Screen Dimming

SkaraMinoc · April 16

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8088280/#Comment_8088280

Screen dimming while inactive (PC): All major consoles have an OS level setting to do this but there is no PC counterpart, so ESO now includes one built in for PC. At the same time your resolution drops, we will dim the screen on a PC client. We felt it worthwhile since the data we found shows that screens that are not as bright will consume less power, especially for LED/OLED screens.

Will we be able to disable this feature?

It's neither the responsibility nor the concern of any video game to be dimming the brightness of my monitor.

SkaraMinoc · April 16

Looks like it only reduces the brightness of the eso64.exe process itself and not the entire PC screen.

silky_soft · April 16

Still though. Is there an opt out?

SkaiFaith · April 16

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8088280/#Comment_8088280

Screen dimming while inactive (PC): All major consoles have an OS level setting to do this but there is no PC counterpart, so ESO now includes one built in for PC. At the same time your resolution drops, we will dim the screen on a PC client. We felt it worthwhile since the data we found shows that screens that are not as bright will consume less power, especially for LED/OLED screens.

Will we be able to disable this feature?

It's neither the responsibility nor the concern of any video game to be dimming the brightness of my monitor.

Excuse me, haven't you read about the "reduce to 30fps when on UI elements" part?
It is totally their responsibility and concern. (Sarcasm)

Necrotech_Master · April 16

yeah, i would disable this feature and the 30 FPS cap for being inactive

SkaraMinoc · April 16

I agree there should be an opt-out for players that don't want it.

I like it when video games automatically become screensavers on idle. Assassin's Creed Origins would automatically rotate the camera around the player after 5 or 10 minutes. It was neat to see the pyramids and Ancient Egypt as a screensaver.

NeuroticPixels · April 16

Sincerely curious… why would the game (not the monitor as a whole) getting dimmed (only for being inactive) be a problem? Why would people not want this?

Not judging in any way. Only want to understand.

Necrotech_Master · April 16

NeuroticPixels wrote: »

Sincerely curious… why would the game (not the monitor as a whole) getting dimmed (only for being inactive) be a problem? Why would people not want this?

Not judging in any way. Only want to understand.

in one of the other threads about this, sometimes people just sit around in game to enjoy the scenery, or recording the ambience

hard to do that with the game auto-lowering resolution, framerate, dimming, etc

Seravi · April 17

I am not on PTS so I was wondering is there any way to turn this off? ESO is a flea bite to my system so I don't need any management from a game on my system resources and my monitor. This game is getting a lot of system access it should not have.

How is the going to effect people that run two monitors off of one GPU? Are both screens going to dim?

Seriously why in the world is this being put into the game? Responsible adults manage their footprint on this planet just fine without outside help so there should be an option to turn this off.

Ezhh · April 17

Seravi wrote: »

How is the going to effect people that run two monitors off of one GPU? Are both screens going to dim?

It just dims the game (tested on double monitor set up).

CameraBeardThePirate · April 17

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

NeuroticPixels wrote: »

Sincerely curious… why would the game (not the monitor as a whole) getting dimmed (only for being inactive) be a problem? Why would people not want this?

Not judging in any way. Only want to understand.

in one of the other threads about this, sometimes people just sit around in game to enjoy the scenery, or recording the ambience

hard to do that with the game auto-lowering resolution, framerate, dimming, etc

OK but like, how many people are literally not touching their keyboard/controller just staring at the game for 5-10 minutes? I find it hard to believe that there's enough people doing that for this to be a problem, considering the screen won't dim so long as you're making some sort of input.

Necrotech_Master · April 17

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

NeuroticPixels wrote: »

Sincerely curious… why would the game (not the monitor as a whole) getting dimmed (only for being inactive) be a problem? Why would people not want this?

Not judging in any way. Only want to understand.

in one of the other threads about this, sometimes people just sit around in game to enjoy the scenery, or recording the ambience

hard to do that with the game auto-lowering resolution, framerate, dimming, etc

OK but like, how many people are literally not touching their keyboard/controller just staring at the game for 5-10 minutes? I find it hard to believe that there's enough people doing that for this to be a problem, considering the screen won't dim so long as you're making some sort of input.

i have no idea lol

just saying it was a thing people do, so at least some % of the playerbase partakes in that kind of activity

Seravi · April 17

Ezhh wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

How is the going to effect people that run two monitors off of one GPU? Are both screens going to dim?

It just dims the game (tested on double monitor set up).

Thanks for testing!

Playing devils advocate here, why does ESO need to monitor and manage MY system resources? If I am idle 5 minutes or 30 minutes what does it matter to ZOS? Are the servers having problems and we get managed because of it? Seriously there has to be more to this than "saving the planet".

I just hope this is an OPTION we can opt out of if we choose.

Wolf_Eye · April 19

Seravi wrote: »

Ezhh wrote: »

Seravi wrote: »

How is the going to effect people that run two monitors off of one GPU? Are both screens going to dim?

It just dims the game (tested on double monitor set up).

Thanks for testing!

Playing devils advocate here, why does ESO need to monitor and manage MY system resources? If I am idle 5 minutes or 30 minutes what does it matter to ZOS? Are the servers having problems and we get managed because of it? Seriously there has to be more to this than "saving the planet".

I just hope this is an OPTION we can opt out of if we choose.

It is not an option we can opt out of. I went on and check the PTS just now and can find nothing in the settings that allows you to do so. It will be enforced on everyone.

Also, graphics stuff like this only really affects your GPU and your monitor (and to a lesser extent your CPU). Decreasing your brightness on your monitor isn't going to make the servers more stable.

DewiMorgan · April 19

I'm one of those to whom this improvement is likely directed, and I appreciate it. I idle frequently, so often get booted out for inactivity. I look forward to having advance warning of this, by having my screen dim a bit beforehand, so if I've got distracted by something else, I'll get a visible notification before the frustration of having to type in my password and select the character and go through the load screens all over again. By the time I've logged back in, I'm usually distracted again, and the cycle continues.

To avoid the screen-dimming, I assume I'll just need to do the thing I normally do to avoid getting logged off: twitch my mouse.

No big hardship, nor a big change, other than being considerably more convenient and less punishing of failure than the login screen.

I'm no ZOS dev, but I am a dev, and have been an MMO dev. It is our duty as developers, as a matter of professional ethics, to responsibly manage our application's use of system resources. That absolutely includes user-idle management.

We call this responsibility "paying our taxes". Handling widescreen, multiple monitors, and screen orientation? CPU and GPU use? Multiple monitors? Virtual machines? Remote desktop? Windowing and resizing and minimizing/restoring? Screen lock and suspend? Accessibility, dark mode, gamepad mode? Localization/I18n? Network use? Battery/power use? Idle timeouts? It's all taxes, and there are so many more. The OS isn't magic, and can't pay them for us, though it tries... bless its cotton socks, it sure tries.

ESO doesn't pay all possible taxes, but it is surprisingly good about those it does pay.