(Req) GWX 2.0 // Brighter Nights wanted

[Marko_Ramius]

Hi all,


How you think the night is in GWX 2.0 ?


For me, it's too dark . Even with a big moon and without clouds, i can see absolutely nothing. I think i would be able to distinguish the horizon, the flag of the ships at very close, and so on ..

My monitor is well tuned. It's a CRT IIYAMA and i love it. Maybe the night is brighter on a LCD ?

We don't have a Gamma correction in game settings so, i can do nothing about this. And i'm not a modder at all, that's why i ask you here, to make something if possible.


So if you think like me about the dark night, please post your whish here.

If i am the only one, i will learn to live with.

Cheers.

[A6Intruder]

Originally Posted by Marko_Ramius

Hi all,


How you think the night is in GWX 2.0 ?


For me, it's too dark . Even with a big moon and without clouds, i can see absolutely nothing. I think i would be able to distinguish the horizon, the flag of the ships at very close, and so on ..

My monitor is well tuned. It's a CRT IIYAMA and i love it. Maybe the night is brighter on a LCD ?

We don't have a Gamma correction in game settings so, i can do nothing about this. And i'm not a modder at all, that's why i ask you here, to make something if possible.


So if you think like me about the dark night, please post your whish here.

If i am the only one, i will learn to live with.

Cheers.

Maybe you should use the SH4 scene dat from Reece. It works fine with GWX2 so far.
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...ighlight=reece
Kind regards

[Marko_Ramius]

Thank you A6Intruder, But i use the "GWX 16Km mod" and love it ..

In fact, my dream would be a mod which make the nights brighter, without changing anything else, and for 16Km. This is the only thing i have to complain with GWX 2.0 so far.

[jimmie]

Originally Posted by Marko_Ramius

My monitor is well tuned. It's a CRT IIYAMA and i love it. Maybe the night is brighter on a LCD ?

Yes, it heavily depends on the monitor. LCD monitors are inevitably brighter because of the backlight; can't get really black. And brightness even differ at viewing angles on LCD monitors.

So with a good CRT monitor, I guess making the sorroundings as dark as possible and tweaking gamma a bit is the way to go... (and if you try to surface attack, you'd yell about modern green HUD lines and bright rec book, TDC screen etc...)

BTW, I think the 16km mod has a side effect, too. You can see 16km means they can also see a lot more than before (enemy sensors are not re-turned for 16km visibility for the mod). You will notice if you run "Happy times" single mission with both default and the 16km. With the 16km mod, you will be gunned immediately after mission start because they see you already, which is not in the case of 8km default.

This means, you want much better visibility (on physical eye) or optimal playing environment with the 16km mod.
You will have very hard time closing to target. Identifying the flag will mostly be impossible (16km visibility doesn't mean more DPI). Personally I think 16km mod is not good if parameters like enemy and crew sensors (or maybe even scope setting) are carefully re-turned.

I may be wrong, tho.

[Marko_Ramius]

Hi Jimmie,

I'm not sure to understand you when you say "parameters are not re-turned for 16k"


A question :


How do you do to identify chips at night, for a shot who will not be, for sure, friendly fire, or neutral ? :hmm: It would be interresting to read how you all manage this.



It is in that sense why i ask for a brighter night. Cause the crew can spot chips, classify them merchants or warchip, fast or slower, but not friendly or hostile ..

So, in a night with big moon, if i make an approach, submerged, to make a shot 500 meters away only. Shouldn't I be able to distinguish the silhouette ( if it's the good english word), and even the flag in the periscope ?

Well maybe not the colors on the flag, but at last be able to classify the type of the boggie .. Again, especially on a high big moon !

This is some gameplay issue but not only ; I think it's just not so fun to have some situations in the sim where you are the only one blind guy


I made some tweaking for my monitor with rivatuner, and made a custom color profile which seem to make the things better in SH3, but only in the game
And more important : It's better on the bridge looking outside, but a bit too much brighter inside the sub, or in map view. Anyway, I will continue to tweak.

I will have to pay attention to not forget to activate it before playing


One thing about the 16K, it would be interresting to know what improvement has been made, if any, to the mod since 1.03. I recall there was some issues with it, some of which Jimmie spoke above, i think.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Hi Marko Ramius.

Two years ago with our first major release, we made serious efforts to brighten the night sky a bit. Since then we have made no further attempt to change it.

Success always made something else wrong.

From TGW 1.0... to TGW 1.1a through GWX 1.0 to now... we have not made further attempts to alter the sky colors or brightness.

jimmie is correct. Unfortunately, the night sky appearance is heavily dependant on user monitors... and to a lesser degree user video cards.

Very sorry sir. We have done what we could.

