Night time is too dark, lights have flat batteries...game is too dark in general

[Beiks]

The new BMW's have special headlights that can move and point towards the road in any direction and whatnot. And other stuff that normal cars can't do. Please tell me you were using a newer M3 so I'm not a jackass. And in this case, the new BMW's in GT5 should have it as well.

And are you really IN Egypt? If so, hope the best for you and your people. It's heartbreaking to know SOME of the things that have recently happened over there.

It was the E30 M3 '90... Sorry mate back then parking lights were a novelty.
Yup, I am in Egypt. Thank you for your kind concern. It HAS been a bit hectic lately, but hopefully it will all change for the better.

 

[Beiks]

So you mean in the mountains where there is no light pollution meaning clearer & brighter skies? You don't say.

Sorry for the sarcasm but I had to get your attention. I live over 50-75 miles from the nearest city/highly populated area and the light pollution is still so bad that you can see NOTHING (I mean no further than 2/3m if you're lucky) unless it is a crystal clear night and a near full moon even then, driving without your headlights? Not unless you want to kill yourself or someone else

No light pollution but at 1800 meters of altitude you'd have the odd cloud passing by from time to time, that's when you wouldn't see the bonnet of the car. Not driving without headlights, driving without the high beam; When your on the narrow twining roads of a mountain you don't want to blind any cars coming the opposite direction, plus the high beam would only change your focal point to the light fog in the air.

 

[3dmaxer]

Well if anyone cares for the technical reason why this game is so dark at night is because it most likely uses a forward lighting renderer by the looks of things. Like most racing game developers graphics are not their main, primary focus. But GT5 does look great though

NFS Shift 2 though uses a deferred shading path which allows the developers to use the latest technology to dynamically light the pixels easily and have lots of dynamic light sources. This makes attaching lights to cars child's play

Deferred shading is a farily new buzz word used in cutting edge titles like Killzone 2/3, Little Big Planet, Uncharted, etc. You can look up Deferred shading on wikis etc if you're interested

I'm with sandboxgod. The lights are always pointing straight ahead. Going uphill you can't see anything, but you can see quite well when you are going downhill. They don't follow the pitch of the car

 

[pestre]

after watching PD latest video of the Nurburgring 24h race, I take back what I have said in this thread. Watching the night drive in real life there, I got the same feeling driving myself in GT5. If you have not seen the video, take a look.

 

[CoolColJ]

There is no moonlight, skylight or ambient lighting in GT5 - there is in real life

Secondly, your eyes are far more sensitive than the crappy cams used in race cars.
Video cameras have very low dynamic range compared to film and eyes

 

[eran0004]

Alright, I live in the north of Sweden where the winter is basically one long night. My experience is that the standard headlights of cars doesn't help much in dark conditions. Well, high beams are better than low beams, but without reflecting objects on the road sides it pretty hard to see the road with defult driving lights. This is why pretty much all cars up here have extra driving lights, usually three or four extra headlights in front of the grill. And buses that drive in the countryside have a lot more than that, if you're blinded by a bus at night it's like staring at a nuclear blast. Well, nearly... And all those lights are there because they are needed, if they're not there the driver wouldn't see a thing (and most roads here are 70 or 90 km/h, so it's not like we're blasting through the countryside at 200 km/h). I think the lights in GT5 is realistic, because full beams doesn't light up much more than that. I think, however, that an option to fit extra lights on the cars would be a great addition that would solve the problem of not seeing the road when going at high speed.

Also, cars that already have extra lights, such as some rally cars and some others, should light up more than other cars.

Edit: This is pretty much standard if you want to see where you're going

 

[Drevenger]

The problem of darkness is the only flaw of gt5 in 3D. Its way too dark.
Also in 2D i always end up toggling up hi beam, low beam just to make sure i'm in hi beam.
My opinion is, theres approximately 50 feet missing of depth on hi beam and close to 45 degree of radius missing. Sure depend on cars and the ammount of lights but its a non factor in the game.

 

[Toyota GT1]

I think the night racing on La Sarthe And the Ring and as well as the (now discontinued) Lambo seasonal all have quite realistic darkness I have no problem seeing one bit. iunno

 

[KidCZ]

I'm envious of all you bats. I can't see much of the road either and when i'm going at night, it's all by memory. When going over 300 kph at Lemans, it sometimes becomes game of "guess where the corner is", because the lamps feel like lightbulbs in my room.
I!m quite sure there is some work to do on the ingame lightning.

 

[Piotrov]

Instead of adding extra lights they should just give us an option to install HIDs on our cars.

