As strange as it may sound, I actually agree with mSparks on that topic 😕

The lighting in XP12 seems to be working in the same way it does in MSFS. When sitting in a dark cockpit with no internal light, and very bright sky outside:

- if the screen manly shows clear areas, then the cockpit will be darkened

- if the screen mainly shows dark areas, then the cockpit will be clearer.

That's kind of what happens in real life as well. When sitting in a plane in a sunny day, when my eyes are looking at the windows, the rest of the cockpit is quite dark, hard to see anything. But if I'm looking at a part of the cockpit, this part looks ok while the scenery out of the window looks VERY bright and shinning. 

The only thing is that XP (and MSFS) consider that the eye is always looking at the very center of the screen, while your real eyes are actually looking all around the displayed picture. That's the limitation. Eye tracking would improve that, yes, but that would only be for VR.

 

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Daube

23 minutes ago, Daube said:

and MSFS

As if the flight sim camps were bad enough, now we have real world lighting camps to deal with to.

didn't actually know MS did similar, I'll stop saying XP is unique in this respect.

 

 

1 hour ago, Daube said:

The only thing is that XP (and MSFS) consider that the eye is always looking at the very center of the screen, while your real eyes are actually looking all around the displayed picture. That's the limitation. Eye tracking would improve that, yes, but that would only be for VR.

This is why head tracking like TrackIR works so well.  the head has to be moved to look in the direction you want to look, therefore the lighting works very well.  I have never felt XP12 has dark cockpits, but I have used TrackIR for years.

2 hours ago, Daube said:

As strange as it may sound, I actually agree with mSparks on that topic 😕

The lighting in XP12 seems to be working in the same way it does in MSFS. When sitting in a dark cockpit with no internal light, and very bright sky outside:

- if the screen manly shows clear areas, then the cockpit will be darkened

- if the screen mainly shows dark areas, then the cockpit will be clearer.

That's kind of what happens in real life as well. When sitting in a plane in a sunny day, when my eyes are looking at the windows, the rest of the cockpit is quite dark, hard to see anything. But if I'm looking at a part of the cockpit, this part looks ok while the scenery out of the window looks VERY bright and shinning. 

The only thing is that XP (and MSFS) consider that the eye is always looking at the very center of the screen, while your real eyes are actually looking all around the displayed picture. That's the limitation. Eye tracking would improve that, yes, but that would only be for VR.

 

Fair enough.

@mSparks you won this round 

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Humpty

5 hours ago, Biology said:

As I mentioned multiple times in my previous posts, I absolutely can stare at the brightly lit outside and even directly at the setting sun while the cockpit in my peripheral vision being nicely exposed, so nothing like X-Plane 12.

I agree with all you said, but this one reminds of a different effect that is lacking in all sims, i.e. sun blinding. I just had a RL demonstration a few hours ago, while driving in the setting sun. Even when not looking directly at the sun, but looking down at the dashboard, the latter was very hard to read, and in general all the details were lost (I was not wearing eyeglasses, which would have certainly helped). To my eyes, the dashboard appeared about halfway between the two following images:

In flight sims instead, the cockpit is always readable, even when there's sun in the center of the screen:

I think DCS had a sun blinding effect years ago, but apparently now it's gone.

This is a different (and minor) issue though, so the exposure/tonemapping issue is certainly a bigger priority to solve.

 

3 hours ago, Murmur said:

I agree with all you said, but this one reminds of a different effect that is lacking in all sims, i.e. sun blinding. I just had a RL demonstration a few hours ago, while driving in the setting sun. Even when not looking directly at the sun, but looking down at the dashboard, the latter was very hard to read, and in general all the details were lost (I was not wearing eyeglasses, which would have certainly helped). To my eyes, the dashboard appeared about halfway between the two following images:

In flight sims instead, the cockpit is always readable, even when there's sun in the center of the screen:

I think DCS had a sun blinding effect years ago, but apparently now it's gone.

This is a different (and minor) issue though, so the exposure/tonemapping issue is certainly a bigger priority to solve.