[jimmie]

Originally Posted by Marko_Ramius

Hi Jimmie,

I'm not sure to understand you when you say "parameters are not re-turned for 16k"


A question :


How do you do to identify chips at night, for a shot who will not be, for sure, friendly fire, or neutral ? :hmm: It would be interresting to read how you all manage this.



It is in that sense why i ask for a brighter night. Cause the crew can spot chips, classify them merchants or warchip, fast or slower, but not friendly or hostile ..

So, in a night with big moon, if i make an approach, submerged, to make a shot 500 meters away only. Shouldn't I be able to distinguish the silhouette ( if it's the good english word), and even the flag in the periscope ?

Well maybe not the colors on the flag, but at last be able to classify the type of the boggie .. Again, especially on a high big moon !

This is some gameplay issue but not only ; I think it's just not so fun to have some situations in the sim where you are the only one blind guy


I made some tweaking for my monitor with rivatuner, and made a custom color profile which seem to make the things better in SH3, but only in the game
And more important : It's better on the bridge looking outside, but a bit too much brighter inside the sub, or in map view. Anyway, I will continue to tweak.

I will have to pay attention to not forget to activate it before playing


One thing about the 16K, it would be interresting to know what improvement has been made, if any, to the mod since 1.03. I recall there was some issues with it, some of which Jimmie spoke above, i think.

With stock game, if my memory serves (I haven't played stock since 2005 spring), night surface attacks are easy because enemys are damn and blind, and the sky isn't very dark as well.

Various people came to change the night darkness simply because in reality, ocean should look just black instead of white in the game (not talking about moon here) and sky color also should be near black if not very dark blue.

I was using a Sony CRT which had a good color. When I tried those night darkness mod, if I didn't turn off all lights in the room I couldn't see almost anything on the screen, but many people here also reported they could see things for the same mod. 2 years lator I got a Samsung so-so monitor and then the black isn't black anymore and I could see very well (not meaning good at all).

So, I don't know who decided the final night sky color for GWX, you can see it's not possible to suit for everyone's hardware. Not talking about enrmonus difference between CRT and LCD, brightness (contrast) even differ among LCD monitors.

I guess it's more likely tweaked for LCD monitors which nowadays much more popular than CRTs. I think they've done a fairly good job within SH3's various limitations.

So in you case, sadly tho, you can only change your gamma 1)monitor itsef, 2) graphics card's setting 3) tweak your SH3 file for your liking.

But then when playing with CRT, even though which is supporsed to be really rich in color, I cursed the green HUD in UZO or scope, which stupidly cannot changed, and I asked for dev at least twice immediately after the release of SH3, but it wasn't taken seriously. It's like looking at a photo of night sky in white background, the contrast of really bright green lines truly distructs the subtle color difference in the dark night. This is really annoying when I was using a CRT monitor and turn the all room lights off. With a LCD monitor, I can play night surface attack in day time...to some extent.

Anyway, so, to ID a ship, you really have to get close obviously. But well, if it's mid or later at war, the location where battle is taking place virtually guarantee if the ship is friendly or enemy, so I would take a risk of not checking and attack. In reality you could probably get really near without getting detected, and I read somewhere convoy spreaded far wider than in SH3. This makes sense for getting inside of convoy after attack could get out surface full speed and outrun escorts (from inside). And this also made easier to attack more valuable ships (in the middle of convoy) than in SH3.

I'm now playing with GWX2.0 default (for visual range) with the said LCD monitor. (BTW, thanks a lot for the great piece of work ) I haven't done any scientific tests so all I'm saying is just how I'm feeling and can be wrong, but with default (8km) I still have to approach carefully to get close. And with an LCD monitor, which must be much brighter than your CRT, yet I really have to try to see as quickly as possible to identify ships, and taking stadimeter reading I have to close MORE. Once in a while I even grab the frame of the monitor to change the angle so I can get more brighter for a sec.

Now once I installed 16km mod and found "Happy Time" single mission can't be played in the way in default 8km, I thought this visibility thing mattered further at night. I mean, without deliverately reducing enemy's sensor ability matuched for 16km, night attack may be so much tougher than 8km current.

I brefily looked inside 16km mod folder and saw only scean.dat and color files and I assumed this optional mod is not tweaking sensors etc.

Another thing is that even with default 8km, I can barely "lock" a target and keep locking at 5.5-6km. It's very hard to use stadimeter at more than 5km because it unlocks easily (so I made a quick range finder gauge for 10x scope which can be used without locking) I don't know if this is tweakable but I probably want lock-able range to further with 16km visibility.

I'd been playing NYGM for some time so I was used to 16km and I hate the haze at the horizon. But now playing with GWX2.0, I kinda see why they stick with 8km as default. I may be wrong but maybe various parameters (such as enemy sensors etc) are selected for best play with 8km, is what I feel through playing. If you ask me, I kinda feel enemy still sees a bit too well for my taste even with 8km.

