Screenshots do not reflect the screen

[ladyonthemoon]

Hi,

To explain the title, take a look at the two screenshots below. They were taken with the "gamma" settings slider completely to the right. In game, the image is extremely bright but when I take the screen shots, they look like that; they do not record what I see on my screen.

Any idea on how to fix that would be welcome.

[Chris]

Gamma is applied by the monitor (or video device as it sends the signal to the monitor), so it won't actually be part of the image rendered by OpenMW. Indeed, the screenshot shouldn't include the gamma adjustment since it's monitor/device-specific. The gamma is supposed to be for getting your specific monitor's energy output correct, rather than act as a brightness control to change the game's general visibility. A properly calibrated monitor, for instance, shouldn't be given images with modified gamma or else it'll look incorrect (it should have the standard SRGB gamma ramp).

If the game's screenshots have incorrect brightness on a properly calibrated system, that would mean the game's light levels are incorrect.

[ladyonthemoon]

Gamma is applied by the monitor (or video device as it sends the signal to the monitor), so it won't actually be part of the image rendered by OpenMW. Indeed, the screenshot shouldn't include the gamma adjustment since it's monitor/device-specific. The gamma is supposed to be for getting your specific monitor's energy output correct, rather than act as a brightness control to change the game's general visibility. A properly calibrated monitor, for instance, shouldn't be given images with modified gamma or else it'll look incorrect (it should have the standard SRGB gamma ramp).

If the game's screenshots have incorrect brightness on a properly calibrated system, that would mean the game's light levels are incorrect.

Ah, thank you for the info.

How do I fix the game's light levels?

[Chris]

FWIW, those screenshots look fine to me, so I'd double-check that your monitor's set up correctly (check the monitor's and OS's gamma settings, the brightness/contrast settings, etc) so the screenshots look alright.

Otherwise, in openmw.cfg is the light settings:

Code: Select all

fallback=LightAttenuation_UseConstant,0
fallback=LightAttenuation_ConstantValue,0.0
fallback=LightAttenuation_UseLinear,1
fallback=LightAttenuation_LinearMethod,1
fallback=LightAttenuation_LinearValue,3.0
fallback=LightAttenuation_LinearRadiusMult,1.0
fallback=LightAttenuation_UseQuadratic,0
fallback=LightAttenuation_QuadraticMethod,2
fallback=LightAttenuation_QuadraticValue,16.0
fallback=LightAttenuation_QuadraticRadiusMult,1.0
fallback=LightAttenuation_OutQuadInLin,0

I don't quite remember exactly what they all do, or how to change it to generally brighten up the image.

[AnyOldName3]

Also, bear in mind that OpenMW doesn't have gamma-correct tone mapping and instead uses linear light falloff where it should only use quadratic as old games like Morrowind pretty much all have a weird setup and we can't really use unaltered Morrowind assets without copying the system. Setting those lighting values to the most realistic values won't produce the most realistic image.

[ladyonthemoon]

FWIW, those screenshots look fine to me, so I'd double-check that your monitor's set up correctly (check the monitor's and OS's gamma settings, the brightness/contrast settings, etc) so the screenshots look alright.

Thank you for your help!

This is something I cannot do, my computer is a laptop.

[ladyonthemoon]

Also, bear in mind that OpenMW doesn't have gamma-correct tone mapping and instead uses linear light falloff where it should only use quadratic as old games like Morrowind pretty much all have a weird setup and we can't really use unaltered Morrowind assets without copying the system. Setting those lighting values to the most realistic values won't produce the most realistic image.

Ah, thank you.

[ladyonthemoon]

All right, I now know what was the problem. My laptop is an MSI and there is a "MSI True Color" software inside that allows rendering and image settings. I managed to work out how to set one so that my OpenMW looks good.

My problem is solved then; no more ultra dark interior cells! The problem is that I have no idea what you, who are not using this "True Color" thing see when I show my screen shots...

This one looks charming to me; it could look ugly to you...

[AnyOldName3]

Some bits look too dark and some look too washed out but I don't think there's more of one than the other, so it's probably not miles off.

[Chris]

That screenshot looks pretty close to how Morrowind looks to me. Morrowind never had the best lighting engine, so it will look weird in places without gamma-correct lighting (the engine would need to load textures with SRGB decoding, apply lighting linearly, then encode SRGB for output; this will almost certainly need tweaks to the light values in the ini and esm/esps to look good, though).