 

Hi Murmur,

Thank you for pointing out that the lack of sun blinding effect is a different issue. Mark's own experiment actually shows that - shine a light in your eyes and you will see that your surroundings are not getting drastically darker, just a small amount. But you are still being blinded, not because your surroundings became pitch black but because the light is leaking everywhere in your visual field. The same happens when the sun is directly shining in eyes, which I had tried (on my risk) several times to be absolutely sure. Some eye adaptation to reflect that small perceived brightness change is understandable, but the effect should be nuanced and certainly not to the degree of X-Plane 12. The effect in MSFS is much more subtle and large dark-colored cockpits are not disproportionately affected, which is basically what I want from X-Plane 12 too. LR is planning to make changes to the tonemapper to achieve that, by either using a much improved version of exposure fusion or potentially a better global tonemapper. Once again, the article from Bart Wronski explains why a local tonemapper with better perceptual qualities is needed to represent human experience better: https://bartwronski.com/2016/08/29/localized-tonemapping/

So what causes the blinding effect if it's not eye adaptation? It's actually bloom, basically the wave behavior of light causes the light to scatter inside the eyes which literally spreads the bright sunlight everywhere in the visual field, overwhelming everything else. LR is planning to simulate proper physically based bloom in the future, so I hope it results in emergent behavior and simulates the sun blinding effect accurately. But the current behavior with the tonemapper and the autoexposure is too drastic and does not reflect the human experience, so it will be fixed.

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Biology

9 hours ago, Biology said:

There is indeed no point in arguing with you,

Congratulations, you have reached the end of the ‘talking to msparks’ curve. There is indeed no point at all trying to move any discussion through his fog of non-sequiturs, bespoke logic, pretend expertise (especially in response to people with actual expertise) and continual strawmen.

It’s kind of an Avsim XPlane forums rite of passage:)

4 hours ago, Murmur said:

I agree with all you said, but this one reminds of a different effect that is lacking in all sims, i.e. sun blinding.

I know IL2 Cliffs of Dover modeled it very well, and I belieeeeeve it was in the BOS series. It’s something I’d love to see at least as an option in the current civilian sims.

56 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

I know IL2 Cliffs of Dover modeled it very well, and I belieeeeeve it was in the BOS series. It’s something I’d love to see at least as an option in the current civilian sims.

Nice, missing in our sims.

16 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Nice, missing in our sims.

This is exactly how it should be! Notice how everything is washed out due to bloom caused by the sun being in the visual field, while the exposure isn't affected much. And when the sun isn't in the visual field, it should behave like MSFS with its subtle eye adaptation, instead of making the cockpits pitch black while still having the outside overexposed like X-Plane 12.

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Biology

14 minutes ago, Biology said:

This is exactly how it should be!

I can understand that it was more a strategic necessity in Cliffs of Dover (‘The Hun in the Sun’ effect), but I can’t think of a good reason not to do it in the civilian sims, at least as a toggleable effect.

Just now, scotchegg said:

I can understand that it was more a strategic necessity in Cliffs of Dover (‘The Hun in the Sun’ effect), but I can’t think of a good reason not to do it in the civilian sims, at least as a toggleable effect.

I'm 100% sure that many civilian flight simmers would complain about it, saying it's unrealistic or makes the sim unusable. So as you suggested it should be toggleable.

1 minute ago, Murmur said:

I'm 100% sure that many civilian flight simmers would complain about it, saying it's unrealistic or makes the sim unusable. 

Definitely! We can already see how contentious the current attempts at eyeball simulation are.

I also wonder if 2D image consumption is part of the problem. Most of us are consuming sim visuals on a 2D screen, which is the same medium for all our (post-processed) photos from our daily life. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is affecting what we feel looks ‘real’ in the sim.

8 hours ago, mSparks said:

Are you saying this does or does not correctly and perfectly demonstrate the contrast difference between the parts of the cockpit panel that are lit by direct sunlight, and the parts of the cockpit panel that are not lit by direct sunlight, when looking out of the window?

No, I'm saying (and I'm sorry to say it, I'm serious) that you don't understand anything about graphics and the interpretation of histogram charts in camera raw, but above all you still haven't understood the difference between the human eye/brain and a film camera! 🤦‍♂️
The histogram clearly shows where the problem lies....



... there is an excess of overshadows and overlights, there are also two "warnings" near the overshadows and overlights.
That graph is basically telling you: "Mr. Spark, that picture has curves completely out of whack!"

