how to light up the night?

[-Evgeny_Prigozhin-]

are there any ways to increase the brightness at night, because I'm tired of the fact that every time the enemy sees everything at night, and I see solid blackness

[stburr91]

Originally posted by -Evgeny_Prigozhin-:

are there any ways to increase the brightness at night, because I'm tired of the fact that every time the enemy sees everything at night, and I see solid blackness

You can turn up the brightness/contrast settings on your monitor. That's about all you can do, because BI thinks playing while looking at a black screen is "realistic", or something, I don't know what they are thinking.

[Heinz Catsup]

can turn on HDR and adjust brightness balance in windows

[Tychus]

you guys need to leave the city. Night time in the woods is usually nearly pitch black depending on the phase of the moon. I would call that pretty realistic. My opinion is that night time in the game is usually not dark enough.

[Ember]

Originally posted by Tychus:

you guys need to leave the city. Night time in the woods is usually nearly pitch black depending on the phase of the moon. I would call that pretty realistic. My opinion is that night time in the game is usually not dark enough.

Yeah people just want another goofy 3rd person arcade shooter when arma is a 1st person military simulator. Yeah that means simulating the rods and cones in your eyes so you only have monochromatic vision at night. It also means simulating lunar cycles so that on new moons it's entirely pitch black.

In real life at night time in the woods or in a building it's totally dark. So dark that even night vision doesn't actually do anything literally. Especially in the case of inside with no light or enough overcast covering stars and other light sources at night.

Using iron sights or optics without illuminated reticles at night in real life is literally impossible to do. You can not even see your sights. But it never gets that dark in Reforger. The game is a bit darker on xbox than PC though from what I've managed to gather. In plenty of cases I can see around me clear and easily with street lights or the moon or whatever light, but xbox uses can't see ten feet in front of them.

[Ember]

Originally posted by tomo:

my friend plays on PC, played it on 2 different ones even, and said they don't see crap at all.
maybe arma needs a slider now like it exists in horror games where it asks you to push it until you can just barely see some symbol or whatever.

Even if you crank up your gamma arma has a feature that basically makes it not effective to a point. A little gamma bump you can get away with and it can work, though it'll make bright daylight especially looking out into bright from a dark interior way overblown and white. But at night there's almost like this static that will wash out your screen if you turn gamma really high, it'll make it impossible to see at night or in light.

This sounds like a monitor issue and they need to adjust brightness of the display itself or slightly adjust their graphics card's control panels gamma setting a few percent.

[stburr91]

Originally posted by Ember:

Originally posted by Tychus:

you guys need to leave the city. Night time in the woods is usually nearly pitch black depending on the phase of the moon. I would call that pretty realistic. My opinion is that night time in the game is usually not dark enough.

Yeah people just want another goofy 3rd person arcade shooter when arma is a 1st person military simulator. Yeah that means simulating the rods and cones in your eyes so you only have monochromatic vision at night. It also means simulating lunar cycles so that on new moons it's entirely pitch black.

In real life at night time in the woods or in a building it's totally dark. So dark that even night vision doesn't actually do anything literally. Especially in the case of inside with no light or enough overcast covering stars and other light sources at night.

Using iron sights or optics without illuminated reticles at night in real life is literally impossible to do. You can not even see your sights. But it never gets that dark in Reforger. The game is a bit darker on xbox than PC though from what I've managed to gather. In plenty of cases I can see around me clear and easily with street lights or the moon or whatever light, but xbox uses can't see ten feet in front of them.

I have been out away from cities doing night shooting, yes it's dark, but you can still see fairly well out 25 meters, and can see outlines anywhere from 50-100 meters.

However, it doesn't matter if some think it's "realistic" it's still a video game, and not being able to see at night makes for poor gameplay. It's not like there is just a small percentage of people saying it's too dark to have good gameplay at night, this is a common complaint.

[Ember]

Originally posted by stburr91:

I have been out away from cities doing night shooting, yes it's dark, but you can still see fairly well out 25 meters, and can see outlines anywhere from 50-100 meters.

However, it doesn't matter if some think it's "realistic" it's still a video game, and not being able to see at night makes for poor gameplay. It's not like there is just a small percentage of people saying it's too dark to have good gameplay at night, this is a common complaint.

and I've been outside when it's so dark that night vision is useless. What's your point? Do you understand overcast and lunar cycles have a huge part to play, and even hundreds of miles from cities you still get light pollution?

