Friday Facts #168 - Nightvision Nightmare

[PandaGOD]

If i would follow realism, i would say that light areas should be "impossible" to walk if u got nightvision on.

NightVision should increase the ammount of light u take, there for, the more light the worst since u cant see anything. (Maybe a auto deactivate goggles on light areas? Or keybind it)

This on the realism part, as for the game and images on FFF, i love the 2nd one

[Axios]

Your biggest problem with nightvision is that you're trying to simultaneously address 2 design goals:

(1) Nightvision should improve the appearance of dark areas
(2) Areas the player lit should still look accurate

In real life, you only wear night vision when you go into dark areas. In a brightly lit area, nightvision would wash out and present a less compelling image than unassisted vision.

My proposal:

Make Nightvision easy to toggle on and off - the player only puts on your nightvision goggles when going into a dark area. This still rewards the player for lighting things up, while still allowing a thematically appropriate filter that truely does improve visibility when venturing outside the base. In brightly lit areas, nightvision can still look terrible - it's not for here. Splitting out Identification, friend or foe (IFF) functionality would allow the player to have an accurate picture of what's going on at all times.

These were some quick mockups trying to illustrate the concept - ideally there's be some proper green filtering and soft edges going on.

Default State

Night Vision - Washing out Brightly Lit areas, making dark areas visible

Night Vision Off with IFF module on

Night Vision On with IFF module on

My +1 to this suggestion.

Actually I find night vision not too useful inside the base because I carefully place lights.

[JadeSpider]

For the nightvision, have you tried lowering the contrast and color saturation in unlit areas without applying a tint? If everything was just near-gray and low contrast without the annoying green effect, I think it would look much better while still rewarding base lights by not applying the effect where there are lights.

I also like the suggestion about leaving it alone but being able to easily turn it on and off.

[Boogalo]

Green night vision is such a tired mechanic that I think it would be nice if it just made the base most dark things can be a bit brighter incremented by how many goggles you have equipped and leave the green tint/vision penalty off entirely.

It makes a little sense in first person games but not when the camera is overhead/external.

[maniak1349]

I always though that nightvision should look something like that:

With NGV

With NVG

nvg3on.png (2.08 MiB) Viewed 7596 times

Without NVG

nvg3off_.png (2.03 MiB) Viewed 7596 times

Basically its boosting contrast in the dark areas, which allows you to see more details in the dark yet being not very useful in brightly lit areas. Right now NVG is lowering overall contrast which results in seeing less detail everywhere.

From what the other guys said - ability to choose a preferred color for NVG in game options and ability to quickly switch NVG on and off will be a realy good thing. Different modes for NVG (heat/biter vision) is a good idea too.

[Splitframe]

Picture 2

[stootachtig]

Why not pick the Fallout 4 way and let people pick their own colors for their huds/nightvision? With advanced enough science, it does not have to be a certain colour

[anarcobra]

I never use night vision because of the green color, and I think the 3rd option is worse than what we have now.
Maybe it would look better if you make it black and white with night vision.
Or alternatively, just let night vision make it look like daytime, this is what most players want I think, and I'm not sure what the green tinge is supposed to add in terms of gameplay.

[Glitterspin]

I really like the idea of realistic night vision, with it being too bright in well-lit areas, and shutting off automatically or with a keybind.

Also the tone so far seems to be that picture #2 from the FFF is the best one presented. I definitely feel the same way! I don't like pic #3 at all.

Also, specifically regarding colorblindness, I'm mildly red/green colorblind and I don't have probelm with the current nightvision mostly. That being said, I think that a nightvision option would be super cool. Maybe have a head inventory slot, so night vision is available a little earlier?

[Xarovin]

I personally think it'd be better as actual night vision that can't cope with bright areas, but have a toggle button or an option to have it automatically toggle based on the light level.

