Lighting Discussion

Oh yeah I love gray Colorado too but I like orange a lot. Pink Colorado is but a bad memory now.

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DAE think H2 maps in H3 feel super dark? I am pretty young but I feel like I am going BLIND, especially in Sgail where I literally can’t see anything??? Did they really make the dim places dimmer or am I losing my sight

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the contrast is a little higher but nothing should be more dark than in H2. try adjusting your gamma

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If you adjust your gamma to the image actually being barely visible… in home theater that means make it black and then move it up until you just barely see it… then the game is indeed quite dark. That seems to be how IOI want it, and it fits both a stealth game and the high contrast look they’re going for.

That said, I don’t think it’s any darker than Hitman 2 really. Maybe slightly. The big change came with H2 and its lighting upgrades. Also if you don’t like it you don’t HAVE to follow IOI’s brightness setting, you can move it up until you’re happy.

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So, what are people´s thoughts on the lighting changes made in the latest patch? So far from what I´ve seen it´s definitely an improvement, but Whittleton Creek still seems rather dark/high-contrasted compared to the other legacy levels, and the exterior/interior transitions are not as smooth.

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From what I’ve seen the exaggerated bloom has been toned down when looking out the window or door in Sapienza. However, the effect is still there when walking towards the bay area from the towns main road, and other locations such as the graveyard.

Its an improvement. The general Sapi lighting is still awful. Atleast IO is more aware it seems.

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I only hope IOI won’t stop there and will keep improving.
If our forum-mate can, why can’t they?

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The bloom is definitely better/less of an issue, especially in Sapi. I´ve checked the places you mention and yes, it´s still there, but they certainly toned it down sufficiently enough to not make our eyes burn.

It seems they didn´t revert back to the pre-February filter though right? It still has that occasional yellowish/sandy look to it, although it´s not nearly as noticable/annoying as before the patch.

Oh man I certainly hope so. Fingers crossed their attitude isn´t “We´ve addressed it, now bugger off” :sweat_smile:

For whatever reason, they decided to not address the lighting in the training facility and New York (probably because they´re indoor areas only?), but I´m hoping they will. The fact that they´re darker/more contrasted than the rest of the missions makes it visually inconsistent.

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Was playing Marrakech the other day. It has never looked better imo. The new lighting makes everything look more real.

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Damn, the most underrated map in 2016 is even better, this is good news :+1:

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How does it feel to be wrong?

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One reason why some developers use effects like film grain, lens flares, chromatic aberration…etc in games. Quote from Dori Arazi (Director of Photography, Sony SantaMonica studios) :

We actually worked pretty hard to make our visuals look worse. The whole thing came from the problem of the “uncanny valley,” and for those of you who are not familiar with the uncanny valley, the traditional thought would say that: if something looks better, than it looks more believable. Kind of like in a linear manner - the more believable, the more relatable.

What actually happens is… When something becomes very close to realistic, our psyche starts judging it in a very harsh manner - it looks for realism, and it finds all the defects. There is a giant dip in believability just before you hit photorealism. And because of the power of our game engine these days, and our amazing tech render teams, and our amazing art teams… we fell right in the middle of the uncanny valley.

So what we try to do is go back to the documentary style, and find things that we relate to as realistic footage, and slap on top of the image to try to at least, if not completely skip over the uncanny valley, kind of make it more shallow, less deep. So we added film grain. We added hand-held. We added crap hitting your lens all over the place. Lens flares. Chromatic aberration. We slipped on focus. All these things that, if you were a filmmaker shooting live action, you would try at all costs to avoid. But what it did is spike our brains and calibrate them toward a sense of realism, and help us skip over the uncanny valley, and relate to the footage without pushing back against it, and then having a giant dip in absorption.

I found it interesting :slight_smile:

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I’m gonna revive this thread like 47 on a fast moving Romanian train.

I play on Xbox and PS4.

Does anybody else feel like, well, the darks are still too dark and the lights are too light? I’m not even talking about the bloom.

It’s not my TV(s), because every other game looks fine. Is there anything I can actually do about this? I know this is an old discussion and I feel like most everyone has just given up and gotten used to the new lighting. But damn, I’m running around Paris and you can’t see jack in some of those lower level rooms. What’s the point of making all these detailed costumes and environments if everything just looks black?

Do I just need a newer TV? Did IOI optimize the game for future hardware? I play this game almost every day and I’ve just been resigned to the darkness and light levels, but I’m wondering if anyone with better hardware doesn’t have this issue, or if this is universal.

Thanks folks, see ya later (barely!)

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Your only solution is to play Hitman 2016 if you want to have a good experience with the lighting in those levels

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Unfortunately a newer TV won’t help. The HDR in Hitman 3 is embarrassingly bad and washed out. Can’t believe they haven’t fixed it yet.

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Maybe a future unlock for 47 could be…a flashlight!

Some areas in various locations are indeed dark as hell.

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You know it’s very funny you should say that, because there is a flashlight in literally every other game I am playing through right now (Halo Infinite, Forgotten City, Days Gone, Subnautica BZ), and when running around Paris yesterday, despite having played Hitman for hundreds of hours, I instinctively tried scrolling through my inventory for the flashlight.

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