What's the deal with new "vibrant" colors?

[Batelle]

I didn't know there was a graphics update in this patch, and I knew the moment my character select screen came up that something was different. I actually like the more saturated colors (my Inquisitor's dark blue armor looks fantastic), but within five minutes of playing, I started getting a pretty fierce headache.

 

So yeah, it's not all about expectations and whining. I'm kind of bummed that I had to disable it, but I'm not going to pay to give myself a migraine.

[Andryah]

Too vibrant for my tastes. I guess seeing it one way for going on 2 years... it would take some getting used to.

 

So I just disabled it.

[Eraan]

It's hardly a graphics update. It's just a post process filter that boost saturation and gamma. In this case it is totally unnecessary and just looks bad.

 

It's because it's a change. The game was the old color palette since launch. It wasn't vibrant at all. Everything had a fog over it and appeared "gray-ish" Everybody got used to it. Now the people that really got used to it and liked the old way and do not like the new one at all, which makes the game look nicer and more detailed, are upset and angry and are voicing their displeasure about it on the forums.

 

It's a very nice change

Wasn't vibrant? Oookey... I'd start looking for proper display.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Eraan

[YoshiRaphElan]

I think we need some happiness in here! Count me in for those who like the update! I have to run on Very Low graphics settings, but at least the color change makes it a little nicer! Thanks, BW!

[Basreia]

Count me in for the color palette update. Makes things just look great. Can't tell me this doesn't look great.

 

http://prntscr.com/1jsu4f

 

http://prntscr.com/1jsu8i

 

http://prntscr.com/1jsucw

 

It's very nice and makes the game look better. The old way was there for nearly 2 years so it might take some getting used to.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Basreia

[Glower]

Too vibrant for my tastes. I guess seeing it one way for going on 2 years... it would take some getting used to.

 

So I just disabled it.

 

Is someone stole your account?

Edited August 6, 2013 by Glower

[Emmablackread]

It's fine if you like the changes, but please do allow us, the ones who have some issues with the new colour palette to voice our opinions.

 

1) Most arguments I've heard ingame and the ones that I too support is that the colours have way too much contrast now. The snow on Hoth turned blue, the yellows turned orange, the reds turned darker and more intense red, pink turned salmon, etc... as if the whole colour palette was transformed into an "Alice in Wonderland" acid trip. Not to mention to weird shading this has caused on some textures.

 

http://tinypic.com/r/14tbh42/5

 

As seen in this image, the colour update was a general amped up vibrancy, with no regard of how that will influence already quite-an-eyesore planets like Hoth, Tattoine or even characters... (seriously, show me a body on which pale white-yellow skin has salmon-red shadows.

 

2) The "graphics update" is just a plain colour change, as opposed to lighting changes or even graphics improvement. Maybe they felt the need to update their palette, but really, if players had wanted different colours surely they would have bought different dyes or changed their skin colour, no?

 

http://tinypic.com/r/33di689/5

 

As illustrated in this picture, a lot of characters now look totally different from what we have envisioned them (and what we have played them as until now).

 

So... is the new colour change fresh, and does it bring vibrancy to the game? Yes. Does it transition smoothly and fit in with the shadows / contrasts / colours in general? No. Was it necessary? No. That's my two cents anyway.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Emmablackread

[MSchuyler]

I started playing this game a week ago or so and already mentioned to some my friends how awesome its look was. Now I just logged into the game after new patch was applied and all I feel when looking at character selection screen is disgust.

 

Makes me wonder if game developers realize there could be people out there who work professionally with graphics and may use expanded color gamut displays? Whats the deal with the over-saturation? If you intended to make it "vibrant" then make it honor my display color profile.

 

Gosh it is practically unplayable to me now with those reds, greens and ugly looking shadows. Did anyone actually complained about this game was not looking "vibrant" enough before?

 

Wow. A whole WEEK you've been playing? And you're already complaining? And a graphics expert, too! I'm impressed! I had to wait a couple of hours to download the update wondering what atrocities I would see, and.....

