I was really looking Forward to the changes - yes, I found some of the older pics looked better.
BUT - I turned off sahdows after failing Dragon's deceit because I kepft falling down in the dark...
18 characters
KDF: 2 tacs, 2 engs, 3 scis
KDF Roms: 3 tacs, 1 eng, 1 scis
FED: 2 tacs, 1 eng, 2 scis
TOS: 1 tac
all on T5 rep (up to temporal)
all have mastered Intel tree (and some more specs Points)
highest DPS: 60.982
It seems there may be two issues here, the overall glare and brightness is too high, hopefully a simple fix and shadows don't seem to be working for some, seems that the latter may be an AMD issue as those with Nvidia seem to have no problems.
I have a Nvidia card and half the shadows are missing. Not just shadows but many nice effects like reflections are now missing in the upgrade. Water is the worst is no longer bounces and reflects on anything.
Well that puts paid to that theory then, which card? and I assume you have the latest drivers.
With a system that simulates bounced light its silly to have lightmaps.
The two aren't mutually exclusive and have been used together frequently. Killing performance by making every light and shadow dynamic is just lazy design.
I disagree entirely, Making every light and shadow dynamic makes it all so much more realistic.
I don't see how losing shadows, losing detail, getting haze and washed out screens and losing reflections and other nice effects is more realistic. One big problem is the upgrade cannot handle many shadows so areas that used to look nice now have half the shadows missing and crazy shadow popup which looks bad.
Look at this screenshots the right side is the new one and its looks less Star Trek like and everything's overly bright. once the door opens its the same down the corridor. Doors should not have glare like that. Most areas of the game look far worse after the upgrade.
Only complaint I have is with "What lies beneath". The HDR like lighting on the XBOX takes away from the scare factor. That being said, the hologram's voice in my sound system sounds very awesome.
I do a lot of 3D rendering, and from what I've seen on tribble it looks like they made a mess of the Lumen values for all of the lights, they are far too bright, the First City is like a sunny day in the sahara.
I'm sorry, but I can't completely agree with the original post. The colors are more vibrant, and if you adjust your Tribble graphic and display settings to be the same as Holodeck's. The antialiasing effects look the same. On the other hand, it does seem to be lacking reflective effects and color in certain places. For example, the displays on the wall over the exchange consoles should have some color and not be just white in my opinion. The issue of shadows depends on how much light is in the room, and where the light sources are placed. For example, if you have multiple light sources that produce the same amount of light in every direction, you shouldn't have shadows. If you don't have the same amount of light in every direction or not, you will have shadows. So until all the reflective effects are installed, I can't really make a judgment on that issue.
I think it's going to take them some time to perfect the new lighting. It's a pretty big change. Overall it has the potential to be much better I think.
To those who said they think the dev before images looked better than the after...I understand these are just opinions, but you must be f*cking kidding me. The current lighting engine was archaic even by the standards of when STO first released. If you prefer the simplistic lighting engine with no atmospherics or proper GI, then you are in the wrong decade.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
To those who said they think the dev before images looked better than the after...I understand these are just opinions, but you must be f*cking kidding me. The current lighting engine was archaic even by the standards of when STO first released. If you prefer the simplistic lighting engine with no atmospherics or proper GI, then you are in the wrong decade.
That's what we are complaining about the new lighting has lost the atmospherics. The old one might be simplistic lighting but it looked better and had better and more atmospherics.
I'm sorry, but I can't completely agree with the original post. The colors are more vibrant, and if you adjust your Tribble graphic and display settings to be the same as Holodeck's. The antialiasing effects look the same. On the other hand, it does seem to be lacking reflective effects and color in certain places. For example, the displays on the wall over the exchange consoles should have some color and not be just white in my opinion. The issue of shadows depends on how much light is in the room, and where the light sources are placed. For example, if you have multiple light sources that produce the same amount of light in every direction, you shouldn't have shadows. If you don't have the same amount of light in every direction or not, you will have shadows. So until all the reflective effects are installed, I can't really make a judgment on that issue.
I did adjust Tribble graphics to the same as Holodeck's. Antialiasing was worse on tribble and many atmospherics areas look far worse along with a lot of missing lighting effects. If you have access to them take a look at the Xindi water bridge.
"Anyone else tried the new graphics and finding they ruin the game? Scenes swap from being so dark you cannot see anything to being over bright, washed out and full of haze, fog and loss of detail."
Nope, I actually like it... Plus I also know that it's a test server and know that the update is not final and it's still being worked on...
Except that the dynamic one is only static while the environment is static.
Also... some of the AMD issues seem to be AMD issues.... not actual flaws in the game.
It is static, that's kind of the point here. I don't recall ever seeing the exchange consoles and walls get up and walk around.
But players do get up and walk around, and can introduce light sources of their own of which the shadows need to interact with.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
The lighting is different. It is not inherently worse*. You are simply used to it looking one way, and soon, you will be used to it looking a different way. This is the same cycle we go through anytime we change ANYTHING. Everyone hates it, talks about how horrible it is, how it's the end of STO . . . and 6 months later, everyone's pretty much ok with it.
