A way to disable the snow storm?

archangelzorak01 · August 2016

I had made a post early in this thread saying, 'people are looking for a reason to complain'. I'd like to the take the opportunity now to apologize for that in light (not blue hopefully) of all the information herein. I now know that the reasoning for the negative feedback is legit.

Sorry folks.

zebular · August 2016

It's being adjusted in tomorrow's hotfix patch:

terramak said:
Content and Environment
Storm King's Thunder
The blizzard VFX in Bryn Shander has been updated in attempt to address motion sickness and headache issues raised by players.

Huzzah! Many thanks!

grogthemagnif · August 2016

I logged off half an hour earlier than usual with the "the snowbblindness is getting to me." excuse. I may have to send to Alaska or Northern Canada for snow goggles.

gphxgphx · August 2016

thegreatmikey said:
Granted, my case is unusual I think and I do not expect a tweak for just me, but I thought, hey, why can't I share with the group?

Why not indeed? It furthers awareness that just because one person perceives something in a given way doesn't mean others do. The 'I don't have a problem so you're all a bunch of whiners' crowd take note.

sameriker · August 2016

tieashame said:

sameriker said:
meh... You should try playing Protecting the Portal with epilepsy. Don't worry I take my meds.
Protecting the Portal and IWD don't bother me so much. I do the old trick of closing one eye for a little bit then rotating to the other, it helps in my case, also between quests i'll let my char sit for a bit and i'll turn away for a few minutes or get a drink.
I can't even go in the "gold" area of Whispering Caverns due to the brightness. I did the 1st day of the new content with my sunglasses on *had a fore-warning on the brightness* but couldn't really see much. Was very hard to find the boxes and crates and well anything that was suppose to have sparkles indicating I needed to get this *like nodes do*. My eyes hurt even wearing the sunglasses, my tummy felt a bit ill but went away a little while after I logged out the area. I think it was a great idea to make it as realistic as they could but way to bright IMO. With all that said, thanks for the new content and look forward to grinding it out once this issue gets better.

Mainly the "strobe" of Protecting the Portal has ever really irritated my condition, but not as such that I wake up on the floor in a pool of drool.

I was planning to do this on the weekend (I work) and haven't been online to update. Thanks for the tips, at the very least I have been warned what to expect.

diogene0 · August 2016

Most people have their screen settings completely messed up, it's often way too bright and colorful, even though it's not good for your eyes. My screen has proper settings. I have no issues with the storm. However, I understand cryptic devs can't blame the consumer for not knowing how to use their stuff, so maybe the storm should be more "grey" by default. Not removed. It's something rather interesting and I'm glad even the most traditionalist game studios try new things, even if it's not much.

To people who have issues: go to the control panel and lower the "digital vibrance", "brightness" and "contrast" settings. It should help.

nameexpired · August 2016

sameriker said:
[...] not as such that I wake up on the floor in a pool of drool. I was planning to do this on the weekend [...]

And some people say I have weird plans for the weekend!
I expect you have a parquet-type polymer floor ready for easy cleaning?

:-)

gphxgphx · August 2016

archangelzorak01 said:
I had made a post early in this thread saying, 'people are looking for a reason to complain'. I'd like to the take the opportunity now to apologize for that in light (not blue hopefully) of all the information herein. I now know that the reasoning for the negative feedback is legit.

Sorry folks.

The purpose of this journey we call life is learning something new. When we learn all the lessons we needed to learn we leave it. If we were born knowing everything already there'd be no point in being here. No need to apologize for being in the same condition as the rest of us. A day something new is learned is a good day.

samaka#2511 · August 2016

I finally got the chance to run out to the new zone... and wow, amazing weather effects. Sometimes you can barely see a foot in front of your face!

I can see how some people may be affected by the constant movement on the screen and the constantly changing depth of focus due to the billowing snow/fog. I thought I might have been affected as well, but after a couple hours I was not suffering any ill effect.

I hope they add a slider or something to control the intensity, but I am guessing we will get a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. Ah well, I'd rather that then a bunch of people getting sick and having migraines... those suck terribly!

shoziku · August 2016

silverkelt said:
Count me as one that doesnt see any issue, it does look like a blurred fog at points, its nothing I havent seen in other games tbh.

It did nothing to my eyes nor did it give me a headache.

It doesn't happen to everyone. My wife's computer does good and it is a hazy fog, which I assume it is supposed to be. Meanwhile on my computer I get almost a white-out. I run lowest settings so the fog probably resorted to primitives like other stuff in the game does. I thought my settings were just too low to play in the new area but one of our guildies is getting the same white-out instead of a fog and he runs a really high end system with full graphics on. If you saw my wife's screen and then looked at mine you'd probably say, something is definitely not right.

cococya · August 2016

I have no issues with my eyes, I don't wear glasses so I thought this wouldn't affect me, but boy, was I wrong.
I spend like half an hour there and this horrible headache hit me, coupled with vertigo, I could literally see nothing on screen and things had gotten dazed in rl.
Had to leave a.s.a.p., took a while to feel better too.

silverkelt · August 2016

I think its like my wife and I..