 

meh? You're upset about THIS????? The difference is marginal. Indeed, it's so marginal that it is my guess if the devs had said nothing about the change most people wouldn't have noticed it. To claim it was playable yesterday and now it is unplayable is the worst hyperbole ever. It's like they shampooed the rugs and washed the windows.

 

Really no big deal.

 

And yes, OF COURSE you have the "right to express your opinions." So does Alyennia. And your reputation follows them.

Edited August 6, 2013 by MSchuyler

[Cernow]

The new colours are way too saturated and contrasty now. Retina burning.

 

My monitors are hardware calibrated (graphic design is my job) so it's not just a matter of taste, it's clear they bumped saturation and contrast to extremes. Fine if you like that sort of thing I guess, but for me the game has gone from having tasteful graphics to a rather ridiculous cartoon.

 

I'm glad there's at least a workaround (thanks for posting). They really need to put this as an official toggle in the graphics settings in-game menu because the new colours are bound to split opinions.

[Kamansus]

I think it's a great change, adds a cinematic feel that I really enjoy in my games. I suspect that a large part of the complaining is people experiencing something they're not used to.

 

And don't try giving "technical" reasons that it's bad, I'm not exactly new to objectively judging hue, saturation, and gamma. Give it a while to grow on you and you'll probably find it improves a lot of the areas in the game.

 

It also removes that awful, ugly grey haze in a lot of places like Makeb. In fact I'd say Makeb gets the most improvement, lots of vibrancy there.

[ImmortalLowlife]

Ok.... I Just started playing since the update. I don't really notice a difference....

[stockmks]

New graphics update looks great. It's just another one of those things you need to adapt to. We have been playing with the dull drab colors ever since the game launched so we have gotten used to it. A

 

The problem is it gets easily seen as qualitatively bad in some aspects. And no I won't get used to something that registers in my brain as worse than before just because its changed. It's not universally awesome by far.

 

Good point about different people running different monitors (though I think that would e minimal) and different different detail settings for their machines.. I can say that with all details maxed on a 30 inch dell it does look... Well, the graphics without the new post processing looks better.

 

Ok if you look at a surface texture, it does look tangibly more detailed, this is nice.. Depending on the lightning though the colors, shadows and sadly atmosphere of the zone has changed from being complety ruined (korriban) to just wrecked/faulty/defective (taris night).

[LetoAtreidesII]

Count me in for the color palette update. Makes things just look great. Can't tell me this doesn't look great.

 

http://prntscr.com/1jsu4f

 

http://prntscr.com/1jsu8i

 

http://prntscr.com/1jsucw

 

It's very nice and makes the game look better. The old way was there for nearly 2 years so it might take some getting used to.

 

Are you just posting over and over again trying to make it look like more people like the change (to what end I can't imagine)? You've posted five times in this thread and in three of them you make it sound like you're just seeing the vibrancy changes for the first time. You've already got your vibrancy change. It's not going anywhere. Are you trying to get them to take away our option to disable it?

 

BTW all of those screenshots look to me like the game has always looked - BEFORE the vibrancy changes. Seems like you have to revise your crackpot scenario about how "everyone" just got used to dull looking colors and simply don't want change. It seems like the issue is on your end. It seems that your computer (and it's not just the monitor, not sure why everyone's focusing on that - video card, driver, driver settings) runs SWTOR (if not everything else) with unusually low saturation and contrast.

 

The PC is not a console. Everyone has a different setup and everyone gets different results. Different hardware configurations produce very different results. The same applies to everyone's bodies, eyes, and brains as I've said many times, but that doesn't seem to be registering with you.

[Vhaegrant]

I have to say I jumped in earlier saying I hated the change, I've now spent an hour or two more fiddling with controls and noticed something strange...

 

I'd not noticed this before previously but when switching between Fullscreen mode and Fullscreen [Windowed] mode the gamma slider settings seem to be inverted. What is high in one setting is low in the other.

 

[edit: I'm been trying to tweak my settings too much today. What I thought was the Fullscreen [Windowed] mode getting lighter is in fact it returning to the same setting each time, must use a default gamma setting from windows/ video card driver.