Also some lighting takes a few seconds to adjust, similar to if you have just been in a dark room and someone turns on a light, these two shots are about 5 seconds apart.
Exposure takes a few seconds to adjust. Most of the time it isn't noticeable, but when you move from a dark area to a bright one, or vice versa, you should see it.
Shadows are a massive step backwards. I am standing in the doorway next to the exchange and no shadows then a few steps forward and shadows grow around me. Completely unnatural and look really bad as you move around, worse then what we have now. It doesn’t look good having shadows appear and disappear as you move. It’s almost like the new graphics cannot handle shadows from further then 2 meters away. The screenshot shows how drastically shadows change in a short matter of steps.
It seems silly for static objects to have dynamic shadows. Those should be baked-in lightmaps.
Lightmaps are an ENTIRELY different system that we have never had in STO. The Shadows are dynamic because the lights that are casting them are dynamic. Whether the geometry is static or not is irrelevant. This is the way it's been from the start.
Shadows popping in and out isn't an option you can control. There is a hard limit on the number of shadow casting lights that can be drawing shadows at once. When you move from one space to another (for instance, from the Concourse, into the Exchange), it's re-choosing which lights' shadows to display. The "solution", and something we do fairly often, is to turn shadows off of some lights entirely, so that they don't compete with others.
Invariably, there are going to be some bad spots. Perhaps the exchange is one of those. When you see places where the shadows are popping in directly in front of you (not down the hallway a ways), post about it, and we'll take a look.
In the above case, we might be able to turn off shadows on some nearby lights to keep them from competing so much.
Thank you for the information although I wonder why its so much worse in STO then other game engines. I have not seen shadow pops that bad in years.
You're going through a lot of different stuff here, so let's slow down. Much of this can be attributed to trying to rebuild the lighting engine in an already 6 year old game with several hundred maps and many thousands of objects. Most of those other games built their lighting engine, and then built the game. We're retrofitting, and that's always going to cause errors. We've done our best to catch the bad ones and fix them, but I'm sure there are points we've missed.
What about the environments that should be clean and controlled like inside star ships but are full of haze/fog so bad you cannot see clearly to the other side of the room.
This shouldn't be the case, but I can't say for sure without seeing it myself. Which bridges specifically are the issue?
Well all the missing nice lighting effects be re added like “water no longer catches light, water ripple effects and reflections are mostly gone”
Nothing should have changed with water shaders. They were working fine last I looked, and would still catch light. Again, specifics. Where are you seeing this? Which water?
What about the areas that jump from super dark to super bright in a matter of seconds? Another area that I found overly washed out is beaming to your star ship bridge then travel in the turbolift. Its so bright and washed out the doors look pink ish and my characters red hair is all faded and washed out almost towards pink.
Shadows are a massive step backwards. I am standing in the doorway next to the exchange and no shadows then a few steps forward and shadows grow around me. Completely unnatural and look really bad as you move around, worse then what we have now. It doesn’t look good having shadows appear and disappear as you move. It’s almost like the new graphics cannot handle shadows from further then 2 meters away. The screenshot shows how drastically shadows change in a short matter of steps.
It seems silly for static objects to have dynamic shadows. Those should be baked-in lightmaps.
With a system that simulates bounced light its silly to have lightmaps.
Its not silly when the new graphics upgrade is so outdated compared to other engines that it can only handle a small number of lights and shadows. Lightmaps often look better then more advanced options that simulate and bounce light. Just look at the Xindi bridges which look x10 worse now. Anyway the more I play with the new graphics the more upset I get, its like playing a game from 10 years ago in how bad it looks. I played though the starting missions and 80% of the time the content looks far worse. Every so often the odd spot looks better.
Not outdated at all, just a different method. Many different games have handled lighting in different ways from each other. That doesn't mean that Game A's lighting is inherently better than Game B's. They're different, they're contemporary.
With a system that simulates bounced light its silly to have lightmaps.
The two aren't mutually exclusive and have been used together frequently. Killing performance by making every light and shadow dynamic is just lazy design.
I disagree entirely, Making every light and shadow dynamic makes it all so much more realistic.
I don't see how losing shadows, losing detail, getting haze and washed out screens and losing reflections and other nice effects is more realistic. One big problem is the upgrade cannot handle many shadows so areas that used to look nice now have half the shadows missing and crazy shadow popup which looks bad.
Look at this screenshots the right side is the new one and its looks less Star Trek like and everything's overly bright. once the door opens its the same down the corridor. Doors should not have glare like that. Most areas of the game look far worse after the upgrade.
I disagree, actually. The turbolift on the left looks far too dark. The door is a good brightness, but look at the dark corners along the lower edge. Look at how dark the lower edge of the wall on the right is. Look at how many different light sources are in that turbolift.
I agree that your hair, and the door are getting washed out, and I'd be happy to look into it if you tell me where that is. It may be that we just need to turn down the light a touch. I don't want it to look like the left, but I agree that the door is too bright.
