a new finding from todays flight testing in 2D.

get yourself in a dark room with the monitor displaying xplane as the only source of light.

I closed the window shutters and door, and dropped some fullscreen terminals on my other two monitors

An viola, even what I would consider "maybe" overly dark in 2D before staring outside is lit and contrasted wonderfully with not a hint of "to dark", outside breathtakingly light and glorious. 

This imho is very likely why I had never noticed it before flying nearly exclusively VR, because the PSVR headset does an awesome job of cutting out all the external light.

On 3/18/2023 at 11:39 PM, 2reds2whites said:

Literally the third line of your explanatory link;

Quote

The human visual system is more sensitive to contrast than absolute luminance; we can perceive the world similarly regardless of the huge changes in illumination over the day or from place to place.

So your answer as to why we need to maintain the luminance ratio is to post a link in which it explicitly states that a constant luminance ratio is completely irrelevant in how we perceive the world. 

 

On 3/18/2023 at 11:41 PM, mSparks said:

yep, dark cockpits dont matter much to our visual perception. well done, that was quick and easy.

 

3 hours ago, mSparks said:

2reds2whites kindly pointed out that working eyes are insensitive to darkly lit cockpits anyway.

No - your own link says completely the opposite - YOU PERCEIVE THE WORLD SIMILARLY REGARDLESS OF THE HUGE CHANGES IN ILLUMINATION. 

I am genuinely dumbfounded at how you've managed to interpret that as 'eyes are insensitive to darkly lit cockpits.' It's the complete opposite. It's saying that even if there is a huge change in illumination you DON'T SEE IT THAT WAY. 

You simply have to be a troll, or lack the ability to read. It's your own link. You posted it, you go and read it.

I also love the idea that as of XP12 it's now a physical impossibility to expose a digital scene correctly, as if every other flying/driving/farming/boating simulator in recorded history hasn't done it already.

Edited March 20, 20233 yr by 2reds2whites

21 minutes ago, 2reds2whites said:

PERCEIVE THE WORLD SIMILARLY REGARDLESS OF THE HUGE CHANGES IN ILLUMINATION. 

right, and as I literally just posted a few minutes ago:

A good reason for not is the cockpit being displayed darker than the monitor surroundings, making it look darker than the surroundings.

Make the surroundings dark and suddenly it looks very light.

just took a couple of camera shots like that

to

didnt change anything in XPlane there, only where the camera taking the photo was pointing.

put that in a calibrated display with no external light coming in like a VR headset and everything is glorious.

People not having the hardware or a dark room available is not a problem LR can fix for them via software.

Edited March 20, 20233 yr by mSparks

19 minutes ago, mSparks said:

didnt change anything in XPlane there, only where the camera taking the photo was pointing.

For the love of god. 

That's because the camera is metering for..................

.........never mind.

 

Edited March 20, 20233 yr by 2reds2whites

15 minutes ago, 2reds2whites said:

That's because the camera is exposing for

the dark cockpit your eyes dont/shouldnt see as dark - the first shot showing its not dark (its always nearly jet black with the window shutter open). like efis posted moving his camera up and down his window.

I am trying to understand why those camera shots and look so different than

The two things I got are:

monitor isnt calibrated

VR cuts out all outside lighting.

____

If we put aside LR being locked into blender/substance painter tone mapper, and light meter changes never solving the issues most are complaining about. The only question left is what the user can do to improve it for themselves.

VR & headtracking we had until now.

Monitor calibration Goran added earlier.

room lighting is a pretty big differentiator as well.

Then maybe think of looking to a plugin that hacks the XP lighting, if, after all that you still are not satisified. (art drefs starting photobb)

Edited March 20, 20233 yr by mSparks

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

VR & headtracking we had until now.

Monitor calibration Goran added earlier.

room lighting is a pretty big differentiator as well.