I can go to imax theaters , I dont have issue with on screen movements (she cant tolerate either.. she gets extremely sick after 4-5 mins in a imax)

My brain takes the movement and translates it to.. not real.

BUT.. when I go on say a twirly ride at a theme park with the kids, I feel like Im going to die (like literally had to lay down once for 25 mins, thought I would have to go to the hospital) , where she , doesnt love it, but doesnt have the same effect on her at all.

Motion is handled by different people , different ways.

qexotic · August 2016

silverkelt said:
BUT.. when I go on say a twirly ride at a theme park with the kids, I feel like Im going to die (like literally had to lay down once for 25 mins, thought I would have to go to the hospital

Hehe, that sounds a lot like the two stages of sea-sickness that some unlucky people suffer from:

Stage 1: You think you are going to die

Stage 2: (the much, much worse experience) You know you are NOT going to die

Sorry, couldn't resist

plasticbat · August 2016

silverkelt said:
I think its like my wife and I..

I can go to imax theaters , I dont have issue with on screen movements (she cant tolerate either.. she gets extremely sick after 4-5 mins in a imax)

My brain takes the movement and translates it to.. not real.

BUT.. when I go on say a twirly ride at a theme park with the kids, I feel like Im going to die (like literally had to lay down once for 25 mins, thought I would have to go to the hospital) , where she , doesnt love it, but doesnt have the same effect on her at all.

Motion is handled by different people , different ways.

2 different types of motion.
1. your eyes tell your brain about the fake motion.
2. your ears tell your brain about the real motion.

rogerdtate · August 2016

How presumptuous.
How exactly do you know what "most people" have their settings at ? Let alone the players having issues in this thread.
I know some of the names from this thread and can tell you they KNOW how to make use of settings.
I would think most people posting in here have been playing for some time now, I have and have not had issues with the settings until now.
Perhaps it is an issue dealing with some medical aspect.
I know the zone bothers me, while not to extent of many here it is hard on the eyes.
I will take people at their word and MANY are having serious medical concerns that have apparently not been such an issue until this mod.
So until you poll the player base on the use of their settings maybe take their word.

diogene0 said:
Most people have their screen settings completely messed up, it's often way too bright and colorful, even though it's not good for your eyes. My screen has proper settings. I have no issues with the storm. However, I understand cryptic devs can't blame the consumer for not knowing how to use their stuff, so maybe the storm should be more "grey" by default. Not removed. It's something rather interesting and I'm glad even the most traditionalist game studios try new things, even if it's not much.

To people who have issues: go to the control panel and lower the "digital vibrance", "brightness" and "contrast" settings. It should help.

carl103 · August 2016

I think it is a GFX card issue. I am not sure why it can't just be made doom grey instead of near-death experience holy light.

I'm pretty confident thats actually a monitor contrast ratio issue. I upgraded my monitor about 18 months back and i noticed that nearly nothing completely whites out the screen or is dark i can't see anything anymore. BUT, it is a million to one contrast ratio monitor which whilst not top of the line is firmly up there still. Unfortunately short of upgrading your monitor there's nothing you can do about that issue.

But i'm with the guy with the fancy explanation a few pages back on the headaches and dizziness issue, it's a focusing issue, specifically it forces people to constantly refocus.

lowjohn · August 2016

So, after the change: for me, the storm is MUCH better. The no-storm bits when it passes, also a whole lot better. The fog is still white-on-white-on-white, to the point where if I'm stuck in a foggy area, I'll swap instances or park somewhere and wait for the blizzard to come back, to avoid looking at it for too long.

Any chance we can get that same snowstorm-brightness-down fix applied to the fog brightness, too?

At least, as someone else pointed out, this only happens in Bryn Shander. Lonelywood looks great, only a very few patches of the map have the remaining blinding snow effects. So if you can survive two days in Bryn Shander, at least you'll get to new content outside of it?

rapticor · August 2016

zebular said:
It's being adjusted in tomorrow's hotfix patch:
terramak said:
Content and Environment
Storm King's Thunder
The blizzard VFX in Bryn Shander has been updated in attempt to address motion sickness and headache issues raised by players.
Huzzah! Many thanks!