Your hair is odd though, as most of it is in shadow, yet it's still changing color. It's possible this is due to exposure settings or color correction, but I can't tell for sure without looking at the map.
It seems there may be two issues here, the overall glare and brightness is too high, hopefully a simple fix and shadows don't seem to be working for some, seems that the latter may be an AMD issue as those with Nvidia seem to have no problems.
I have a Nvidia card and half the shadows are missing. Not just shadows but many nice effects like reflections are now missing in the upgrade. Water is the worst is no longer bounces and reflects on anything.
I haven't seen any water missing its reflections. Can you tell me where you're seeing that?
To those who said they think the dev before images looked better than the after...I understand these are just opinions, but you must be f*cking kidding me. The current lighting engine was archaic even by the standards of when STO first released. If you prefer the simplistic lighting engine with no atmospherics or proper GI, then you are in the wrong decade.
That's what we are complaining about the new lighting has lost the atmospherics. The old one might be simplistic lighting but it looked better and had better and more atmospherics.
it took me well over a month to get used to the way everything looks on the new windows. i tweaked lotro and sto endlessly until going blind from eyestrain. but finally i got used to it.
i will say that i don't care for things being very bright but if we can adjust the overall brightness it'll be just one more thing i have to adapt to.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Even adjusting the ingame brightness and my monitor did nothing.
The only thing that toned it down was shadows and I am sure I am not the only one whoncant use them as I have a mid range card yes its not a gaming card but I have never had issues playing Sto but I can see me either having to abandon the game as playing the game on low ps2 style graphic settings is a big no no or i am going to have to folk out for a new gpu...
Hey guys, if you think the lighting looks terrible, next time you're on tribble, go to your graphics settings, click "enable sliders", then slide both sliders all the way down (to the left), then all the way back up (to the right). Then adjust settings as you see fit.
There have been reports, and I've now seen a video (thank you Foundry Roundtable) where people's settings are SET to max, but not displaying properly. By dragging the sliders back and forth, it'll force everything to update.
Lightning is washed out, contrast is shot to hell, the ship tailor is so dark I can't see a frakkin' thing, bloom is out of control, and there are ZERO reflections. And if past performance from Cryptic is any indication, it's going to go live in this condition.
The view screen shows space as black in holodeck, clearly this isn't black.
Same bridge on holodeck
Adjusting the sliders made no difference although with both sliders on minimum it was interesting lol.
This also seems to be making the refractive effects less visible in the ponds at Starfleet Academy, which some people may be mistaking for reflective effects. The ponds in this area, as far as I can tell, don't have reflective effects and should in my opinion. This game is outstanding, and thank you Cryptic developers for your efforts to make the game better.
“The lighting is different. It is not inherently worse*. You are simply used to it looking one way, and soon, you will be used to it looking a different way. This is the same cycle we go through anytime we change ANYTHING. Everyone hates it, talks about how horrible it is, how it's the end of STO . . . and 6 months later, everyone's pretty much ok with it.”
That’s not true and I dislike it when devs say that. We might give up complaining because you won’t do anything about it but that doesn’t mean we suddenly think its ok. Take sector space when I did the temporal recruit I kept thinking how much I still hate this a year later. I ran into all the same problems as the first time around when new sector space was implanted with delta recruits. 1 year later and I am still getting my ship stuck in suns, auto pilot still sometimes takes me to wrong places, auto pilot drops out way before the target, suns look worse like flat objects hanging in space without flares. 12 months later it’s not better and still functions worse than the old sector map and looks worse than the old map.
Just because players have accepted it 6 months later it doesn’t means its better or a real improvement. Sometimes we just have to accept changes even when they are worse.
Take the stupid film grain effect in TOS parts of the game. It still ruins the look of TOS content it’s not better months later; it still causes slowdowns, still causes headaches and still looks terrible. But we have accepted it even though it’s horrible. I just avoid TOS style content as much as possible because of the film grain.
Another one http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10075563-before-and-after
The before shot is clear, detailed and looks great. In the after shot the distances parts of the shots look like they are surrounded by a light fog/ haze. The detail has gone. I don’t have time to go throughout the entire game but from my play though on tribble it’s a common problem.
“This is a very generic comment. I need specifics. What areas? What's the actual issue?”
The issue is a vast amount of areas are overly bright, colours are faded and washed out example my characters red hair goes pink and what was black is now grey. The screenshot I gave you was taken from interior warship medium.
“Nothing should have changed with water shaders. They were working fine last I looked, and would still catch light. Again, specifics. Where are you seeing this? Which water?”
All water has lost all reflections. (EDIT I have not checked since you made the post about the slider fix) The clearest example are the Xindi bridges with the Aquatic bridge being the worst. It no longer has water ripple effects on the ceiling. Most of the shadows have vanished. None of the consoles admit light. Colours are now faded and washed out.
