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Boy I love this new lighting! :D ~ Sarcaz~
lexusk19
Member Posts: 1,425 Arc User
imgur.com/HHYAkI6
I love this new lighting!
Looks so crisp and clear! -_- This is MAX settings by the way, GTX 970 Video card with a Intel I7 6700k CPU. FPS is fine, but the game looks like potato in any fancy settings. Anyone know a fix since Craptic is to lazy/incompetent to do anything? After all, theres no money in making a good product...
Ugh end rant, but for real guys, fix this stuff, game looks horrible.
I love this new lighting!
Looks so crisp and clear! -_- This is MAX settings by the way, GTX 970 Video card with a Intel I7 6700k CPU. FPS is fine, but the game looks like potato in any fancy settings. Anyone know a fix since Craptic is to lazy/incompetent to do anything? After all, theres no money in making a good product...Ugh end rant, but for real guys, fix this stuff, game looks horrible.
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1. Use 2.0
2. Turn off 2.0
3. Play with the settings while leaving 2.0 on
4. Play with the settings after turning 2.0 off
They've (Tacofangs) told us that 2.0 actually uses different light sources than those used by 1.0 and that most of the rest is run through a generalize filter.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1226842/new-bridge-lightings-bloopers/p1
It can also lead to some weird stuff when 2.0 is on:
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1226617/interesting-effect?sso=eyJ1bmlxdWVpZCI6IjEwOTgxMzk4NyIsIm5hbWUiOiJ3ZW5keXN1ZTUzIiwiZW1haWwiOiJ3ZW5keXN1ZTUzQGFvbC5jb20iLCJwaG90b3VybCI6Imh0dHA6XC9cL2ltYWdlcy1jZG4ucGVyZmVjdHdvcmxkLmNvbVwvYXJjXC84NlwvMGRcLzg2MGQ1M2EzZDhkYzY3ZjQwMWQ4MjgwOThiNzczMmU3MTQ3Mjg3OTY3MC5qcGciLCJyb2xlcyI6Ik1lbWJlciIsImNsaWVudF9pZCI6IjE0NDM5Njg5ODEifQ%3D%3D+fae196ad6d35c1034bfeb575600b449b525f216c+1485334329+hmacsha1
2.0 off and a bit of time playing with the settings and almost never a D3D crash and everything still looks a lot better than it used to when running the Dx9 command switch with all settings at max.
Disclaimer, I have run across an area or two that absolutely require lighting 2.0. What Lies Beneath iss a great example. With 2.0 turned off it was so dark it is impossible to see what you are doing no matter what other setting I tried. With 2.0 on it was lit up like broad daylight. Thankfully coming back from all the D3D crashes I usually got back to where I was when it crashed instead of having to start over.
I disagree.
It's easy to find a few spots that don't look good and say the whole thing is ugly.
It's also easy to find the opposite:
Lighting 1.0:
Lighting 2.0:
2.0 just looks and feels rushed...
The thing just is, that Taco said he's perfectly okay with some maps sucking because of 2.0, as long as the majority of the maps is improved. I disagree, of course. Unless he has plans to fix those now broken maps.
EDIT: His exact words were "Honestly, if the majority of the game stayed looking roughly like it was, and a handful of maps look worse, but I now have many more options for lighting things in better, more interesting ways, I am 100% ok with that."
You make the latter sound unreasonable; but, to me, indeed, releasing something when you know it's not actually production-ready, is precisely what 'rushed' means. It has become an extremely common thing, these days, though. Microsoft does it all the time: "Bring out something now, because Ferengi, and who cares whether it's actually ready or not." Were it me, I would indeed have waited to release until all known bugs were fixed (mind you, not all bugs, but all bugs you knew of at the time). Guess I'm old-school that way, but it's now being mocked. O, the times, they are a-changing!
Yes, I agree: overall, there be many places were 2.0 simply renders maps overbright, and washes out entire scenes. And not everything is a reflective surface.
Ironically, 2.0 is actually really better, in potentiality, provided the errors get fixed. If they're unwilling to do the latter, though, then I'd say it's worse.