Those extremely black shadows... inside a cockpit surrounded by windows... with all around a wide day sky emitting powerful diffused light... those kind of black shadows cannot be generated. 🤢
There are no such shadows on Earth in a condition equal to that represented by that image!
Only in the SPACE can such black shadows exist in broad daylight, because in the space the sky is BLACK, there is no diffuse skylight, there is only direct sunlight.
And it is precisely the combination of direct sunlight and a totally black sky that generates the black shadows that we see in the NASA photos and also in this XP12 photo in which the black shadows are incredibly realistic if inserted in a space scenery, but completely buggy if inserted in a terrestrial scenery.

Question: but then what should that panel look like on Earth? 🤔
Just smooth the histogram curve to emulate the diffusion of the sky by eliminating the excess black shadows.

I don't think there is anything else to add.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But first I want to make a courtesy gesture to all the "fans" who - still - haven't understood the difference between the human eye and the camera.

Still not convinced that the human eye sees things completely differently than XP12 does?
I assumed so.
Ok, so I'll tell you a short story entitled: "what is a high dynamic range, and what is a low dynamic range".

This photo represents low dynamic range.
The backlight blinded the camera, and the scene became completely black.
Which is precisely what XP12 does! A poor imitation of a low dynamic range camera that gets blinded.

This photo instead represents a high dynamic range.
Which is precisely what the human eye does!

How was it possible to obtain this visual detail of imitation of the human eye?
It was explained in this video.

I'm curious to know - after watching the video - how many "fans" will still support the fake news that the dark panels of XP12 are the "correct imitation of the human eye".

Supporting this nonsense means knowing absolutely nothing about optics, photography, lights, shadows, high and low dynamic ranges, eyes/camera differences .... in short, nothing at all.
In those videos there is the exact explanation of how the XP11-12 dark panel bug happens.
But obviously only educated people will be able to understand this! 🧐
Other users, on the other hand, probably won't understand a word not allowed thing and will keep repeating like parrots that XP11-12 generates "realistic" lights and shadows". 🤦‍♂️
It's the damage that advertising does.

At the end of it all I add a piece of news that will make the fans happy: the bug of the lighting system doesn't generate it only by xplane!
MSFS and P3D also suffer from the same bug.
But MSFS (after users complained en masse) fixed the problem. Now its panels are convincing illuminated, black shadows in MSFS are practically absent, and the sky diffused luminosity inside the cockpits is pleasant and allows a vision of the panel much more similar to a high dynamic range camera, i.e. more similar to the human eye.

6 hours ago, efis007 said:

Mr. Spark, that picture has curves completely out of whack!"

for a photo maybe.... what does your histogram say about the same scene in XP11 or FSX, or MSFS for that matter?

6 hours ago, efis007 said:

Supporting this nonsense means knowing absolutely nothing about optics, photography, lights, shadows, high and low dynamic ranges, eyes/camera differences .... in short, nothing at all.

As others have explained, and I tried to.

in that screenshot, xplane "thinks" you are focused looking out of the window, and has adapted the exposure/range accordingly, this is even more pronounced in VR where you really are focused on the distant objects (clouds and other aircraft) with the cockpit out of focus.

6 hours ago, efis007 said:

MSFS and P3D also suffer from the same bug.

highly realistic lighting is not a bug tho. Aircraft cockpits are just really dark, LR even confirmed it by measuring the light levels in them with a light sensor. I showed it with a photo from inside a C172

The bug was the cockpits being far too bright, XP11, FSX and old versions of P3D had this bug. new generation sims fixed it, if you want to go back to that lighting just jump back on the last gen sims.

Or buy yourself a VR headset and enjoy a near perfect visual rendition of your favourite aircraft.

Or set up head tracking so xplane knows where you are looking.

Or if all that is to much like hard work/expense just bind cockpit and out of the window views with crtl+numpad

You plain and simply cannot have realistically pitch black cockpits and bright daylight out the window rendered with equal brightness and simultaneously have realistic photometric lighting. The sim needs to simulate your pupil dilation.

6 hours ago, efis007 said:

But MSFS (after users complained en masse) fixed the problem.

Ouch, so they dialled back on realism at the behest of users who have never sat in a cockpit.

I'm shocked, totally unexpected, no one could have seen that one coming.

Oh well, at least they are differentiating themselves properly.

Edited March 11, 20233 yr by mSparks