To quote another person. “the Vorgon bridge looked the worst by far. On Holodeck this bridge is absolutely stunning, with every metal surface showing the reflection of the data orbs on the ceiling and the shiny crystal inlays on the floor panels. On Tribble, the textures for those crystal inlays have disappeared, leaving only the moving colors underneath visible. None of the metal surfaces are reflective anymore, and none of the data orbs/consoles/glowy bits emit light. It really just looks washed out and very bland on Tribble compared to Holodeck,”
“Not outdated at all, just a different method. Many different games have handled lighting in different ways from each other. That doesn't mean that Game A's lighting is inherently better than Game B's. They're different, they're contemporary”
I don’t agree. Shadow pops shouldn’t be a problem in modern games. It was barely a problem in the current lighting engine but is far worse in the new lighting engine which to me seems inherently worse. The large amount of shadows popping in and out feels like a step backwards. It’s not something I have experienced in games in many years.
“I agree that your hair, and the door are getting washed out, and I'd be happy to look into it if you tell me where that is. It may be that we just need to turn down the light a touch. I don't want it to look like the left, but I agree that the door is too bright.”
“Hey guys, if you think the lighting looks terrible, next time you're on tribble, go to your graphics settings, click "enable sliders", then slide both sliders all the way down (to the left), then all the way back up (to the right). Then adjust settings as you see fit.
There have been reports, and I've now seen a video (thank you Foundry Roundtable) where people's settings are SET to max, but not displaying properly. By dragging the sliders back and forth, it'll force everything to update.”
I would like to state my complaining and everything in this post above this quote is before trying this fix. If the horrible lighting I am experiencing is due to the above bug I apologise for complaining. I don’t have time right now to test out and replay all the starting missions as it’s getting late here. It could well be I thought the lighting was worse than it is due to the settings bug. That would explains why I lost reflections and water effects.
I tried the fix @tacofangs said and it did nothing, as I can not use shadows as it slows the game to a crawl and I am not able to play ( well I can but its like a slideshow ) ... and this is what I get
the only! thing that toned it down was Shadows and hmmm I cant use them....
Now on Holodeck I can use max settings with some Alterations! to play and this is what I get with/without shadows....
With
Without...
Nothing majorly different on Holo but as you see on Tribble........
As I said above if there is no fix for this I will and im guess others to, with either have to abandon the game or spend RL money to buy a new GPU (and what ever else is needed to do so) to be able to play the game...
Hey guys, if you think the lighting looks terrible, next time you're on tribble, go to your graphics settings, click "enable sliders", then slide both sliders all the way down (to the left), then all the way back up (to the right). Then adjust settings as you see fit.
There have been reports, and I've now seen a video (thank you Foundry Roundtable) where people's settings are SET to max, but not displaying properly. By dragging the sliders back and forth, it'll force everything to update.
I'll try that - thanks Taco.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
The lighting is different. It is not inherently worse*. You are simply used to it looking one way, and soon, you will be used to it looking a different way. This is the same cycle we go through anytime we change ANYTHING. Everyone hates it, talks about how horrible it is, how it's the end of STO . . . and 6 months later, everyone's pretty much ok with it.
Also some lighting takes a few seconds to adjust, similar to if you have just been in a dark room and someone turns on a light, these two shots are about 5 seconds apart.
Exposure takes a few seconds to adjust. Most of the time it isn't noticeable, but when you move from a dark area to a bright one, or vice versa, you should see it.
Shadows are a massive step backwards. I am standing in the doorway next to the exchange and no shadows then a few steps forward and shadows grow around me. Completely unnatural and look really bad as you move around, worse then what we have now. It doesn’t look good having shadows appear and disappear as you move. It’s almost like the new graphics cannot handle shadows from further then 2 meters away. The screenshot shows how drastically shadows change in a short matter of steps.
It seems silly for static objects to have dynamic shadows. Those should be baked-in lightmaps.
Lightmaps are an ENTIRELY different system that we have never had in STO. The Shadows are dynamic because the lights that are casting them are dynamic. Whether the geometry is static or not is irrelevant. This is the way it's been from the start.
Shadows popping in and out isn't an option you can control. There is a hard limit on the number of shadow casting lights that can be drawing shadows at once. When you move from one space to another (for instance, from the Concourse, into the Exchange), it's re-choosing which lights' shadows to display. The "solution", and something we do fairly often, is to turn shadows off of some lights entirely, so that they don't compete with others.
Invariably, there are going to be some bad spots. Perhaps the exchange is one of those. When you see places where the shadows are popping in directly in front of you (not down the hallway a ways), post about it, and we'll take a look.
In the above case, we might be able to turn off shadows on some nearby lights to keep them from competing so much.
Thank you for the information although I wonder why its so much worse in STO then other game engines. I have not seen shadow pops that bad in years.
You're going through a lot of different stuff here, so let's slow down. Much of this can be attributed to trying to rebuild the lighting engine in an already 6 year old game with several hundred maps and many thousands of objects. Most of those other games built their lighting engine, and then built the game. We're retrofitting, and that's always going to cause errors. We've done our best to catch the bad ones and fix them, but I'm sure there are points we've missed.
What about the environments that should be clean and controlled like inside star ships but are full of haze/fog so bad you cannot see clearly to the other side of the room.
This shouldn't be the case, but I can't say for sure without seeing it myself. Which bridges specifically are the issue?
