OFF with Richer more Vibrant Colors

[Hellshade 110]

Well I was messing around with the Nvidia control panel and I saw some options to crank up the Digital Vibrance setting from 50% to 85%. Someone else had mentioned this (sorry, can't recall who), but I figured I'd give it a try. I removed my ENB series driver and I have to say that I really enjoy the results. No performance hit at all, unlike the ENB series driver, but much richer, more vibrant colors and deeper blacks. Obviously you'd have to mess around with it to bring it to your own personal liking. I think the terrain and scenery look a lot more alive and vivid this way.

 

At any rate, there's a screenshot of how I had my Nvidia settings at the bottom of this page along with a couple of videos showing what the results are in game. I even did one flying for the Germans so Olham doesn't think I'm always picking on them! By the way, I got hit right before the first closure between our two flights when I was fighting for the Germans and man was it ever a pain to try and line up a Nieuport 17 after that. They had so much agility and I had to anticipate where they would be to have any chance of getting some rounds into them.

Be sure to watch both movies in 720P format for best quality!

 

 

Hellshade

Edited April 21, 2012 by Hellshade

[Burning Beard 14]

Hellshade,

 

This is a truly great find. I didn't know it existed. I too have played with the ENB series and tweeked up some deeper and richer tones, but it is pretty cumbersome to work with. This is quick and user friendly. You can take the game from kind of flat tones to much richer values. The trick is not to over do it ;)

 

Beard

[Hellshade 110]

Yes, one definately has to play with the values in order to see what they want. Youtube has a tendancy to make such videos a bit darker than the way they actually appear in the game too. I did a quick dogfight with DVIIFs against some Camels with the same settings except Brightness was put up to 50%. I can see this being the way to go to tweak the video settings though for color. Again, I don't get to take credit for this 'find' though. Someone else mentioned something about it in a post so I decided to do a little hunting around and see what I could find. I can't complain about the results.

 

Fokker DVIIFs vs Sopwith Camels - 720P

 

 

Hellshade

[HumanDrone 4]

This sure seems worth a try, but what are ENB series drivers? And they must be removed? Any tips here?

 

Thanks,

 

Tom

 

ETA: My, you sure did punch some holes in those airplanes! I gotta get some serious stick time, here!

Edited April 21, 2012 by HumanDrone

[Burning Beard 14]

You have to add the ENB series, if you haven't then they aren't there. What they are usually called is Bloom and HDR.

 

Beard

[Hellshade 110]

Here's a screenshot to give you a better idea of what the colors look like without youtube messing them up. I gotta say I just love it. Brings the whole thing even more to life.

[shredward 12]

That's quite a dance duo !

[Creaghorn 10]

i thought about tweaking around with this settings, too, but what IMO get's lost is the perfectly caught look of middle europe. the settings as they are, especially in dull weather and with the fog etc. is pretty close to how it looks in real. not any random looking countryside which pretends to be over flanders fields because the game tells it to you. when you look at it without knowing where it is, you could easily say, ok, that looks like somewhere in middleeurope. with the setting tweaked it may look a bit more colourful, but IMO i get's more mediterranean or caribean touch. especially the skies.

[Olham 164]

I even did one flying for the Germans so Olham doesn't think I'm always picking on them!

Naw, I never said that, did I? I also fly mostly one side - the German side.

It's from the immersion - it warps me back in time and history, and where would I have been fighting?

German side. (But for OFF II I am planning to fly serious campaign pilots on British and French side too).

 

By the way, I got hit right before the first closure between our two flights when I was fighting for

the Germans and man was it ever a pain to try and line up a Nieuport 17 after that. They had so much

agility and I had to anticipate where they would be to have any chance of getting some rounds into them.

It's easy to be a good dancer in a Tripe, you know?

But I'm joining that dancing business with wooden clogs on, every day.

You saw how hard it is - turn-fighting is not the only art in here!

 

Damn, now I answered before I checked out your videos - will do now.