It's a military simulator. It is going to be realistic as a priority. All of the arma games pride themselves on having true dark monochromatic night. Also night vision will be coming eventually.

Also like I said there's people that seem to see things way darker than they should, it's most likely just a monitor issue but you should be able to see down streets in night with overcast and new moon with street lights and such. If well lit streets are too dark to see then something is up maybe a slight gamma adjustment will help.

For me things look absolutely beautiful in all lighting conditions. I'm truly impressed with the lighting especially low light, night, and adverse weather.

Edit: It also helps where you're located and the year, these islands are suppose to be in the 1989 year and out in the middle of the ocean so light pollution is way down compared to mainland USA today which has insane levels of light pollution.
https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/

[stburr91]

Originally posted by Ember:

Originally posted by stburr91:

I have been out away from cities doing night shooting, yes it's dark, but you can still see fairly well out 25 meters, and can see outlines anywhere from 50-100 meters.

However, it doesn't matter if some think it's "realistic" it's still a video game, and not being able to see at night makes for poor gameplay. It's not like there is just a small percentage of people saying it's too dark to have good gameplay at night, this is a common complaint.

and I've been outside when it's so dark that night vision is useless. What's your point? Do you understand overcast and lunar cycles have a huge part to play, and even hundreds of miles from cities you still get light pollution?

It's a military simulator. It is going to be realistic as a priority. All of the arma games pride themselves on having true dark monochromatic night. Also night vision will be coming eventually.

Again, just because some people think it's "realistic" doesn't mean it makes for good gameplay. There are many things in the game that aren't realistic, compromises are made for better gameplay, being able to see at night, even if you error slightly on the too bright side for gameplay's sake, that is a very reasonable compromise.

Also, I just check the roadmap, I did not see night vision listed.

[Ember]

Originally posted by stburr91:

Originally posted by Ember:

and I've been outside when it's so dark that night vision is useless. What's your point? Do you understand overcast and lunar cycles have a huge part to play, and even hundreds of miles from cities you still get light pollution?

It's a military simulator. It is going to be realistic as a priority. All of the arma games pride themselves on having true dark monochromatic night. Also night vision will be coming eventually.

Again, just because some people think it's "realistic" doesn't mean it makes for good gameplay. There are many things in the game that aren't realistic, compromises are made for better gameplay, being able to see at night, even if you error slightly on the too bright side for gameplay's sake, that is a very reasonable compromise.

Also, I just check the roadmap, I did not see night vision listed.

Your subjective idea of what is good gameplay is not relevant though. They literally pride themselves on night time being actually dark and simulating the cones and rods in your eye accurately. Meaning they aim to have the amount of light and color look as natural as possible.

It's not going anywhere. You should see the other armas, it's significantly darker than reforger. Like before arma 3 it was way too dark even and reforger seems to nail it and light sources look great. I look forward to seeing how they do night vision, if it'll have trailing and other such quirks real night vision from that time period would have.

Again I believe some players are experiencing a darker night than intended so I just want to make that clear too. Either a monitor issue or otherwise. A little gamma or brightness slider will help, other armas had one. But I'm saying don't expect it to suddenly be way more visible. Looking down a well lit street at night should be clear, but a forest in overcast with no moonlight or starlight should be impossible to see your black weapon sights.

Night vision slot is there and I've seen it mentioned in several places even if it's not on the roadmap. They had NVG's in that time period and it's an important part of the kit. It would be important to get that foundation done before moving on to Arma 4 I would think too, unless like mods it's just a simple lazy filter style adaptation.

I also see on the roadmap they mention flares, suppressors, and a proper simulation of the electrical grid so maybe they will look at issues some players are having with night being too dark for them.

Once helicopters are added if they don't have night vision it will be virtually impossible to fly at night time. You'll basically rely on flares to see or lights. They will have to add night vision for pilots or else that will be a nightmare.

[stburr91]

Originally posted by Ember:

Originally posted by stburr91:

Again, just because some people think it's "realistic" doesn't mean it makes for good gameplay. There are many things in the game that aren't realistic, compromises are made for better gameplay, being able to see at night, even if you error slightly on the too bright side for gameplay's sake, that is a very reasonable compromise.

Also, I just check the roadmap, I did not see night vision listed.