From the look of beams to detail on walls (as seen in the iconican maps where it just looks washed out with energy effects seeming to lose "see through" and looking different) everything seems off in older maps. Beams look like solid bars of color and lose a lot of the cool particle effects they had before which is the one I'm seeing the most causing it to be the most jarring for me.
If it was one or two things I'd be ok with it as a whole, but it's all over the place leading to differences in how things are presented from the original intended looks to the 2.0 looks. It makes it harder for me to overlook and actually makes me want them to dedicate active Dev time to fixing up how things look and getting as much as possible to look like it did in 1.0. It feels rushed, regardless of if it "stayed looking roughly like it was" to Taco.
Devil's Advocate: Everything looks off in older maps, because you something to compare them to. By and large, maps may look different, and different to you may mean worse, because that's how human brains work. But different does not mean objectively worse.
Yes, there are some maps that DO look worse, but those are few and far between. The majority of maps I've heard complaints about, are maps that look DIFFERENT, but if I were lighting those maps now, that's how they would be lit.
Just because the lighting looked one way in 1.0, do not for a second think that that was the INTENDED look. We were working within incredibly tight lighting constraints in 1.0. It was not POSSIBLE to realize the lighting visions a lot of us had while making these maps in the first place. 2.0 has raised the bar of those limitations significantly. Again, this does not mean that EVERY map looks like we want it to look now, but don't go thinking that 1.0 is lighting "canon" or something.
There is another thread about lighting on Bridges. The things mentioned there, which are actually a problem, and not just a personal preference, are being addressed. But it is simply not feasible to manually relight every single map, and even if we did, they wouldn't all look exactly like 1.0.
This is my experience as well, and I already had it generations of PCs ago, when I had a computer scientist friend who always fine tuned everything while I just bought my PC off the store with whatever inefficient graphic card (or other parts) it had. Turns out, I do not remember any setting issues on my PC except for sometimes frame rate drops when the auto setting was too generous, while those perfected PCs regularily had troubles. (Granted, when they were running they did look better)
read the thread I posted earlier. I think Taco agreed that it was rushed, but now with each update a little more of it gets fixed. They had to have it all done by the release date and there was too much to do and too few people to do it.
Edit: or just read what Taco posted above (completely missed that or I wouldn't have posted this right now...)
I'm pretty sure lighting 2.0 makes Drozana's lower decks DARKER than with lighting 1.0. If it's brighter, it's because the Boffs' flashlights can lighten the scenery, in contrast to 1.0 where only your flashlight was working.
While yes, the human brain doesn't like change, you have to admit that some things ARE lost in the 2.0 change over simply because the lighting is positioned differently and acts differently because of how it's been reworked. It's just hard for me to believe that all the maps would be lit the same way.
Just looking at the iconian maps in those screen shots, and it's even easier to see being rendered in real time in game, show that things might not be how they were originally intended NOW. I know for a fact that when you are given lesser tools you do more with less and make things work, and in that case you cut corners and build things in certain ways to make things work how you intended. You can see that blatently just shifting from 1.0 to 2.0 and seeing the entire lighting shift from multiple sources to create a specific look to one or two at harshly different angles giving an entire other lighting scheme that appears to be default locations rather than precisely placed. Detail is minimized or outright impossible to see, and actually playing some maps it's hard to even think that an artist would intentionally make details that someone would never see because they're lit in a certain way. Why make intricate wall details if they'll just be blurred out? Why spend that time on the texture if it's going to be covered up by the lighting effect? No artist would and I can't imagine even you would go to that level of effort to make something that you know when lit would never be seen.
For another example, the "Bonnie Kin" map (Mission: What Lies beneath) is no longer dark and requiring the flashlights leading to a horror like crawl leading to an intentional feeling of "wow this is creepy and....WHAT IS THAT VOICE", it's decently lit and no longer scary because of how the lighting is now positioned in that map. This is on the default 2.0. Toggling between the two it's easy to see the differences. Even adjusting the lighting DOWN in the various ways possible it's still more lit than should be for a map meant to be dark and scary.
I've gone through adjusting everything possible to try and see things like the wall details that are obvious in 1.0 and are blurry or hard to see in 2.0. I've tried to make the lighting get at least close to capture what the original look of the maps were but it's nigh impossible for some because the lighting is actually in totally DIFFERENT places meaning it's not possible to know if it's intended or just the "default" location for all new lighting sources.
