Outdoor lighting appears overexposed when viewed from indoors or under cover shade

[Cromulent]

Is there a config setting to adjust the lighting exposure level for outdoor lighting when looking out a window from indoors? I just started the game and notice that the sky is bright white when looking out a window from inside the cottage. When I walk outside, the exposure level of the sky seems to adjust downward as I move out from under the roof of the cottage until the sky appears more blue with wispy clouds.

The advanced graphics settings in game do not seem to affect this when changing from ultra to low. I have set r_HDRbloom to 0 and this helps a little bit, but the sky is still almost pure white when looking out from indoors or under roof shade. I could not identify any adjustment in "sys_spec_PostProcessing.cfg" that affected this. This graphical processing effect does not appear realistic and is straining on the eyes. Maybe this is some lighting adjustment that the game makes to brighten indoor environments? I would like for the sky to remain blue and aesthetic when looking out a window from indoors. Otherwise, the game looks and runs pretty well.

My system has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, if that makes any difference.

[Cromulent]

Here are some screenshots showing the issue:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883188600

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883189691

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883189834

These final two screenshots show how the sky brightness adjusts when I stand stationary and move the camera from aiming at the roof to aiming at the sky. The brightness of the sky adjust as the camera rotates away from the underside of the roof:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883189997

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2883190106

[Alexoferith]

I have the same GPU. Yes, I know what you mean. But I take it that it is by design to be like that. In real life, when you are in a dark space and if a window suddenly open, everything will be so bright when looking out. It takes a little while for the eyes to adjust. There is no point looking out of an opening if you are trying to see if anyone is there in the distance coming your way. This is because the FOV is restricted. I mean I was in Skalitz, trying to farm armours from killed bandits, soldiers, tradesman, Cummans, etc.. I am going for the merciful achievement so I cannot kill anyone. I saw 6 to 8 guys fighting when I approached the entrance. Since I cannot fight them, I immediately turned right and went round them along the wall until I reached the entrance to Henry's home. When I looked back, I couldn't see anyone. So I walked down back towards where they were directly. When I reached the well, then suddenly three of them just "popped" up. So, from the entrance to Henry's ex-home to where the group were fighting, it was no more than 120 metres. Therefore, I would strongly advise not to rely on what you see on the screen at a distance. In this game, due to the FOV, anything that can be interacted with (NPC, enemies, plants, etc..) seem to only show up about 50 or 60 metres away.
By the way, if you want to change the contrast of your GPU (which will affect the game) is via NVidia Control. However, that only works to a little extent. I tried to adjust the gamma and contrast as I want to see at night in the dark within the game. It didn't work. Yes, the gamma and contrast changed but everything was just grey instead of black. Still couldn't see the trees, rock or the road. You have to use either the torch or using a nighthawk potion. Hope this help. Good luck and have fun :)

[Valden21]

OP, that's not a mistake; it's a reflection of reality. IRL, whenever you walk outside on a sunny day after being inside, it's always really bright for a moment, and it's because your eyes haven't adjusted yet. The game reflects this. What you're seeing is intentional on the part of the devs.

[wjpower2003]

Originally posted by Valden21:

OP, that's not a mistake; it's a reflection of reality. IRL, whenever you walk outside on a sunny day after being inside, it's always really bright for a moment, and it's because your eyes haven't adjusted yet. The game reflects this. What you're seeing is intentional on the part of the devs.

This

[AmesNFire]

Originally posted by Alexoferith:

I have the same GPU. Yes, I know what you mean. But I take it that it is by design to be like that. In real life, when you are in a dark space and if a window suddenly open, everything will be so bright when looking out. It takes a little while for the eyes to adjust. There is no point looking out of an opening if you are trying to see if anyone is there in the distance coming your way. This is because the FOV is restricted. I mean I was in Skalitz, trying to farm armours from killed bandits, soldiers, tradesman, Cummans, etc.. I am going for the merciful achievement so I cannot kill anyone. I saw 6 to 8 guys fighting when I approached the entrance. Since I cannot fight them, I immediately turned right and went round them along the wall until I reached the entrance to Henry's home. When I looked back, I couldn't see anyone. So I walked down back towards where they were directly. When I reached the well, then suddenly three of them just "popped" up. So, from the entrance to Henry's ex-home to where the group were fighting, it was no more than 120 metres. Therefore, I would strongly advise not to rely on what you see on the screen at a distance. In this game, due to the FOV, anything that can be interacted with (NPC, enemies, plants, etc..) seem to only show up about 50 or 60 metres away.
By the way, if you want to change the contrast of your GPU (which will affect the game) is via NVidia Control. However, that only works to a little extent. I tried to adjust the gamma and contrast as I want to see at night in the dark within the game. It didn't work. Yes, the gamma and contrast changed but everything was just grey instead of black. Still couldn't see the trees, rock or the road. You have to use either the torch or using a nighthawk potion. Hope this help. Good luck and have fun :)