Well all the missing nice lighting effects be re added like “water no longer catches light, water ripple effects and reflections are mostly gone”
Nothing should have changed with water shaders. They were working fine last I looked, and would still catch light. Again, specifics. Where are you seeing this? Which water?
What about the areas that jump from super dark to super bright in a matter of seconds? Another area that I found overly washed out is beaming to your star ship bridge then travel in the turbolift. Its so bright and washed out the doors look pink ish and my characters red hair is all faded and washed out almost towards pink.
Shadows are a massive step backwards. I am standing in the doorway next to the exchange and no shadows then a few steps forward and shadows grow around me. Completely unnatural and look really bad as you move around, worse then what we have now. It doesn’t look good having shadows appear and disappear as you move. It’s almost like the new graphics cannot handle shadows from further then 2 meters away. The screenshot shows how drastically shadows change in a short matter of steps.
It seems silly for static objects to have dynamic shadows. Those should be baked-in lightmaps.
With a system that simulates bounced light its silly to have lightmaps.
Its not silly when the new graphics upgrade is so outdated compared to other engines that it can only handle a small number of lights and shadows. Lightmaps often look better then more advanced options that simulate and bounce light. Just look at the Xindi bridges which look x10 worse now. Anyway the more I play with the new graphics the more upset I get, its like playing a game from 10 years ago in how bad it looks. I played though the starting missions and 80% of the time the content looks far worse. Every so often the odd spot looks better.
Not outdated at all, just a different method. Many different games have handled lighting in different ways from each other. That doesn't mean that Game A's lighting is inherently better than Game B's. They're different, they're contemporary.
With a system that simulates bounced light its silly to have lightmaps.
The two aren't mutually exclusive and have been used together frequently. Killing performance by making every light and shadow dynamic is just lazy design.
I disagree entirely, Making every light and shadow dynamic makes it all so much more realistic.
I don't see how losing shadows, losing detail, getting haze and washed out screens and losing reflections and other nice effects is more realistic. One big problem is the upgrade cannot handle many shadows so areas that used to look nice now have half the shadows missing and crazy shadow popup which looks bad.
Look at this screenshots the right side is the new one and its looks less Star Trek like and everything's overly bright. once the door opens its the same down the corridor. Doors should not have glare like that. Most areas of the game look far worse after the upgrade.
I disagree, actually. The turbolift on the left looks far too dark. The door is a good brightness, but look at the dark corners along the lower edge. Look at how dark the lower edge of the wall on the right is. Look at how many different light sources are in that turbolift.
I agree that your hair, and the door are getting washed out, and I'd be happy to look into it if you tell me where that is. It may be that we just need to turn down the light a touch. I don't want it to look like the left, but I agree that the door is too bright.
Your hair is odd though, as most of it is in shadow, yet it's still changing color. It's possible this is due to exposure settings or color correction, but I can't tell for sure without looking at the map.
It seems there may be two issues here, the overall glare and brightness is too high, hopefully a simple fix and shadows don't seem to be working for some, seems that the latter may be an AMD issue as those with Nvidia seem to have no problems.
I have a Nvidia card and half the shadows are missing. Not just shadows but many nice effects like reflections are now missing in the upgrade. Water is the worst is no longer bounces and reflects on anything.
I haven't seen any water missing its reflections. Can you tell me where you're seeing that?
To those who said they think the dev before images looked better than the after...I understand these are just opinions, but you must be f*cking kidding me. The current lighting engine was archaic even by the standards of when STO first released. If you prefer the simplistic lighting engine with no atmospherics or proper GI, then you are in the wrong decade.
That's what we are complaining about the new lighting has lost the atmospherics. The old one might be simplistic lighting but it looked better and had better and more atmospherics.
Taco knows me, he knows when i get a nerve burn (especially over my bank account) that i hold on to it like a pit bull playing with it's favorite radiator hose.
Not this time, Taco isn't the last word in STO, he has to answer to his PWE desk jockies, this game has been a mess since it launched and when it shuts down it will be that way.
When he saw my name he probably took a sedative and slammed a shot, such is the nature of my tenacity.
Oh and Taco, if i have to buy a graphics card it'l probably be 3-6mnths before you get another $30 for a ship, at least youl be able to get your morning coffee then.
I know, "this isn't Khemo", yea, it is, ive been listening to Classical Crossover lately, it soothes me, and if your curious i would check out Jackie Evancho or Amira Willighagen, honest, it works.
The view screen shows space as black in holodeck, clearly this isn't black.
Same bridge on holodeck
Adjusting the sliders made no difference although with both sliders on minimum it was interesting lol.
Ok, I get it now. It's not that space is lighter, it's that the window is reflecting a generic cubemap (which is some blotchy sky/blue/white colors). Many bridges have not been touched up yet. My guess is that the Odyssey simply hasn't gotten probed yet. When it does, reflections should be back to normal.
Not sure what's going on with low-end, but I know that the Graphics team hasn't worked out all of the fallback stuff yet for people who's cards won't do the new lighting. That's all coming still.