 

Anything less than 100 Gamma for Fullscreen mode results in serious contrast issues that go to unreadable at about 25, nearly didn't make it back out after setting to 0 so don't do it

 

In Fullscreen mode 85 gamma seems to be the sweet spot for me (was originally set to 100), and now the more planets I go to the more I seem to need to alter the gamma to keep it decent]

 

I'm pretty sure this has not previously been the case as I used to play in Fullscreen mode all the time only recently switching to Fullscreen [Windowed] when I had to tab to You Tube during my datacron hunt.

 

Could be a big part of why some people seem to be happy (almost not noticing a change) and others are having the backs of their eyes burnt out.

 

[Final edit:

having messed around for another hour or so I've found my own personal solution. Leave the new graphics setting running and change the colour adjustment preset of my monitor. I use an Iilyama Prolite 2473hds and the option was:

 

menu -> colour adjust -> i-Style colour -> Text

 

I'm sure this will vary from monitor to monitor, but I found the previous 'games' option far to bright and vibrant, whereas this 'Text' setting seems to be a healthy compromise of both, now I have a graphics update that is far more pleasing to the eye, well, my eyes at least ]

Edited August 7, 2013 by Vhaegrant

[Kamansus]

The problem is it gets easily seen as qualitatively bad in some aspects. And no I won't get used to something that registers in my brain as worse than before just because its changed. It's not universally awesome by far.

 

Good point about different people running different monitors (though I think that would e minimal) and different different detail settings for their machines.. I can say that with all details maxed on a 30 inch dell it does look... Well, the graphics without the new post processing looks better.

 

Ok if you look at a surface texture, it does look tangibly more detailed, this is nice.. Depending on the lightning though the colors, shadows and sadly atmosphere of the zone has changed from being complety ruined (korriban) to just wrecked/faulty/defective (taris night).

 

Ok, again, that's entirely your opinion, I just checked those zones and I think they're actually improved. Korriban has a nice reddish fill to everything that was more diluted before and I think fits the atmosphere, and imperial Taris is vastly improved. The darkness has a wonderful blue glow to it (very film-like) and the spotlights in the imperial base actually look like spotlights. The toxic lake looks actually radioactive, the moon is contrasting nicely, and the shadows of the night are genuinely dark. Imperial Taris was probably my least favorite planet, now I think I'll actually manage to enjoy the atmosphere while suffering through the rakghouls.

 

Assuming there isn't hardware reasons for us seeing different things I think it's a difference in preference in the level of stylization of the game's appearance. I, as I've said, prefer a cinematic approach while others apparently not. It's disableable so choose whatever makes you happiest.

[Cernow]

Assuming there isn't hardware reasons for us seeing different things.

 

There's hardware reasons. Different monitors will display things differently, in some cases markedly so. Some monitors are quite colour accurate out of the box, some are very wide of the mark. But almost all monitors would benefit from calibration. I don't mean fiddling with the brightness, contrast and other settings on your monitor (though this can help). I mean testing with a hardware calibration device which reads the output from your screen with a lens and then generates a special colour profile that Windows Colour Management loads to correct any inaccuracies.

 

Most people will never realise or appreciate what true colour calibration can do because it isn't worth investing in the hardware unless you have a professional need or are truly passionate about colour accuracy (perhaps if you do a lot of photography or printing). but if you get the chance, take it because often the difference can be like night and day.

 

Pretty much everyone playing this game will experience the game's visuals in a slightly different way because of variations in their computer hardware, the colour perception of their eyes, their viewing environment etc. For some the recent change will be minimal, for others dramatic. Hence the reason a change like this shouldn't be forced globally on the player base, but should be an in-game option.

Edited August 7, 2013 by Cernow

[Akow]

You can turn it on or off at will. Everyone wins. But some people don't like that. They want there to be no choice. They want to force their tastes and preferences on others probably because they're under the delusion that all human beings feel and experience things the same way. These people annoy me. And they are so damn pervasive. Even some of the people who share my dislike of the color vibrancy change think that way.

