PSA: If you want the game to look better, turn down the brightness!

RealLifeRedguard

Just thought I'd share this with you guys.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but the game set the brightness way too high, making the colors look faded and lighting far less noticeable. If you go to settings and adjust the brightness until you can barely see the middle logo, and can't see the one on the left, your game will instantly look 10 times more beautiful. It wont be too dark either, so don't worry!

Again, not sure if this is something that everyone already knows, but I was telling people this in zone chat and they seemed surprised by the difference so I thought I'd share it here.

Ffastyl

And if you turn the gamma entirely down, the game may be dark enough to simulate realistic darkness! This depends on your monitor brightness, however.

DjSolJAH

Very true. I usually play games on close to full brightness. ESO is much better with low brightness because you really see shadows/contrast. Oh and the night time battles look amazing with low brightness

WillhelmBlack

This goes for all monitors and TV's.

Volkodav

RealLifeRedguard wrote: »

Just thought I'd share this with you guys.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but the game set the brightness way too high, making the colors look faded and lighting far less noticeable. If you go to settings and adjust the brightness until you can barely see the middle logo, and can't see the one on the left, your game will instantly look 10 times more beautiful. It wont be too dark either, so don't worry!

Again, not sure if this is something that everyone already knows, but I was telling people this in zone chat and they seemed surprised by the difference so I thought I'd share it here.

You can turn the brightness down in your settings.The Gamma slider does it.Just move it to the setting you want.

Nestor

Every single Monitor and TV is in Torch mode out of the box. This is strictly for display purposes in the store, not for use in the home.

The first step is to reduce the Brightness, and the usual target is 45% to 55% Brightness. That goes a long way to making anything you watch look better with more brilliant and saturated colors. If you need something to make these adustments with, use one of the following images:

https://www.google.com/#q=monitor+calibration+image

Basically, you want to make your Monitor as dark as possible, but still be able to see the gradations on the darkest Gray Scale Bands. That alone will make any game or video look better.

BTW, you reduce the power consumption of your monitor or TV by more than half making this adjustment, so you save a few bucks on your electricity bill and do the environment a favor.

Then, once your monitor is adjusted properly, make adjustments in the game. You will find you don't need to tweak most games very much.

Moonscythe

Every time I see discussions of brightness in Elder Scrolls games I think of my experience with Morrowind. Morrowind is dark anyway but I was playing on Xbox with an old TV that was losing its brightness. I had to turn the bright up as high as I could just to be able to see in caves and at night. I agree that it messed up the colours but still. When I started it again still on the same TV the first thing I enchanted was a belt of night vision with constant effect. Morrowind's night vision was more like candlelight in Oblivion instead of the stupid blue like night vision goggles. I still prefer to be able to see what I'm doing rather than bump around in the dark no matter how realistic.

NikaTheCat

RealLifeRedguard wrote: »

Just thought I'd share this with you guys.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but the game set the brightness way too high, making the colors look faded and lighting far less noticeable. If you go to settings and adjust the brightness until you can barely see the middle logo, and can't see the one on the left, your game will instantly look 10 times more beautiful. It wont be too dark either, so don't worry!

Again, not sure if this is something that everyone already knows, but I was telling people this in zone chat and they seemed surprised by the difference so I thought I'd share it here.

The game does not set the brightness by itself. You probably missed it, but it asks you to do exactly what you said, the first time you log into the game.

But keep up the good work.

Tholian1

If you play on console with a properly calibrated television, you don't even need to adjust the game brightness from the default setting in the game.

Troneon

Or you could use Hook64 (Previously known as ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) created by Sorien with SweetFX and betters colors etc

Troneon wrote: »

Thanks for the help all, first got the 64 bit client running....then tested the first version of Hook64 (Previously ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) which was created by sorien which gives the game a graphics boost, shaders, effects etc and removes the in game fog ......this was soriens first enhanced graphics launcher version for 64bit ESO and it works!!!

