2.5.6 update changes/improvements?

Loving the extra draw distance for lighting at night.

 

 

But other than that, I can't notice much of any difference in the sim at all other than that the ground textures appear to be washed out and bland looking. I had a handle on that previously by adjusting the Gamma setting, but now I have to turn it way down low (to 1!) to get away from the bland/cartoonish ground textures. Caucasus Autumn map used to be gorgeous, now it (and other maps) just seem very bland.

 

 

Any ideas? Tried SSLR, just kills framerates and doesn't make much difference... Deleted fxo/metashaders2 and no difference.

 

 

AD

Edited February 18, 2020 by Aluminum Donkey

using VR:

The water is improved now showing depth with sandy bottom near shore.

All the cities and airfields now look spectacular at night.

No more sky color banding at sunset/night.

Not sure but weather many have been improved.

Edited February 18, 2020 by fitness88

Any ideas?

 

Yes - just wait until ED further refines and improves the initial 2.5.6 release with additional patches and updates as they usually do. :thumbup:

 

As per the newsletter, the main two improvements were: Improved Water & Improved Environment Lighting. And, they said "We know that it is far from perfect and will continue to improve..."

 

:)

Go into your Nvidia control panel.

go to adjust desktop color settings

move down to section 3 apply the following enhancements

move the digital vibrance up to 60-65

 

 

That should give you what you are looking for.

Go into your Nvidia control panel.

go to adjust desktop color settings

move down to section 3 apply the following enhancements

move the digital vibrance up to 60-65

 

That should give you what you are looking for.

 

 

I do like that one, but I usually set it to 55, otherwise everything else starts looking really weird :) I'm using a VA monitor (HP Omen 32") and it has vibrant colors and high contrast, so everything on it looks good. I'm just noticing that cockpit textures are easier to see now, but the ground scenery looks really washed out, so ED appears to have drastically changed the Gamma scale.

 

 

The ground starts to look good again when I set Gamma to 1.0 to 1.1, but then the cockpit textures are really dark/lack detail.

 

 

AD

Shifted gamma to 1.0 doesn't make sense, the monitor is calibrated to 6500k, which corresponds to 2.2 gamma.

What's the difference, well there's a lot of infrastructural changes you can't see on first glance.

 

The remaining modules were switched to the new DRM, it seems the old copy protection was completely removed, no more dcs_protect.dll, a10_protect.dll, fc3_protect.dll and CombinedArms_protect.dll, so they're all gone and so are the recurring CPU usage spikes :)

 

I figured this out in summer of 2019 or so but just didn't saw the need for more drama. It was better for everyone, the last thing we need is panic about a spike in CPU usage that's on another thread-s that doesn't quite affect things that much visibly, but it really stood out like in some cases it could have an impact but I would have to do a lot more testing to confirm and I wasn't motivated to do so, it's a lot of fun but it's exhausting doing this, and a time killer, it would end up looking pointless for raising it just as it was being fixed, it just took a few more months than I thought.

Shifted gamma to 1.0 doesn't make sense, the monitor is calibrated to 6500k, which corresponds to 2.2 gamma.

 

Everything is *extremely* bland and washed out at 2.2 gamma setting.

 

1.2 seems ok. Cockpit is really dark, can't see texture details and instruments can be hard to see, but ground looks good.

 

AD

@Aluminium Donkey

check every setting outside of DCS first, settings of your monitor, Windows display settings and driver settings. Looks like something is already messed up there, so DCS will always look wrong without cleaning the other stuff up first.

@Aluminium Donkey

check every setting outside of DCS first, settings of your monitor, Windows display settings and driver settings. Looks like something is already messed up there, so DCS will always look wrong without cleaning the other stuff up first.

 

 

Already done that, but I've used the same display settings for years. Every other game looks good, DCS just seems to require very low Gamma settings. 1.2-1.3 or thereabouts looks pretty good, but cockpit textures are very dark just like in 2.5.5.

 

 

AD

did you delete fxo and metashaders ?

 

there is a large document showing all the changed in the last beta, you can find it on hoggit

 

Raw changes 20 something pages, summarized in 7

Shifted gamma to 1.0 doesn't make sense, the monitor is calibrated to 6500k, which corresponds to 2.2 gamma.

Where did you find this information?

mmm, I kindda share some of the sentiments here. It's like the entire gamma range took a shift down across the board. Previously, the darkness was a massive issue and you compensated by adjusting gamma down, but the colours ended up messing up in darkness with banding and orange artifacts. Now, the dark looks OK once adjusted, but, without touching the gamma set nicely for dark, the daytime colours do appear washed out and look like they need a lower gamma.

