Returned to GW2 after years: What is going on with blown out Highlights?

[Gildenpatriot.8142]

Especially in areas with snow. I was playing on the genderran fields in the east side. I noticed, that snow looks overall bright in a painful way for the eyes, and: textures are pure white, whenever it reflects sunlight.  Also combat effects like gunfire completley melt any detail away into a pure bright white.

1. Brand new PC (RTX 4070/Ryzen 9 7900)
2. 1440p Monitor (Gigabyte M27Q)
3. no HDR used
4. updated drivers

The only game, where i have noticed such problems is Gw2.

The following video demonstrates the problem on the map genderran fields.

 

 

 

 

 

My observations:

1.Turning down Gamma from 1.0 to a much lower value does not bring back any detail, it only darkens the entire image. So it seems the game delivers already blownout lightning in the first place.

2.Postproccessing and ambient occlusion both bright up highlights by a large extend (occlusion should not do that actually, but it does take away highlight detail)

3. PP on low showed a total destruction on any brighter whites.....and turning PP off was best...still it was a bit overtuned.

4. Setting Gamma to a low and then back to a standard value (1.00) makes snow look totally burned out for a few seconds - then it autoadjusts somehow to a more balanced brightnesslevel (which is better but still looks blown out)

  (this automatic adjustment behaviour seems to be always active even if the adaption feature for lightning is disabled - that seems to have a larger impact on shadowlevels)

5. I also noticed a resolutionbug, so the game looks somewhat pixelated on edges and textures, whenever i try to select a resolution higher than my native monitors 1440p (f.e. 3840 x 2160 with Nvidia DLAA /DSR Downsampling).

    (This seems to get solved by setting the same resolution in windows, go back to the game - swap to windowed and back to fullscreen)

 

 

Turning off PP and Occlusion solves it for the snowtextures, but not for spellcasting effects combined with snowtextures...so it does not really help much.

Is there anything i can do about it? I'd like to play a bit GW2 again on max details....but this hurts my eyes and it is not fun at all to look at the game in specific zones.

 

Arena.net, you should seriously consider to bring those blown out lights back into a more comfortable zone.

Edited February 11 by Gildenpatriot.8142

[Ray Koopa.2354]

In the video, I don't see you trying checking or unchecking "Light Adaption" (or "Lichtanpassung" in German).

Other than that, disabling all post processing makes the texture look just fine to me. It's snow after all which is, to some extent, bright under sunny sky in reality too.

Are you playing on the same screen as years before? May wanna reduce its hardware brightness or contrast.

[Gildenpatriot.8142]

It is a new Monitor in sRGB Mode and with a very good coverage of that colorspace. The enitre PC is new. Lichtanpassung /Lightadaption does only make shadows darker in this scenario, it does not have any noticeable effect on the snow. It shifts a bit the overall brightness - which is may be the point of using it - but the information in the bright parts is already lost. It is like you compare a RAW-Image with a compresse JPEG image of a sunrise. In the RAW there is still more information present and by reducing the bright parts you can bring back structure in the clouds. In the JPEG bright parts without details simply get saved as you see them: no hidden detail information anymore present.

Reducing GAMMA does not do anything at all.

Important: If my monitor has the wrong settings, it has NO influence on the source material, it would be a display problem in the first place and the delivered brightness levels are actually correct (not blown out). So it can look fine and not blown out on other displays with different profiles (as yours f.e. you have another computer/monitor).

Even when selecting the wolves with mouseover, their fur gets pure white...or the Gunfireeffect. No texture, everything gets eaten up by the light. Even more worse with my Guardian and his permanent auras. I have a huge circle of pure white around my character when certain skills - and i am very positive that this has never been the case back than at my main time in GW2. It would have been so troublesome i would have never played the game.

All i wonder now is, if you got about the same looks in the game - or is it only me?

 

 

Edited February 11 by Gildenpatriot.8142

[Chaba.5410]

27 minutes ago, Gildenpatriot.8142 said:

All i wonder now is, if you got about the same looks in the game - or is it only me?

My understanding is that it only affects some players.  Someone posted a video or screenshots around here about a year ago showing how it looks for them.

 

 

Edited February 11 by Chaba.5410

[Gildenpatriot.8142]

Yeah - i use Windows 11, System is just 6 month old, updated Nvidia drivers, RTX 4070, Ryzen 7900 - so i am already on the hunt to look after some akward automatic tool running somewhere that destroys my image in the highlights...have no other idea what else it could be. In the worst case im goign to resinstall the entire system. This driving me mad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZJJqQBZhuw  This is another example with the guardian. It is super distracting. It seems to be especially a problem on the white snowtexture- as soon i walk on a paved path (with those goblestones) the immense corona of clipping madness disappears.

Edited February 11 by Gildenpatriot.8142

[GODh.3892]

Something that you can try (it helps me with a similar problem, running an older RTX 3080)

* F11 (options) -> graphics (2nd tab) -> shaders - > medium (the high settings gives ME similar problems)

Edited February 11 by GODh.3892
typo

[Gildenpatriot.8142]

well...it helps with the textures a bit - but not if you cast spells in areas with winter/snow. Just one big Flashthunderstrike...even wolves and deers fighting each other release on each hit a blinky flashlight. This is ridiculously overdesigned and i think they pushed those effects even further with the DX11-Release. It is NOT a benefit and NOT Artstyle, it is NOT Cool, but it is TORTURE. GW2 would look the same without this nonsense and would be way more pleasant to the eyes.

My impression: All lightsources especially from combat effects are additive to their surroundings. The simple add up to their brightnesslevels without any limitations. This leads to the overall overexposed look whenever the final treshhold of maximum brighntess gets hit (Snow is already extrem bright + lightsource = blown higlights).  This core behaviour is causing this problems. Those effects need somesort of a curve compression in the highlights already beginning in the upper midtones. So you bassically never can reach the 100% brightness when lightning flashes are involved or even close. It would be like the diminishing returns of the charms you can collect ingame. The more you got, the lesser the effectbonus. Of course i am talking only about brightness - colorshifts f.e. from a torch would already do a great job visualizing a change in lighting/atmoshphere. Does not neet to eat up your optic nerves to achive that goal...that is simply not necessary at all.

Even tuning shaders down and pp down will not completley get rid of the problem...and i did not get a new GPU (jump from gtx 970 to rtx 4070) just to lower the graphicssettings even more. We need a tool to adjust those effects - a slider that allows users to go all down to zero percent of the intended flashbrightness. I would give it a try at 15-20%. Give them control over this.......i really wonder how many people are not playing this game, because they can not stand the migraine, eyepain/strain, headaches, sickness or whatever all this stuff is causing.

Arena.net/GW2 lost me, i am simply not able to endure those effects for more than 5 minutes and it was way more tolerable back in the release years and at that time i was able to level up 3x 80s chars - gone......now impossible. And that is only me playing solo in the environment.

 

However i want to thank for the people willing to help me with this problem. Did not work out, but at least someone was looking. In the end, it is Arena.nets Job to make this work for a majority of customers, not mine or anybody elses responsibility. All i can do is here to show what is going wrong with my GW2 copy on a brand new, modern & updated system (win11/RTX 4070/ Ryzen 7900).

Edited February 12 by Gildenpatriot.8142