This game is Ugly

[Gavin786]

Some help would be great - pls read ->

I loved Surge 1 - it was gorgeous.
Now I just bought Surge 2 and it is REALLY Ugly!
I never usually complain about things like this but it is bugging me. It is totally like "washed out" - I dont know if this is the right way to say it.

There was also a bug in my multi-monitor setup and I had to disable 1 monitor to get game to run.

Is this something that is a know issue or I just have to live with this?

Are textures/models everything just super-low quality in this game?

It is almost like gamma has been turned up to maximum. It just looks really "Off".

Is there any advice about this or do I just got to accept it ?

TY any who answer!

[TeRRoR]

Yea, you have to live with all that. The gamma is completely ruined and the devs are obviously not able to do anything about it. It seems like they completely ******-up the lighting in this one.
The overall washed out look, blurry textures you can do pretty much nothing to fix this. Also keep in mind: even though it looks way worse than the Surge 1 this game is twice as demanding.

If you are really desperate to play the game then do it. But if I were you I'd refund and see if the massive problems get fixed. Or: get used to it. The game itself is good, but yea: it ugly as heck.

[Mikoto]

Originally posted by Belladonna:

Yea, you have to live with all that. The gamma is completely ruined and the devs are obviously not able to do anything about it. It seems like they completely ******-up the lighting in this one.
The overall washed out look, blurry textures you can do pretty much nothing to fix this. Also keep in mind: even though it looks way worse than the Surge 1 this game is twice as demanding.

If you are really desperate to play the game then do it. But if I were you I'd refund and see if the massive problems get fixed. Or: get used to it. The game itself is good, but yea: it ugly as heck.

Well if you owned he game I would say try changing your settings AA as changing it to a lower setting removed all of the blur for me but you do you dude.

[Pellarome]

The gamma issue has been acknowledged by the devs and they are working on a fix. We'll see another patch this week so maybe that will fix it, if not, then probably the one after that.

[Cherrycat]

They know its ugly, which is why they put photo shopped pictures on the steam store.

Example:

https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/644830/ss_1104031f37dbbbdba141992d2c8332eff2b4b08a.600x338.jpg?t=1570702456

[TeRRoR]

Originally posted by Argenteus:

Originally posted by Belladonna:

Yea, you have to live with all that. The gamma is completely ruined and the devs are obviously not able to do anything about it. It seems like they completely ******-up the lighting in this one.
The overall washed out look, blurry textures you can do pretty much nothing to fix this. Also keep in mind: even though it looks way worse than the Surge 1 this game is twice as demanding.

If you are really desperate to play the game then do it. But if I were you I'd refund and see if the massive problems get fixed. Or: get used to it. The game itself is good, but yea: it ugly as heck.

Well if you owned he game I would say try changing your settings AA as changing it to a lower setting removed all of the blur for me but you do you dude.

Yea, change AA and all problems are gone. Big LOL!

[Noeat]

Originally posted by Belladonna:

Originally posted by Argenteus:

Well if you owned he game I would say try changing your settings AA as changing it to a lower setting removed all of the blur for me but you do you dude.

Yea, change AA and all problems are gone. Big LOL!

he didnt tell all problems, but blur
try read, before u rant

[VaniKa]

I'd really like to see how the game looks on the machines of the people complaining about ugly graphics. Either we perceive the graphics differently or you are really encountering a bug of some sort. Care to post some screenshots? Just saying it's ugly doesn't really convey how it looks as the game has stark contrasts and maybe some people aren't used to that or have their monitor calibrated badly. I think I remember something about washed out colors when HDR is used. I don't have that technology so that might be the reason why I think the game looks fine? And wouldn't disabling HDR solve the problem then?

[Chuck P]

I think the game looks fine in the first half, but then I've always been a big fan of washed out colours and high contrast visuals. It's in the second half where it gets really ugly for me, with that hideous blue filter and nanogoo particle effects littering everything.

[TeRRoR]

I find it most interesting how many people are referring to the broken gamma as an artistic choice of some sort. High contrast is one thing, pitch black areas with no details left and white areas that just hurt the eye are a different thing though. It has nothing to do with HDR or an uncalibrated monitor. Take a screenshot and put it into photoshop and you'll see that there is actual picture information missing due to over/under exposure. No way to bring it back.

[VaniKa]

Screenshots please. I have no problems with crushed blacks or pure white areas, except some direct light sources. Colors don't look washed out and textures are crisp. There are strong contrasts, yes, but these are actually normal in the real world. Look how bright concrete appears in strong sunlight. You just don't perceive it that way because your subjective vision is relative and takes into account the surroundings and circumstances. For example what you see as white might actually be yellow or grey. But you expect it to be a white surface in a yellow-lighted environment. Your brain corrects it. So, in reality even nearly black surfaces can appear nearly white because of the strong light reflection. This is what also happens in the game. It's just realistic and there's strong sunlight in the game at times, as there are very dark areas where you wouldn't see anything in the real world as well.

[TeRRoR]

Please, don't give me that "realistic" BS. I don't care what's realistic, I want my games to look pretty and I want to be able to navigate around the environment. What TS2 replicates is starring into the sun for 2 minutes: a post-blind effect that is.

here, same scene with different ingame brightness settings:
https://ibb.co/dDGKYYm
https://ibb.co/frVHft5
https://ibb.co/5xktkvY

Screenshots don't do the problem justice though. It heavily depends on the area. At the end I have two options: getting extremely over-exposed whites so that my eyes hurt or darker areas so dark that I can't see ****- nothing inbetween. How can you possibly like that because it's "realistic"? The whole game isn't about realism and this adds nothing to the experience. It doesn't even look good. So how's that an artistic choice? It looks like they haven't placed any fill-lights in there scenes. Fire up any game-engine or 3D package, disable global illumination and don't use any fill lights to brigten up pitch black areas and you are damn close to what TS2 looks like.

[VaniKa]

That does indeed look strange! Where is it exactly?

[Mikoto]

Originally posted by VaniKa:

That does indeed look strange! Where is it exactly?

I doubt he can answer that as he does not even own the game (everyone that owns the game has a mouse icon next to their name, and no privacy settings can hide that).

Now if he were complaining about the console version then sure but as it is right now, he is just yet another troll.

[TeRRoR]

Oh, we got ourself a detective here :D

This is the section below the big pipes that connect the place where you fight Brother Eli and the MedBay (theres a teleporter once you unlock a shortcut in the middle between these two places. Go down that teleporter and go through the shortcut down there. Then you are standing pretty much where I took those screenshots)

[VaniKa]

This is how it looks on my system with default brightness:
https://imgur.com/a/UtoLliL