Improved tone mapping for 1.61 proposal

[maturin]

So do you see the problem?

Noon at the default date looks perfectly normal. Noon on August 11, 1991 has the new tone mapping settings making the shadows too dark, and the night unplayable. I have had pitch black nights EVEN with the moon up.

I don't exactly understand how the date is changing the lighting system (I know that the moon cycles affect darkness), but it's a drastic difference. The presence of the moon shouldn't be changing how sun shadows render.

[MavericK96]

After a bit of actual play time with the new tone mapping, I have to say that, while I like the deeper contrast in general, I agree with many here that think it is too dark at night. Even with the moon out it is extremely difficult to see, which is not all that realistic if you're in open air (I've been outside in darkness other than the moon and the moon, if 1/2 or more full, is actually really bright).

Even if there's no moon, and no ambient light, you will still be able to see fairly well due to starlight (if it's not cloudy of course). It should never really be pitch black unless you are in a cave or something.

[Orcinus]

Maybe not my job to say, but guys.... have some patience, don't bash BIS for looking at some thing that might improve the game, or for all we know help with Arma 3. We have no idea how the divide their time and it's not for us to say that they are "wasting time" fixing this(or whatever else) and they could be doing some thing else.

I feel embarrassed for the community and bad for the devs when i read stuff like that^

+1

Anyone who follows this sub-forum alone must surely realise the devs have been working really hard (including late evening & weekends) and making some superb improvements to the game.
The recent new commands are allowing community members to fix what are IMHO more important issues than Q's list, e.g., we now have a superb suppression addon, & effective suppression for the first time.

I don't feel bad for the devs though - I think they're all far too intelligent to be bugged by the more OCD-type posters.

[ceeeb]

I agree with many people here that the new default settings are a bit too dark and highly contrasted, especially in the second setting (exposure contrast??). The loss of detail within shadows and dark areas is too severe.

After some experimenting, my preferred settings are quite a subtle change from the "Arma" setting:

"reinhard" setToneMappingParams [0.85, -0.0004]

[Dwarden]

feel free to prepare better settings for Reinhard or Filmic, which will work at:

all times of day (i use increments by 30 minutes)
avoid overbright sky when pitch black night or sky being glown before surise / after sunset
sun and moon above horizon ( i test with full moon, half mood, quarter moon, lil moon, no moon)
low altitude sun or moon
shadows not being too bland or too strong
keep shades of grey
keep color vibrance
avoid being too grainy, grey or dark or bright
avoid black sky turn blue when at night
avoid other color weirdness or cutoff
etc.

if it was so easy , i would make better one already

or find (be) someone with expertise on coloring and image toning / photography
to talk about correct values for each daylight hour and variety of possible lighting scenarios
i'm open to discussion e.g. on skype

p.s. nice try ceeb not bad but sadly not good enough either

[maturin]

I know that very few of us want to bash you for experimenting with a difficult feature. But between Day Z and SixUpdater, the betas are fast becoming mandatory for online play.

If you could somehow wrestle with the issue without introducing any more game-breaking blackout times at night, that would be much appreciated.

[Kyorikei]

Agree with -=seany=- and OMAC on most points. I'm fine with dark nights in Chernarus but when it "dark" even at day... let's just say it sux. What's more unnatural is that when you are trying to avoid looking at skies lighting seems fine. When you get some sky on your screen even if there's no sun on it it becomes darker and very frustrating to play. Hope you manage to tweak lighting settings right as it was just fine few beta patches ago.

[maturin]

Any change in our ability to see at night breaks the game. Period. Unless the AI are adjusted accordingly.

[OMAC]

As I wrote before, this

setToneMapping "Reinhard"; "Reinhard" setToneMappingParams [0.9, -0.002]

is fairly nice as a default. -0.001 is even lighter with less shadow cutoff.

[CarlGustaffa]

feel free to prepare better settings for Reinhard or Filmic, which will work at:
...
if it was so easy , i would make better one already

I haven't played much with the new tone mapping, but I did a system where the post processing coloring changes with sun elevation and overcast, causing blue nights, yellow days, and less saturated colors during overcast, all blending seamlessly and continuously together. I'm expecting something similar is possible for blending tone mapping parameters by these varying conditions.