Your subjective idea of what is good gameplay is not relevant though. They literally pride themselves on night time being actually dark and simulating the cones and rods in your eye accurately. Meaning they aim to have the amount of light and color look as natural as possible.

It's not going anywhere. You should see the other armas, it's significantly darker than reforger. Like before arma 3 it was way too dark even and reforger seems to nail it and light sources look great. I look forward to seeing how they do night vision, if it'll have trailing and other such quirks real night vision from that time period would have.

Night vision slot is there and I've seen it mentioned in several places even if it's not on the roadmap. They had NVG's in that time period and it's an important part of the kit. It would be important to get that foundation done before moving on to Arma 4 I would think too, unless like mods it's just a simple lazy filter style adaptation.

If they intend to add night vision, why not put it in the roadmap. BI has been very clear, the only things they say people can count on being added, is what is in the roadmap.

Also, you could see pretty well at night in Arma 3 before they broke the lighting with their visual update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jgtykj6KfU

[Ember]

The lighting in Arma 3 is much darker at night than Reforger in my experience (over 3000 hours in arma 3). Like I said there must be an actual issue, bug, or otherwise some people like yourself are experiencing that makes Reforger so dark which is unfortunate.

Here's what Reforger looks like to me on a night with moonlight. Maybe I should make a video, images don't do justice to video games...
https://imgur.com/a/mJ6Z4Ru

Shadows in arma 3 render out to only 100 or 200 meters or something iirc and that makes things look "brighter" at distance than up close. Where as in Reforger shadows even cloud shadows render to what seems like max render range. Which can lead to forests and clouds making things much darker appearing in situations, but to my eyes overall Reforgers night looks much clearer than Arma 3 and especially older armas.

[stburr91]

The issue with reforger/enfusion lighting is that the contrast between light, and shadows is too extreme. You can have comically bright moonlight, and when the shadows are nearly black.

[Ember]

Originally posted by stburr91:

The issue with reforger/enfusion lighting is that the contrast between light, and shadows is too extreme. You can have comically bright moonlight, and when the shadows are nearly black.

I feel like at night that is what it looks like though, like in my three images things look perfect to me especially the first two. Being able to see hundreds of meters away at five minutes past midnight is impressive.

Maybe total overcast is a bit too dark around the street lamps but it's not worth being upset over imo, but when interior lights are introduced that might not be the case anymore too.

The game excells at looking out into bright areas from dark places, and looking into dark places from bright places imo. It's actually dark unlike other games which attempt to make it arcade like and for the sake of balance or gameplay you're just visible inside a room or foliage canopy despite it being in shadows in darkness and there being no light around to see.

[Delta_44]

Originally posted by Ember:

Yeah that means simulating the rods and cones in your eyes so you only have monochromatic vision at night.

Unfortunately that feature was dropped since Arma 2, but it would be awesome if they added that, although nerfed (in under 2 minutes you could see EVERYTHING)

[Ember]

Originally posted by Delta_44:

Unfortunately that feature was dropped since Arma 2, but it would be awesome if they added that, although nerfed (in under 2 minutes you could see EVERYTHING)

That feature was not dropped at all, they have that still in arma 3 and you can see it working in arma reforger too. It's just how the eye adapts to brightness and the limits to light and color. You can see the color of objects fade in lower and lower light in Reforger just like you can see ambient light go so low that cranking your gamma up doesn't help past a certain point, just makes grey noise.
If you check the images in the link I posted earlier ( https://imgur.com/a/mJ6Z4Ru ) you can see the yield sign has color in the first image and doesn't really have it in the final image.

Originally posted by tomo:

on that third image when i go full screen i can still easily look past the second lamp post and see the dirt road going off to the right with a road sign on the left and right, and the building further back with the windows.
honestly, the third one is still way brighter than i'd expect it irl. i could probably spot a guy if they were moving around too much.
that there's complaints oft his being too dark is just wild.

I agree it's definitely brighter than in reality, though I feel like light can spill better in reality if that makes sense? Definitely going to look better when buildings have lights too.

But yeah I agree the night in arma being dark is a huge plus for me not a negative. Having used irons and optics with no illumination in actual darkness it's basically impossible so I like that it feels like that. I like that shadows and looking into windows from a distance are extremely dark.

I currently live in an area with little to no light pollution and on a really dark night with no moon and overcast it's like you can't see ten meters in front of you in the middle of the woods.

I do hope they add night vision though so at least there are options for people who genuinely struggle seeing at night.