Auto Exposure

[Viktor]

Discussion.

[ult]

Hover your mouse over the bottom right corner. The menu will pop up. Click HDR and change it to A.

[kiga]

You can also press V

[Viktor]

Thanks, found it. Well, in some cases (like when you are near black hole), It's better than the auto exposure in previous version of SE. But in some cases (like when you are near or on planet), it's worse.

[HarbingerDawn]

Originally posted by Viktor:

Thanks, found it. Well, in some cases (like when you are near black hole), It's better than the auto exposure in previous version of SE. But in some cases (like when you are near or on planet), it's worse.

In those cases, it's best to just control the exposure manually a lot of the time (set mode to manual and use the [,] and [.] keys). [/] will reset exposure.

[Viktor]

Originally posted by HarbingerDawn:

Originally posted by Viktor:

Thanks, found it. Well, in some cases (like when you are near black hole), It's better than the auto exposure in previous version of SE. But in some cases (like when you are near or on planet), it's worse.

In those cases, it's best to just control the exposure manually a lot of the time (set mode to manual and use the [,] and [.] keys). [/] will reset exposure.

Manual just doesn't help much. When near planet, the planet keeps shining like star. Either way, i would like to have the auto exposure from the previous version as option. The only case the new auto exposure seems better than the old version is when near black hole. It's making the black hole look way more mysterious and scary. But in all other cases it's kinda messed up. When on surface of planet, it also behaves like adaptive contrast, which is something i really don't like.

[HarbingerDawn]

Originally posted by Viktor:

Originally posted by HarbingerDawn:

In those cases, it's best to just control the exposure manually a lot of the time (set mode to manual and use the [,] and [.] keys). [/] will reset exposure.

Manual just doesn't help much. When near planet, the planet keeps shining like star. Either way, i would like to have the auto exposure from the previous version as option. The only case the new auto exposure seems better than the old version is when near black hole. It's making the black hole look way more mysterious and scary. But in all other cases it's kinda messed up. When on surface of planet, it also behaves like adaptive contrast, which is something i really don't like.

Manual of course won't help unless you manually adjust it, as the name implies. It does not behave like adaptive contrast at all, that's not how it works. It behaves like the auto exposure detection of a camera, selecting the correct exposure settings so that the scene (or center of it) is neither overexposed nor underexposed.

[Viktor]

Originally posted by HarbingerDawn:

Originally posted by Viktor:

Manual just doesn't help much. When near planet, the planet keeps shining like star. Either way, i would like to have the auto exposure from the previous version as option. The only case the new auto exposure seems better than the old version is when near black hole. It's making the black hole look way more mysterious and scary. But in all other cases it's kinda messed up. When on surface of planet, it also behaves like adaptive contrast, which is something i really don't like.

Manual of course won't help unless you manually adjust it, as the name implies. It does not behave like adaptive contrast at all, that's not how it works. It behaves like the auto exposure detection of a camera, selecting the correct exposure settings so that the scene (or center of it) is neither overexposed nor underexposed.

Which is what it fails at. How come when a parent star sets down behind the horizon of a planet, i still see the light of it for a long time after when it should be dark night already? Overexposing objects is exactly what it does. When just near planet, it's making it overexposed so much that the planet almost looks like a star. And when near star, you cannot see the solar wind. When in certain angle with planet and the parent star, you sometimes see the solar wind way too much. Like the wind is made of shiny solid glass or something. When near galaxy, it's making the galaxy underexposed. Nope, i don't think it behaves correctly. I think it needs either work or there should be option for the old AE. The old version of AE was cool. It wasn't overexposing nor underexposing anything. When you were near planet or star or black hole with disk, it behaved like light pollution for your eyes. You just couldn't see the other stars, but it wasn't over exposing the planet from any angle in the same time. It was making the universe more realistic and immersive. It looks like you are now using the same technology like Black Desert Online does with the remaster graphics if you ever played that game. For example, when Sun rises or setting down, it overbrights that part of the sky so much that you can no longer see the Sun at all, while you should still be able to see the Sun rays and the disk. Everyone is complaining about that in BDO. It also makes the night too bright, which i experienced in SE also in some cases. I bet you are using the same feature, because it behaves exactly the same way.
I tried to play with the manual settings, but it really doesn't do much. Everything is too dark or too bright. You just won't get the cool result from it like from the old AE. Or maybe help me how to do it? Because i don't know. I tried.

