Eye Adaptation & High Dynamic Range Lighting SUCK!

Gameplay
#1

Hi guys and fellow backers. I really like most of the effects of next-gen engines, but one. That one is eye adaptation & HDR lighting. What those effects suppose to do? Here is text by Crytech itself:

Eye adaptation is used to simulate the human eye’s reaction to sudden or extreme changes in lighting conditions, such as a dark, indoor environment suddenly transitioning to a bright and sunny outdoor setting. HDR allows scenes with extreme brightness and contrast ranges to be more realistically rendered. Link

In fact it doesn’t simulate your eye’s reaction at all. Human eye has very high dynamic range which means that your eye can easily see blue sky at the same time with landscape and neither of those things will appear lighter than the other (as you can see on the big picture linked above). Most of monitors can’t emit the amount of light comparable to that in real world, therefore your eyes can’t react properly to transfers from dark to light etc. So someone came up with revolutionary solution. “We will simulate this effect for you so your eyes don’t have to”. Unfortunately this effects doesn’t work as it should. It works like you’re watching the world through your shitty digital camera on iPhone. I firstly encountered this effect in Skyrim and initially thought it is some kind of bug. The sky was either white, or the landscape was dark. Then I found out that it is “super extra duper next-gen, biatch!” I’m writing this because I saw the effect in WH video posts a lot. I hope it was there just because it is some default setting of CryEngine and you’ll tweak it in the future, but in any cases please consider to turn this effect off or limited it to minimum, because this effect is neither realistic nor natural. It doesn’t contribute to deeper immersion, in fact it destroys it. Only case when this effect should work is when you’re looking directly to the sun.

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#2

They could also just make an option to turn it on/off

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#3

I saw a demostration of this (albeit in source engine) by Valve and it actually looked really good (they showed the effect in a relatively dark church you walk into from a sunny day outside). It was part of a bonus material to Half-Life 2 and it included commentary which explained how it worked. And it did look quite realistic also.

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#4

Maybe it is acceptable from dark indoor to light outdoor, but it depends on setting of the effect and how quick the transfer is. (for example in this scene it doesn’t look natural) But my main point is more about sky and landscape, because it looks really weird when you look at the sky and everything else darkens, or if you focus on the surrounding landscape and the sky is nearly white even though you’re not looking directly in the sun. Those effects simulate behave of the camera because average cameras are not as good as our eyes, but for our eyes it is unnatural.

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#5

This bonus chapter’s name is Lost Coast which was released 2005, if I remember correctly.
It introduced the feature of HDRR to the Source engine.

The only thing that should be done is this transition from dark to bright or vice versa. And, for example, when you’re in a dark place looking out of a window which is a littler further away. Since your eyes are used to the darkness everything outside should be extremely bright (of course only if it’s day outside). In the Source engine it was done right. Once your eyes are used to the new surroundings the (transition) effect should stop. I’ve never played Skyrim but what you are describing sounds really stupid. I always thought HDRR is for improved lighting, not for making it worse. Maybe the bloom part, color correction and/or some other values are too aggressive? I don’t know, obviously I’m no expert on this matter but it sounds rather strange and of course should not find its way into the final game.

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#6

Yeah, I am not sure if it is going to be implemented like that in KCD (the sky thing). I have not noticed anything like that in the videos (however, I have not studied them all that carefuly) You are right that the barn scene does not look very natural, but it could simply be that in the pre-alpha version of the game they have not set up the parameters properly yet. In that Lost Coast (thank you, Cerberus) Half-Life demonstration chapter it looker really great and very realistic.

#7

Yeah, that’s what I hope that it is still some default settings and developers will adjust it in some late phase of development. BTW is the Half-Life demonstration video available somewhere?

#8

Here. four minutes into the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJyCYA8JFoo (the church is later on in it, I remembered it wrong, but it doesn’t matter). I think it looked better on my computer than in the video though…perhaps a better graphics setting or something.

#9

The first link is the technology demo. Was the only site I could find it on. Video quality seems to be from the stone ages but I think it’s better than nothing. :slight_smile:
(Please, keep in mind it’s from 2005)

http://www.gamona.de/videos/half-life-2,half-life-2-lost-coast-movie:video,670954.html

more info:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Half-Life_2:_Lost_Coast

#10

I wouldn’t say that this is “next gen” (though I hate that term). HDR exposure is something that’s been around a good while, and the main reason is as you say; Monitors can handle the wide range of light intensities that the world emits.

The solution is to render the scene in HDR (high dynamic range), and then run a tonemapping operator to convert it to LDR (low dynamic range).
The tonemapping operation needs input in the form of the exposure to use, which is usually calculated from an average of the intensity in the view.
To simulate the time it takes for the eyes to adjust, a delay is added for the exposure changes.

This is not perfect, but you don’t want to be without HDR, so it’ll have to make do.

Here’s a comparison of HDR vs no HDR from Far Cry 1: http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2004/11/03/farcry_patch13_eval/5

#11

Well, maybe, but if so, they should tweak it properly. If they screw it like guys from Bethesda, it will be really unnatural and annoying. BTW: That Source Engine example looks pretty good, this is how it should work. You can still see textures of clouds even though you’re looking in to the sun directly, which is very similar to real-life experience.

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#12

True. I’m just saying that there is nothing wrong with the technique (in my opinion), but it needs to be tweaked to look good.

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