Photoscenery extremely overexposed in 4.4

[TimS]

Having recently updated to V4.4, the most striking visual change has being the overexposure of photoscenery, especially the lighter shades such as sandy areas (grass and darker areas apper much less affected if at all). Seems to affect most scenery from the default starting airport to major releases from Orbx and other prolific developers.

Shaders make a small impact but the effect is still highly pronounced in the default shaders. HDR on and off seems to make no change and fiddling with the HDR sliders makes no change.

First image is the default starting location, HDR off, Default shaders after a fresh install of the Client. It's way more overexposed than I remember and you loose most the detail in the sandy areas of KVPS.


Add the latest version of Envshade and HDR on the scenery brightens up even more and you loose all the detail in the sandy areas of KVPS


Again with Envshade at MKstudios Lanzarote, the sandy island looks purely radioactive. Default shaders are slightly better but still suffer the same affect.


Screenshot from when I noticed the issue on my first install of 4.4 using the same settings and shaders as I used in 4.3 with no such issue. Overhead Taxi2gate doha, the photoscenery again suffers and no longer blends with the airport itself which is unaffected by the issue.

[TimS]

Just to add more to the above, there really does seem to be a problem with terrain lighting in 4.4, that disproportionately affects photo scenery but also, is clearly evident in a vanilla install on a fresh windows installation (only programs installed are Chrome and Prepar3D) The photo scenery at KVPS is still overly bright and when zooming out on top down view all terrain is overexposed in the same sort of way, getting worse the more you zoom out of the scene.



Wish I had the full 4.3 installer as currently the sim is unusable.

[Martyson]

KVPS-quick look screenshots
P3Dv4.4
my P3D scenery is from v4.2.21.24048

[TimS]

Interesting results Vaughan, however your screenshot of KVPS appears to be showing a different part of the airport from where the issue affects. The problem area is around the runway 12 threshold and passenger terminal.

I did a fair bit of testing over the weekend with different versions of P3D, and there certainly is an issue in 4.4 making some ares of photoscenery overly bright and bloomy, which no setting will fix HDR off, still an issue, Bloom 0 still an issue. Default or third party shaders, it's an issue. I think the bloom in the overhead view is unrelated and just due to the default bloom setting being very high.

This set of screenshots clearly show the issue and the differences between the versions. With the new PMDG update not being functional in 4.3 I'm super eager to get this solved and back to flying.

[Martyson]

KVPS screenshot

[BG2518]

Seems to me that the airfield is simply not produced to the same quality levels as would have been achieved by the likes of ORBX. I'd pay for an ORBX version.

[akanishta]

I've noticed this as well. Recently installed the 4.4 client and now desert photo scenery is completely washed out. I have MSE Utah and where the desert used to be tan, red, maroon, etc., it's now all white.

[TimS]

Seems to me that the airfield is simply not produced to the same quality levels as would have been achieved by the likes of ORBX. I'd pay for an ORBX version.

The issue occurs at Orbx airports, plus payware airports from a wide variety of other developers. I just used the default airport to show off the issue as everyone would have it to compare and it’s clearly apparent where one section is more washed out than the rest of the terrain around it.

[TimS]

I've noticed this as well. Recently installed the 4.4 client and now desert photo scenery is completely washed out. I have MSE Utah and where the desert used to be tan, red, maroon, etc., it's now all white.

Glad to see I’m finally not the only one who appears to be having this issue. That’s exaclty what the problem is. Many areas of photoscenry, particularly those depicting desert or sandy areas loose all their colour definitions and become a washed out glowing white colour.

[Saldo]

The Shaders in V4.4 have changed.
I had to lower terrain lighting and objects lighting to make the PR scenery show up like it looked in V4.3.
Especially in the summer the overexposure was enormeous.

Here I am using PTA so I have modified the Shaders. With Tomato Shade you can do that too.

[yankeegolf3]

Hello,
I have excatly the same problem. The photoscenery rendition is awful in 4.4. It is visible in urban area and around airports.
I deleted the shaders file, to no avail. I replaced the shaders file with the V3 file (which I have kept), same result.
I rolled back to 4.3, the problem has gone.
So it is obvious the 4.4 is faulty. And it can happen with a fresh install !
So I am asking LM: how is it possible to fix this issue which ruins the photoscenery experience? Too bad because the combination of 4.3 and megascenery was awesome.
Please bring back the 4.3 rendition!!!

[WarpD]

Here is KVPS, MegasceneryEarth Florida 4X photoscenery.

HDR off:


HDR on:

[yankeegolf3]

I have also found out that the anomaly is there with the default scenery.
How come nobody from LM has addressed this topic since it was started? Help is needed!
Thank you

[WarpD]

Yet... it's not there on all systems. This leans towards a modification being the source of the issue.

[Saldo]

It looks like all PR scenery is shown overexposed.
That some of them “look” normal is because they were darker in the first place.

Here I have several MSE packages for Europe and the darker ones look lighter and better now, while the lighter ones are overexposed now.

Like I wrote : with PTA / Tomato Shade you are able to make the terrain less bright, but then also LC textures show up darker.

It would be nice If someone from LM can reply on this ...