I use XP in a dark room (narrowboat), portholes covered during the day, use headtracking and calibrate my monitor monthly 🙂

I am astonished that so many people discuss about cockpit brightness sometimes even insulting others.-

As previous  leader for the UX - team in a companie building commercial simulators for military and others i would have been fired immediately if providing such view of cockpits. A simulator must allow quick and easy reading of cockpit instruments and this is by Xplane 12 in its present version clearly not fullfilled. The arguments about "realism" for such a simulator are nonsens simply said; even LR uses them either by not knowing mandatory requirements for a simulator or not being able to improve it!

By the way:  the add-on Reshade is able to make cockpit brightness useable.

Yes and no. 🙂
The Reshade filters act globally on the whole scene, it is not possible to brighten a very dark cockpit without deteriorating the whole scene.
Here we have a very dark cockpit.

Reshade can act with low, medium, high, brightness filters.
To brighten a black cockpit you have to brutally increase the boost on the "black shadows" filter.
But this process cannot magically generate light where there was no light before.
In an image the shadow always remains a "shadow", it cannot be transformed into "light" without destroying the harmony of the image.
If I push on the Reshade filters trying to transform "shadow to light", I get something like this.

As you can see I actually lightened the shadow.
But the shadow has always remained a shadow, it has not turned into light.
Furthermore, the lightening process has made that shadow even uglier, artifacts emerge due to the forcing of the filter which tries to transform black into light.
Can black be transformed into light, i.e. into white? (in photography white is light)
Certainly.
But the image is completely destroyed.

The sad truth is that nothing can be done to fix this problem. 
No reshade filter can "create light" inside a panel that is completely immersed in dark shadow.
To fix the problem Laminar needs to redesign the lighting engine, or (highly preferable solution) remove the "eyes autoexposure contrast" feature, and recalibrate tonemapper curves.
Without these measures, the problem will hardly be solved.
 

I did not say that shadeX can solve the problem completel but there is at least an improvement to allow useage of Xplane 12.

LR seems to have only one light source (i.e. the sun) implemented and therefore strong difference between inside and outside; a more reasonable approach could be implementation of "invisible" lights in the cabin. If these are not strong the effect of "moving shadows" would remain.

1 hour ago, egontester said:

LR seems to have only one light source

the aircraft have as many light sources as the aircraft author defines.

all defined in real world units of nits.

aircraft authors also have more or less complete control of the way light behaves in the cockpit

 

Edited July 7, 20232 yr by mSparks

5 hours ago, egontester said:

a more reasonable approach could be implementation of "invisible" lights

Invisible lights!?

Another cloudless and sunny day in a lot of the UK today.  Drove a few miles with the sun directly ahead - could hardly see anything inside the car because of the glare from outside.  If that is what real life is like then that is how the sim should be. 

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Invisible lights!?

Another cloudless and sunny day in a lot of the UK today.  Drove a few miles with the sun directly ahead - could hardly see anything inside the car because of the glare from outside.  If that is what real life is like then that is how the sim should be. 

But below is not in direct sunlight.

7 hours ago, efis007 said:

Here we have a very dark cockpit.

 

XP12 is doing just as good(?) job with authentic exposure of a scene as my generic 3+ years old android smartphone. 

 

6 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

But below is not in direct sunlight.

The eye view is pointing directly outside at a very bright scene, so of course the cockpit looks darker.  Post the same image with the eye view looking at the panel, it will look very different.

20 hours ago, egontester said:

A simulator must allow quick and easy reading of cockpit instruments and this is by Xplane 12 in its present version clearly not fullfilled

What do you think about the fact that most of users don’t have this problem? I am flying in real as well and have zero issues reading anything in the cockpit. It looks like it could be related to some (older?) monitors. But then, there are image-settings we can use (HDR on/off),, gamma etc.

How did can say that "most of the users don't have this problem"? Look to the many comments over the years and you mast conclude that many users have this problem, many saying that they will not use XP12 and go to MSFS. It is silly by LR that they do not accept these comments and will loose many customers. They could put  options in settings for "happy users" ( that is you ) and  for users looking for a usefull simulator that's me and many others...