Then last test was to get my RadeonPro+SweetFX profile (better colors etc) to work by adding a trigger alias with the 64bit client with soriens hook64 as well and...VOILA!!!

Crisp 60+ fps 64 bit ESO with soriens Hook64 Enhanced Graphics Launcher and my choice of colors using SweetFX

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/eso-launcher-graphics-enhancer-2/page/27/

Full Album : http://imgur.com/a/Y7aYv





Before with normal crappy colors but without in game fog to compare....

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/268131/esoptimize-fog-removal-and-graphic-improvement/p1

Lysette

Most monitors nowadays are so good, that you can run them easily on 25-30% brightness and it will be fine. The slightly brighter ingame lighting is not that bad, because it leaves cave settings bright enough to watch it from a distance and not have to go nearer to the monitor in order to see details. I rework screen shots though, make them a bit brighter with more contrast and it is in average better to do that from screen shots, which are not too dark in the first place.

Lysette

Troneon wrote: »

Or you could use Hook64 (Previously known as ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) created by Sorien with SweetFX and betters colors etc

Troneon wrote: »

Thanks for the help all, first got the 64 bit client running....then tested the first version of Hook64 (Previously ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) which was created by sorien which gives the game a graphics boost, shaders, effects etc and removes the in game fog ......this was soriens first enhanced graphics launcher version for 64bit ESO and it works!!!

Then last test was to get my RadeonPro+SweetFX profile (better colors etc) to work by adding a trigger alias with the 64bit client with soriens hook64 as well and...VOILA!!!

Crisp 60+ fps 64 bit ESO with soriens Hook64 Enhanced Graphics Launcher and my choice of colors using SweetFX

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/eso-launcher-graphics-enhancer-2/page/27/

Full Album : http://imgur.com/a/Y7aYv





Before with normal crappy colors but without in game fog to compare....

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/268131/esoptimize-fog-removal-and-graphic-improvement/p1

I think that is all a matter of taste in the end - to me these screen shots are just "over-saturated" - some like it, but I don't.

Danikat

I agree with the recommendations to tweak your monitor settings first. When I got my new monitor I spent what felt like ages adjusting the settings (including switching back and forth between my favourite games to see how they looked) and it made a big difference. I still check the settings in-game too, but I usually don't need to make big changes to get them to look good.

Lysette wrote: »

Troneon wrote: »

Or you could use Hook64 (Previously known as ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) created by Sorien with SweetFX and betters colors etc

Troneon wrote: »

Thanks for the help all, first got the 64 bit client running....then tested the first version of Hook64 (Previously ESO Enhanced Graphics Launcher) which was created by sorien which gives the game a graphics boost, shaders, effects etc and removes the in game fog ......this was soriens first enhanced graphics launcher version for 64bit ESO and it works!!!

Then last test was to get my RadeonPro+SweetFX profile (better colors etc) to work by adding a trigger alias with the 64bit client with soriens hook64 as well and...VOILA!!!

Crisp 60+ fps 64 bit ESO with soriens Hook64 Enhanced Graphics Launcher and my choice of colors using SweetFX

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/eso-launcher-graphics-enhancer-2/page/27/

Full Album : http://imgur.com/a/Y7aYv





Before with normal crappy colors but without in game fog to compare....

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/268131/esoptimize-fog-removal-and-graphic-improvement/p1

I think that is all a matter of taste in the end - to me these screen shots are just "over-saturated" - some like it, but I don't.

I was thinking the same thing. I have several friends who have urged me to use SweetFX with pre-made profiles in various games because they say it looks vastly better than the default and I'll never be able to play without it again once I see how good it looks, but to me it just looks like someone's ramped up the contrast and everything looks over saturated and unrealistic.

If I spend a lot of time tweaking the settings I can make it look good to me, then I realise it's virtually identical to the game's default (case in point, once it stopped working and it took me a day to notice) and I uninstall it again.

The odd thing is I actually like bright colours, including games with bright, cartoony graphics. But not in games that are supposed to look realistic.