Color and Contrast lighting changes (in game-ish screenshots)

[Knite]

My wish is that the engine is slightly tweaked to make the color and contrast of the game to look like THIS (2nd screenshot primarily) :
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,289405.0.html

I'm not sure how this was done, but it looks AMAZING (you can tell it's in game too as the 2nd screenshot has one of our airfields in it).

[Kazaa]

*

[gyrene81]

Nice photoshop jobs.

[Knite]

Yeah, doesn't work like that.
Buy a good monitor and you can pretty much change the profile to suit your taste.

So you're saying my choices are to either change the profile of my monitor to make EVERYTHING ELSE not look accurate... or ask (OMG! Asking for something in the Wishlist forum! For shame!) the game be slightly tweaked in the contrast/lighting department so that it looks more in line with something the game engine is likely already capable of? I find that a little odd that you're "poo-poo"ing this wish considering you also have a thread asking for more eyecandy (including touching on the ground). Mine's not asking for more anything, just current "tweaked".

Perhaps I do not follow your logic. You're saying you DON'T want the game's brightness/contrast and color saturation improved? Saying that it's impossible is bull because otherwise, every game would have the same color palette, with the same lighting, saturation, and contrast.

[Motherland]

I don't think it's possible to mess with the way the game looks like you would in a photo editor, and I think that's what Kazaa was trying to say...

However good those screenshots look, they look a bit 'better than real life', and I don't think you'd want to play the game if the colors were that exaggerated anyway... I've played some games/mods and certainly watched plenty of movies where that kind of effect got old pretty quickly.

Also he's not just playing with the colors, he's also sharpening the foreground and blurring the background, which actually goes a surprisingly long way to make things look fantastic.

[Knite]

I didn't realize I had to be completely specific with what I know and don't know, and what exactly I was pointing out...
Yes, I know that the editing was done with a photo editor. Yes, I know the blurring is from that. No, it is not impossible for a game engine to do things like "motion blur", "Distance Blur" (or if you prefer, off focus blur), high contrast lighting (Otherwise known as HDR).

I wasn't even looking to completely duplicate the pictures. I was specifically talking about
A) the saturation levels of the ground (how lush and green it looks), which is a function of the lighting engine combined with textures used. This can have many different looks... for instance :
That is NOT photoshopped, but is in game, offline, after playing with the lighting settings. So it IS possible to change things like that without major coding changes.
B) The contrast of light vs. dark on the individual aircraft, as well as the contrast of aircraft to ground lighting. The "base ambient" light level of the ground could be slightly lowered, or of the aircraft slightly raised (or both), as well as increasing(or decreasing?) the shadow's contrast to give a more "positive/negative" light picture between objects, which again, is more a function of taking what's already in the engine and tweaking the numbers.

Heck, blurring the terrain at a distance of 5-10k a little (and increasingly as getting higher) would be a cool feature that IS possible to do in a computer game/sim, but I wasn't even asking for that.



If you all didn't like it, that's cool. I can respect that. Opinions don't have to align. =)
But shooting it down by saying it can't be done? There's too many games out there with too many varied choices by their technical and artistic departments that prove otherwise time and time again. It CAN be done, not necessarily by this particular itineration of this particular engine, but only HTC and crew would truly know that.

The idea of a wish isn't to say "can it", it's to say "I'd like it to".

[Kazaa]

I don't think it's possible to mess with the way the game looks like you would in a photo editor, and I think that's what Kazaa was trying to say...

However good those screenshots look, they look a bit 'better than real life', and I don't think you'd want to play the game if the colors were that exaggerated anyway... I've played some games/mods and certainly watched plenty of movies where that kind of effect got old pretty quickly.

Also he's not just playing with the colors, he's also sharpening the foreground and blurring the background, which actually goes a surprisingly long way to make things look fantastic.

Motherland to the rescue.

[Kazaa]

Knite, I owe you an apology. Was kind of being overthunk for not really reading your OP. I understand what you're saying now, you bring up some great points and I agree.