IR/HV/Thermal Sights: Huge disadvantage at low gfx

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by X3Killjaeden, Jan 3, 2013.

  1. X3Killjaeden

    Hi there, i've taken the liberty to make some comparison shots of the NV Gun Sight and IR + Thermal on an Aircraft for different graphic settings
    Let's start with the NV gunsight that you can aquire for most weapons:
    From left to right High, Medium, Low
    [IMG][IMG][IMG]
    [IMG][IMG][IMG]
    As you can see High and Medium are pretty good, but low is completely useless and more a hindrance then a help. It's like your screen just turns into grey/white, losing any color contrast in the process. High has the further advantage of that you can guess what is behind the actual viewrange, but this is not so huge imo.
    • Up x 3
  2. X3Killjaeden

    • Up x 2
  3. Zapon

    Now this ticks me off- for a specific reason

    See here- see the IRNV pics in my night vision thread?

    http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...ndard-optics-night-vision-irnv-thermal.53280/

    It had a color gradient that included RED- which prevented this





    Color contrast is the whole reason these sights work(although the IR sight should not have color contrast on object entities in-game because a near-infrared NVG sight is not the same as a thermal- and these aren't fusion devices- (for detail on what i mean, my thread above goes into the details-)


    TLDR: - SOE, I've said it before, and will say it again. Consider adding a proper gradient to your non-optical sights in the game

    Or if so, make it a smooth gradient. Like ARMA

    or go the color route- look to SOCOM Confrontation for how to do a proper palette


    Rainbow, ironbow, etc- should be implemented
  4. X3Killjaeden

    And finally thermal
    [IMG][IMG][IMG]
    [IMG][IMG][IMG]
    Here you can make out the targets quite ok on every setting, however due to the very limited range (which is even more extreme in ground vehicles), it is very bad that you can't see the shape of the environment "behind" the curtain on medium and low setting. Medium is even worse in that regard then Low. Plus you still can read your cockpitdata at least somewhat on high setting.

    I hope something gets done about this
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  5. square

    this is pretty terrible, but I think the infiltrator cloak is still worse
  6. X3Killjaeden

    that is a complete different issue and i don't care how real life pendants would look like. I know how they look and used them but this is a game. I just don't want to be penalized for not beeing able to run the game on high setting. And as it is, the NV scope is useless like that.
  7. Birkin

    Do you know which settings change it or do they all have to be high/med/low to see the difference?
  8. Zapon

    Um, did you read my posts?

    I prefer how they were BEFORE they changed the IRNV sight. And advocate a color gradient for contrast as they had before.
    what's the problem?
    I was noting that their more effective solutions mirrored a realistic gradient
  9. FateJH

    Looks like some kind of shader compile failure.
    But there goes another gun attachment I was interested in.
  10. X3Killjaeden

    oh right, i missed that. I just saw "realism" things in the links and alot of blank lines and i skipped the rest =P
  11. X3Killjaeden

    As far as i've seen it you only get the different ways if you set the whole setting to the specific type (high) - changing single stuff in the low setting to high won't change it. But i haven't tried everything yet i think.
  12. Birkin

    thats a shame, I am on low setting but I think I could handle turning some things up. I really need to spend some time fiddling with it.
  13. Zapon

    :/

    Aw, can't be doing that, you'll miss the good stuff :p

    Like this

    [IMG]


    this is one pic of the way it was before. The contrast looked really good. I have no clue what the devs have in mind these days though.
  14. Isila

    Nah, looks more like high and medium are shader effects (high of course being a more advanced one, hence the depth-of-field-style effect on 'out of range' backgrounds), while low is a straight texture swap similar to how Aliens vs. Predator (2000) handled it:

  15. Nephera

    wow that looks really nice
  16. Jourmand1r

    turning off shadows ruins the irnv scope.
  17. TheBloodEagle

    Anyone else think the low settings actually look much clearer & crisper except for NV? You don't even get the distance blur effects and a bunch of other textures/glows that are distracting. You lose out on some render distance but within it everything stands out more.
  18. St0mpy

    I kinda like the ir scope on low, paints the scene much better
  19. X3Killjaeden

    This is only true compared to medium, as medium has even lower range regarding terrain view. But why do you switch on IR? To find enemies - as you could just switch it off if you purely want to navigate. And check out the linked images, it's "long range" - it's almost impossible to see the turrets, but on medium and high they stick out like... i dunno.
    On high you can easily navigate, as the terrain doesn't become monochrome, so you still get some sense of what you are really looking at. And you still have the blurry background which stops things to just pop up infront of you.
  20. X3Killjaeden

    not all hope is lost - you can set "graphics quality" to high but everything else to low and off, that way you still get the benefits of the better views. I don't have really tested how much performance it costs. in the warpgate i get 50 fps on low, 44-45 if i set it to high, but with low everything else. 28 if i would set everything to high.
    Perhaps start the game with low everything, and then ingame switch only quality to medium or high. It says "restart for everything to take effect" - you don't want that, you just want the sights to be usable ;) Then after gaming session, set everything to low again before logging off.
    I'll play a bit with this and see how it goes.