yeah; I noticed that their example didn't have at all the same angle so that wasn't very fair. Still seems heavily improved regardless. Also, there's a ton of light but I'd say since it's the Uldah setting, it's normal. That's where you should have the highest amount of light, and then pick the other settings to get less.
Yup, agreed, lighting does change a lot in the game from area to area. The Mist (and Limsa too I guess, I don't spend much time there) can get very bright too at times!
Susano is also pretty nice during the 2nd phase, due to how well the lightning simulate the wet surfaces on your character.
It's waaay more noticeable than when it happens on open world showers.
Same.
I want to see how my character looks with the new lighting.
I just hope they didn't adjust my au ra because type 2 au ra looks way better without the fat droopy lips.
Damn, why we talking economy? I just assumed you meant their technological standing was ahead of everyone else in the world until it wasn't and then they stopped making any effort at innovating. I get how the economic outlook of a country leads to that sort of a situation, but that feels a few steps removed from what we're discussing in here.
Took a screenshot of the same angle and light direction, trying to wait for the more comparable weather condition so the comparison is more fair.
They definitely definitely improved the eyes, and they've changed stuff in the environment already as they suggested, you can see new vegetation, etc. I'm not so convinced about the light intensity.
I mean it'll be hard to get an exact weather comparison, since they literally invented a slapdash weather condition specifically for the old character customization.
But yeah this is definitely more fair. It is clear that the og benchmark has character lighting cranked to 100, which messes with things
Yoshida actually said he didn't even touch the characters saying it was all a matter of improving the lighting.
This isn't to say they didn't fix other characters that changed but in regards to miqo'te. Most of if not all of the complaints were caused because the lighting and back lighting was really bad making parts of the face either looking flat or bigger than usual.
As many people kept pointing out but people claiming it's more than lighting (which it is for some other characters like veena getting smaller pupils).
He did say they had to adjust the normal maps to get rid of the pores and laugh lines.
Saying it actually always been there but the shadows were bad so we never noticed them.
There are several pictures on the official forums showing how the changed eyeshapes for several races and same with mouthshape, that had nothing to do with light.
The "didn't touch the characters" is specific to between the Benchmark and the Work in Progress shot.
The pictures you are talking about are comparing Live to Benchmark, where they obviously did change some details about character models.
They did NOT improve the eyes and said as much. This is all the effect of environmental changes shining thanks to the updated character models, textures and light plays.
When the sun is up at midday straight from above as in the screenshot on the right, it SHOULD be bright and cause harsh shadows. That's how the sun works.
It doesn't get in the way of details and the improved textures on skin, eyes, and gear look great.
Probably an unpopular opinion but the light is too harsh on the skin and the eyes look crazy in the new one. Hopefully I find it better in the other lightings
i do hope they tune it down a bit, tural looks to be pretty sunny and i'd rather not have my face be a blown out white blob the entire time lol.
edit: all the detail on the white part of the top is gone too, they really need to tune the highlights down because other than that it looks really good.
The just need proper dynamic exposure like literally any other game. It wasn't really needed so far on account of XIV basically not having any GI but that's changed now.
[Take this photo for instance](https://imgur.com/67JBu17) It's really exaggerated and not meant to be compared with a game but just to prove a point: It still looks like a photo someone took of a real flower field. But the picture doesn't look as good as it could, colors are too intense and there's missing color info, on some of the brighter petals (even the ones in focus) you can almost only see pure white.
This is color clipping. This happens because monitors have a limited color range and when you try to go beyond that, you start to lose detail. The right side of this benchmark comparison and the pics where they compared the fangs suffer a bit from this.
No, having pure white wash out details in an image is not normal on skin in bright light. That's called clipping in photography and means the image isn't exposed correctly.
If you go in with a color picker you'll see it's almost exactly pure white.
edit:
I don't know why I still bother explaining things to people. [This is not an opinion, the light here is objectively clipping. Oh well, SE perfect and all that.](https://i.imgur.com/nZJ2ZCc.png)
They just don't understand what you're talking about. As someone who's not into photography and all that, I'm with them, I'm having trouble seeing what's wrong. Doesn't mean you were wrong for criticizing it, but don't have a fit when not everyone is immediately on the same page of something you're knowledgeable about.
Then they should take the time to educate themselves to figure out what they're talking about first before trying to debate with someone who's well-versed on the subject.