I find myself removing the goggles when I'm in a well lit base, as it looks much better just with the natural lighting and lamps. I'd then have to re-equip the goggles if I wanted to venture out.
The example images are a good idea, but they both look really odd (1st looks like the lamps are sucking the green away, and the 2nd one looks like radioactive stuff is leaking from the factory), I think the main problem is coming from trying to mix both bright and dark

Edit: nolcotin had the right idea lol, here's a quick mockup using his first image, All I did was remove the red and blue channels and bumped up the brightness, but you get the idea :p

image

[AcolyteOfRocket]

Hmm, Nightvision still looks pants I'm afraid.

I'll stick with the flamethrower

[mdqp]

To be honest, all the new versions of nightvision not only look worse, but actually make it even less useful (having lighter and darker areas at the same time will only make it harder to see anything, and the nightvision is already not great). If the green filter is the problem, then please, remove it, perhaps use scale of gray.

[darkweaver]

nightvision has always been ugly. And it's just a game, no need for reality stuff, i'm an advocate for the no green filter.
Heck, let's get rid of those useless googles and use a lit armor (don't know how to word it in english :X) that turns you into a powerful lamp.

[MeduSalem]

Brrr... the additional green glow from the FFF example makes it look even worse than it currently is.

I'd say just make the night vision black and white like mentioned in the FF if people can't stand looking at a greenish screen.


Or maybe try a different color... how about a Sepia-like filter instead? That's not as "punishing" to the eye. Something like that:

0.13 - Smart Furnace 1a.jpg (407.85 KiB) Viewed 7588 times

Needs to be tweaked though.. because "ALT"-Info shouldn't be in sepia

[porcupine]

What's all this reality crap people keep posting about? You're some far out space man, on an alien world, who can carry around diesel locomotives in your pant pockets (hello, capsule corp anybody?).

The idea things have to be green for night vision... That just doesn't align with the rest of the gameplay.

I'd like to see better lights (as science/ugprades), along with better night vision (again, science/upgrades). Grayscale would be fine as far as I'm concerned (or partial grey scale), but as others have said, let people pick their own colors really.

I'm > 50 hours into a bobs mods map, and I have absolutely no freaking clue where night vision kicks in, but I'm clearly not near it, wherever it might be (getting near dark blue science now, almost out of light blue to research, spending my days clearing more space for solar and security needs with bot assisted turret lines and lots of ridiculous creeeeeep, since my biter nests fill entire 4k screens, with swarming biters in > 70% of the tiles).

Also, pink barf, everywhere. maybe Night Vision would get rid of my garbagebubble gum issues?

[daemonworks]

Most of the options are kinda terrible... and what's with the green anyways? Yeah, that used to be a thing, but that was quite a while ago, not in the distant future.
Just desaturate the colours to get a reasonable approximation of realistic night vision.

[sebas]

I would suggest for the night vision view:

normal view near lights or gun fire, like it's now without night vision
slightly darker and grayer without lights, so you still have an advantage by putting up lights

Because the green at the moment and on those pictures is quite ugly and annoying. It would really be a nice quality of life improvement .

[MiloRK]

Although I agree with some of the new night vision criticism--it could use some work--I really like the thinking behind it! Rewarding placement of lighting is an interesting idea, and other optic benefits could add to the usefulness of researching and wearing night vision goggles. Here's my stab at a night vision concept:

No night vision

Normal Vision.png (2.58 MiB) Viewed 7584 times

Night vision

Night Vision.png (3.13 MiB) Viewed 7584 times

Maybe you could upgrade your optics to get thermal vision:

No night or thermal vision

Normal Vision_1.png (2.81 MiB) Viewed 7584 times

Night and thermal vision

Night Vision_1.png (2.66 MiB) Viewed 7584 times

Great Friday Facts, as always!

[irbork]

Night vision googles are pretty much useless to anyone who cares about their eyesight. It is nice to see how cool it looks for the first time and never use it again. Like motion blur, depth of field and low quality aa in other games it only makes your eyes tired and causes early need to wear glasses. The best solution is to implement in options same effect that light radius mod provides, especially taking under consideration that you may spend hundreds of hours playing this game.

[gvblake22]

I agree that there is too much green effect. What about instead of green, it was more of an infrared night vision effect; like MiloRK's suggestion. The contrast and detail can still be there but it is just washed out with grayscale (black and white) instead of green.