What the ♥♥♥♥ is up with this bloom?

[Millie]

My monitor doesn't support bloom, or anything like that, and I've never had this issue before.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1840306218665034077/2A506BC08CCC652328A813EFD0744B678EA175AB/?imw=1024&imh=575&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1840306218665033330/07FADF1D09481D69F3840C685BBF2C7F8E475E15/?imw=1024&imh=575&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true

[Millie]

Found a fix to the problem. Download this mod and follow the instructions. Removes bloom entirely, even if it's disabled in the settings.

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/63?tab=files#:~:text=Disables%20the%20game%27s%20%22Bloom%22.%20To%20install%2C%20extract%20the,possible%20to%20disable%20TAA%20with%20a%20config%20file.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Yeah, it's the way this game implements its fake HDR. It's also really overbearing in first person driving. Mods like those improve it immensely.

The game's lighting model has some at times jarring issues that require a lot of tweaking to improve.

In addition to the fake HDR issue, in my game at least, if you have RT local shadows and local shadow quality simultaneously enabled, sometimes you'll see the non-RT local shadow maps clipping through the RT shadows, almost like texture Z-fighting, but not. (I just set local shadow quality to off with RT local shadows enabled.)

Other times you'll see shadows and lighting rapidly flicker when you approach things like air vents or trash bags as their LODs are streaming in, unless you have RT reflections enabled. Which, perplexingly, is the only setting that prevents it. (I tested everything under the sun. Enabling RT reflections is the only thing that stopped it for me.)

And things like transparencies (the barbed wire on top of fences for example) will have horrible shimmering and flickering unless DLSS is enabled. (Yes, it looks worse native than with DLSS enabled... but only in that one respect. The game was sort of built around DLSS being enabled.)

And finally, even with all of that tweaked to as close to perfection as you can get it, the TAA ghosting is severe enough that turning off screen space reflections entirely is the only way to really minimize it on NPCs' feet and cars, when in highly reflective areas.

And even then, things like certain chain link fences (and other fine grain structures with transparencies) look horribly poorly resolved. (See the fence behind the alley Vik is in. It's been like that since day one and is still like that.)

The game is absolutely gorgeous imo and I've loved it since day one, but it does suffer from lighting model and TAA blemishes on its beauty. I use a combination of mods (personally I use the eye adaptation mod for the fake HDR along with disabling bloom in the ini file, a mod that removes the trash bags around the city since they are particularly prone to visual issues for me, and the 10x All LOD extension mod) and the aforementioned settings, with some reshade tweaks, to get it looking as good as I can.