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

[-piggy-]

I think the issue is that after looking over these differences (with both eyes) they are slight. To claim that the older way is beautiful and the newer way is unplayable seems to be complete hyperbole.

 

I wish i could show it to you on a screenshot what this patch did with game for people using wide color gamut displays. The reason i did not prove what i said with images is because people with standard displays will not see it until they load up the screenshot on similar display within non-color-managed application. You would not be saying it is a hyperbole. The game originally was slightly over-saturated on our screens but it was still looking awesome. The "new" colors practically made it unplayable, and I'm not joking here. Cheers to Bioware for allowing us to revert the change.

[spectreclees]

In some areas it looks.. alright. Something about it though is bothering me. It makes me feel like I am in a dream sequence when playing. Everything can be fuzzy, too bright or even too dark. No, it's not my graphics or monitor. I adjusted accordingly and it still feels off to me. Edited August 7, 2013 by spectreclees

[-piggy-]

I strongly suspect that a lot of the people claiming it is terrible have wide gamut displays and don't know it. Unless an application knows about color profiles (games certainly don't), everything will look more saturated and vibrant than intended. Those people were already seeing SWTOR more saturated and vibrant than designed, before the patch. After the patch I imagine it got to be too much. I have a calibrated normal gamut monitor and it's almost too much for me in certain instances, and the crushed blacks in the shadows don't do them any favors. Since this is all post processing, they should have at the minimum a checkbox in the options, and preferably a slider so you can adjust it to something that looks good on your hardware.

 

Wish there was a way to turn SWTOR into color managed app though. I had similar issue with WOW when they made it super contrast-y in previous expansion - which basically killed all the awesome atmosphere of places like Duskwood.

 

You nailed it dude - and it is really nice to see someone who understands what the fuss is about. Not unlike some self-proclaimed "graphics professional" in couple posts here who tried to educate me and explained how bad my working setup is - pretty hilarious actually:

 

The issue is your calibration is "screwed up". And I'm not sure why you're expecting Bioware to care, let alone know how badly you have your colors messed up in your working environment.

 

Just as you expect Bioware to care or know about your own exotic color calibration, you also expect me to read posts I am not interested in and did not respond to.

 

Ha.

[Cernow]

Having said that I do not think there is any evidence anywhere that people see colors in a drastically different fashion. My "red" is not your "green," for example, and you're not looking up into a sky that would be purple to me. In other words, it is doubtful you are especially different from anyone else in the way you perceive color.

 

Colour blindness of some kind or other affects quite a lot of people, though for many it's mild enough they probably don't realise it in day to day life and the effects are subtle. Blue skies turning to purple, very unlikely. Being unable to determine between certain gradations of colour tone or intensity, relatively common.

 

It's also the case that a lot of people seem to be predisposed towards over-saturated and primary colours. You only have to take a walk around the television showroom at an electrical store to appreciate this. Advertisers take advantage of this a lot too. Whether this is nature or nurture is up for discussion. Perhaps it reminds people of childhood.

 

To claim that the older way is beautiful and the newer way is unplayable seems to be complete hyperbole. Yes, you may see color differently, but if it's THAT different, you must have an awfully hard time in the real world.

 

I've never said the new colours are "unplayable". The hyperbole seems to be all yours.

 

What I suspect is that had you the benefit of the new color scheme initially, you wouldn't be complaining at all, and that if they "toned down" the color because it was "too bright," there would be a hue (snicker!) and cry that the colors had lost their vibrancy, and we would now be having this discussion from an opposite point of view. You're just seeing a difference, and you've taken offense, which is a needless expense of energy.

 

Unlikely. Chances are if the game launched like this I'd put up with it, yes. But then I'd welcome any toning down. But given that Bioware's current trend in art direction is towards the garish (witness most of the new dyes they added) it's highly unlikely this would happen.

 

Bottom line is that BW has provided a way for you to turn this off, so if you don't like it, turn it off. If you feel incapable of finding the text file and adding a line or changing an existing one, I really question why you are in front of a computer at all and hope you don't have the same difficulty changing channels on the TV. But if that's true, get someone competent to do it for you.