 

 

 

Yes you can just add it and set it t false yourself. There was no existing line in my client settings file either. I added it and it worked. Specifically, I added the following line under [Renderer]:

 

AllowColorRemapping = false

 

 

 

.

 

thank you I was having the same problem finding that my self . I just don't like the new colors . every NPC looks odd now

[EnzoForMe]

Game looks worse than before.

 

All I see is more green. Maybe in the next update they can work on red or blue.

[-piggy-]

Why is there unanimous hate for the color change? What kind of display is everyone running on, I'd like to get an idea of what this is relating to.

 

I use professional hardware calibrated display with wide color gamut which means that it has capability to show more colors than regular home/office display. These displays exist because when you prepare graphics for pre-press you need to see exactly how your magazine cover or ad will look when printed.

 

Of course, when application you are working with is "color-managed", i.e. able to understand your device's color profile (which works as some sort of "map" to match colors from your source to target device properly) then all is fine and dandy. Many apps these days are color-managed, including major web browsers.

 

When application doesnt care it may produce unexpected results, such as extreme over-saturation of certain colors. This is basically my problem with this patch in a nutshell. They changed colors by adding more saturation and contrast, and it turned my SWTOR experience into Alice in Wonderland acid trip.

 

Im quite happy that Bioware developers thought about people like me and allowed me to roll back to the way the game was looking before. I checked the game on cheap TN panel display and what I had "before" is actually more or less what TN users are having now with this vibrancy "on".

[-piggy-]

Wow. A whole WEEK you've been playing? And you're already complaining? And a graphics expert, too! I'm impressed! I had to wait a couple of hours to download the update wondering what atrocities I would see, and.....

 

meh? You're upset about THIS????? The difference is marginal. Indeed, it's so marginal that it is my guess if the devs had said nothing about the change most people wouldn't have noticed it. To claim it was playable yesterday and now it is unplayable is the worst hyperbole ever.

 

Hey, someone got off the wrong foot today, eh? Feel free to read my previous post in this thread if you want to educate yourself a little bit on different types of display devices people may be using to play the game.

 

Please remember that:

The PC is not a console. Everyone has a different setup and everyone gets different results. Different hardware configurations produce very different results. The same applies to everyone's bodies, eyes, and brains as I've said many times, but that doesn't seem to be registering with you.

[SkunkWerks]

Makes me wonder if game developers realize there could be people out there who work professionally with graphics and may use expanded color gamut displays? Whats the deal with the over-saturation? If you intended to make it "vibrant" then make it honor my display color profile.

 

"People who work with graphics" should probably understand why images will never display consistently in terms of colors from one display device to another, and that even color profiling is far from an ideal "fix" for the problem.

 

Sincerely,

A person who works with graphics.

[Heezdedjim]

The new colors look great. Unfortunately someone forgot to turn on the freaking lights. Please give us a MOAR GAMMA setting so I can see where the hell I am walking. Everywhere in this game other than the surface of Tatooine feels like I'm stumbling around in a basement during a blackout.

[Anosa]

i love the new colors.

[-piggy-]

"People who work with graphics" should probably understand why images will never display consistently in terms of colors from one display device to another, and that even color profiling is far from an ideal "fix" for the problem.

 

Sincerely,

A person who works with graphics.

 

This is kinda derailing my thread, but i have to say that i view my work on many different calibrated displays - very often - and when said devices are calibrated properly (at least every month or so), the results look more or less the same. If device is not capable of showing the color it will not show it of course. But calibration guarantees you will not see something extremely different (i.e. you may see LESS colors if your device is not capable but not MORE which is exactly what happening with SWTOR on wide color gamut display).

 

Now, you can go ahead and read one of my previous posts in this thread where I explained problem I was having in more detail. Because you clearly missed the point of my original post.

[Arkerus]

The new colors look great. Unfortunately someone forgot to turn on the freaking lights. Please give us a MOAR GAMMA setting so I can see where the hell I am walking. Everywhere in this game other than the surface of Tatooine feels like I'm stumbling around in a basement during a blackout.

 

I have zero problems seeing anything. You need to adjust your monitor and in game settings.