Two view taken inside a base to illustrate the problem - the same lights are on is both cases, but the lighting cut is far too soon when the other side of the room is plunged into darkness despite that the lights are all on. Besides the lights cutting off too soon, reflections are IMHO way way too harsh, especially when combined with the only white light color which is harsh pure white. It seems to me that lights should generate more ambient light and less specular reflection - even in spot light mode I feel there should more ambient. Is there no way that cant be improved - the other side of a decent sized hangar should really be plunged into darkness. Contrast with SE (sorry) which I thought had terrible problems with its lighting, but at least they were still visible from 30m away. Actually some of them worked over 200+m away - good enough to make lit up landing pads visible from a distance, or make a workable optical landing system etc. We also really need to be able to customize the light colors, or if that really is not possible, then what about a couple of whites - like two subtle shades of warmer white. Room Lighting desperately needs some work. Contrast with sunset/sunrise on temperate worlds - they look amazing. I get what you are trying to do with the sunrise/sunset on arid worlds - I have lived in the middle east in the past so I am familiar with the desert twilight, but something aint quite right there - maybe too obviously pink?
It's intentional that lights stop working at around 50 or so meters, I guess. https://empyriononline.com/threads/texture-of-ramp-dissapair-after-230-meters.91713/#post-382040 Here I recorded videos showing them the lights cutting out at 50 or so meters and also the warp drive disappearing at 50 meters. Nothing ever came of it. The devs gave us volumetric lighting a while ago now so that lights on POI's look better, but then they made it so the lights stop working at 50 meters, so it was pointless for that reason. So the only thing volumetric lighting really does is blind the player when they are trying to fly a vessel with spotlights/headlights. They have render ranges set way too low on a lot of devices now. We report it and they say they will pass the info along and then nothing ever seems to happen after that.
I didn't mention volumetric lighting which is another problem - I think they are planning on doing something about that. For now I just wish I could disable it entirely. Add in over-dark cockpit glass and well - my efforts to make good 1st person cockpit views seem a bit pointless until both are sorted Its a real shame - good lighting can make everything look really a good. OTOH bad lighting just makes everything look awful. Maybe its unity that is just awful at dealing with lighting? Would be good if they would at least make a comment - tough **** live with it, or we have a plan to improve or something.
Volumetric lighting can look awesome, in the right places. I just wish we could turn it on or off in the control panel on a per-light basis.
Having lights fade at 30 meters and completely stop working at 50 meters is way too short a distance in my opinion. Lights should at least be visible for a few hundred meters. Even better if they were visible from DSL ranges. If the structure is loaded and in viewing distance then the lights should be visible as well. I completely understand they keep reducing the render ranges for performance reasons. This is way over the line of acceptable though. Nothing in the game should have such a short render distance. That just points to the fact that something really needs optimized, badly. Volumetric lighting CAN look awesome, in the right places. Unfortunately that place is only within 30 or so meters from the light. After that the light fades and then completely stops working shortly after.
The promised switch for volumetric lighting will never come. Taelyn said so in the last Q&A. The reason given is that they turned down the intensity, so it is not a problem. I call bs, whatever they did caused the light to be less useful and pleasant. Good light is one of the things that attracted me to this game and the bad light now is one of the things that keeps me from playing much now.
I always change my lights to a soft grey color. It's less harsh, actually more realistic, and I'm playing a game, not rendering a 3d scene with radiosity, ray-tracing, causitcs and volumetrics. I kind of expect a simpler lighting scheme.
Yeah that really bummed me out. I was so hoping a switch would show up to turn it off completely. Other wise it's nothing more then a drain on my computer resource for something I would never use. Makes no sense to me to add a permanent fog to the game. So great they lower it, how is that going to help? Will it help looking out a window? Will it make my scope on my sniper gun clearer? It's just became one more thing to take the fun out of the game. They insist we need it. To me this just means some of the dev's really don't play the game other then to test the things they are doing. Shame none of them tested the game playing in fog all the time. Oh right the slight haze it will become. The real world I live in has some really nice clear days and nights. Guess they just didn't want to make the game look too realistic. I no longer even add lights to my bases. Besides not using the extra power to light them I don't get the fog. I would rather walk around with my night vision scope on at night. This way things are clear. Okay a bit green, but at least it's a clear green.
Did they really say that? I must have missed it. I can't even explain how much that really irritates me if true....... They promised us so many times that there would be a switch to turn it off coming in the future. "A option for Volumetric lighting will be added in a future build." https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-10-2-improvements-and-bug-fixes-part-ii.54619/#post-321237 "No ETA yet but it's not forgotten." https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-experimental-10-3-0.57759/page-3#post-325680 "Is still planned" https://empyriononline.com/threads/alpha-experimental-10-5-optimizations.69761/page-7#post-343728 There are many more where those came from....... This better not be true.
It was my question. I had submitted it on Spanj's discord. he edited out the passive-aggressive part of the question but he asked it and it was answered. Unfortunately, it was the disappointing answer and given that I wish he had asked it as I had written it.
