Info: Monitor brightness TEST

[mkr8683]

Yes. This is what I'm seeing.

[DRG]

What you are seeing depends entirely on how you have your monitor set up.

The screen shot in post #11 looks, to me, exactly the way I see the game but my answer to this question is NO, I DO NOT see that bar.

When I turn the brightness up on my monitor 25% I can say I can see it as "level 2" but that's not the way I run my monitor normally and it's obvious everyone who's answered back see the game somewhat differently than the guy who's created most of the graphics and photos in the game.

Years back ....( I can say that now because we've been at this 14 years as of the end of last month ) ... I asked the same question after seeing the game displayed on a friends computer and I was, quite frankly, appalled at how the game looked on his monitor. I can say with confidence that if that was how it looked to me in 1998 I would never have bothered developing it further because it looks as washed out, colourless and drab as a desert in the hot sun

The diagonal bar was deliberately put into the rebel flag as a gauge for brightness. It's just been so long since I viewed the game on another computer I forgot this might still be a problem but I had to run some tests on another machine the other day and it was a serious Deja vu moment

The bottom line is you should not be seeing that diagonal bar to be viewing the game "correctly". If you adjust your brightness down to the point it almost blends completely with the pure black background of the flag then give it one or two more clicks lower you are seeing the game the way I see the game.

Now, there's more to this than just viewing it "my way" . All the graphics produced for the game, the colours selected etc etc are based in that adjustment.

The diagonal bar is a deep blue grey. If pure white is colour #1 and pure black is colour 256 that diagonal bar is 242. It's DARK. It should be barely distinguishable from black with a good pair of eyes.

If most of you had said it's "barely noticeable. I have to look for it" you wouldn't be out by much, maybe 5-10% too bright but when you get into "Noticeable but not sharply defined" to me it washes the game out way too much to be even enjoyable to look at and I'm serious when I say if that was the way I saw it day after day there would be no day after that.

HUMOUR ME. Try playing the game with your monitors adjusted as described above. If you think it's too dark then so be it but thats the way the graphics have been set up to be viewed.

My eyes aren't perfect, far from it, but I cannot run any of my programs at the brightness level that would give me "Noticeable but not sharply defined" on those flags so it's not just a game issue

Don

[Judicator65]

The screenshot in #11 is a little more defined than mine, I think. I have the excuse that I'm running a Dreamcolor IPS monitor, though, so I don't really want to muck around with the settings too much.

[rfisher]

Yes

Brightness 20/100

Contrast 70/100

I think that it is clear and distinct.

[rfisher]

Hmm, I just tried your settings, but I had to put brightness on 0% and Contrast down to about 15% before the bar disappeared which was long after the rest of the image was way too dark.
But then I think a good quality monitor is supposed to be able to do this to be honest.

[DRG]

Every Monitor is different. Mine *seems" normal to me but it may nearing the end of it's life. That said I've never had to make yearly adjustments to make it "right" again.

If the original setting shows that bar appears distinct on your monitor AND you do not feel the colours displayed seem washed out and black seems deep and rich then I guess your original settings are good for your monitor and the game. It does seem like you have a higher end monitor. I'm basing my observations on two views of the game on other peoples machines and on both the colours were almost pastel in comparison to what I'm used to seeing on my Trinitron CRT.


Don

[rfisher]

I did blow about £500-£600 on my monitor only a year or two ago, so it is fairly good.
But yes, I think I have been playing at a 'correct' setting because I've never thought the colours were washed out or pastel. The game has always looked ace to me!

[DRG]

OK that's very good to hear. The examples that prompted this discussion may have been abnormalities or just poor monitors ( one was a laptop the other probably a low end LCD). It occurred to me that issues that occasionally crop up with the "quality" of the graphics might be related to that because the examples I cited were really washed out and did not look very attractive.

If players see that diagonal and feel the colours have good saturation then thats " a good thing" (tm) It may be too that perhaps my monitor does not show the range some of the newer ones can and still maintain rich colour saturation

Don

[Rosollia]

LCD monitors struggle with the dark colors. There is a backlight on LCD monitors that is always on. This means that you can not get pure black. Perhaps higher end LCD monitors and ones that use LED for backlight can cope better with the dark colors, but they will never be as good as CRT monitors IMHO.

CRT monitors on the other hand have the electron beam that lights up the phosphor layer to produce pixels at exactly the wanted brightness levels. So CRT monitors usualy have a lot better color gradient and are able to display a wider range of brightness levels.

I have a 2 year old 22" LCD monitor that was in the middle price range when I bought it and it is impossible to make that line in the example picture disappear.

The only good thing about an LCD monitor is that it weights less than CRT and takes less room. Also it has a wery sharp image quality at its native resolution.

Other than that CRT monitors are supperior especialy in color richness and displaying various brightness levels. Also CRT is able to produce any resolution not just the native resolution. LCDs suffer in image quality while trying to emulate lower than native resolutions.

Down side to CRT is that they may struggle with the HD resolutions at 1920 × 1080. Also CRT monitors may flicker anoyingly if they have a lower than 85 Hz refresh rate. LCD monitors do not have this problem since they do not have a beam riding the screen. Granted some early LCDs had the trailing problem due to the crystals turning too slow.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Rosollia

I have a 2 year old 22" LCD monitor that was in the middle price range when I bought it and it is impossible to make that line in the example picture disappear.

Even with that would you consider the colours you do see in the game rich and saturated or weak and thin?

It would be so much simpler if we could exchange screen shots but everyones monitor shows the screen shots to their individual performance level


Don