8 réponses à ce sujet

[BiggsZA]

 Hi,

I'm finding Mass Effect 2 VERY dark with regard to the brightness.  

I'm running around in my Collector's armour and from behind the armour looks completely black.  If I turn the camera around, the lighting in the front at least shows the detail on the armour, but from behind it's pretty much black.  If I go into some areas (such as Omega) I find that there is just way too much shadow going on with not enough lighting with whole sections just hidden in black shadows.

When I view the Squad screen, Miranda's hair, for example, is almost totally black with no real texturing.

Mass Effect 1 and other titles look perfectly fine on my xbox with the current tv settings.  Oh, for further information, I'm running my xbox through HDMI into a Samsung LE40A686 HDTV at 1080p.  I've tinkered with tv and in-game brightness settings with no success.

Is this just me?  I've found it tricky finding proper example screenshots.

[BiggsZA]

 I've put a screenshot up of what it sometimes looks like to give more evidence of what I'm talking about.

I just wanted to note though - it's not like that ALL the time.  I could be standing somewhere and the lighting is perfect and I can see everything but if I move one step forward the lighting changes to VERY black.

Screenshot of Mass Effect 2 being dark is at http://www.dividebyz...effect_dark.jpg

I guess I'm just keen to see if this is just how it is because all my other games look ace.  If this IS how Mass Effect 2's lighting works then I'm a little disappointed that Bioware are hiding all those excellent textures behind so much black shadow.

Modifié par BiggsZA, 30 janvier 2010 - 06:13 .

[IllNinjaMonk]

No, your lighting looks very dark, and the image appears to be very saturated... Try degaussing if it's an option, and play with your contrast as well. Some places are pretty dim, but nothing like your screen shot. I play on a Sony 1080i Bravia. Looks great.

[BiggsZA]

Thanks for the speedy response. I reckon the saturation is mostly because it's a photo of my tv screen which I didn't edit. I mostly wanted to show how the shadows end up showing zero texture details on some scenes.



Aside: The screenshot I posted is talking to Captain Gavron on Omega which has been the darkest location so far for me. I could walk away into a different light and you'll see every detail of the armour perfectly. It's weird.

[IllNinjaMonk]

Yeah, I'd just say it's the area then. Bump up the in game brightness and bear it. My issue is the the aim assist. I can't stand having my reticule drawn off target by a stray enemy...

[JimmyGringoX]

I'm having the same issue. So bad that I didn't even know that Miranda's hair had texture. I've tried every possible configuration on my monitor, but the contrast levels are horrible... there's a black officer in the Normandy CIC and he's nothing but a silhouette, crushing all dark tones into a black void.

[krimesh]

I get the impression that shadows are too dark sometimes; when I stand on board the normandy where everything is brightly lit, my shepard has impenetrable shadows over parts of his face - I always thought that this was because of my screen which is not exactly cutting edge. But in my case it is not so bad that you cannot get used to it.

[noaxark]

Sorry for the grave digging, but I believe I can help some of you. Mass Effect 2 has a high contrast look, and it has very little tolerance for errors in your brightness configuration. A common example of this is when your black/white levels are out of whack between your output device and your display device , an issue that can have a very dramatic effect on your image. In games with darker environments, it can actually hamper your gameplay; in ME2, which has a mostly brightly lit environment but for some reason very heavily shaded characters, it mostly affects the visual experience, but it's annoying nonetheless.

I won't go into details explaining black levels (more on that can be read here), but instead go right into the relevant settings involved. In the display settings in your 360's system menu, you have an entry called "Reference levels". This has the options "Standard", "Intermediate" and "Expanded". If it's set to the wrong one for your screen, the brightness in ALL games will be affected, often very noticeably. Games can become:

• Too dark in dark areas. The most obvious example of this are pitch-black shadows that look like they should have detail, but don't and won't, even if you crank the brightness up on your screen.
• Too bright in bright areas. Much harder to catch than the above.
• Too much saturation.
• All of the above (and even the opposite, meaning a washed-out image!)

Getting this setting right is complicated by factors that are hard to know about and control, such as:

• The levels your monitor expects (be it a setting in its menu, or hard-coded from the factory)
• The levels your cabling allows through (many HDMI peripherals, e.g. splitters, are limited to Standard levels)

I can't help you with these factors, as the only piece of equipment I know you have is your 360. Thankfully, this makes my advice simple. If your 360 is set to "Extended", switch to "Standard". According to logic, this is most likely to fix a game that looks too dark, and doing the opposite (Standard->Extended) should fix a game that looks washed out. In my experience, though, logic doesn't always apply here, and changing this setting is always worth a try if you're unfamiliar with it. If you notice an improvement in your game, keep it. If you don't, change it back. It could just make the game even darker.

I think the "Intermediate" setting is a compromise between the other two options for older TVs that aren't as exact as today's flat-screens. If this works best for your HDTV, my guess is that it's not set up correctly

Let me know if this helps you out, or if you get any interesting results.

 Edit: 

IllNinjaMonk wrote...
Try degaussing if it's an option

This is a bit of a personal stickler with me, so sorry, no offence, but... degaussing is one of those annoying ancient cure-alls that has been suggested for way too many issues for way too long a time. I haven't owned a screen capable of being degaussed in at least five years, and even back then its applicability was overrated. I realise some, or even many, people still own and use CRT screens, but let's at least avoid suggesting degaussing those that clearly state they use 40 inch flat-screens

Modifié par noaxark, 24 août 2010 - 11:33 .

[BiggsZA]

I hate to resurrect a topic without activity for 2 months, but I'm keen to grab some DLC and do another ME2 playthrough. I was hoping to tweak the settings to try alleviate the shadows as much as possible (as I'm also finding Fable 3 rather dark).

Noaxark, perhaps you could give me a shove in the right direction?

Some details of the setup:
- Samsung LE40A686 HDTV
- Xbox 360 S
- Latest dashboard update
- Xbox connected to tv using HDMI
- Xbox set to 1080p
- Reference level set to Standard

My main issue is that blacks tend to lose a lot of the quality. For example, the trousers of the butler in Fable 3 loses all textures. Armour in Mass Effect 2 becomes largely solid black losing the textures. I've tried numerous settings but I find the blacks too dark - I have to turn up the brightness or backlight which washes out the other colours. Some titles are more forgiving than others.

Further info: The latest Xbox 360 dashboard update allows the Video Settings to be either RGB or YCbCr. I have it currently set to RGB.

Any recommendations you may have would be much appreciated - or if anybody has some excellent settings they use for their own Samsung A686 that might help too.

Modifié par BiggsZA, 04 novembre 2010 - 10:28 .