So my point was I thought not only the CRT makes night harder unfortunately, 16km mod may make yet harder for the game play. But this is just my speculation.

[Adriatico]

Confirmed...
heavilly depends on monitor... I was astonished six months ago when I bought my first LCD... Modified sea surface was far to reflective during the day, like melted silver.
By night, I could not sea a "white cow" !
Following many years at CRT monitor, it takes some time to adjust your LCD, due to extreme contrast performance.

[Samwolf]

Originally Posted by Marko_Ramius

Hi all,


How you think the night is in GWX 2.0 ?


For me, it's too dark . Even with a big moon and without clouds, i can see absolutely nothing. I think i would be able to distinguish the horizon, the flag of the ships at very close, and so on ..

My monitor is well tuned. It's a CRT IIYAMA and i love it. Maybe the night is brighter on a LCD ?

We don't have a Gamma correction in game settings so, i can do nothing about this. And i'm not a modder at all, that's why i ask you here, to make something if possible.


So if you think like me about the dark night, please post your whish here.

If i am the only one, i will learn to live with
Cheers.

Try this:
http://files.filefront.com/SH3+Mod+M.../fileinfo.html

Use the IUB/Rub 16Km version. I'm using it to get rid of some graphics problems I had with the night sky but it also makes the night brighter. So far it has not caused me any problems with GWX2, enable using jsgme and try it out. Should make your nights brighter.

[linerkiller]

Originally Posted by Samwolf

Try this:
http://files.filefront.com/SH3+Mod+M.../fileinfo.html

Use the IUB/Rub 16Km version. I'm using it to get rid of some graphics problems I had with the night sky but it also makes the night brighter. So far it has not caused me any problems with GWX2, enable using jsgme and try it out. Should make your nights brighter.

so, i can install it with JSGME after the installation of the GWX 16 Km atm. mod?

[Samwolf]

Originally Posted by linerkiller

so, i can install it with JSGME after the installation of the GWX 16 Km atm. mod?

Yes, That's the way I'm using it. What you want is to overlay the envcolors and skycolors dat files.

[JCWolf]

I had untill this last release,
GWX 1.3 instaled and the nights
were litlle more visible...

I had no problems seeing something during night,
With GWX 2.0 even with the room lights off
I don't see a thing, but a faded shadow of the
watch Officer and ocasonal wave foams....

if someone thinks this is real thing ok by me,
but remember that, Moonlight is Monlight
anywere , in land, or at sea!

If its bad weather I do understand the darkness increasing
but with the Monn on the sky, there should be a moonlight,
smaller or brighter but some light!

the way it is is by far to dark to play,
so most of the times what i do is increase Time C.
during nights and reduce Knots to the lowest speed !

But that sure makes one miss the fun!

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Guys, if the mods you are using include any .dat files... especially the 'scene.dat' file... you are breaking a few features including the moon reflection on the water.

What I recommend doing... if you know how, is to extract the .tga's from the prospective mod and re-pack them into the GWX scene.dat file so you don't break intended effects.

Also of note, when Marhkimov and I worked on the atmospheric mods a long time ago, we made two versions... 'light' and 'dark' respectively in an attempt to address different user monitor needs.

Support for the 'dark' versions was dropped by the Grey Wolves project roughly a year ago with the release of GWX 1.0. As most complaints regarding the SH3 sky were in reference to being too dark... we have the 'light' versions as default.

Hope this helps.

[Samwolf]

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

Guys, if the mods you are using include any .dat files... especially the 'scene.dat' file... you are breaking a few features including the moon reflection on the water.

What I recommend doing... if you know how, is to extract the .tga's from the prospective mod and re-pack them into the GWX scene.dat file so you don't break intended effects.

Also of note, when Marhkimov and I worked on the atmospheric mods a long time ago, we made two versions... 'light' and 'dark' respectively in an attempt to address different user monitor needs.

Support for the 'dark' versions was dropped by the Grey Wolves project roughly a year ago with the release of GWX 1.0. As most complaints regarding the SH3 sky were in reference to being too dark... we have the 'light' versions as default.

Hope this helps.

I did not replace the GWX2 scene.dat file. I am only using the envcolors and skycolors files from Marhkimov's mod. I'll check for the moon reflection next time I load up my patrol but I don't remember it missing.

[Kpt. Lehmann]

Originally Posted by Samwolf

I did not replace the GWX2 scene.dat file. I am only using the envcolors and skycolors files from Marhkimov's mod. I'll check for the moon reflection next time I load up my patrol but I don't remember it missing.

Cool. I believe the .env files are safe enough.

@JCWolf: No sky colors were changed between GWX version 1.03 and 2.0.