Another one http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10075563-before-and-after
The before shot is clear, detailed and looks great. In the after shot the distances parts of the shots look like they are surrounded by a light fog/ haze. The detail has gone. I don’t have time to go throughout the entire game but from my play though on tribble it’s a common problem.
Don't go by the Before & Afters. Remember this is all a work in progress still, and most of those before and after shots were done before we really got into it. When we first switched over, fog was much more prominent than it used to be. But I believe that's been corrected at this point. If you're going to point at things, point me to things that are currently on Tribble.
“Nothing should have changed with water shaders. They were working fine last I looked, and would still catch light. Again, specifics. Where are you seeing this? Which water?”
All water has lost all reflections. (EDIT I have not checked since you made the post about the slider fix) The clearest example are the Xindi bridges with the Aquatic bridge being the worst. It no longer has water ripple effects on the ceiling. Most of the shadows have vanished. None of the consoles admit light. Colours are now faded and washed out.
To quote another person. “the Vorgon bridge looked the worst by far. On Holodeck this bridge is absolutely stunning, with every metal surface showing the reflection of the data orbs on the ceiling and the shiny crystal inlays on the floor panels. On Tribble, the textures for those crystal inlays have disappeared, leaving only the moving colors underneath visible. None of the metal surfaces are reflective anymore, and none of the data orbs/consoles/glowy bits emit light. It really just looks washed out and very bland on Tribble compared to Holodeck,”
I've looked at both the Xindi & Vorgon bridges just now. I agree they are missing their reflections, but this is due to the same thing as I mentioned above with the Odyssey. They haven't gotten touched yet. Many bridges have not. We're working on it, and they will get adjusted properly. We have several hundred maps in game. It was much more important to go through the social areas and primary mission maps first. That doesn't mean bridges won't get touched up, it just means that they haven't been yet.
“Not outdated at all, just a different method. Many different games have handled lighting in different ways from each other. That doesn't mean that Game A's lighting is inherently better than Game B's. They're different, they're contemporary”
I don’t agree. Shadow pops shouldn’t be a problem in modern games. It was barely a problem in the current lighting engine but is far worse in the new lighting engine which to me seems inherently worse. The large amount of shadows popping in and out feels like a step backwards. It’s not something I have experienced in games in many years.
This is not a step backwards in tech, it's just a symptom of overzealous environment artists that had their leash loosened. We will touch up the areas that are problematic. Shadows shouldn't be fading in and out nearby, they should only be doing so at a distance, as they did before.
“I agree that your hair, and the door are getting washed out, and I'd be happy to look into it if you tell me where that is. It may be that we just need to turn down the light a touch. I don't want it to look like the left, but I agree that the door is too bright.”
“Hey guys, if you think the lighting looks terrible, next time you're on tribble, go to your graphics settings, click "enable sliders", then slide both sliders all the way down (to the left), then all the way back up (to the right). Then adjust settings as you see fit.
There have been reports, and I've now seen a video (thank you Foundry Roundtable) where people's settings are SET to max, but not displaying properly. By dragging the sliders back and forth, it'll force everything to update.”
I would like to state my complaining and everything in this post above this quote is before trying this fix. If the horrible lighting I am experiencing is due to the above bug I apologise for complaining. I don’t have time right now to test out and replay all the starting missions as it’s getting late here. It could well be I thought the lighting was worse than it is due to the settings bug. That would explains why I lost reflections and water effects.
I've got no problem with you complaining. That's how we learn about these things. The only time I have a problem is when people start going off about our personal or collective incompetence, indifference, or heartlessness.
Bring up issues you see as often as you like, just do so in a respectful manner, and we're all good.
I tried the fix @tacofangs said and it did nothing, as I can not use shadows as it slows the game to a crawl and I am not able to play ( well I can but its like a slideshow ) ... and this is what I get
the only! thing that toned it down was Shadows and hmmm I cant use them....
Now on Holodeck I can use max settings with some Alterations! to play and this is what I get with/without shadows....
With
Without...
Nothing majorly different on Holo but as you see on Tribble........
As I said above if there is no fix for this I will and im guess others to, with either have to abandon the game or spend RL money to buy a new GPU (and what ever else is needed to do so) to be able to play the game...
From your other thread:
ESD is an odd duck.
It's an interior map, set in space, with big windows looking directly toward the sun.
When we re-lit, ESD, a change was made to the way we were representing Sunlight on the map. That allowed us to do some cooler stuff, like having the sunlight pour through to the concourse, something it couldn't do before. But it relies on shadows to not have that sunlight affect everything, everywhere.
I'll bring this up, but I honestly don't know what the right answer is right now.
Edit: I will add that I believe you should be able to revert to the old lighting by switching from DX11 back to DX9.
Hey guys, if you think the lighting looks terrible, next time you're on tribble, go to your graphics settings, click "enable sliders", then slide both sliders all the way down (to the left), then all the way back up (to the right). Then adjust settings as you see fit.
There have been reports, and I've now seen a video (thank you Foundry Roundtable) where people's settings are SET to max, but not displaying properly. By dragging the sliders back and forth, it'll force everything to update.
