A suggestion / idea: Nighttime 'colours'

[FoolTrottel]

When flying a nighttime mission (in this case, the DangerDogz special very own Coop mission 'Pegasus' in the G11 Glider -HSFX, time set at 00:30, Normandy Map) I got the impression the landscape was way too colourful.

Midnight, and I can see green fields and forests.
Now, at night, in the darkness, the human eye does not see that many colours.
Mostly, all is grey-ish.

Would it be possible to change the lighting, and reduce the colors, moving towards grey, more and more as it gets darker?

First attachment is an un-edited screen shot from within cockpit.
Second one was converted to greyscale, using PaintShop Pro.

If you really want to have a good look at them, try and make sure your display is in a darkened room :)
Well, when flying this mission, one has to darken one's room completely, to be able to see anything... but it is striking, once your eyes got used to the darkness, you see all them colours...

Anyways, just an idea to add some more 'realism' ... immersion at night ...
(Sure, there's only a few true nighttime missions out there... but still...)

[Pursuivant]

+1.

While it would mostly be eye candy, FoolTrottel's point about human night vision and lack of color vision is spot on.

Ideally, there would be some way for a pilot to "gain" further night vision if he's exposed to relative darkness for 20 or so minutes, as well as some temporary loss of night vision if he's "dazzled" by bright lights (e.g., searchlights, nearby gun flashes, flares or incendiaries).

[Daniël]

Excellent request. In low light conditions people see mostly grey. The ground in the edited picture looks good, but I think the sky has more colours at night. More dark blue (of course it depends on the time at night and clouds). Snow can look blue at night.
While speaking of lighting conditions, I think that Il-2's dusk looks very good for such an old game.

I've edited FoolTrottel's pictures. It has the dark blue sky and the grey ground. What do you think of it?

[Pursuivant]

Excellent request. In low light conditions people see mostly grey. The ground in the edited picture looks good, but I think the sky has more colours at night. More dark blue (of course it depends on the time at night and clouds). Snow can look blue at night.

So, grayed out ground and water textures, but dark blue sky to reflect starlight and sunlight from over the horizon.

In moonlight conditions, things get interesting. Functionally, reflected moonlight can be treated as very dim sunlight. In reality, the moon is slightly better at reflecting red wavelengths of sunlight - making it appear red - but because humans lose their ability to clearly detect red colors in low light we perceive moonlight - even bright moonlight - as being more neutral.

http://www.cast-lighting.com/search/1/display-document/71

I've edited FoolTrottel's pictures. It has the dark blue sky and the grey ground. What do you think of it?

Pretty good.

I'm not sure how well IL2 can handle lighting effects, though, given the age of the graphics engine. Ideally, everything would be handled with formulas that handle things like luminosity and light scattering at a distance.

[FoolTrottel]

Thank guys for your insights...!

To keep things as 'simple' as possible, me thinks just tuning down all colours towards grey-ish - both sky and ground all together- would suffice here...

[KG26_Alpha]

I would imagine (to to it properly) you will need separate map textures created for TOD
perhaps 5 classes sunrise midday evening dusk and night to make it "realistic" but that's a big ask.

Or

The mission map loading TOD reference triggers a colour to black and white gammut so the game drops the global colour reference internally.
auto switching the video setting in IL2 and not using the ATI Nvidia software to control it.

Quite a bit of work, but you could just turn the monitor colour down locally to suit your eye,
as you can imagine there will be as usual people complaining about its too grey or not grey enough etc etc

:)

[RPS69]

I would imagine (to to it properly) you will need separate map textures created for TOD
perhaps 5 classes sunrise midday evening dusk and night to make it "realistic" but that's a big ask.
:)

Actually, it is done that way already. When you got 32 bit enabled, the last 8 are used for lights. You could see this by generating TGA files, and opening them with a picture editor that support multi layered images. A screen shot at night will look full daylight just by removing this last layer.

Problem is that colors are being darkened, but not turned into B/W.

It could be achieved by establishing a threshold on the darkening layer. When lights go below X, all colour levels are equalized, achieving a true night sight.

[KG26_Alpha]

Actually, it is done that way already. When you got 32 bit enabled, the last 8 are used for lights. You could see this by generating TGA files, and opening them with a picture editor that support multi layered images. A screen shot at night will look full daylight just by removing this last layer.

Problem is that colors are being darkened, but not turned into B/W.

It could be achieved by establishing a threshold on the darkening layer. When lights go below X, all colour levels are equalized, achieving a true night sight.


How are you generating the tga file ?

[RPS69]

Well, I did that a long time ago. You just took an ingame screenshot. It generates TGA. I hope they didn't change it to some useless JPG.

I will check if still works.

[Pursuivant]

Well, I did that a long time ago. You just took an ingame screenshot. It generates TGA. I hope they didn't change it to some useless JPG.

There's the option to save screenshots as .jpg, but you can still save them as .tga.

.jpg is better if you're trying to upload screenshots to the web. .tga is better for photo editing work.

[KG26_Alpha]

.tga format is available still but i don't see the "layers" in PS CS6

[RPS69]

Yep. It was removed. They don't allow to save 32 bit pics anymore. Now I remember that at some time it was removed as a solution to an online hack about hitting print screen to generate lag.

Anyway, that TGA thing was only to apreciate the light masking layer. It is there.

[Furio]

Just try a google search of these two: Frederic Remington and Frank Tenney Johnson. They are two great American painters and used to portray night in green, with great realism and stunning results.

I’m sceptical about “laws” on colour perception by human eyes, as there are as many differences as human beings. To say nothing about tastes: for example, I would love green nights!

I cannot say much about technical feasibility, but I feel that, as the time resources of TD are limited and precious, they should be better employed elsewhere. What I can say, I’m pretty sure that some people would be happy, some neutral, and some unhappy, with all the in-between shades.

In short: if any change is made, please keep it as an option!

[sniperton]

In Kurosawa's Ran (or Kagemusha?) were night scenes photographed in green. I haven't even noticed it until I heard the director of photography talking about how he came to this idea.

[Dash 8]

I actually wish nights were brighter so I could actually fly a night mission without just turning on the autopilot and 8x time acceleration to get it over with. All I can see at night is a black screen. The opening post here shows 2 completely black pictures with just a few grey dots that are stars. I have my brightness all the way to 100% on the monitor and gamma set to 1.70 in the nvidia control panel. Any higher and the color starts to wash out. I guess it's because I still use a CRT monitor, but I've always hated the way LCD monitors looked overly bright with washed out colors. That's why I never bought one.

[Pursuivant]

I actually wish nights were brighter so I could actually fly a night mission without just turning on the autopilot and 8x time acceleration to get it over with. All I can see at night is a black screen.

To some extent that's realistic. Modern people mostly living in areas of "light pollution" forget just how dark it can get in blackout conditions, especially when there's a new moon and/or overcast.

But, I don't think the game does as good a job as it could of modeling the effects of moonlight or early dusk and dawn, nor does it model things like moonlight reflecting off of clouds, to make somewhat brighter conditions above an overcast.

In any case, the option of having "cosmetic darkness" where you can increase the the contrast between ground and sky while still having the appearance of darkness would be a nice addition - albeit unrealistic. It might also be simple enough to implement, since all that's needed is a "filter" layer