[Olham 164]

The colour saturation is probably a matter of taste. Winder's landscapes are "knitted" so good,

they can even be driven with your richer colour as in your videos, without looking less good.

But I find that the hazyness, the dampened colours of northern Europe are caught quite well with

the original settings.

Hellshade, you probably have chosen a wrong FoV setting - your Albatros looked badly distorted

in width. Or did you only zoom out too much - not sure? If you like, send me your screen resolution,

and I can calculate 3 possible variations of the FoV for your monitor.

 

.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Olham

[Von Paulus 8]

Yes, it's a matter of taste. I too personally prefer without saturation, that reminds me the other WW1 sim, and that was always one of the things that I prefer on OFF.

Sure, it's more eye-candy, but less accurate.

Anyway thanks for heads up, Hellshade. I know that I will probably have to exchange my graphic color in this fall. Main reason for that is ArmAIII and OFF2.

And I'm really wondering what would be the best for those two future games, ATI or Nvidia. Never had so much doubts.

 

The colour saturation is probably a matter of taste. Winder's landscapes are "knitted" so good,

they can even be driven with your richer colour as in your videos, without looking less good.

But I find that the hazyness, the dampened colours of northern Europe are caught quite well with

the original settings.

It's not only in the Northern Europe. We in the Western part do have it also. Not always but it's common.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Von Paulus

[Hellshade 110]

Olham I am running at 1920 x 1200. If you could calculate good FoV settings I would appreciate it. It looks off to me too and I tried many settings but could never come up with what I really liked.

 

As for the vibrant colors, I didn't realize France was so 'drab' but I have never been there and most of the photos I've seen are black and whites from WWI and some WWII. I'm used to Florida where everything is so lush and green.

 

Hellshade

Edited April 21, 2012 by Hellshade

[Creaghorn 10]

at least northern france and belgium is usually rather dull. the further south you go, the more mediterranean it gets, and southern france of course is a completely different ballgame.

there is some comedy movie from couple years ago where a southern french postman gets transfered to northern france, and before he gets there he hears a lot of horrorstories about the weather and the people there. always cold and dull, the people described a bit like hillbillies with strange dialects and traditions etc. was very fun to watch.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Nice tip Hellshade...

[Olham 164]

Well, northern France is not always "drab" - when it's sunny, it is also very juicy (still not

as lush as Florida, maybe). But we here in northern Europe may see overcast grey days

or rainy days more often than you down there in "Disneyland".

 

As for your OFF settings for a good screen ratio - here are three possible ratios, which would all

give you a correct ratio of hight : width (so your aircraft is not so distorted).

They are 3 variants, because you can select among them, if you prefer it more zoomed in or out -

but they would all be "right".

 

Firstly you need to select the "Aspect (Widescreen)" at the left side in "Workshops" - select 16:10

(I guess you had done that part already, but just to make sure).

And here are three possible ratios for your monitor - you need to set the numbers in FOV (right half):

 

23 : 14

 

24 : 15

 

26 : 16

 

I use the middle one; best is, you check them all out and see what zoom factor you prefer

(in other words: how close or remote you want to be in relation to your cockpit).

You will still be able to zoom in or out in the sim, if you want to.

[Olham 164]

PS: if you want to know how to calculate the values:

 

You start with the vertical value of your resolution and divide it by 15 for a start.

 

1200 : 15 = 80

 

Now you divide the horizontal value by 80.

 

1920 : 80 = 24

 

So with a vertical value of 15, you need a horizontal value of 24.

Not all values make "clean", unbroken numbers. If you chose a vertical value of 16,

it would go:

 

1200 : 16 = 75

1920 : 75 = 25,6

 

Here you would need to round up to 26. So, 24 : 15 was the "cleanest" result without any rounding up or down.

Hope you're not dizzy now?

[gaw 5]

wonder if ati has something similar?

[themightysrc 5]

"at least northern france and belgium is usually rather dull. the further south you go, the more mediterranean it gets, and southern france of course is a completely different ballgame."

