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How dark is the night?


Hocking

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One of the greatest improvements to the sim will be the ability to have night operations now. However, the only video or screens that I have seen so far show the night to be extremely bright. In fact, it looks like a night sky, but that is about it. The actual ground atmosphere appears to be only slightly different than a regular daytime situation.

I know there is away to adjust the brightness levels, but exactly how dark can you make the night. I realize there will be a balance between being frustrating and being realistic, so I am hoping there are options to at least make it more realistic than what I have seen so far. Again, I have only seen one movie and a few screens of the night, so I am not judging anything at this point. I am just curious.

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You can make it pitch black if you want to. But you wont see much, the AI wont see much and everything will drive very slowly. Everything is based on local time, but theres also a setting to force a minimum light level.

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"Realistic" is not really an option. At night - in real life - you have better positional hearing, you have smells, tactile information, you may have memorized your true 3D environment. This is all missing in a computer simulation (at least in a PC based one).

In practice, if you make it too dark it will only frustrate the player, and the immediate reaction will probably be to fiddle with the gamma settings of the graphics card driver, to to crank up brightness and contrast settings in the monitor OSD. If that happens, things clearly are too dark.

The monitor conveys about 80% of all information. If you make it black, how's the player supposed to interact with the 3D environment. If you make it difficult to retrieve information, you essentially do just that - frustrate the player. This can't be the real solution, and I think that there are very, very few games that make scenes truly dark. It simply doesn't make much sense. It may contribute to atmosphere and immersion, but that doesn't guarantee good training, or good sustained entertainment.

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Black Shark has a very, very dark night - as much as possible to prevent the fiddling with gamma settings.

The difference is, of course, that you may also use NVGs and you have other navigational inputs such as your moving map, barring that your navigation computer, a radar altimeter with alarm, and hopefuly a pre-planned flight path that you are familiar with.

In terms of combat, support craft can drop illumination flares to help you aim your weapons, otherwise you're just mostly transiting.

I don't think making the night 'as dark as needed' is a big deal if you apply sufficient lighting with moonlight, and work other light sources if it's an overcast/moonless night, which would present a serious challenge. Further, I think the fact that pretty much just about every playable vehicle has a thermal sight helps, and it helps train the night-fighting scenario where your sensors are superior to the other guy's.

If you don't make scenes as dark as they ought to be, I personally find that then people DO fiddle with the gamma settings and brightness to get an advantage over those who do not.

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You can make it pitch black if you want to. But you wont see much, the AI wont see much and everything will drive very slowly.

What about TIS ?

-> Viewing distance is not reduced when looking through the TIS of playable vehicle ?

-> Would AI-vehicles with TIS (including T-80), also see "less" when it's getting darker ?

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What about TIS ?

-> Viewing distance is not reduced when looking through the TIS of playable vehicle ?

-> Would AI-vehicles with TIS (including T-80), also see "less" when it's getting darker ?

TIS is not hampered by ambient light levels.

Long range spotting is not hampered by low ambient light levels - but you need a light source to identify a target object - this could be the horizon glow if a vehicle skylines itself, or the muzzle flash of a firing weapon.

AI is particularly good at firing on muzzle flashes - and can in fact continue tracking a vehicle observed as it fires even as it moves to a new firing position. I prefer to limit visibility ranges a bit at night/use moonlit conditions/dawn or dusk to make this a bit less obvious when it happens.

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