[HarbingerDawn]

Originally posted by Viktor:

Originally posted by HarbingerDawn:

Manual of course won't help unless you manually adjust it, as the name implies. It does not behave like adaptive contrast at all, that's not how it works. It behaves like the auto exposure detection of a camera, selecting the correct exposure settings so that the scene (or center of it) is neither overexposed nor underexposed.

Which is what it fails at. How come when a parent star sets down behind the horizon of a planet, i still see the light of it for a long time after when it should be dark night already? Overexposing objects is exactly what it does. When just near planet, it's making it overexposed so much that the planet almost looks like a star. And when near star, you cannot see the solar wind. When in certain angle with planet and the parent star, you sometimes see the solar wind way too much. Like the wind is made of shiny solid glass or something. When near galaxy, it's making the galaxy underexposed. Nope, i don't think it behaves correctly. I think it needs either work or there should be option for the old AE. The old version of AE was cool. It wasn't overexposing nor underexposing anything. When you were near planet or star or black hole with disk, it behaved like light pollution for your eyes. You just couldn't see the other stars, but it wasn't over exposing the planet from any angle in the same time. It was making the universe more realistic and immersive. It looks like you are now using the same technology like Black Desert Online does with the remaster graphics if you ever played that game. For example, when Sun rises or setting down, it overbrights that part of the sky so much that you can no longer see the Sun at all, while you should still be able to see the Sun rays and the disk. Everyone is complaining about that in BDO. It also makes the night too bright, which i experienced in SE also in some cases. I bet you are using the same feature, because it behaves exactly the same way.
I tried to play with the manual settings, but it really doesn't do much. Everything is too dark or too bright. You just won't get the cool result from it like from the old AE. Or maybe help me how to do it? Because i don't know. I tried.

80% of the issues you're describing are due to limitations with other visual elements of SE's rendering (atmospheres, stellar coronae), and the other 20% seem to come from a misunderstanding of what is realistic and what isn't.

The old autoexposure wasn't realistic at all - it lowered the magnitude limit of point sources and a few other visual effects, but didn't affect the brightness of objects, leading to numerous situations where the relative brightness of different elements of the scene were not rendered realistically. That is no longer the case. The new exposure mode is massively more realistic. Its only shortcoming is the way auto exposure chooses what exposure level to use. And if manual exposure isn't producing the result you want, that's only because you're choosing the wrong exposure. It's the same as using manual settings on a camera, just as auto is the same as using automatic settings on a camera. The reason it fails in a lot of cases is the massive difference in brightness between one part of an image and another a lot of the time. It's like trying to take a picture of the moon at night with your cell phone - most likely, it will be massively overexposed. This issue doesn't exist so much during the day since the brightness variations in a daytime scene are relatively small, so the margin for error is small - even if the autoexposure doesn't get it just right, it will usually be close enough. When you're talking about objects in space, that's not the case.

Autoexposure will be improved in the future, but it's totally functional now, and is massively more realistic than what we had before.

I'll make a video showing it off and giving tips about it in the near future, maybe it will be helpful.

[Defe777]

Auto Exposure seems to work correctly only if an object lies in a very small decentralized area of the screen (on the left). This happens with certain resolutions, in my case 3440x1440. I run SE on Ultra and LOD 1 with 1080ti 11G, 16Gb ram, i7 7700k and ssd @70-100fps.
Typical dark objects, like Pluto or Sedna, show themselves as bright as stars in 0.990. This did not happen in the previous version.
I think I can say, with some confidence, that this is a bug. Incredible work by the way, as always :D

[HarbingerDawn]

Originally posted by Defe777:

Auto Exposure seems to work correctly only if an object lies in a very small decentralized area of the screen (on the left). This happens with certain resolutions, in my case 3440x1440. I run SE on Ultra and LOD 1 with 1080ti 11G, 16Gb ram, i7 7700k and ssd @70-100fps.
Typical dark objects, like Pluto or Sedna, show themselves as bright as stars in 0.990. This did not happen in the previous version.
I think I can say, with some confidence, that this is a bug. Incredible work by the way, as always :D

Yes, the offset of the exposure metering area is a bug. But Pluto being overexposed when the camera is exposed properly on the background stars is not a bug, that's 100% realistic.

[Defe777]

I see, thanks for the quick reply.