 

The solution to your troubles has been laid before you, so go affect the change.

 

More hyperbole. I edited my client_settngs.ini file the moment I saw the post about it. Where did I say I had any trouble finding it? I'm thankful it is at least possible. That still doesn't excuse the need for this to be in Preferences where it belongs.

[SkunkWerks]

I usually don't respond to troll posts

 

Because you've never seen one. Trolls aren't a thing that have existed since 1995.

 

If you want to tell me how irritated you are that someone dares disagree with you on the internet, you might have gone for a shorter, more accurate word. "Jerk" for instance.

 

Exactly. It will. Except on sRGB ones.

 

If I didn't say it clearly enough for you before: color profile has NOTHING to do with the number of colors your monitor is capable of displaying.

 

Nada.

 

Zip.

 

Zilch.

 

Goose egg.

 

 

Pardon me for skipping your rant below that quoted part where you trying to educate me in how color calibration and color profiles work. You obviously are misguided, thinking I don’t know the simple facts

 

Because you clearly don't.

 

You don't know what it is. You don't know how it works. And I cry for anyone who ever has to deal with you in the design trade, because- even worse- you're thick-skulled about learning anything apparently.

 

I expect you not to flame in threads

 

Wasn't. But since you started calling me "misguided", well, the gloves are off.

 

I will repeat myself, if you are genuinely interested in the subject

 

Because one of us has to be, after all...

 

Not unlike some self-proclaimed "graphics professional" in couple posts here who tried to educate me and explained how bad my working setup is - pretty hilarious actually

 

I didn't say your setup was bad. I said it was incorrect for running relative to the "enhanced colors" just added to this game. I'm sure it works fine for whatever else it is you underachieve at.

 

Shall we add "reading comprehension" to the list of your imaginary proficiencies?

Edited August 7, 2013 by SkunkWerks

[-piggy-]

If I didn't say it clearly enough for you before: color profile has NOTHING to do with the number of colors your monitor is capable of displaying.

 

Again, thanks for stating the obvious. What it has to do with SWTOR patch looking much-less-than-awesome on a display with extended color gamut? What it has to do with my original post since you read at least that one?

 

You don't know what it is. You don't know how it works. And I cry for anyone who ever has to deal with you in the design trade, because- even worse- you're thick-skulled about learning anything apparently.

 

I really hope you were able to learn something from our conversation and this thread, friend. It is really easy to start throwing personal insults when you know you have been defeated. Now go cry in a corner.

[SkunkWerks]

Again, thanks for stating the obvious.

 

Thanks for continuing to rant on about "extended colors" being the issue. AKA: 32 million colors. AKA: sRGB. AKA: what any monitor made in the last decade is perfectly capable of displaying.

 

What it has to do with my original post since you read at least that one?

 

See above.

 

I really hope you were able to learn something

 

Because, again, one of us has to. May as well be me since you've apparently sworn off learning anything.

[-piggy-]

Thanks for continuing to rant on about "extended colors" being the issue. AKA: 32 million colors. AKA: sRGB. AKA: what any monitor made in the last decade is perfectly capable of displaying.

 

*Sigh* I really hoped you could understand what me and several other people in this thread are talking about. So, for the final time, YES, extended color gamut displays (which are the choice of many professionals working with graphics) are KNOWN for having issues with non-color-managed applications. Google it for god's sake, you silly.

 

We already had SWTOR pretty much over-saturated on our systems. BEFORE the patch. Can you understand this? Dont believe me? Go and run the game on such a display. Go study the internets to learn why. You will come to terms with your defeat, I can promise you that. At least, you learned something new today.

[Damask_Rose]

The neon colors I could have lived with. The greater depth and detail I quite liked. The overblown contrast was a deal breaker. Thankfully I was able to get the workaround to work today.

 

My fear is that in the future if they don't address this with an in-game toggle or slider, there might come a patch where the workaround won't work and we'll be stuck with the change.

 

For those of you who would like side-by-sides I made a couple while in Imperial Taris to show the crazy contrast. Without the enhanced graphics on the left, with enhanced graphics on the right.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462478130/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462476036/

[-piggy-]

My fear is that in the future if they don't address this with an in-game toggle or slider, there might come a patch where the workaround won't work and we'll be stuck with the change.