I'll try that - thanks Taco.
Note that this isn't really a "FIX" for anything, other than potentially settings that look like they're set to one thing, but are actually displaying something else.
Comments
BUT - I turned off sahdows after failing Dragon's deceit because I kepft falling down in the dark...
KDF: 2 tacs, 2 engs, 3 scis
KDF Roms: 3 tacs, 1 eng, 1 scis
FED: 2 tacs, 1 eng, 2 scis
TOS: 1 tac
all on T5 rep (up to temporal)
all have mastered Intel tree (and some more specs Points)
highest DPS: 60.982
I misunderstand and I agree with Dynamic lighting is great but the way STO implanted it is the worst I have seen in years.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Nope, I actually like it... Plus I also know that it's a test server and know that the update is not final and it's still being worked on...
But players do get up and walk around, and can introduce light sources of their own of which the shadows need to interact with.
But. . . . no one's going to believe me.
*(other than a few bugged locations)
Exposure takes a few seconds to adjust. Most of the time it isn't noticeable, but when you move from a dark area to a bright one, or vice versa, you should see it.
I don't get it. What's "wrong"?
Lightmaps are an ENTIRELY different system that we have never had in STO. The Shadows are dynamic because the lights that are casting them are dynamic. Whether the geometry is static or not is irrelevant. This is the way it's been from the start.
You're going through a lot of different stuff here, so let's slow down. Much of this can be attributed to trying to rebuild the lighting engine in an already 6 year old game with several hundred maps and many thousands of objects. Most of those other games built their lighting engine, and then built the game. We're retrofitting, and that's always going to cause errors. We've done our best to catch the bad ones and fix them, but I'm sure there are points we've missed.
This shouldn't be the case, but I can't say for sure without seeing it myself. Which bridges specifically are the issue?
This is a very generic comment. I need specifics. What areas? What's the actual issue?
Nothing should have changed with water shaders. They were working fine last I looked, and would still catch light. Again, specifics. Where are you seeing this? Which water?
Again, which bridge?
Not outdated at all, just a different method. Many different games have handled lighting in different ways from each other. That doesn't mean that Game A's lighting is inherently better than Game B's. They're different, they're contemporary.
I disagree, actually. The turbolift on the left looks far too dark. The door is a good brightness, but look at the dark corners along the lower edge. Look at how dark the lower edge of the wall on the right is. Look at how many different light sources are in that turbolift.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3tBgvnJZC-Q/hqdefault.jpg
I agree that your hair, and the door are getting washed out, and I'd be happy to look into it if you tell me where that is. It may be that we just need to turn down the light a touch. I don't want it to look like the left, but I agree that the door is too bright.
Your hair is odd though, as most of it is in shadow, yet it's still changing color. It's possible this is due to exposure settings or color correction, but I can't tell for sure without looking at the map.
I haven't seen any water missing its reflections. Can you tell me where you're seeing that?
You keep using that word. . .
I put them on my gpu screams at me lol ( well more like it becomes a slide show )
If i dont put them on the new light settings make every map i have been to so bright its headache provoking.
i will say that i don't care for things being very bright but if we can adjust the overall brightness it'll be just one more thing i have to adapt to.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The only thing that toned it down was shadows and I am sure I am not the only one whoncant use them as I have a mid range card yes its not a gaming card but I have never had issues playing Sto but I can see me either having to abandon the game as playing the game on low ps2 style graphic settings is a big no no or i am going to have to folk out for a new gpu...
There have been reports, and I've now seen a video (thank you Foundry Roundtable) where people's settings are SET to max, but not displaying properly. By dragging the sliders back and forth, it'll force everything to update.
Just a little frustrated we didn't have it when playing through in our new AOY toons.
This also seems to be making the refractive effects less visible in the ponds at Starfleet Academy, which some people may be mistaking for reflective effects. The ponds in this area, as far as I can tell, don't have reflective effects and should in my opinion. This game is outstanding, and thank you Cryptic developers for your efforts to make the game better.
Just because players have accepted it 6 months later it doesn’t means its better or a real improvement. Sometimes we just have to accept changes even when they are worse.
Take the stupid film grain effect in TOS parts of the game. It still ruins the look of TOS content it’s not better months later; it still causes slowdowns, still causes headaches and still looks terrible. But we have accepted it even though it’s horrible. I just avoid TOS style content as much as possible because of the film grain.
For Bridges this post goes into a lot of detail http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1221664/lighting-updates-starship-bridge-issues
As for haze excluding inside the ship in “Stranded in Space” as haze in makes sense the next one is the ground map in Hide and Seek which haze doesn’t make sense. See my earlier screenshot. Take a look at http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10142393-weekly-before-and-after in the back door way it’s washed out and hazy in the after shot.
Another one http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10075563-before-and-after
The before shot is clear, detailed and looks great. In the after shot the distances parts of the shots look like they are surrounded by a light fog/ haze. The detail has gone. I don’t have time to go throughout the entire game but from my play though on tribble it’s a common problem.