I really do get that you're proud of the work you've done on the new lighting engine and the new maps made in it DO look better because you've got more tools to work with. However you have to actually look at our point of view and go back and look at some of these maps. Stand in the same areas as the screen shots are being taken and toggle from 1.0 to 2.0 and see the differences. In some maps it's not a problem but maps like those brought up in this thread alone should be enough to make you at least want to go in engine and see it being rendered for yourself and make a judgement without a bias of "it's all good, just different now."
I also know that you can't do EVERY map, but when things are brought up you should at least look and see if the screen shots are close to the intended look. If they are close, and by close I mean you can see everything as intended, then it's fine to leave, but if half the details are just gone and the entire thing looks washed out then something is VERY wrong with how the new engine is positioning the default lighting.
If it gets fixed, then it's all good.
That's the fact the flashlights are much brighter, lighten more and the Boffs' one now work, adding up to yours.
1.0:
2.0:
If anything should be changed, it would be the flashlight intensity, not the map.
Some after/before screens:
I agree that What Lies Beneath should be dark and have that "horror" feeling; however, when I played the episode recently using 1.0, it seemed much darker this time than before 2.0 was implemented to the point of being almost pitch black. Not only that, the beam coming from the flashlight seemed to be barely working if doing anything at all to the point that I couldn't even see the wall in front of me when I walked right into it.
Exactly. I originally thought that the flashlight wasn't working at all, then I reached a wall and saw a faint hint of reflected light just before smashing face first into the wall. Walkways, railings, consoles etc could not be seen at all as the only thing the flashlight illuminated was whatever was "inches" in front of the beam (disclaimer, some of the taller items could be kinda seen, if you crouched down after running into them so the flashlight beam would actually hit them).
I realy do feel that there are some some, literaly, glaring examples of maps which I cant belive you would light the way they are now. Starbase fleet alert and starbase fleet defence for example. Any one remember this song because I sware I cant get it out of my head.
Yo listen up here's a story
About a space captain that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue
Like him inside and outside
Blue his starbase with blue little windows
And a blue Shipyard
And everything is blue for him
And himself and everybody around
Cause he ain't got nobody to listen
I'm Blue da ba dee da ba daa
I'm Blue da ba dee da ba daa
I have a blue starbase with blue windows
Blue is the colour of all that I see
Blue is the shipyard and all the com arays too
I have a transwarp gate and it is so blue
Blue are the ships here that warp around
Blue like my starbase, it's in and outside
Blue are the words I say and what I think
Blue are the feelings that live inside me
I'm Blue da ba dee da ba daa
I'm Blue da ba dee da ba daa
The game over all really does look a lot prettier now.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
This really is such a good point that it needs to be re-emphasized.
A lot of people that don't like 2.0 or think it looks 'wrong' are simply used to the way it used to look and so now it's easy to confuse wrong for just.. different.
I'll admit, I too thought 2.0 looked 'off' or 'wrong' when it first rolled out. I played with it on for a while and then after a week or two I went in and disabled 2.0 and I was really surprised by the result. The result was, it put the game back to how it was, but strangely, it's not how I remember it. My memory created some nostalgic version of the old game that simply put.. didn't exist. Once it went back and I can see how the game looked before compared to now, I quickly turned 2.0 back on and have not considered going back since.
Some people, myself included, just got it in their heads that the old way was the 'correct way' so that any difference now must be inherently wrong. Now, I'm not going to say there aren't occasional odd graphics issues since 2.0, of course there are. I can't name a graphics engine in existence that doesn't have similar issues, but when comparing 2.0 to 1.0 directly, I now see that 2.0 is actually a sizable improvement. Especially if you're able to play the game on max details, the game looks vastly improved now vs. how it looked this time last year. I think some people have simply done what I had done, and let inaccurate memory and a little nostalgia cloud the overall impression. The best thing with 2.0 though is that if someone insists that it looked better before, they still have the option to simply disable the new lighting. If someone thinks it looked so much better before, then great.. they can play that way while the rest of us enjoy the updated engine.