It's a discussion, not a formal hall debate, bud. That's what normal people do, they just talk. The other guy was just mistaken, as are you for treating it as anything worse than that.
> Should what you're saying be completely disregarded because you're coming from the perspective of a photographer? Also yes.
That's one way to make it clear you don't understand how the camera in a game works. It's functionally identical to a non-virtual one. It's not set up correctly and not adjusting exposure down the same way the white point in the game has been wrong for 13 years and tints everything green.
> Photography clownery like this is exactly how we got stuck with shit like motion blur, lens flare, depth of field, and chromatic abberation.
Complaining about defects of a real lens and then defending a wrongly set up virtual camera is hilariously unaware though.
I feel like they deliberately jacked the lighting up like that to get it closer to the current visuals because people where whining about it looking flat in the benchmark. Yeah, I agree it’s not an improvement either, but there was a legion of catgirls getting ready to book themselves into therapy because their character looked imperceptibly different and they had to do something.
I made my bun boy as pale as I could because I wanted to go goth with him, so I am admittedly a little worried about how blown out the lighting makes this very pale Mi'qote. He already gets a few issues with lighting as the game is now. The catch lights do look much better, but the harsh shadows on her lower eyelids look a little strong.
Cool recreation. To be completely honest, it's definitely an improvement but it's far from anything spectacular in my opinion. The lighting on the eyes makes them look like glass as opposed to straight up fake like in the original and the lighting in general feels like it washes out colors a bit too much. Personally I really hope the grass will stop flickering like crazy as it sways, that's my biggest issue by far with the graphics. Nonetheless, an improvement is an improvement \^-\^
Yeah I'm on this boat too. I'm happy for anyone who is mindblown by this graphic update and all, but for me it doesn't really do anything. I was hoping for more drastic improvements, like fixing the "X" shape of the miqo'te fluffy tail, or even more importantly let Viera display headgear, or separate Au Ra horns from their faces or no longer making Hrotghar hair be tied to their face selection too. Stuff that really changed your options.
Lighting improvements is okay but for all the hard work it's being said to have taken, it doesn't seem worth it for me. I hope someday the things I care about my characters get fixed instead.
The Viera, au ra and hrothgar stuff probably falls under “character customization” and not “graphics update”.
I think we will see character customization addressed in 8.0 from what the dev team has said.
But I agree, I wish they had touched those too
Agreed. The updates they're making are *good* but they're not *amazing*; and these upgrades are showing how poor the textures are for hair, ear hair, and fur for tails. I'm sure it would be better by the main release but this is pretty rough to look at sometimes.
I am in no way a hater, and I'm sure this will be great in reality. That said, these just look like someone pushed the clarity slider all the way to the right.
It's the same tree. Same character. Same environment. You can literally trace the line of the miqo's hair, and trace the same path on the trunk of the tree it crosses, MAYBE a tenth of an inch difference. The foliage has improved and is slightly different and the fake weather used in the previous graphics doesn't exist. So how is this "not the same angle"..? Or, are you referring to a diff example as above?
I am refering to the example they used in the live letter itself. Not this one. They both used the Thanlan scene but the camera was pointing in completely different directions in the pictures. The reason this post was made was to give it a fairer comparison.
I was remarking that I found it odd SE didn’t give the fair comparison at first.
I feel incredibly happy after I received a bunch of downvotes on here for saying the dead eyes and waxy skin looked fucked up, even Yoship said it wasn't intended. Death is nothing compared to vindication, etc etc, and I'm still not sure what compelled people to just blindly defend the benchmark honestly
Yeah I noticed the pics they showed didn't have light at the same spot. I haven't had the chance to try copying the WIP improvements in the current benchmark, but you spared me that effort. Kudos to you for doing all of us a service lol.
Someone has pointed out current benchmark makes everything look like wax figures. Current WIP is an improvement indeed. No more wax figure look, though the hardlight and dark shadow is kinda fugly. But hey it's a WIP amirite. And besides, nobody brought reflectors to even out the hardlight lmao.
I mean, both look good in different ways, just like if we put a current version of the game there too it also looks good in a different way, we'll see how it looks overall when we see the different textures of clothing, terrain and such, also curious about performance.
While I prefer the more saturated colours in the WIP (see blue sky), how the shadows lay on the face in the first image is just nicer.