I'm 90% sure you can edit the FOV and distance in the settings.

[Cromulent]

Thank you for the thoughtful responses. Whether this graphical lighting effect of "over exposure" is realistic is debatable. In real life, I'm currently sitting in a dimly lit room looking out the window during the day time, and my vision does not produce such an "overexposed" appearance of the outside. This is not the same as what could appear if I were taking a photograph from the same position, depending on the exposure value selected on the camera. I would prefer for the game to represent human vision and not photo exposure (or at least for this effect to be toned down). Maybe my vision performs differently from someone else's, which is why I would like for this effect to be configurable to match my firsthand experience with "reality". Of course, looking out a window during the day in game is not very often, and so this is a minor issue, but I also notice this effect when walking under archways or from under the overhangs surrounding buildings. That being said, I'm now a few hours into the game and this hasn't kept me from enjoying it.

Regardless of the debate about what is "realistic," is there a method for reducing this graphical effect with a config setting? I thought it might be related to HDR, but I tried setting all of those values to 0 and it didn't seem to alter the exposure auto adjustment that the game makes. I don't see any mods that appear targeted towards addressing this.

Otherwise, I'm mostly impressed with the graphics and the game in general so far. The only other issue that I had was with the rain appearing blown out during the night, but the "Better Rain" mod seemed to fix this and made the rainy night very atmospheric. Torch light, shadows, and the night sky look really cool. I just completed Gothic 2 Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos before starting this, so it's quite a difference graphically, although the old school graphics didn't bother me after I got used to them. The two graphics effects that I miss from Gothic 2 are the consistent outdoor lighting regardless of player camera view orientation, and the shooting stars in the night sky (a minor detail but very nice for atmosphere).

As an aside, I wish that developers would toss Depth of Field, Bloom, Blur, and any other post processing that artificially reduces sharpness into the dust bin of video game history. It's like taking a beautiful photo or painting and smearing it in vaseline. Those effects only make sense if they're attempting to represent atmospheric humidity.

[Valden21]

Originally posted by Cromulent:

Thank you for the thoughtful responses. Whether this graphical lighting effect of "over exposure" is realistic is debatable. In real life, I'm currently sitting in a dimly lit room looking out the window during the day time, and my vision does not produce such an "overexposed" appearance of the outside. This is not the same as what could appear if I were taking a photograph from the same position, depending on the exposure value selected on the camera. I would prefer for the game to represent human vision and not photo exposure (or at least for this effect to be toned down). Maybe my vision performs differently from someone else's, which is why I would like for this effect to be configurable to match my firsthand experience with "reality". Of course, looking out a window during the day in game is not very often, and so this is a minor issue, but I also notice this effect when walking under archways or from under the overhangs surrounding buildings. That being said, I'm now a few hours into the game and this hasn't kept me from enjoying it.

Regardless of the debate about what is "realistic," is there a method for reducing this graphical effect with a config setting? I thought it might be related to HDR, but I tried setting all of those values to 0 and it didn't seem to alter the exposure auto adjustment that the game makes. I don't see any mods that appear targeted towards addressing this.

Otherwise, I'm mostly impressed with the graphics and the game in general so far. The only other issue that I had was with the rain appearing blown out during the night, but the "Better Rain" mod seemed to fix this and made the rainy night very atmospheric. Torch light, shadows, and the night sky look really cool. I just completed Gothic 2 Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos before starting this, so it's quite a difference graphically, although the old school graphics didn't bother me after I got used to them. The two graphics effects that I miss from Gothic 2 are the consistent outdoor lighting regardless of player camera view orientation, and the shooting stars in the night sky (a minor detail but very nice for atmosphere).

