Further setting options for the image display

[Falkaroth]

Further setting options for the image display like brightness & contrast & colors etcetera. It would be nice if you could separate the outside world and the cockpit. Reshade is not a real alternative in the long run.

 

I would very much welcome this. Thanks.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Falkaroth

[Falkaroth]

For example. With German translation because I am German. I hope everyone understands what I mean.

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by Falkaroth

[despinoza]

fingers crossed for that

[Falkaroth]

fingers crossed for that

 

That would be desirable.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Falkaroth

[Falkaroth]

What really bothers me in version 2.5.6 are the new colors. I find the old colors much more beautiful and natural. And since you can't please everyone in this way, I got the idea.

 

Older version

 

Current version 2.5.6 Beta

[Falkaroth]

In the past there were also reports that some cockpits looked too dark. This would be off the table with such an attitude !.

[Falkaroth]

I just wanted to clarify how helpful such an option would be. There are mods that address this problem! I myself cannot say how complicated it would be to program this. However, if this were realized, one or the other would be grateful for such an adjustment option.

 

A good example https://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/files/3303537/.

Thanks to joeyjojojunior for his effort.

.

Cheers

[MonnieRock]

I too would like to have more controls other than gamma.

 

Put me on the wish list

[SharpeXB]

You should set brightness and contrast in your graphics card control panel (I have never seen this function correctly on monitors) you’ll need tests patterns from a high quality source like a Blu-ray Disc, like is used for home theater.

 

Gamma does not control brightness or contrast it just sets the curve between black and white but it doesn’t set those levels.

Edited June 6, 2020 by SharpeXB

[Falkaroth]

In other games i am actually quite satisfied with the image quality because setting options. I don't know if you can compare a Blue-Ray to a game.

[Falkaroth]

A mode for color blindness would also be worth mentioning 

[SharpeXB]

On 6/8/2020 at 11:57 AM, Falkaroth said:

In other games i am actually quite satisfied with the image quality because setting options. I don't know if you can compare a Blue-Ray to a game.

In order to display a high quality test pattern, a disc or usb with those would be necessary. 

[Tippis]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

In order to display a high quality test pattern, a disc or usb with those would be necessary. 

Lol no.

You just a properly set up image and some instruction for what to look for — no disc or USB needed. A Blu-Ray is not a good point of comparison because of how low-quality, inaccurate, and simplistic those test patterns are compared to what you can do on a computer.

Edited July 24, 2022 by Tippis

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, Tippis said:

Lol no.

You just a properly set up image and some instruction for what to look for — no disc or USB needed. A Blu-Ray is not a good point of comparison because of how low-quality, inaccurate, and simplistic those test patterns are compared to what you can do on a computer.

 

You need a source for the test patterns which are used to calibrate a display. You need to do this before setting anything in a game. The patterns can come from a disc or even game consoles like the OneX can do them. Blu-ray Discs are not low-quality, that’s literally the highest quality video source there is. 
Something like this will work. 
https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-calibrate-your-tv

Edited July 24, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

5 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

You need a source for the test patterns which are used to calibrate a display. 

The internet.

Or just the OS since it's built in these days.

6 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Blu-ray Discs are not low-quality, that’s literally the highest quality video source there is. 

Lol no.

Video on BR is inherently low quality due to compression and (commonly) a fixed size for the signal. The good news is, you don't need video — that's just how it's done if all you have is a simple TV (or projector) and a simple BR player, doubly so since such displays generally have pretty darn poor image tuning capabilities to begin with in order to be user friendly. If you have a computer, and especially if you have a proper monitor, there is no need to settle for something that simplistic and inaccurate.

(Oh, and also, while you can indeed get proper calibration off of a BR disc, the thing that it does is not “video” — it's a BD-J app that does similar things to how your OS colour and image calibration works. It does this by being proper software running on your BR player.)

[SharpeXB]

7 hours ago, Tippis said:

The internet.

Or just the OS since it's built in these days.

You can’t just screen grab the image and expect it to be correct. Some of those websites might work but you need a high quality source. Yes Windows 10 has a pattern but the PLUGE bars on it are rather small and obscured by bright color bars nearby. 