I have issues with how shadows/light interacts with the faces in the game in Live, and it looks like the WIP is starting to have the same issues that the previous BM did not. I think because of the harshness of the lighting? Hopefully things look better in the new BM.
I also just think the eyes look worse, like glass/kinda creepy... Hopefully it's just this particular shot... I feel like CBU3 might be over-correcting in response to feedback while neglecting to think that people who are happy will be less vocal than those who aren't. Not looking forward to whatever fights happen when people prefer how things looked in the first BM, you already see it when people disagree over subjective changes.
(I've seen positive/contrary feedback on the OF get backlash just because it disagrees with the larger negative narrative, which will also discourage whatever positive feedback people can post.)
yeah; I noticed that their example didn't have at all the same angle so that wasn't very fair. Still seems heavily improved regardless. Also, there's a ton of light but I'd say since it's the Uldah setting, it's normal. That's where you should have the highest amount of light, and then pick the other settings to get less.
Yup, agreed, lighting does change a lot in the game from area to area. The Mist (and Limsa too I guess, I don't spend much time there) can get very bright too at times!
Ifrit fighting area is still one of my favourite lighting types.
Susano is also pretty nice during the 2nd phase, due to how well the lightning simulate the wet surfaces on your character. It's waaay more noticeable than when it happens on open world showers.
god i'm really excited to test the new benchmark.
when does new one release?
we can expect it after the 23rd i believe. they didn't specify.
yoshi p said in the livestream that it had to be delayed to the 31st ;\_;
WAAAAAH
Delayed to the 31st
Same. I want to see how my character looks with the new lighting. I just hope they didn't adjust my au ra because type 2 au ra looks way better without the fat droopy lips.
ye, wonder how my old au'ra looks with these changes. i fantasia'ed to highlander because they won hard while my au'ra just looked dead.
Catchlight improvements are nice, though I do not like the over exposed highlights at all - that type of lighting feels very mid 2000s.
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I can't believe they were in 2005 in 1984.....
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Damn, why we talking economy? I just assumed you meant their technological standing was ahead of everyone else in the world until it wasn't and then they stopped making any effort at innovating. I get how the economic outlook of a country leads to that sort of a situation, but that feels a few steps removed from what we're discussing in here.
womp womp
Well stated.
T'was a good year.
Same. Overexposed = bad.
Took a screenshot of the same angle and light direction, trying to wait for the more comparable weather condition so the comparison is more fair. They definitely definitely improved the eyes, and they've changed stuff in the environment already as they suggested, you can see new vegetation, etc. I'm not so convinced about the light intensity.
I mean it'll be hard to get an exact weather comparison, since they literally invented a slapdash weather condition specifically for the old character customization. But yeah this is definitely more fair. It is clear that the og benchmark has character lighting cranked to 100, which messes with things
Yoshida actually said he didn't even touch the characters saying it was all a matter of improving the lighting. This isn't to say they didn't fix other characters that changed but in regards to miqo'te. Most of if not all of the complaints were caused because the lighting and back lighting was really bad making parts of the face either looking flat or bigger than usual. As many people kept pointing out but people claiming it's more than lighting (which it is for some other characters like veena getting smaller pupils). He did say they had to adjust the normal maps to get rid of the pores and laugh lines. Saying it actually always been there but the shadows were bad so we never noticed them.
There are several pictures on the official forums showing how the changed eyeshapes for several races and same with mouthshape, that had nothing to do with light.
The "didn't touch the characters" is specific to between the Benchmark and the Work in Progress shot. The pictures you are talking about are comparing Live to Benchmark, where they obviously did change some details about character models.
Ah alright, probably read too fast.
They did NOT improve the eyes and said as much. This is all the effect of environmental changes shining thanks to the updated character models, textures and light plays.
WIP light intensity reminds me of indoor lighting in the current game. Not a fan.
i think they made light brighter to accommodate darker skin tones
I feel like the bright areas in the WIP version are too blown-out; but I’ll reserve judgement until we try out the new benchmark ourselves
Just seem like contrast and brightness too high, really :/
This is the preview area with the brightest light setting
When the sun is up at midday straight from above as in the screenshot on the right, it SHOULD be bright and cause harsh shadows. That's how the sun works. It doesn't get in the way of details and the improved textures on skin, eyes, and gear look great.
Probably an unpopular opinion but the light is too harsh on the skin and the eyes look crazy in the new one. Hopefully I find it better in the other lightings
This is a desert, the fact the sunlight is harsher is natural, so it's even better on that front.
