understanding that DayZ is not for them. ;)

I play mostly at night, i prefer when my actions do not create too much attention, :sleepy: even if sometimes i get a shot from who change the gamma settings in Nvidia.

[tiri 21]

Ok, i thought you were most on the "stop complaining but i won't read what you say" end of the spectrum.

I'm not worried about the long wait (i play mostly at night too, but that's because of my timeline and play hours), but when i get the chance to play during the day, servers are always full, and i don't want to play on servers located far from where i am because of the high ping.

But we have to remember, the arcade people will be part of the people paying for this mod (i hope we'll be able to do this), so i hope they'll stay here a little longer.

[Rico (DayZ) 99]

But we have to remember' date=' the arcade people will be part of the people paying for this mod (i hope we'll be able to do this), so i hope they'll stay here a little longer.

[/quote']

GOD! i hope not…is not a form of game racism don't get me wrong…i play arcade games from pac-man, and i enjoy it too, but, after played 28 years of Supermario,Sonic,Doom, Quake, MOHAA, COD and every games or FPS that existed, i'm a little bored, and finally i found something different that i've been waiting for so long.

I'm a bandit, yes a bad person! but being bandit does not mean kill everything that moves, for the sake of it, instead i see peoples doing massacres, shoting only at back, than running away without touching the inventory of their victims, if i want that i can enter in any lobby of BF3 COD3.:huh:

The mod has become famous because who played Arma2, has done a lot of videos on Youtube! the arcade players were only a collateral damage.

but now i'm off-topic :exclamation:

[Slamz 6]

The OP is suggesting we take all light away if the surface is very dark' date=' so it's no use to tweak the gamma since all the objects are just a big black block. I argued it's hard to draw the line anywhere when doing that. If you want to make a fair playing field for everybody, you have to take a lot of dark shades away and make the night graphics far worse.[/quote']

The problem is that night graphics are already "worse" for some players than others. Before I thought about tweaking my gamma settings in my video card, nighttime in DayZ was literally me looking at a solid, pitch black screen. If it wasn't overcast I could see the horizon and black shapes against the horizon but that was it. The entire ground and everything on it was a solid sheet of black.

When I turn my gamma way up, it's basically just a shades-of-gray daytime. I can distinguish individual blades of grass in the fields and I can snipe a zombie in the head from 300m with no light assistance even if I'm looking down on him.

In fact, here's a screenshot from my actual screen at night with gamma boosted:

(click for full size)

If your nighttime doesn't look like this, adjust your video driver's gamma settings until it does.

Without gamma adjustment, that scene is about 95% black. I can just barely distinguish that there are buildings but I can't tell what type and I can't make out features like fences or roads. I certainly can't see the zombie hopping along the road in the middle of the screen. With gamma up, I could snipe him!

For single-player, this is no big deal. If someone wants to "cheat", it's their game.

For multi-player, I think this is, in a nutshell, why no multiplayer game has dark nights. It's easy to just lower the brightness of the video but if you want to counter the gamma advantage, you need to do more work.

If we want a real dark night that can't be exploited, we need a better technical implementation of it.

I've thought about things like fog effects or limiting the clipping plane but I really think that the suggestion in the original post is the way to go. Pick a line in the sand below which things should be "too dark to see" and then simply draw everything under that line as "black".

It will look cartoony on the screens of people who jack up their gamma.

It will look perfectly normal on the screens of people who don't jack up their gamma -- in fact, they won't even notice the difference!

---

Taking my above screenshot and adjusting, here's my estimate of what it would look like with my suggested fix:

If the player turns their gamma way up, it should look like this:

(the low end grays have been turned to black -- note that this is still way more than I see in the game right now with gamma set to a normal, calibrated value)

If they have gamma set normally, it should look like this:

(same image with the brightness turned down a bit -- the "gamma up" image can't really see more detail, it's just that the grays that are available are slightly brighter. Turning up the gamma won't reveal more detail in the house facings because they are literally black, versus the original screenshot which had multiple shades of darker gray in there)

[Kigrax 0]

All the crying about gamma correction is ridiculous. If I can't see at night without NVGs I'll simply stop playing at night. No amount of changes you can implement are going to force me to play at night and move either in pitch blackness or flare to flare; both are suicidal, especially given that zombies teleport every two seconds, glitch through solid surfaces, never tire and run as fast as me. That's all there is too it, cry all you want. I'll just keep capping the whining kids who do nothing but look for NVGs at NW airfield, but in the daytime.

[Kyndrid 0]

The idea of it being that light sheep doesn't make ANY sense in DayZ...

You seem to forget the there are no lights on anywhere, no light pollution and no large sources of light other than the moon, and when it's anything less than a full moon (And even if there is...) it will be far, far darker than the picture you provided.

I think making it quite a bit darker than that picture, but should still be faintly visible, I know I personally would never change gamma if I could at least see ANYTHING at night, but right now it's basically impossible and throwing flares every few hundred yards is just asking to be killed.

[Slamz 6]

it will be far' date=' far darker than the picture you provided.[/quote']

It's really a question of where you want to draw the line at.

In my sample image, I struck out the bottom, oh, 20% of gray tones?

If you struck out the bottom 50% or 75% then you might get the type of darkness you are looking for, where a LOT less is visible.

The important thing is that if my gamma is +0 and yours is +3, my solution means we both see the same amount of data. Where the line should be of what's "black" and what's "gray" is something rocket would have to play with until it felt right.

Here's another example with an even wider range of grays set to black.

You can adjust your gamma up but it won't reveal any new information. Everything "darker than dark" has been set to black so gamma doesn't help:

We can even go further, of course. I mean we could literally just set your entire screen to black. :-p

I'm not arguing (in this thread) that it needs to be brighter, necessarily. My suggestion is that "all very dark shades of gray should be set to black in order to foil gamma adjustments."

[TeaLeaf 5]

For an idea on how to implement this technically: Apply a pixel shader.

That is, if you can do that with the level of engine access modders have.