Questions about the new linear lighting

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Sniffles
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Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:03 am

Questions about the new linear lighting

Post by Sniffles »

Just a few questions about the new linear lighting implementation in the latest version of DFU. I think switching to linear lighting is a great improvement in daytime and most indoor lighting, it gives it a near authentic vanilla feel that I enjoy. My only issue that has come up is in low lit areas or scenes. First I want to clarify that I’m not complaining here and I do understand that this is a ‘preview’ build and is still a work-in-progress. Also I’m wondering if it’s more of an issue on my end and not something that’s intentional.

0.13 with no retro color rendering modes it seems to me that the linear lighting has caused a slightly more exaggerated posterization effect to the overall scene, at least mostly in low light or no light areas, making it very dark, saturated and hard to look at. All the screenshots presented in the 0.13 blog post don't look like this at all to that extent. So is this something intended or something unique to me? And is there a way to fix this? Curious has any players tested this much or come up with similar results?

Also, again not complaining, but if this is intended or unfixable it’s just that I want to be aware if this is the norm for future DFU versions, if so I may need to stay with 0.12 for now unfortunately. Personally, though I’ve always used the 320x200 rendering for the “retro” look, I’ve never used the posterization effect and only occasionally used the palettization effect. For me these effects are hard on my eyes (mostly posterization), so I generally avoid them. A heavy posterization effect in dark lit scenes is something my eyes won’t be able to get used to or tolerate.

Thanks for any help and input! I left some screenshots below.
dfucolortest01.jpg
dfucolortest01.jpg (128.06 KiB) Viewed 724 times
dfucolortest02.jpg
dfucolortest02.jpg (107.45 KiB) Viewed 724 times

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Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Questions about the new linear lighting

Post by Interkarma »

Hey there. :) I understand all these screenshots are in retro rendering mode? Yes, I have also noted that retro mode presents darker colours in low lighting conditions, even without palettization/posterization enabled. This is likely a result of the gamma conversion being done at render time and isn't intentional.

I flagged this in my tweet here and both Pango and I are aware (we worked together on different parts of the retro mode feature). There's some tuning needed here and retro mode will get almost certainly receive another pass.

In the meantime if the effect is particularly bothersome, you can run without retro mode. The screenshots in blog post were all "out of the box" DFU.

Thanks for your feedback!

Sniffles
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:03 am

Re: Questions about the new linear lighting

Post by Sniffles »

Thank you Interkarma for the helpful reply! Sorry I accidentally put this in General instead of the Help forum.

Glad to see this has already been discussed and a potential fix for the issue at some point in the pipeline. Yes I used retro render at 320x200 in the screenshots, sorry I didn’t communicate that too well. I didn’t even think of switching out of retro render to test the results since I always have it enabled, like you said that solves the problem. I will probably need to avoid retro rendering features entirely for now.

Keep up the good work and I'll look forward to if/when this issue is resolved!

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Interkarma
Posts: 7236
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: Questions about the new linear lighting

Post by Interkarma »

I'm working through problem with retro mode being too dark now. I've posted a few quick tweets about problem now as I work towards a solution.

https://twitter.com/gav_clayton/status/ ... 8017991682

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