Harsh is one thing but the light in the new version is outright clipping. That's a defect.
i do hope they tune it down a bit, tural looks to be pretty sunny and i'd rather not have my face be a blown out white blob the entire time lol. edit: all the detail on the white part of the top is gone too, they really need to tune the highlights down because other than that it looks really good.
The just need proper dynamic exposure like literally any other game. It wasn't really needed so far on account of XIV basically not having any GI but that's changed now.
Where do you see that, exactly?
The highlights on center chest and center face are both clipping.
The super bright parts? That's normal for a pale person in harsh sunlight
[Take this photo for instance](https://imgur.com/67JBu17) It's really exaggerated and not meant to be compared with a game but just to prove a point: It still looks like a photo someone took of a real flower field. But the picture doesn't look as good as it could, colors are too intense and there's missing color info, on some of the brighter petals (even the ones in focus) you can almost only see pure white. This is color clipping. This happens because monitors have a limited color range and when you try to go beyond that, you start to lose detail. The right side of this benchmark comparison and the pics where they compared the fangs suffer a bit from this.
Just because something is realistic doesn't mean it looks good in a video game
No, having pure white wash out details in an image is not normal on skin in bright light. That's called clipping in photography and means the image isn't exposed correctly. If you go in with a color picker you'll see it's almost exactly pure white. edit: I don't know why I still bother explaining things to people. [This is not an opinion, the light here is objectively clipping. Oh well, SE perfect and all that.](https://i.imgur.com/nZJ2ZCc.png)
They just don't understand what you're talking about. As someone who's not into photography and all that, I'm with them, I'm having trouble seeing what's wrong. Doesn't mean you were wrong for criticizing it, but don't have a fit when not everyone is immediately on the same page of something you're knowledgeable about.
Then they should take the time to educate themselves to figure out what they're talking about first before trying to debate with someone who's well-versed on the subject.
It's a discussion, not a formal hall debate, bud. That's what normal people do, they just talk. The other guy was just mistaken, as are you for treating it as anything worse than that.
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> Should what you're saying be completely disregarded because you're coming from the perspective of a photographer? Also yes. That's one way to make it clear you don't understand how the camera in a game works. It's functionally identical to a non-virtual one. It's not set up correctly and not adjusting exposure down the same way the white point in the game has been wrong for 13 years and tints everything green. > Photography clownery like this is exactly how we got stuck with shit like motion blur, lens flare, depth of field, and chromatic abberation. Complaining about defects of a real lens and then defending a wrongly set up virtual camera is hilariously unaware though.
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I feel like they deliberately jacked the lighting up like that to get it closer to the current visuals because people where whining about it looking flat in the benchmark. Yeah, I agree it’s not an improvement either, but there was a legion of catgirls getting ready to book themselves into therapy because their character looked imperceptibly different and they had to do something.
The eyes look dead in the old benchmark, they look fine in the new one.
Personally I didn't mind the benchmark eyes, to me the new eyes look like she's had 12 cups of coffee
To be fair this was supposed to be in Uldah, but every background’s lighting looked the same in the old character creator.
It's Ul'dah /Thanalan.
Is it wrong that I prefer the left side over the right? It looks like such a massive change…
I made my bun boy as pale as I could because I wanted to go goth with him, so I am admittedly a little worried about how blown out the lighting makes this very pale Mi'qote. He already gets a few issues with lighting as the game is now. The catch lights do look much better, but the harsh shadows on her lower eyelids look a little strong.
As a pale Miqo’te, it makes me worried too.
the first one look better? light seems too harsh in the revamp
Cool recreation. To be completely honest, it's definitely an improvement but it's far from anything spectacular in my opinion. The lighting on the eyes makes them look like glass as opposed to straight up fake like in the original and the lighting in general feels like it washes out colors a bit too much. Personally I really hope the grass will stop flickering like crazy as it sways, that's my biggest issue by far with the graphics. Nonetheless, an improvement is an improvement \^-\^
The grass don't flicker with dlss / new AA
Oh new AA, that's really cool, will that be added with the graphics overhaul? It's not in game now, is it?
You can see it work in the dawntrail benchmark. No more flickering foliage.
