DCS World image quality - 2017 vs. 2020, which is better?

[shu77]

The sand colour under the cities lets it down for me, I think thats what makes the left image look better. .

[Vanguard]

The sand colour under the cities lets it down for me, I think thats what makes the left image look better. .

 

That's a really good point. Now I can't unsee it, it's terrible.

[draconus]

Guys, there's not much green beside golf courses.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/las-vegas-sky-2437395.jpg

[M1Combat]

That's a good pic. I guarantee you it was taken after a good deal of rain :). Probably after monsoon season.

 

It shows the desert color in the town so it does exist... but is clearly over done in the DCS shots.

 

The mountains though... They're "generally" lighter colored. You're seeing a good bit of green growth on the desert vegetation that's generally mostly leafless and dust covered :).

[SpecterDC13]

I live in Las Vegas and work here at Nelllis AFB and I can tell you for a fact that with a clear sky in the middle of the day that the picture on the right is pretty darn accurate and even in game on the ground sitting at Nellis with the gamma set to either 2.1 or 2.2 that the color tones are accurate because the sun out here is very damn bright. The picture on the left is more accurate during a rainy overcast day during the winter. I run with my gamma at 2.1 but i use to run it at around 1.6 because I liked the feel of what looks like when wearing sunglass (oakleys). So if you want to feel like you are wearing sunglass run gamma at 1.6/1.7 but you want that natural bright sun blinding you like it does without sunglasses run it at 2.1/2.2. Again this is all opinion but based off of what I see on the day to day here.

[M1Combat]

Well... the Gamma number you run is prety dependent on the hardawre you run too.

 

I run 1.3-1.5... and it still loooks pretty much like the one on the right :).

[JellyBean]

I don't live in Vegas but have had the pleasure of damaging my liver there on a number of occasions. I did think the 2020 image looked very accurate with regards to colouring. it also feels like a 'high gamma' sort of place when you escape out the casinos, it is a particularly bright light during the day followed by lots of bright lights at night. Good times.

[pmiceli]

The problem is DCS colors for the desert maps are over saturated. Some color correction sliders would be a welcome addition.

[Bob1943]

I was flying at Nellis in 1968 and took some in-flight pictures from an F-4 in Sept 1968. The pictures are posted under the NTTR map topic at: https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=266738

They are not all taken during mid-day, and were taken with a cheap pocket camera. A couple of the pics show the sunlit landscape. So, you can make some approximate comparisons to how close the DCS map looks to these photos.

[OnlyforDCS]

Well to me this discussion is kind of pointless since the most important graphical feature IMO is still at the same level now as it was back in 2017. The weather, or rather the cloud systems. All the promised improvements and features are still MIA.

[borisbarzotto]

the lighting of the game at certain times and weather is very realistic and other times not

[Eihort]

I was Battle Born and Battle Raised in Las Vegas and lived here all my life (I turn 40 in two days). I've had the opportunity to fly in and out many times on commercial aircraft, during different times of year, at different times of day, in different weather conditions.

 

In the watermarked photo that was posted I can tell you it's absolutely NOT anywhere near Monsoon season given there's snow on the mountains. That would put it probably 70/30 the early part of the year than the later. It could be in the middle of January or as late as March depending on how the rain was that year. When it's been raining everything gets slightly darker, depending on the type and mood of the rain fall. Typically we either get this incredibly light drizzle off and on all day, or it drops buckets for about 20 minutes, stays overcast for a few hours and then breaks up and the sun comes out.

 

It's the mid-2000s because I can see properties that stop existing still up (Stardust in particular), and other buildings and features built since then that don't exist yet (Palms 2nd tower isn't there). Considering at that time I was at UNLV which is in that picture, and they've seen consistent growth over the last 20 years with more buildings, and I was in this area a lot. The D-gates at McCarran are still being built and they haven't moved Russel Rd. over a quarter mile to the north to make room for it.

 

I can also tell you that photo has been color adjusted, and is also subject to the variables of being on actual film, given the time period, so it's 'accuracy' to life is questionable if you were there when it was taken.

 

When I look at the DCS pictures, the 2017 one seems a more realistic depiction to me for one reason: the lightness of the ground texture. I've spent a lot of time flying around the NTTR map and since day 1 my biggest complaint was that it's too light. You don't see this bright sand color from the air in the completely undeveloped areas, because it's covered in sage brush and other plant life for the most part. You only see that in areas where it's been bulldozed and turned over and the gravel removed, and it's still not quite that light.

 

I know a lot of this is because the various limits and compromises that must exist in the engine due to technical limitations, but on average, the entire map is too light as far as I'm concerned.

 

To be perfectly honest, there are some parts of Iran in DCS that are better representations of the typical "mountains and desert" regions of Nevada.

[Savvy]

I think the one on the right looks accurate to the real colours, but the shot on the left looks more realistic if you didn't know where it was. I agree with the OP, the trees etc on the new one look very cartoonish.

 

 

I had the understanding that the new lighting system hasn't fully been implemented which could be the problem.

[dali]

I think the best is still to come - PBR textures of the buildings and more accurate lighting. Like the one in FS2020.