The issue is a vast amount of areas are overly bright, colours are faded and washed out example my characters red hair goes pink and what was black is now grey. The screenshot I gave you was taken from interior warship medium.
All water has lost all reflections. (EDIT I have not checked since you made the post about the slider fix) The clearest example are the Xindi bridges with the Aquatic bridge being the worst. It no longer has water ripple effects on the ceiling. Most of the shadows have vanished. None of the consoles admit light. Colours are now faded and washed out.
To quote another person. “the Vorgon bridge looked the worst by far. On Holodeck this bridge is absolutely stunning, with every metal surface showing the reflection of the data orbs on the ceiling and the shiny crystal inlays on the floor panels. On Tribble, the textures for those crystal inlays have disappeared, leaving only the moving colors underneath visible. None of the metal surfaces are reflective anymore, and none of the data orbs/consoles/glowy bits emit light. It really just looks washed out and very bland on Tribble compared to Holodeck,”
I don’t agree. Shadow pops shouldn’t be a problem in modern games. It was barely a problem in the current lighting engine but is far worse in the new lighting engine which to me seems inherently worse. The large amount of shadows popping in and out feels like a step backwards. It’s not something I have experienced in games in many years.
The area is interior warship medium.
I would like to state my complaining and everything in this post above this quote is before trying this fix. If the horrible lighting I am experiencing is due to the above bug I apologise for complaining. I don’t have time right now to test out and replay all the starting missions as it’s getting late here. It could well be I thought the lighting was worse than it is due to the settings bug. That would explains why I lost reflections and water effects.
I tried the fix @tacofangs said and it did nothing, as I can not use shadows as it slows the game to a crawl and I am not able to play ( well I can but its like a slideshow ) ... and this is what I get
the only! thing that toned it down was Shadows and hmmm I cant use them....
Now on Holodeck I can use max settings with some Alterations! to play and this is what I get with/without shadows....
With
Without...
Nothing majorly different on Holo but as you see on Tribble........
As I said above if there is no fix for this I will and im guess others to, with either have to abandon the game or spend RL money to buy a new GPU (and what ever else is needed to do so) to be able to play the game...
I'll try that - thanks Taco.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Well, hello again Taco.
Taco knows me, he knows when i get a nerve burn (especially over my bank account) that i hold on to it like a pit bull playing with it's favorite radiator hose.
Not this time, Taco isn't the last word in STO, he has to answer to his PWE desk jockies, this game has been a mess since it launched and when it shuts down it will be that way.
When he saw my name he probably took a sedative and slammed a shot, such is the nature of my tenacity.
Oh and Taco, if i have to buy a graphics card it'l probably be 3-6mnths before you get another $30 for a ship, at least youl be able to get your morning coffee then.
I know, "this isn't Khemo", yea, it is, ive been listening to Classical Crossover lately, it soothes me, and if your curious i would check out Jackie Evancho or Amira Willighagen, honest, it works.
Lets cut the man a break.
Ok, I get it now. It's not that space is lighter, it's that the window is reflecting a generic cubemap (which is some blotchy sky/blue/white colors). Many bridges have not been touched up yet. My guess is that the Odyssey simply hasn't gotten probed yet. When it does, reflections should be back to normal.
Not sure what's going on with low-end, but I know that the Graphics team hasn't worked out all of the fallback stuff yet for people who's cards won't do the new lighting. That's all coming still.
Don't go by the Before & Afters. Remember this is all a work in progress still, and most of those before and after shots were done before we really got into it. When we first switched over, fog was much more prominent than it used to be. But I believe that's been corrected at this point. If you're going to point at things, point me to things that are currently on Tribble.
I've looked at both the Xindi & Vorgon bridges just now. I agree they are missing their reflections, but this is due to the same thing as I mentioned above with the Odyssey. They haven't gotten touched yet. Many bridges have not. We're working on it, and they will get adjusted properly. We have several hundred maps in game. It was much more important to go through the social areas and primary mission maps first. That doesn't mean bridges won't get touched up, it just means that they haven't been yet.
This is not a step backwards in tech, it's just a symptom of overzealous environment artists that had their leash loosened. We will touch up the areas that are problematic. Shadows shouldn't be fading in and out nearby, they should only be doing so at a distance, as they did before.
I'll take a look.
I've got no problem with you complaining. That's how we learn about these things. The only time I have a problem is when people start going off about our personal or collective incompetence, indifference, or heartlessness.
Bring up issues you see as often as you like, just do so in a respectful manner, and we're all good.
From your other thread:
ESD is an odd duck.
It's an interior map, set in space, with big windows looking directly toward the sun.
When we re-lit, ESD, a change was made to the way we were representing Sunlight on the map. That allowed us to do some cooler stuff, like having the sunlight pour through to the concourse, something it couldn't do before. But it relies on shadows to not have that sunlight affect everything, everywhere.
I'll bring this up, but I honestly don't know what the right answer is right now.
Edit: I will add that I believe you should be able to revert to the old lighting by switching from DX11 back to DX9.
Note that this isn't really a "FIX" for anything, other than potentially settings that look like they're set to one thing, but are actually displaying something else.