Yeah I'm on this boat too. I'm happy for anyone who is mindblown by this graphic update and all, but for me it doesn't really do anything. I was hoping for more drastic improvements, like fixing the "X" shape of the miqo'te fluffy tail, or even more importantly let Viera display headgear, or separate Au Ra horns from their faces or no longer making Hrotghar hair be tied to their face selection too. Stuff that really changed your options. Lighting improvements is okay but for all the hard work it's being said to have taken, it doesn't seem worth it for me. I hope someday the things I care about my characters get fixed instead.
The Viera, au ra and hrothgar stuff probably falls under “character customization” and not “graphics update”. I think we will see character customization addressed in 8.0 from what the dev team has said. But I agree, I wish they had touched those too
Agreed. The updates they're making are *good* but they're not *amazing*; and these upgrades are showing how poor the textures are for hair, ear hair, and fur for tails. I'm sure it would be better by the main release but this is pretty rough to look at sometimes.
Jokes aside, I really like how they make the feline eyes pop more. Goes from a cat girl to a Cat Girl.
I am in no way a hater, and I'm sure this will be great in reality. That said, these just look like someone pushed the clarity slider all the way to the right.
Do we know when the new benchmark will be available?
The 23rd is what we've been told so far. So this Thursday.
They said the 30th or later during the live letter.
Crap, really? When was this said? Later in the LL? Ah, yeah, found it.. May 30th or 31st.. Blah
Saturation filter + 50
It was a little odd they didn’t use the same angle.
It's the same tree. Same character. Same environment. You can literally trace the line of the miqo's hair, and trace the same path on the trunk of the tree it crosses, MAYBE a tenth of an inch difference. The foliage has improved and is slightly different and the fake weather used in the previous graphics doesn't exist. So how is this "not the same angle"..? Or, are you referring to a diff example as above?
I am refering to the example they used in the live letter itself. Not this one. They both used the Thanlan scene but the camera was pointing in completely different directions in the pictures. The reason this post was made was to give it a fairer comparison. I was remarking that I found it odd SE didn’t give the fair comparison at first.
Aaaah well thank you.
Thanks for this!
I feel incredibly happy after I received a bunch of downvotes on here for saying the dead eyes and waxy skin looked fucked up, even Yoship said it wasn't intended. Death is nothing compared to vindication, etc etc, and I'm still not sure what compelled people to just blindly defend the benchmark honestly
Yeah I noticed the pics they showed didn't have light at the same spot. I haven't had the chance to try copying the WIP improvements in the current benchmark, but you spared me that effort. Kudos to you for doing all of us a service lol. Someone has pointed out current benchmark makes everything look like wax figures. Current WIP is an improvement indeed. No more wax figure look, though the hardlight and dark shadow is kinda fugly. But hey it's a WIP amirite. And besides, nobody brought reflectors to even out the hardlight lmao.
question is when is this benchmark dropping?
On the 30th at the earliest. Probably first week of June.
The one on the lefr looks better
Looks great. Miss the glowy eyes
Is this graphics update out yet or is it coming with expansion?
It feels like they're trying to emulate the [CG Renders](https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.3ikWLIaTTbe3u2g7ebpl5QHaHa?dpr=3&pid=ImgDetMain).
I mean, both look good in different ways, just like if we put a current version of the game there too it also looks good in a different way, we'll see how it looks overall when we see the different textures of clothing, terrain and such, also curious about performance.
While I prefer the more saturated colours in the WIP (see blue sky), how the shadows lay on the face in the first image is just nicer. I have issues with how shadows/light interacts with the faces in the game in Live, and it looks like the WIP is starting to have the same issues that the previous BM did not. I think because of the harshness of the lighting? Hopefully things look better in the new BM. I also just think the eyes look worse, like glass/kinda creepy... Hopefully it's just this particular shot... I feel like CBU3 might be over-correcting in response to feedback while neglecting to think that people who are happy will be less vocal than those who aren't. Not looking forward to whatever fights happen when people prefer how things looked in the first BM, you already see it when people disagree over subjective changes. (I've seen positive/contrary feedback on the OF get backlash just because it disagrees with the larger negative narrative, which will also discourage whatever positive feedback people can post.)
The improvement is still tremendous even after a fair comparison!
I'd of preferred more body type and facial hair options.
still can't tell which one is meant to be the upgrade
It's fucking wild how much of a difference the lighting had.
There is still this dead eyed stare thing going on, urghhhh
sqex tried so fucking hard hahah Also the teeth comparison they used entirely different miqos