Why are my lights not lighting up anything?

[Squirting Elephant]

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198063120601/screenshot/2040744841430205644/

Inside houses they work a tiny bit but are still meh. Did I mess up some graphic settings or are lights absolutely useless?

Even the moon seems to emit more light..

[kyew]

They're just underwhelming. I've heard complaints about them before (made some myself) but I guess they want them that way. It seems they only light up about four feet around them.

[pdoan8]

To me, the light (out door and in door) are pretty close to real life. The emitting light does not look natural, but the amount is pretty close.

I used to live in a poor country that have blackout almost every day, or every other day. A small oil lamp with glass chimney can't illuminate a large room. Might not even enough for a medium size dinner table. Down grade that to a paper lantern with a candle or a home made oil burner, then I can be sure that I can't see what I'm eating for dinner. Also, there will always be a dark area under the lamp/lantern.

[Morri]

Purely looking at your screenshot; that doesn't look normal. Check your graphic settings ingame; how's the brightness set there? (mine is at 100%).

It should look more like this: https://imgur.com/a/BDpzcoH

[Philtre]

The lights aren't very bright. As pdoan8 says, this is realistic; back in the day, having brightly-lit rooms was a sign of wealth and extravagance, because you needed a zillion candles and servants to run around replacing then constantly.

[kyew]

Originally posted by Morri:

Purely looking at your screenshot; that doesn't look normal. Check your graphic settings ingame; how's the brightness set there? (mine is at 100%).

It should look more like this: https://imgur.com/a/BDpzcoH

Looking at your screenshot, I was wondering if they have any intentions of implementing the chandelier for players. That would be a nice addition to a large house.

And, yeah. That does look dim after a second look. It should, at least, be lighting up the road beneath it.

[kyew]

Originally posted by Philtre:

The lights aren't very bright. As pdoan8 says, this is realistic; back in the day, having brightly-lit rooms was a sign of wealth and extravagance, because you needed a zillion candles and servants to run around replacing then constantly.

Myself, I don't think it's exactly realistic. There's no ambiance from light sources. A light five feet away from a wall illuminates nothing but put it one foot closer and it lights up the whole wall. IRL even a small light will reflect off of things pretty far away.

Take, for instance, inside a player's home. The lights you can put on the ceiling are bright right where they are, but it's unrealistic that a light one position away from your bed leaves your bed in complete darkness.

I agree that one light shouldn't be bright enough to light the entire house, but if you, say, filled your entire house with ceiling lights, that really should light up the entire house.

[Squirting Elephant]

Originally posted by Morri:

Purely looking at your screenshot; that doesn't look normal. Check your graphic settings ingame; how's the brightness set there? (mine is at 100%).

It should look more like this: https://imgur.com/a/BDpzcoH

I increased the brightness and it improved a tiny tiny bit but I believe that I may have found the problem:
https://imgur.com/a/T0Idvfw (sorry for the 18+ warning, no idea how to remove it)

As you can see, when I get closer to the tavern, the lights suddenly start to emit, when I'm further away, they emit literally nothing. View-distance and post-processing on ultra don't fix the problem either.

Can't we get a slider or something in the graphics settings to increase that distance? Because right now it's REALLY small and usually towns can look nice at light with proper lightning but I can't do it in this game.

/off-topic: On the first image you also see a vertical blue bar of light through the tavern in the center-right. I have a lot of such lightning glitches when I switch to ultra settings. They are not bothersome though.

[TuppenceStick]

Ultra settings are really only intended for photo settings. I play on high for most settings with no issues. A lot could depend on your PC specs too.

[Squirting Elephant]

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, Intel I13, 32GB ram, enough diskspace. Do I lack something?
My CPU runs at roughly 7% and GPU on ultra on 40% in Task Manager.

So the lights are supposed to work properly on high settings? Still, I'd prefer a settings slider though.

[Foxglovez]

For us modern folks they would have to increase ambient lighting thoughout the area if we have ights - as we think of Light with a capital L, when fires and candles only give a lower case kind of light. When all the lights go out, it's really dark out there. Who knew? Only seen when the power grid goes out.

[Ravayen]

I also have the issue where lights are extremely dim, after some testing putting the shadows setting up to ultra made it a little better but not by a lot so maybe it has something to do with the light source interacting with shadows? either way there is definitely a problem for some people.
My interior lights do almost nothing and the street lamp thing wont even light the road plus the light vanishes when more than a few feet away like others have said

[Sinnista83]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

As you can see, when I get closer to the tavern, the lights suddenly start to emit, when I'm further away, they emit literally nothing. View-distance and post-processing on ultra don't fix the problem either.

Can't we get a slider or something in the graphics settings to increase that distance? Because right now it's REALLY small and usually towns can look nice at light with proper lightning but I can't do it in this game.

THIS 1000% ... The light you see against the road/buildings etc. when you stand near the light source should not turn into just a smoldering orange dot with no emitting light when you are farther away... It should still light up its surroundings somewhat. Having it go "dark" when your only like 10 feet away is totally unrealistic.

[rhwilson1953]

Lighting in the game seems fairly close to what you will get when using candles. And since the game has candles for light and not oil lamps you shouldn't expect any real distance from the source to be lit up enough to see much. Any wall with a color other than plain white to reflect the light will not be very bright. A single candle does not emit much light.

As a 71yo growing up in rural areas where there were miles between homes and farms, when emergency generators were not heard of we used candles and kerosene oil lamps a lot when there was a power failure. Several times we would be without power for two days up to 2 weeks or more when storms would roll through.

Candlepower
Candlepower measures the concentration, or intensity, of a beam of light emanating from a source in a particular direction. Each light source produces a cone shape of light. The narrower the cone is, the more concentrated the light beam, and the higher the candlepower. A laser beam, for example, would emit high candlepower and produce a very narrow cone, but it probably would register a relatively low lumen measurement, or total light produced. Candlepower is measured in units called candelas.

Footcandle
Footcandles measure light quantity as it falls on a surface, illuminating it. One footcandle equals one lumen per square foot. Lux and phots, two other lighting terms, are the metric variation of footcandles, indicating how much light, in lumens, falls on a square meter of surface and a square centimeter of surface, respectively. These measurements sometimes are used to indicate how many lamps might be necessary to light a particular room, based on its size and usage.

Read More: https://www.sciencing.com/lumens-vs-wattage-vs-candlepower-8664914/

[pdoan8]

Originally posted by Squirting Elephant:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198063120601/screenshot/2040744841430205644/

That looks too dark for me.

This is the outdoor. The Winter snow make it look a bit brighter than normal. You can see how much it illuminate the ground below.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371032959

Indoor lantern. Very bright
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371033052

Indoor candles. Pretty close to real life for me.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371013406

Edit: I'm using a laptop with i9-12900, RTX 3080, 32 GB RAM.

Edit2: my graphic settings
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371040411
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371040490

[Sinnista83]

I'm not arguing the strength of the light, I feel that's accurate... I'm arguing the light rendering at a distance.

I should not just see a "dot" of light on the light sources and that be all... Realistically I would still see light emitting on objects/walls no matter what distance I'm at, it may just fade a little at great distances, but not to nothing at this distance as it is.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371079797

It should look like this close light, emitting light to the ground, objects and walls on ALL the lights in the distance as well, maybe reduce 10% emission per 10 meters distance, but as is it seems to be set to 100% reduction at roughly 10-15 meters, and all you're left with is a "dot" like in the first image and the lights in the distance in the second image...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3371080363

The result of how it is now is no matter how many lights you put up, it always feels dark as it ONLY lights up the lights you are standing near.