 

I wouldn't disagree. I'm a real Grecophile and have flown out to Greece many times over the years. Apart from the quality of the light and detail you can see - which I put down to the bone dry climate and the absolute lack of moisture in the air causing clouding - the other major shock on a holiday is flying back into Manchester to see just how earthy, dull and unclear it is, like there's semi permanent haze through which one must pass to be able get back to the legendary land of Moorhouse's ales and black puddings.

 

This lack of clarity is quite shocking at times. It's also a reason why I fly with hdr & bloom. The darker the better I think.

[Hellshade 110]

 

This lack of clarity is quite shocking at times. It's also a reason why I fly with hdr & bloom. The darker the better I think.

 

You might want to also try disabling the hdr & bloom enb drivers and changing the Gamma Values in the Control Panel if you have an Nvidia. By lowering Gamma you can make everything darker with no performance loss. These screen shots were taken with Brightness and Contrast at 50% (default) and also Digital Vibrance at 50% but with Gamma pushed down to .70. Playing with Brightness and Gamma can help you get darker blacks.

 

The first two are on a cloudy day and the last is what it looks like on a sunny day. Of course you can mess with any of the values you wish in any way you choose until you get exactly the "feel" that you are looking for.

 

[Olham 164]

Did you try the screen ratios, Hellshade?

[+Lothar of the Hill People 6]

I've uploaded a JSGME with installer version of the ENB series graphics mod here, preset with Creaghorn's settings from his Homebrew. Should be an easy way to try out the bloom and HDR effects. If anyone has a custom enbseries.ini with settings that work great for OFF, please let me know.

[von Baur 54]

I think your basic screen ratio may be off, Hellshade. On a 16:9 monitor the correct setting would be 1920x1080. Mathematically, you would take 1920 and divide it by 16 (the width) for a result of 120, then multiply that times 9 (the height) for a result of 1080. Or you could do it the hard way, as I did: open up a paint window, draw a perfect circle using the legend as confirmatio. Mark a piece of paper with the height or width and adjust your settings until the other direction matches it perfectly.

[Olham 164]

The best might be to check for the exact monitor name/type you use, which resolution it has.

You should then choose that resolution, Hellshade - it wouldn't make sense to use another.

 

For avoiding ingame distortion in OFF, it is then necessary to set the FoV (Field of View) right.

But that can only be calculated correctly with the correct screen resolution.

[+Lothar of the Hill People 6]

I think your basic screen ratio may be off, Hellshade. On a 16:9 monitor the correct setting would be 1920x1080. Mathematically, you would take 1920 and divide it by 16 (the width) for a result of 120, then multiply that times 9 (the height) for a result of 1080. Or you could do it the hard way, as I did: open up a paint window, draw a perfect circle using the legend as confirmatio. Mark a piece of paper with the height or width and adjust your settings until the other direction matches it perfectly.

 

The calculations are actually a bit more complicated. I'm also running at 1920x1200, and at that resolution I'd recommend trying:

1. 30:19 (29.98) - closest virtual camera
   
2. 27:17 (26.90)
   
3. 24:15 (23.79)
   
4. 22:14 (22.23) - farthest virtual camera
   

As you can see with the rounding error, 30:19 is the most spatially accurate for this resolution. But it may feel a bit fish-eye (it's more complicated than a matter of zoom), so a virtual camera farther from the virtual screen (a smaller FOV) may feel more natural. Any other combinations will have much more spatial distortion.

 

Whatever the resolution, doing a little math first greatly narrows down the trial and error. Use the wikipedia H= equation to find the horizontal FOV (H) for each of the eight possible vertical FOVs (V) between 13 and 20 at your monitor's resolution. Even the Windows calculator can do arc (inverse) tangents! Then try out the ones that yield an H closest to an integer.

Edited December 4, 2012 by Lothar of the Hill People

[Olham 164]

This Wikipedia FoV formula seems to go from wide-angle lense to tele-lense rather.

If you want a "normal" relationship of width to height, just follow my simpler formula.

(See previous side).