Game is to DARK

Whenever something is intentional is not a good excuse for something that is either bad or needs adjustments.

The issue isn't so much the range of a light source, but their intensity.

This is what I'm getting so far (which is a HUGE improvement over the total blackness that I was getting):

Now, overall, this looks good. Dark yet, at the same time, still remains a playable environment. What's missing though is the diffuse lighting on the objects/terrain near the light sources. The intensity doesn't represent what I'm expecting from glass jars that are all (bright) yellow.

If you look on the character's right, you see two light sources that are faintly illuminating the ground. You can get away by making it dimmer near the ground but, near the light sources (with a radius of approximately a foot and a half in in-game range), I should see a lot more light coming off from those lanterns.

I should take screenshots of inside my row house, the candles aren't worth turning on at all. It's like they don't add light at all and they merely tint the wall yellow. I think I'll take more screenshots to further illustrate my point.

If all your players are running around with a light spell and claim "this is fine", you're doing something wrong with how you're lighting your scenes.

HDR rendering should also simulate our eyes adjusting to darkness so if you're inside a dark cave, you should still see something with the faintness of light in the distance. Considering we don't have or other sense likes touch or hearing, the game should visually compensate for our immediate area. I was in the Ecter mines (or however you spell it) a few releases ago and I couldn't tell which way I was facing... or if there was a wall in front of me... Should I keep moving? Is a wall blocking me? Am I going up or down a ramp? Who knows? Near our characters, it should never really be 100% black.

 

Several players keep reporting the game is too bright and unrealistic at night. Several other players keep reporting it is too dark. No one seems happy. The answer likely requires a gamma or brightness slider.

 

Excellent post. This is a great observation and could get us on the path to satisfying more people.

 

Lately I feel that indoors is a bit darker, which compels me to add more lighting objects. Not sure that's a good thing. I'm ok with how light/dark things are, but think some light objects tend to fall off way too fast.

On another note, I was recently playing the Forest and liked what they did with different cinematic brightness settings. It wasn't just gamma, but also affected contrast, hues, etc.

 

One of the major problems with indoor (house) lighting is that, currently, the natural lighting within the houses really depends on the scene's lighting (day/night cycle) even though, technically, the walls should be blocking the sun. During sunsets, your house shouldn't be drenched in red light, it should be mostly covered in shadows.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to take more screenshots. Here are a few more screenshots that illustrate some of the issues:


Somehow the fire isn't generating any diffuse light anywhere.

Here's an example of what I was talking about with candle light:



Regardless of realism, the inside of caves should look more like this:


... and less like this:

If you're using the "it's super dark in real life" argument: ANY faint light in the blackness that you see in the image above should be perceived as incredibly bright by the human eye.

If you have 20 minutes to spare, I also went and recorded a video (with audio commentary) explaining a little bit more in detail my personal issues I have with lighting.

Notice how I have to switch back and forth with the torch.

 

Thank you for the excellent video. It did a great job explaining why the darkness is not conducive to a stealth build in SotA, something I had never thought about before.