[Viktor]

Originally posted by HarbingerDawn:

Originally posted by Viktor:

Which is what it fails at. How come when a parent star sets down behind the horizon of a planet, i still see the light of it for a long time after when it should be dark night already? Overexposing objects is exactly what it does. When just near planet, it's making it overexposed so much that the planet almost looks like a star. And when near star, you cannot see the solar wind. When in certain angle with planet and the parent star, you sometimes see the solar wind way too much. Like the wind is made of shiny solid glass or something. When near galaxy, it's making the galaxy underexposed. Nope, i don't think it behaves correctly. I think it needs either work or there should be option for the old AE. The old version of AE was cool. It wasn't overexposing nor underexposing anything. When you were near planet or star or black hole with disk, it behaved like light pollution for your eyes. You just couldn't see the other stars, but it wasn't over exposing the planet from any angle in the same time. It was making the universe more realistic and immersive. It looks like you are now using the same technology like Black Desert Online does with the remaster graphics if you ever played that game. For example, when Sun rises or setting down, it overbrights that part of the sky so much that you can no longer see the Sun at all, while you should still be able to see the Sun rays and the disk. Everyone is complaining about that in BDO. It also makes the night too bright, which i experienced in SE also in some cases. I bet you are using the same feature, because it behaves exactly the same way.
I tried to play with the manual settings, but it really doesn't do much. Everything is too dark or too bright. You just won't get the cool result from it like from the old AE. Or maybe help me how to do it? Because i don't know. I tried.

80% of the issues you're describing are due to limitations with other visual elements of SE's rendering (atmospheres, stellar coronae), and the other 20% seem to come from a misunderstanding of what is realistic and what isn't.

The old autoexposure wasn't realistic at all - it lowered the magnitude limit of point sources and a few other visual effects, but didn't affect the brightness of objects, leading to numerous situations where the relative brightness of different elements of the scene were not rendered realistically. That is no longer the case. The new exposure mode is massively more realistic. Its only shortcoming is the way auto exposure chooses what exposure level to use. And if manual exposure isn't producing the result you want, that's only because you're choosing the wrong exposure. It's the same as using manual settings on a camera, just as auto is the same as using automatic settings on a camera. The reason it fails in a lot of cases is the massive difference in brightness between one part of an image and another a lot of the time. It's like trying to take a picture of the moon at night with your cell phone - most likely, it will be massively overexposed. This issue doesn't exist so much during the day since the brightness variations in a daytime scene are relatively small, so the margin for error is small - even if the autoexposure doesn't get it just right, it will usually be close enough. When you're talking about objects in space, that's not the case.

Autoexposure will be improved in the future, but it's totally functional now, and is massively more realistic than what we had before.

I'll make a video showing it off and giving tips about it in the near future, maybe it will be helpful.

Well, then i guess it depends on of which view the realism is intended. Maybe it is realistic from view of an camera, but it's definitely not realistic from view of human eye. Well, at least if it come to lights. The way how camera works with lights in real life is actually disadvantage of cameras. So why implementing it in SE where it doesn't have to be? I still think the old AE was better and closer to realism when you look by your eyes. When close to bright object, it simply worked as light pollution, preventing you to see other stars, but it wasn't making the close planet shine like a star. If it comes to sunset, then yes, you are suppose to see the light from the Sun even when it's already few degrees bellow the horizon, but not so much. The new AE shows the light way too bright and for too long.
If this is meant to be a camera auto exposure, then ok, but i'd like to have an option for the old AE, because that was more like eye auto exposure. It could just have some features from the new AE. Like for example when you move into elliptical galaxy and the light of that galaxy gets dimmer and also the black hole stuff i talked about.

[Defe777]

I agree with Viktor

[Wmss]

Harbinger, I really hope that one of the top priorities for the next version is an option for autoexposure that is true to the human eye. As I've already said in a reddit comment you may or may not have seen, the simulated camera is nice but absolutely not what I want to be using to look at planets under most circumstances.

I want to be able to jump to a planet and be able to immediately assess the lighting conditions compared to Earth as seen through the human eye, something that is only able to be approximated currently thanks to manual mode's fixed exposure (as a side note, 1/9000ish exposure is about Earth daylight).

[sbobo3113]

Originally posted by Wmss:

Harbinger, I really hope that one of the top priorities for the next version is an option for autoexposure that is true to the human eye. As I've already said in a reddit comment you may or may not have seen, the simulated camera is nice but absolutely not what I want to be using to look at planets under most circumstances.

I want to be able to jump to a planet and be able to immediately assess the lighting conditions compared to Earth as seen through the human eye, something that is only able to be approximated currently thanks to manual mode's fixed exposure (as a side note, 1/9000ish exposure is about Earth daylight).

The exposure of the human eye is nearly impossible to replicate realistically. Witch is why Auto Exposure in SpaceEngine is only made to simulate what a camera sees instead.