No "thanks" coming from me. I logged in, made my way to BS (ha!) and was like.. "Nothing has changed. The screen is still blinding white" and teleported back to PE. Which is fine with me. I've already spent too much time in NW. Now I don't have to bother. Not sure I even encountered the "blizzard" stuff. Just the normal weather effects (looks like fog) are terrible and should have been an option people can disable. I'm glad they added them for people who like that sort of thing.. But why force it on everyone?

gphxgphx · August 2016

diogene0 said:
Most people have their screen settings completely messed up, it's often way too bright and colorful, even though it's not good for your eyes. My screen has proper settings. I have no issues with the storm. However, I understand cryptic devs can't blame the consumer for not knowing how to use their stuff, so maybe the storm should be more "grey" by default. Not removed. It's something rather interesting and I'm glad even the most traditionalist game studios try new things, even if it's not much.

To people who have issues: go to the control panel and lower the "digital vibrance", "brightness" and "contrast" settings. It should help.

You do know a typical setup for people with vision limitations is High Contrast, right? You're instructing people with such difficulties to adjust their monitor so they can't see anything at all.

The patch went through this morning so hopefully this will no longer be an issue. People can stop being subjected to headaches like you.

lowjohn · August 2016

lowjohn said:
So, after the change: for me, the storm is MUCH better. The no-storm bits when it passes, also a whole lot better. The fog is still white-on-white-on-white, to the point where if I'm stuck in a foggy area, I'll swap instances or park somewhere and wait for the blizzard to come back, to avoid looking at it for too long.

Any chance we can get that same snowstorm-brightness-down fix applied to the fog brightness, too?

At least, as someone else pointed out, this only happens in Bryn Shander. Lonelywood looks great, only a very few patches of the map have the remaining blinding snow effects. So if you can survive two days in Bryn Shander, at least you'll get to new content outside of it?

So, screenshots. This is what it looks like, TODAY, on maximum possible graphics settings, in "fog":
http://imgur.com/uh4MpL5

And for comparison, here is what it looks like when something is WATCHABLE, for extended periods of time, when blue and white are (almost) the only colours:
http://imgur.com/UTr1W5a

The fog blocking LOS is NOT the problem. The Fog being so bright that it washes out everything and makes 80+% of the screen "white" is what's making Bryn Shander so hard to watch.

(And, again, that NW screenshot was on maximum possible settings. Lower settings are brighter: Fewer far objects showing through the fog, more super-bright fogpatches.)

gphxgphx · August 2016

Here is a shot of my game screen post patch. Trying to be positive and give devs something to work off of even though they are boggling my mind. If the other zones of IWD look nice a fix shouldn't be this hard. Being able to see our screen shouldn't be a battle.

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i107/gphxgphx/NWscreen.png

zibadawa · August 2016

The problem to me is the whitewashing of the entire screen. They seem to be trying to apply the idea of the snow particles reducing long range visibility with a generic whitewashing, and that's not palatable (to me). Plus it tends to be in conflict with how your vision immediately in front of you is just fine in actual snowy conditions. Some snow particles here and there and maybe some annoying wind whipping at your face, but you have no problems seeing, say, your own gear with clarity. As the zone currently is, literally everything gets the whitewashing effect put over it.

That said, it does seem to be an improvement, and now there's a new host of problems with Lonelywood to complain about, and other issues that have existed since people first posted about them on the preview forums long ago to continue to gripe about.

lina#3656 · August 2016

I haven't been out there yet today (post patch), but I rather enjoyed it yesterday. I felt like I was in the middle of a blizzard. At times it was hard to see, but I grew up in blizzard territory and to me it seemed fairly realistic. I'm glad they fixed it for those having issues though. It's not fun to play a game that causes headaches or other physical discomfort, after all, it is just a game.

gphxgphx · August 2016

The idea the problems people are experiencing being able to see in the appropriately named BS zone are due to monitor settings is extremely faulty. When a problem is only a problem in one zone in one application that's where the fault lies. The solution is clearly to make the zone similar to other IWD zones where visibility is not an issue. The fact it's a battle for users to get this zone to be playable is astonishing.

Devs, do you not have eyes to see our screenshots? How difficult must this be?

http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i107/gphxgphx/NWscreen.png

carl103 · August 2016

Looking at the screenshots there is a LOT more whiting out on them than i saw yesterday, haven't been back since the patch to check. I'll take some screenshot a bit later when i'm more awake and double check it isn't faulty memory on my part, (i have just woken up, at 6 am

).

Assuming however my sleep addled brain is working right which i think is likely:

That rules out a monitor. First what graphics card are you using all, second, what driver version. I'm on a GTX 960 from NIVIDA, but i'm a bit bad about remembering to update my graphics drivers unless i have issues so i'm still on 372.54.

Everyone else?

Also if your someone with no issues, get comparison screenshots too, let us all see what it looks like for you.

carl103 · August 2016

Sorry for double post, turns out i took a few screenshots yesterday. As noted i did feel some eye strain after a few minutes but not instant migraine, headache, e.t.c. Need to see what the patch did still but here mine, (nurse Ra's is especially baaad):

For reference the two previous:

A way to disable the snow storm?

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