Edited July 25, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Tippis]

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

You can’t just screen grab the image and expect it to be correct.

Good thing that no-one suggested that, then. Well, except for you, just now.

7 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Yes Windows 10 has a pattern but the PLUGE bars on it are rather small and obscured by bright color bars nearby. 

OSes have had this for decades. It is not new and, for even more happy funtime, size is not even that much off a factor. That's the benefit of having a computer rather than some semi-stale and obsolecent video disc media.

The point remains: you don't need some obscure BR-disc based supa-sekritt test pattern. It's ubiquitous and universally available and built into any system that matters. The thing you claimed as a necessity is anything but, on top of also being one of the worst examples.

[twistking]

I've worked in media creation, so i think i have some good experience with colour calibration and i'd say that if you calibrate by eye, you can do that on whatever source you want, since your eyes will probabyl be the weakest link in the chain. Personally i'd also recommend to cross check with sources that you are very familiar with. This could be any media or program. Best to also be familiar with this source on different screens.

Most importantly though is to remember that calibrating by eye is very "dangerous" for untrained eyes, because it's very hard to judge clours absolutely. If you have a modern display that was factory calibrated and is not completely bleeched out from thousands of hours of runtime, i would reccomend to simply use the pre-calibrated S-RGB-mode of the monitor and run with that for colour. Some monitors won't label their SRGB mode as such, but will call it default, neutral, custom or whatever. Check the manual or google.
I have relatively cheap LG gaming monitor for DCS and while it's menus scream GAMING at you, it has a really decent SRGB mode hiding under teriible marketing-speech aimed at "gamers".
I have trained eyes, but i wouldn't be able to improve on that preset mode by eye alone, so i just rolled with it.

Of course gamma, brightness and black levels are a different problem, but the good news is, that it's easier to calibrate those by eye. Again, if you have a modern monitor, gamma should be fine by default, but black levels might not be. Normally this is not a big deal, because gamma/black levels are fine to be corrected by eye, the problem with DCS is that black levels are very critical, because dcs has a much wider dynamic range than typical mainstream media. It's therefore important to get black levels and gamma right. If you manage to do that you can fly both day and night missions in dcs without tuning your gamma.

Oh and one last piece of warning. I said you can use internet sources for calibration. Just make sure that those images are displayed correctly. Fo example you cannot use the windows image viewer, because it applies a colour profile that you cannot see or change. Most modern internet browsers show images correctly. Firefox and chrome should be fine f.e. But i expect edge and operah to work as well. If in doubt, there are websites that let you check if your browser handles colour correctly...

[twistking]

With refenrece to the original request, i would agree that a bit more user control could be a useful feature, but i do not think that cockpit and outside grading should be made seperate controls, because this is not a question of user taste, or image calibration. Cockpit and outside lighting are in a certain fixed relation that should be dictated only by the graphics engine. It does not make sense to have them seperated, sicne their relation should be set objectively correct by the original artist. IF there is a problem and players find a cockpit too dark or to bright, then this should be submitted as a bug report, so that the artist can check if there is a problem with the lighting calculations. This should not be a function of taste or preference since there should be an objective "truth" to that specific issue.

I also would propose to change the gamma slider to relative corrections so that default would be "0" and you could then increase or decrease equaly in both directions. You coudl get the same effect as before, but you would simply have different values. I think that the current values are very confusing both to colour professionals and - as proven by forum discssions - especially confusing to novices. You should deal with absolute gamma values only when setting up and calibrating your display. Your display should be set up correctly for a certain gamma before you start DCS. IF your monitor is set up correctly, you should have gamma in dcs on "0". If you have issues with black levels or gamma though, you could either compensate with the gamma, or close DCS and try to improve your monitor calibration. The current values suggest that "DCS gamma" was something that would have to be individual for every user, while it should only be used as a compensation method for badly setup screens, or simply bad screens.

The mdoerators are also guilty of paddling the idea that there cannot be objectively correct colours, "because every display is different, so every user has to select the appropriate gamma setting for them in DCS" so everything would be subjevtive. This is of course complete and utter bulls**t.

Edited July 25, 2022 by twistking

[Falkaroth]

That's the way it is . I like you