The worst issue for me is brightness/contrast dynamic range.

[vrdubin6 184]

I agree, I just wish this was something you could turn off in the graphics settings. I understand the thought process, and I like the feature when I look down into the cockpit, but I hate that it also happens when I just want to look out the windows. If I'm in a high wing and I look down out the side window to sightsee it makes the terrain washed out. Personal preference I guess.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,899]

16 minutes ago, vrdubin6 said:

I agree, I just wish this was something you could turn off in the graphics settings. I understand the thought process, and I like the feature when I look down into the cockpit, but I hate that it also happens when I just want to look out the windows. If I'm in a high wing and I look down out the side window to sightsee it makes the terrain washed out. Personal preference I guess.

EyeAdaption on also improves lighting in general.  Look at my screengrabs in my post above, nothing washed out there.  the screenshots below are looking out the side of a high wing.  I spent months tweaking Freestyle filters, but with them all off I get a much better looking environment.  I just boost saturation a little.

Edited April 22, 2022 by MrBitstFlyer

[Noel 4,564]

I find the EyeAdaptation attribute hardly improves the issue be it set on or off.  In fact in a double-blinded test I'm not sure I'd do better than 50:50.  I try to fly planes that have the potential to illuminate the cockpit dash panel best and I hope Asobo offers better range for EyeAdaptation.

[vrdubin6 184]

2 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

EyeAdaption on also improves lighting in general.  Look at my screengrabs in my post above, nothing washed out there.  the screenshots below are looking out the side of a high wing.  I spent months tweaking Freestyle filters, but with them all off I get a much better looking environment.  I just boost saturation a little.

Oh, shoot. For some reason I thought EyeAdaption was on by default. Am I understanding that it's set to 0 by default and you've changed it to 1? If so I'll have to give it a whirl when I'm home. 

[Fielder 3,754]

This is the original, not sure about LensDistortion

{PostProcess
        Enabled 1
        EyeAdaptation 1
        ColorGrading 1
        Sharpen 1
        Fringe 1
        LensDistortion ?
        Dirt 1
        LensFlare 1
        FilmGrain 1
        Vignette 1
        LensBlurMultiplier 1.000000
        FringeMultiplier 1.000000

[Fielder 3,754]

Most of us have a POV that pans the view left right up down. Sometimes even with a gauge in good view it is unreadable due to darkness. By tilting the view down with the hat, some of the sunlight goes away as more of the windscreen becomes covered. The dash lightens up and you can read the gauges better.

[Bobsk8 12,889]

I am confused, what is this UserCfg.opt  file that is in notepad on my system. At the top of the file it mentions my GPU card.  Is this something that comes from the GPU like Nvidia, or is this a MSFS system file.  I notice that the settings on mine seem to be the recommended settings everyone is talking about, and I don't remember changing anything with this file.  

 

 

[Nemo 1,305]

6 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I am confused, what is this UserCfg.opt  file that is in notepad on my system. At the top of the file it mentions my GPU card.  Is this something that comes from the GPU like Nvidia, or is this a MSFS system file.  I notice that the settings on mine seem to be the recommended settings everyone is talking about, and I don't remember changing anything with this file.  

 

 

It is kinda MSFS.cfg file where some of the settings you choose via the MSFS interface are stored in.

[Fielder 3,754]

 

The file also has changes not available in the MSFS settings choices. Which is why people access that file, to make those changes.

I think somebody long ago had suggested we all turn off eye adaptation. I guess I did that long ago and forgot about it. Anyway, it was set to 0 when I checked yesterday. I put it back to 1. That helped.

[Stearmandriver 2,333]

Eye adaptation is on (1) by default.  I'd turned it off long ago and thought that was marginally better, but I'll try turning it on again and see if I can see a difference. 

Color grading definitely needs to be off (0) in my opinion; the sim is over-saturated and cartoonish looking when it's on.  Of course a lot of these effects are probably dependent on graphics hardware (3070 here).

I agree that the existence of this eye adaptation effect is ridiculous.  There have been several discussions about it recently.  The reality is, this is simulating the dynamic range of a camera, not a human being.  There's a reason it's in the "post processing" graphics section with all the other camera effects after all... if you're really after the look of sitting in the cockpit YOURSELF (vs watching a YouTube video), this effect should not exist. Looking out the window at noon, the inside of the cockpit is still nicely illuminated / exposed to the human eye; it is not dark for some mysterious reason. 

[Noel 4,564]

All they need to do is put a slider in place so that we can each can customize how bright the interior of the instrument panels are relative to the outside world thru the windscreen.  Easy, peasy.

[abennett 177]

Interesting reading. I find setting sharpen to 0 a must as for me the image is far too noisey with G7 odyssey 3070 1440p

[MrBitstFlyer 3,899]

6 hours ago, abennett said:

Interesting reading. I find setting sharpen to 0 a must as for me the image is far too noisey with G7 odyssey 3070 1440p

Interesting.  Since release I have experimented with all the graphical tweaks suggested. Eye adaption off, colourGrading off, sharpening off, use NVidia Freestyle Filters Etc.  Just like sims before it you change one setting to fix another, then tweak something else to fix that.

Over the past couple of weeks I have stopped using just about every tweak.  First to come back was Eye Adaption.  It doesn't fix the lighting shift between inside and outside, but it helps.  I noticed something else though, the ground shadows improved. I was able to remove the Brightness/contrast Freestyle filter. I then removed the colour filter I used to increase saturation - no longer required. 

My experience with sharpening is very different to yours. I have been using the NVidia Sharpen plus filter ever since it was suggested turning off Sharpening in UserCfg.opt. Turns out removing the Freestyle sharpening and turning MSFS sharpening back gives clearer textures and reduces the pixelation in clouds with my 2080ti and Oddesy G7 at 2560x1440.

 

[bobcat999 8,517]

I run at 4k 100% scaling on a 28 inch 4k monitor, and sharpening definitely needs to be OFF for me, or the image looks over-sharpened and makes the cloud pixellation look worse.

I believe 'dirt' set to 0 gets rid of the fingerprints and scratches on the glass, but I have never tried it myself as I like the dirty glass effect.

Fringe, film grain, and vignette can be turned off if you want.  It may give you a 1% frame rate boost!    But either fringe or vignette (can't remember which) It removes the horrible rainbow colour banding effect in the hangar.

As I am lucky enough to have a 3080, I actually run with shadows at 6144, which is halfway between 4096 and 8192.  It seems just right at 4k resolution to me and no measurable performance hit. 
I found at 8k, shadows actually looked too sharp at the edge and unrealistic.  This is an excellent tweak if you don't like the standard flickering feather edged cockpit shadows.  Once again, they could do with a slider for this.

 

[Paul K 1,399]

This is all very interesting. What effect does 'film grain' have ? It sounds like something I have no need of.