As an aside, I wish that developers would toss Depth of Field, Bloom, Blur, and any other post processing that artificially reduces sharpness into the dust bin of video game history. It's like taking a beautiful photo or painting and smearing it in vaseline. Those effects only make sense if they're attempting to represent atmospheric humidity.

The reason for the difference between what you're seeing IRL through the window and what you're seeing in the game is because of the glass in the window. I've noticed that when light filters through glass IRL, it always makes it less bright unless the sunlight is reflecting off something. Thus, there's an illusion of the day being less bright than it actually is; go outside, and your eyes see how TRULY bright it is.

[Cromulent]

Found an interesting CryEngine tutorial that discusses the related postprocessing effects, described as HDR Eye Adaptation Speed, EV (exposure value) Auto Compensation, EV Min and EV Max.
https://docs.cryengine.com/display/CEMANUAL/Tutorial+-+Environment+Editor+Part+4+-+HDR+and+Filters#TutorialEnvironmentEditorPart4HDRandFilters-HDRAdaptationSpeed

I had some success by manipulating the HDR Eye Adaptation Speed and setting it to 0 in order to lock the exposure level. This was done by aiming the camera up at the sky and then setting "r_HDReyeadaptationspeed 0" in the console, which would result in the sky remaining a consistent brightness regardless of camera view position. The only issue is that the dark areas become too dark. During daytime, indoor areas appear ok if I have a torch lit, but night is too dark even with a torch. Indoor candle light does not provide enough light for the room.

I think part of the cause of the overexposure of the sky is the large range in bright and dark objects in the camera view when indoors or near building shadows. I wonder if it would be possible to adjust the EV min for shadows to be not as dark, so that the auto exposure does not adjust so much brighter. I'd rather have less dark shadows than completely blown out skies if that is the trade off that needs to be made. The eye strain caused by excessively bright, overexposed scenes in game is not desirable. It's especially bad on days where there are wispy clouds. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where to find the variables that control "EV min" and "EV max" in the game files in order to test this hypothesis.

Otherwise, I'm having a great time in the game and enjoying the story so far. Just bothered by the one detail, which unfortunately seems to be common to many modern games attempting to depict "realistic" graphics.

Before and After locking the exposure level by using r_HDReyeadaptationspeed:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884001285

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884001340

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884001393

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884001451

[Manwith Noname]

The behaviour in game mimics reality in terms of eye adaptation but it isn't perfect. Sitting in a dim room and looking out at a bright sky your eyes adapt almost immediately to the bright scene outside your window. When you stop looking outside and look at something in the dimly lit room, your eyes adapt almost immediately again and things don't look ridiculously dark. You are so used to it you don't notice it and possibly never thought about it outside of a science class...or a hot box.

...

Until you get older and your eyes take longer to adapt and once insignificant things like stepping outside on a sunny summers day inflict blindness and pain...so much pain.

Ahem.

[TheMountain]

shamelessly necroing this thread to say, it's really annoying that everyone ignored this user's request to stop debating the realism of the thing and just answer the question. Here I am in 2024 dealing with the same thing, and because of that this thread ended, and I am no closer to solving this issue myself.

[wjpower2003]

Originally posted by TheMountain:

shamelessly necroing this thread to say, it's really annoying that everyone ignored this user's request to stop debating the realism of the thing and just answer the question. Here I am in 2024 dealing with the same thing, and because of that this thread ended, and I am no closer to solving this issue myself.

I believe it's called adaptive lighting. There may be a Cryengine setting for it which can be tweaked in the user.cfg file but not sure.

[Manwith Noname]

Read post number 8.

[wjpower2003]

Originally posted by Manwith Noname:

Read post number 8.

OP needs to mark this thread as resolved

[TheMountain]

Originally posted by Manwith Noname:

Read post number 8.

I did read that, and by reading it, i realized it wasn't the solution because they say that by changing it to where it solves the other issue, it then makes dark areas too dark.

[TheMountain]

https://www.reddit.com/r/kingdomcome/comments/8qok9k/pc_semifix_for_nvidia_too_dark_night_lighting/

related that provides more information for the next guy.