 

[Racedude]

I think it only becomes an issue when you do a enduro with a standard. I mean, how difficult is it to program hi-beams on standards? It's just increasing a light value, or adding another light sources.

 

[sind3ntosca]

i followed this link and changed my RGB Full Range to limited......wow, what a difference. even the single car view in my garage has vastly increased visibility

Hey thx for the link... now i can see in the dark hahhaha...

 

[Didi_Raikkonen]

Have you seen the top gear endurance race in the BMW 3 series diesel? It looked pretty damn dark to me, couldnt see much at all, i agree its really hard to race at night but it would appear GT has it nicely done

 

[RReed43]

I think the night time lighting is pretty realistic. The secret of being able to drive fast at night is to really know the course so that you don't need to see the course in the normal sense but to know the course well enought that you are prepared for each turn as they approach.

I thought the Lambo Challenge was impossible until I drove it enough that I really knew the turns, at that point the darkness was no longer any issue and I simply concentrated on excuting each turn properly.

I am in the midst of the 24hr Nurburgring and just completed an 8:43 lap in the dark and the rain with a GT-R 35R TC and feel very good about getting around so quickly when the visability and traction are both poor. I really appreciate GT5 for creating such complex challenges.

 

[Morgoth_666]

Many games seem to have issues with night time, it is either too dark or too bright, and light sources tend to dissipate too abruptly. It's very difficult to broadcast nighttime pictures of a live event or in a movie, so I'd not be surprised that it is very difficult to simulate night images on a video game.

Many modern TVs also do have a ridiculously high amount of contrast in dark areas. This is often not a hardware issue, as it can be fixed if you can get into the advanced settings of the TV - it's simply locked out of the user adjustments. Someone has just decided that it looks better and should be industry standard. Play a dark game on a really old TV and you'll be amazed at the difference(HD aside).

Headlights are tricky to get right. But GT5 at night is too dark, no question.
Anyone who says otherwise has never been outside at night for more than a minute. You can drive most nights with no lights. But try driving in reverse at midnight on GT5's Nordschleife - 100% black screen.

 

[Tsukasa_Bullet]

While driving a car in cockpit-view on any track in daylight I find that the dashboard often gets pitch black when shadows appear on it, so dark that its practicly impossible to read out any instruments. I often get the total opposite effect in my real car going to work on a sunny day.

Or prehaps my TV is set too dark...

 

[ErikAndre71]

Well seeing some of the pictures posted in the OP I say it's to dark, but my game is far from that dark. You need to adjust the TV if it's that dark in game.
My living room TV have a preset for movies, TV, and for games. The one for games is much brighter than the one for movie.

I brighten up the TV until the thing that should be black becomes gray, then one step at the time back to it's black again. I of course do this in-game. I can almost drive around the ring just as fast at night time and day time. And no it's not to bright at day time, it's perfect.
Maybe the game is to dark, but I really haven't noticed it before seeing some of the way to dark pictures posted in the OP.

Not everything is plug & play. Try the obvious and it might be just that

 

[Morgoth_666]

While driving a car in cockpit-view on any track in daylight I find that the dashboard often gets pitch black when shadows appear on it, so dark that its practicly impossible to read out any instruments. I often get the total opposite effect in my real car going to work on a sunny day...

I can read my dash fine too in strong light/shadow conditions. That's part of what I was getting at with the near-darks. Apparently the dark instruments are not an issue with all modern TV's(so I've heard on this forum) so the information IS there, we just can't see it. I'd try testing GT5 on my 1970s TV which has better near-blacks, but I'm not sure I have the necessary equipment to convert the PS3 video signal to RF.

Of course if PD made the whole thing a tiny bit brighter and less contrasty, we'd probably all be in here complaining how it wasn't dark enough(like rFactor at night).

This is all (whites too) further complicated by the weird exposure effects present in cockpit view.

 

[CoolColJ]

While driving a car in cockpit-view on any track in daylight I find that the dashboard often gets pitch black when shadows appear on it, so dark that its practicly impossible to read out any instruments. I often get the total opposite effect in my real car going to work on a sunny day.

Or prehaps my TV is set too dark...

In other words GT5 is mimicking the crap dynamic range of video cameras rather than our eyes, as I was saying along....
I know in real life the dash is never so dark during daytime that I can't read it!

Mimicking video during a replay is ok, but not while your playing

Hence people using video of real life races as a reference = facepalm
Video and GT5 has about 5 F-stops of dynamic range, film has more like 15, our eyes 24

 

[interpolfan11]

Have you seen the top gear endurance race in the BMW 3 series diesel? It looked pretty damn dark to me, couldnt see much at all, i agree its really hard to race at night but it would appear GT has it nicely done

Speaking of this episode, does anyone want PD to incorporate fog into future GT titles?

