Useful Image?

[ryanwigginton]

Thought this might be useful to someone...

On the left is TMO. On the right is an image taken with my camera. I made a point of taking the photo because I felt the colour in TMO's environment was too saturated. After taking the photo, I loaded up TMO and tried to match the conditions.

Course, speed, time of day and latitude are all matched. Date in image is 31st Jan, in TMO 24th Jan. Note, I took screenshot on the 24th because weather conditions were right and I didn't want to run into foul weather and miss the opportunity. I couldn't match longitude. Wind in the photo is 16m/s. Wind in game is 15m/s. I'm also taking the photo from a greater elevation above the sea.


http://imageshack.us/a/img716/1682/comparisonz.jpg

[AndytotheD]

You are mostly correct, but there are likely other things that need to be taken into account.

Also, what TMO are you using? 2.5 doesn't look like that on mine. Much more realistic ocean water.

[ryanwigginton]

What was the current version back in January? Might've been 2.2. But to be honest, I still feel the same about 2.5. Too much colour saturation. I added Improved Stock Environments recently which seems to improve things a bit.

[BigWalleye]

And, of course, your own monitor and video card settings have a lot to do with what you see. Professionals who work with computer graphics have elaborate (and expensive!) systems for calibrating their video color reproduction. You would have to be REALLY serious about computer gaming to go that route! Your camera (scanner, and any other imaging device) has its own mapping which may be more esthetically pleasing but which is not inherently any more accurate than your monitor/graphics card. Ultimately, any imaging device provides its own color response which will differ from that of our "standard" device, the human eyeball. And even that device provides a device-dependent mapping. (My wife sees deep purples and indigos where I see black; I see deep reds which are black to her.) If you have a high-end graphics card, which you probably do if you are able to play SH4 at all, you should be able to do a software-specific adjustment of your system's color response which will be more to your liking, and have those settings load automatically on starting the game. Then, even if the game's color palette is not to your liking, you can tune it closer to what you prefer.

[ryanwigginton]

I've been calibrating for a few years now. I use CalMAN and can't use stock colour profiles anymore. They look terrible when you're accustomed to a calibrated screen.

[BigWalleye]

Suffice to say you are serious. Nonetheless, the saturation you show is incredible. Looks like an old Kodachrome slide. (Well, maybe the sky isn't blue enough.:)) Since you clearly know what you are doing, I'm surprised you are unable to tone that down. I've never seen the like of it in any SH4 environment, even stock. What monitor and how is your graphics card set up?

[Armistead]

Many of us make our own envs. for TMO. I'll post mine to see how close it is.

http://i651.photobucket.com/albums/uu235/Armistead1424/SH4Img2012-07-26_104913_031.jpg

[ryanwigginton]

This is much more natural looking! Did you release this environment as a mod?

[Armistead]

No, I haven't released it, except to a few people that play online with me.
Mine is tweaked to work with how I prefer sensors, which is more difficult than TMO. Caustic has released his env mod ISE which is good and doesn't rework sensors for TMO.

If you want to change colors, it's easy to do and make your own. I think most tweak colors now to their own preferences. I'll be glad to walk you through the process.

You can look at the SS thread in the other forum and see what looks others are using, fairly obvious.

[Charalampos]

My image has the oversaturated fake look aswell but after an hour or so I have still not managed to make any huge improvements.

When you guys say you tweak your own colors where do you do that from?
(sorry If I'm asking something already answered but I couldn't find anything similar in the forum)

Cheers!

[Armistead]

You'll need to DL the Silent 3ditor.

The game enviroment is mostly adjusted in the Env.Atl file and scene.dat.

Silenthunter4/data/Env/Env Atl.

Find the file, right click and open with the S3d.

Understand sensors and enviroment values work together. However, if for the most part you adjust colors in the Atl file, it shouldn't effect sensors. I think the only two files in the Atl that may effect sensors is the Haze and "Sun to Sky"

Always best to copy the files you want to play with and make a small mod for your changes.

Playing with env files isn't hard per say once you know what does what, but it's time consuming.
You have possibly 1000's of values you can adjust and one color can effect another. They're other files in filters and shaders that can be tweaked and adjusted as well.

Most tweak an existing env mod to their preference, making small tweaks to water color, clouds, etc...and leave the rest alone.