 

Thanks for these comparison images showing overblown contrast. Losing detail is unacceptable, and new setting is unplayable for me, as well as for many others. I really hope that the .ini trick is there to stay, or better, they will implement a checkbox in game's preferences allowing people to control the setting.

[Solloby]

While overall I like everything looking brighter and shinier, and thought Voss and the Imperial Fleet looked fine, Hoth is now eye-blindingly white. A couple of times I seriously considered putting on a pair of sunglasses (I reflexively tried shielding my eyes once or twice but that obviously didn't work because the light source wasn't from the sun above me). The sky is very white and you can almost go snowblind depending on camera angle. That said, yesterday was the first time I noticed the painted mountains in the background of Hoth, not sure why I didn't see them before.

 

I really wish there was an ingame slider so when I'm on Hoth I can turn it down, but when I leave I can turn it back up again.

[Glower]

The neon colors I could have lived with. The greater depth and detail I quite liked. The overblown contrast was a deal breaker. Thankfully I was able to get the workaround to work today.

 

My fear is that in the future if they don't address this with an in-game toggle or slider, there might come a patch where the workaround won't work and we'll be stuck with the change.

 

For those of you who would like side-by-sides I made a couple while in Imperial Taris to show the crazy contrast. Without the enhanced graphics on the left, with enhanced graphics on the right.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462478130/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462476036/

 

OMG.... I was not paying attention on the fleet but this is really ugly. I need to visit Taris by myself.

[MSchuyler]

The neon colors I could have lived with. The greater depth and detail I quite liked. The overblown contrast was a deal breaker. Thankfully I was able to get the workaround to work today.

 

My fear is that in the future if they don't address this with an in-game toggle or slider, there might come a patch where the workaround won't work and we'll be stuck with the change.

 

For those of you who would like side-by-sides I made a couple while in Imperial Taris to show the crazy contrast. Without the enhanced graphics on the left, with enhanced graphics on the right.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462478130/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462476036/

 

Perfect example. Contrast, depth of color, definition is all much better on the right. It's the difference between a mediocre graphics card and a high-end card. If I were shown that difference on two computers side-by-side, it would motivate me to shell out for a better GPU.

 

Thankfully, I don't have to. BW gave it to me for free. Thanks, Bioware! Great job! (And thanks for sharing, Rose.)

[Cernow]

Perfect example. Contrast, depth of color, definition is all much better on the right. It's the difference between a mediocre graphics card and a high-end card. If I were shown that difference on two computers side-by-side, it would motivate me to shell out for a better GPU.

 

Thankfully, I don't have to. BW gave it to me for free. Thanks, Bioware! Great job! (And thanks for sharing, Rose.)

 

LOL. You're either trolling for the fun of it, or totally misinformed.

 

Looking at the image of the guy on the speeder, the version on the right has a large area in the centre of totally blown highlights that have gone to pure white (RGB 255:255:255) and shadows that are very close to pure black. Most of the mid range is gone too, compressed out. The left image has a much wider tonal range, no blown highlights and good shadow detail.

 

If your monitor is incapable of displaying this correctly then take the image into Photoshop and you can see the facts for yourself. Isolate the left image and look at the histogram - you'll see a nice M-shaped histogram with lots of mid-range colour information and almost no clipping of highlights or shadows. Isolate the right image and you'll see a nasty U shaped histogram with very little mid range and a HUGE amount of clipping.

 

This should motivate you to get a better monitor, not a better GPU (the GPU has very little to do with this).

[Nemmar]

Does no ones monitor have the option to change the contrast? Seriously... its like children at the computer.

[Sinapus]

I haven't had a chance to go anywhere, I did notice color differences at fleet. However I've run into a problem:

 

The colors seem to have changed the lighting in the ships to the point where it's hurting my eyes, so I might have to switch back if adjusting the settings doesn't help. I might start with lowering the brightness.

 

[LordArtemis]

I personally think it looks much better now. But the sounds and animations for certain abilities are still borked IMO. They should have NEVER been changed in the first place.