Some of the functions:
Spoiler:

show spoiler

fnSelectByLast:

private ["_first","_second","_weight","_ret"];
_first = _this select 0;
_second = _this select 1;
_weight = _this select 2;
_ret = (1-_weight)*_first + (_weight*_second);
_ret

fnInterpolate (should be same as the simple expression version):

private ["_in","_xfrom","_xto","_resfrom","_resto","_out"];
_in = _this select 0;
_xfrom = _this select 1;
_xto = _this select 2;
_resfrom = _this select 3;
_resto = _this select 4;
_out = (1-((_in-_xfrom)*(1/(_xfrom-_xto))+1) min 1 max 0) * (_resto-_resfrom) + _resfrom;
_out

fnNormalize (parameter checking removed):

private ["_normalized","_min","_max","_failsafe","_clamp","_s"];
_normalized = _this select 0;
_min = _this select 1;
_max = _this select 2;
_clamp = if (count _this > 3) then {_this select 3} else {true};	//Optional parameter, default true. If false, answer may be outside 0-1 range.
_failsafe = if (_min == _max) then {0.0001} else {_min - _max};		//Avoids division by zero errors in the event of equal inputs.
_normalized= 1 - ((_normalized - _min) * (1 / _failsafe) +1);		//Scales the input parameter to 0-1.
if (_clamp) then {_normalized = _normalized max 0 min 1};			//And clamps outside values if not actively set to false.
_normalized

fnSunElevation (without parameter checking I use for testing, untested in this copy&paste version):

private ["_lat", "_day", "_hour", "_angle", "_isday", "_msg","_input"];
_lat = -1 * getNumber(configFile >> "CfgWorlds" >> worldName >> "latitude");
_day = 360 * (dateToNumber date);
_hour = (daytime / 24) * 360;
_angle = ((12 * cos(_day) - 78) * cos(_lat) * cos(_hour)) - (24 * sin(_lat) * cos(_day));
_angle

fnBlueNightYellowDay (the actual morphing of the post processing parameters):

private ["_ret","_amount","_bgtcontrast","_color","_bgt","_ctr","_a1","_r1","_g1","_b1","_r2","_g2","_b2","_sun"];
_amount = call sunElevation;
if (_amount < 30) then {
	_amount = [_amount, -14, -1] call fnNormalize;
	_amount = _amount min 1;
	_amount = _amount max 0;
	_amount = 1 - _amount; //Max effect when sun is -10° below horizon (or lower), no effect when sun is -1° below horizon (or higher).
	_bgtcontrast = 1.0 - 0.32 * _amount;
	_color = -0.05 * _amount;
	_ret = [ _bgtcontrast, _bgtcontrast, 0, [0, 0, _color, _color],[0, 0, 0, 1],[0, 0, 0, 0]];
} else {
	_amount = [_amount, 30, 52] call fnNormalize;
	_amount = _amount min 1;
	_amount = _amount max 0;
	_val = (0.5*overcast*overcast) + (0.5*fog*fog);
	_bgt = [1.5,0.7,_val] call fnSelectByLast;
	_ctr = [-0.015,0.015,_val] call fnSelectByLast;
	_a1 = [0.85,1.3,_val] call fnSelectByLast;
	_r1 = 1; _g1 = 0; _b1 = -1;
	_r2 = 0.899, _g2 = 0.0287, _b2 = 0.04;
	_bgt = [1.0,_bgt,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_ctr = [0.0,_ctr,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_r1 = [0.0,_r1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_g1 = [0.0,_g1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_b1 = [0.0,_b1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_a1 = [1.0,_a1,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_r2 = [0.0,_r2,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_g2 = [0.0,_g2,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_b2 = [0.0,_b2,_amount] call fnSelectByLast;
	_ret = [1, _bgt, _ctr, [0,0,0,0], [_r1, _g1, _b1, _a1], [_r2, _g2, _b2, 0.0]];
};
_ret

Yes, ambiance and "feeling" is extremely important to me