 

Persoanlly im thankful we can adjust it in pit, but it's definitely a bit washed out for daytimne if night time looks ok.

Running in VR.

 

I think night is greatly improved. I do my testing by running a mission on a moonless night where I land at Anapa on 04 so fly over the towns on the coast.

 

I am currently using a gamma of 1.3 on this. Many recommend 1.0 but I find this makes the DDI's a bit too dark, also I can't see anything of the wings, where I think I should see something.

 

Before the patch turning gamma down would also make ground lights very dark, I now think that they are brighter now and much better for it, although I think they should be brighter still.

 

Conversely, turning gamma up would make the ground textures, especially when close to landing, very visible in very odd garish colours, which looked awful. This is now much less noticeable, and the textures are much darker.

 

There's still room for improvement, though. I really don't like the "upturned bowls" that are the aerodrome landing lights when coming into land - I think they look awful. They get better once really close (once landed), but I still think the "halo" effect is too large. I think the landing lights should look more like very bright points (like the stars, but much brighter), with a less pronounced halo effect.

 

Curiously the red landing lights, which are closer than the white ones, become visible later.

 

Going to daytime - as to daylight being washed out, well, sorry to be different, but I find a gamma of 2.0 to be quite realistic and approaching what I would expect in reality. A gamma of 1.0 just seems too dark to me.

 

This is all for the good (in VR at any rate), and it's finally nice to get a half-decent night experience in VR. Hopefully improvements will keep coming.

Running in VR.

 

I think night is greatly improved. I do my testing by running a mission on a moonless night where I land at Anapa on 04 so fly over the towns on the coast.

 

I am currently using a gamma of 1.3 on this. Many recommend 1.0 but I find this makes the DDI's a bit too dark, also I can't see anything of the wings, where I think I should see something.

 

Before the patch turning gamma down would also make ground lights very dark, I now think that they are brighter now and much better for it, although I think they should be brighter still.

 

Conversely, turning gamma up would make the ground textures, especially when close to landing, very visible in very odd garish colours, which looked awful. This is now much less noticeable, and the textures are much darker.

 

There's still room for improvement, though. I really don't like the "upturned bowls" that are the aerodrome landing lights when coming into land - I think they look awful. They get better once really close (once landed), but I still think the "halo" effect is too large. I think the landing lights should look more like very bright points (like the stars, but much brighter), with a less pronounced halo effect.

 

Curiously the red landing lights, which are closer than the white ones, become visible later.

 

Going to daytime - as to daylight being washed out, well, sorry to be different, but I find a gamma of 2.0 to be quite realistic and approaching what I would expect in reality. A gamma of 1.0 just seems too dark to me.

 

This is all for the good (in VR at any rate), and it's finally nice to get a half-decent night experience in VR. Hopefully improvements will keep coming.

 

I agree with what you say. Flying sunset in PG now is breathtaking, love the ground lights, stars look great [even though a bit greenish at least they can easily be seen]and I like the realism of now needing to turn down cockpit lighting at night especially when landing.

Flying gamma 1.3 night, the ground goes dark away from city lights, I keep 1.3 for daytime as well.

One thing I've noticed with this update, most VR users love it, most monitor users not as much...they complain the lights are too bright.

Edited February 19, 2020 by fitness88

stars look great [even though a bit greenish at least they can easily be seen]

Guess stars are kinda tricky since you can only go down to one pixel. In the real night sky, many stars are just the faintest of specs. Guess they could play with the brightness a bit to somewhat compensate.

Where did you find this information?

It's the world standard - the golden middle , the perfect value for all monitors.

If it is necessary for DCS gamma 1.0 is something wrong on the side of the ED developers.

It's the world standard - the golden middle , the perfect value for all monitors.

If it is necessary for DCS gamma 1.0 is something wrong on the side of the ED developers.

 

Funny that as Nvidia, who obviously know nothing of display properties in their default driver programme and settings gamma is shown as a 1.........lol ......

Funny that as Nvidia, who obviously know nothing of display properties in their default driver programme and settings gamma is shown as a 1.........lol ......

 

I remember a post of Cobra(definitly someone from HB) saying that all their F-14 Artwork is done for the 2.2 Gamma setting because of real live physics/behaviour/something.... I can't remember exactly why only the point that all their artwork was done for a 2.2 gamma.

 

Edit:

We master for 2.2 gamma, as is physically correct.

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3868798&postcount=3

Edited February 20, 2020 by unknown

Thanks everyone, I've got it mostly sorted out now. They did, in fact, mess around with the Gamma scale :)

 

I played with in my graphics driver settings a bit (442.19) and it's good now.

 

Peace :)

AD