 

I really can't express how silly it looks to me to see mobs fall before my animation completes. Especially on any kind of "slam" or jump attack mechanic. And the overload change was just silly IMO.

 

It's really a shame because it was almost perfect before.

[MaximusRex]

Reading through this, I wonder if those who don't like it, it seems a rather modest change, have settings that are amplifying the effect.

 

I don't see any of the contrast issues that people are reporting here, like shadow being too dark.

[KyaniteD]

Does no ones monitor have the option to change the contrast? Seriously... its like children at the computer.

 

I have three monitors and they're displaying everything else just fine. I do other things than play on my computer and I don't want to manually change the monitor settings on all three monitors before and after playing this particular game. (Besides, changing monitor settings doesn't return information that has been removed or reduced by software.)

 

I'm glad that there is a simple workaround. I'm happy with it as long as they don't consider the workaround a bug and take it away.

 

People do have different hardware and different perception and it seems that on some panels it is indeed an improvement. But for those where it's not an improvement and actually a decrease in quality and comfort, it should be made optional.

[otherworlder]

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".

 

I actually wondered if this might be the culprit in my case as well. I'm a professional illustrator and have a calibrated wide gamut display and had to do a ton of research when I first got the thing to figure out why certain apps, OS, browsers, etc tended to show images with insane saturation/contrast. Having finally done the homework on that, the new change in TOR reminded me very much of it. This could certainly explain why some are not seeing a huge difference on default while others are getting their retinas drilled out.

 

Thankfully, I was able to reset to the original preferred color scheme. To each their own.

[otherworlder]

Does no ones monitor have the option to change the contrast? Seriously... its like children at the computer.

 

As another person pointed out, my display is a professional setup with calibration hardware/software that handles this for me, and does so with pinpoint accuracy. I'm not going to manually sabotage that and risk creating inaccurate images in my work just to accommodate a bad graphics change in one game.

 

Fortunately BW left us that nifty escape clause in the setup files so we can have our cake and eat it too. Why do you care?

[otherworlder]

Thanks for continuing to rant on about "extended colors" being the issue. AKA: 32 million colors. AKA: sRGB. AKA: what any monitor made in the last decade is perfectly capable of displaying.

 

 

 

See above.

 

 

 

Because, again, one of us has to. May as well be me since you've apparently sworn off learning anything.

 

Listen man, you should just stop. You're on the wrong end of this gun.

 

You're not a graphics professional if you don't understand the difference between a wide gamut display and an SRGB display (and seem to have no knowledge of the issues suffered by users of the former when it comes to content designed strictly for the SRGB crowd).

 

Google the issue and you'll discover everything you want to know about it in ten minutes. It's a real thing.

Edited August 8, 2013 by otherworlder

[Qaoz]

Seriously, BioWare? As if this crayon palette needed more contrast.

 

Does no ones monitor have the option to change the contrast? Seriously... its like children at the computer.

 

Yes, because I'd like to fiddle with my monitor's contrast every time I load up the game.

[TUXs]

The neon colors I could have lived with. The greater depth and detail I quite liked. The overblown contrast was a deal breaker. Thankfully I was able to get the workaround to work today.

 

My fear is that in the future if they don't address this with an in-game toggle or slider, there might come a patch where the workaround won't work and we'll be stuck with the change.

 

For those of you who would like side-by-sides I made a couple while in Imperial Taris to show the crazy contrast. Without the enhanced graphics on the left, with enhanced graphics on the right.

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462478130/

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/99983040@N07/9462476036/

 

Great photos, thank you for doing this.

 

Until last night, I didn't mind this change...however, while doing the taun taun thing, I realized I'll need to revert the change. The contrast is just overwhelming. I like most of it, but it's impossible to see several effects (ground effects and targeting) because of how overly bright it all is.

 

I'll be making the .ini adjustment tonight.

[Virus_Bot]

Seriously, BioWare? As if this crayon palette needed more contrast.

 

 

 

Yes, because I'd like to fiddle with my monitor's contrast every time I load up the game.

This ^

 

And next Nemmars response:

"Well just use a profile then, you don't have to manually change it every time duh!"

Would still like an option in-game thks : )