 

[JDMKING13]

Speaking of this episode, does anyone want PD to incorporate fog into future GT titles?

There is fog in GT5, on the ring.

 

[OK8]

I have no problem with the darkness, in fact I really like it's properly pitch black.

 

[J-KiLLA24]

There is fog in GT5, on the ring.

There can be fog on all weather tracks.

 

[yzfmike]

I myself think that the darkness in GT5 is perfect. I have watched the Le Mans race life on SpeedTV. You don't see anything but just the headlights and taillights of the cars coming at and past the camera on the long straights during replays and the race. PD has placed the right lighting in the right spots. The N24 only has lights on the GP Pit area. I would honestly only have it this way. I still have to complete both of the races. (Recently unlocked the 24 Le Mans race.)

Besides would the N24 be better if it was lit up like Daytona or some other course at night? I don't think so.

 

[chriz00]

@ the people complaining about the darkness, noobs! lol

But I've driven down a canyon road at night, it's dark as ****, even with high beams. It was a pretty cool experience though.

 

[sheepborg]

Three things i have to ask
1. do you have an HD TV?
2. are you in a dark room
3. have you actually ever driven at night [much less on a windy road at 60]

If you answered NO to any of those questions, then you have no backround for your claims, or are being swayed in the wrong direction

I was thinking about that lamborghini touring being really dark, but then tonight i went the long way out to get some pizza in the rain at night. It reminds you how dark real life is. So now that event doesnt seem so bad doing it with the lights out on my 61 inch hdtv.

There is nothing wrong with the lighting
period

 

[Griffith500]

There is no moonlight, skylight or ambient lighting in GT5 - there is in real life

Secondly, your eyes are far more sensitive than the crappy cams used in race cars.
Video cameras have very low dynamic range compared to film and eyes

In other words GT5 is mimicking the crap dynamic range of video cameras rather than our eyes, as I was saying along....
I know in real life the dash is never so dark during daytime that I can't read it!

Mimicking video during a replay is ok, but not while your playing

Hence people using video of real life races as a reference = facepalm
Video and GT5 has about 5 F-stops of dynamic range, film has more like 15, our eyes 24

Sorry to multiquote you like that, but GT5 does have "ambient" lighting because it uses image based lighting - the car dealership demonstrates that nicely. On top of that, it uses deferred rendering for the day / night locations and their massive quantities of lights, so a spatially-varying ambient lighting system is definitely workable, and visually apparent at Sarthe and Nürb for example. Moonlight does seem to be missing, though, which means most of the time the only "ambience" is from artificial lights which have a finite range - so you're right in that sense.

As for dynamic range, is the 24 stops for "one scene, at one time", or for the range our eyes can accommodate overall, i.e. with time (chemical changes), or with certain extremes considered in isolation?

We should remember that TVs are low-dynamic-range devices. (I will admit it's pretty funny to see the people realising they had the output set incorrectly, though.) I think you're right that they are using a tone-mapping window in line with the dynamic range of video cameras, but that's probably partly because they're designed for these exact display devices we're all using.
If anyone cares, I use a PC monitor (which has to accept the full gamut, by default) and I personally think the darkness in GT5 is very well done, given the limitations of the display device. But perhaps they should broaden the input window in their tone mapping a touch for better daylight legibility of gauges and less annoying tunnel exits.

Something else to think about is the distracting, ugly and sometimes obscuring effect of the colour compression in the game (memory bandwidth limitation, perhaps).
There not being better display devices available is, I think, the real issue, though.

 

[xxDingerxx]

The only issues with lighting I have is the lack of moonlight and the difference between the headlight settings.

For some strange reason, when you switch on high beams, you lose the pattern of your low beams. So effectively you sacrifice near lighting for far.

That doesn't happen in any car with a 2 lamp solution. Not so sure about a single multifunction one though.

 

[terminator363]

For some strange reason, when you switch on high beams, you lose the pattern of your low beams. So effectively you sacrifice near lighting for far.

👍👍👍👍👍

Took the words right out of my mouth, I absolutely agree.

 

[Mavryk]

I can't beleive what this world is coming to, really. People complaining that a video game isn't EXACTLY like real life. It's a fricking video game. Enjoy it for what it is and stfu, already. Thinking back to what games were like 10, 15, and even 20 years ago, it's come a long, long way. Instead of griping that "it's too dark, I can't see the road 100 feet in front of my car driving 150 mph", just enjoy the game. The graphics are incredible from my point of veiw. I think PD has done a great job.