Monitor brightness TEST
 

I have a little test I'd like to run with you. I haven't asked this in ages

Start the game and set up a rebel battle where both player 1 and 2 have the same nation. Set the battle controls to Human purchase and deploy for both sides and set the battle up to be one where player 2 is defending

When the purchase screen for BOTH sides appears just press done. The deployment screen for the rebel side ( player 2 ) will appear first. Press human deploy. There won't be any troops to deploy but find the Rebel black Victory hex flag then zoom all the way in then out one ( that brings you to the default zoom level.)


Do you see a diagonal line running from the top right corner to the bottom left corner of that Black Victory hex flag ?

I need a dozen or so responses. I just need yes or no

Thanks

Don

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Yes

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Yes

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Yes

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Yes

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I'll let this run a bit longer because I want more than just three responses but now that I have four Yes's please indicate how distinct the bar looks on this scale....

1/ Very clear and distinct line

2/ Noticeable but not sharply defined.

3/ Barely noticeable. I have to look for it

Then if you are a yes, please tell me what brightness setting you have your monitor set at.


Thanks


Don

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2/ Noticeable but not sharply defined.

Brightness = 4 of 10 (a tad darker then default)
Contrast = 6 of 10 (A tad higher then default)

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3/ Barely noticeable. I have to look for it
monitor:
brightness 86 of 100
Contrast 65 of 100
800x600 video settings
Wear glasses but my view is not the best:)

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yes
2/ Noticeable but not sharply defined
800x600 video setting
80% brightness and contrast

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Yes

2/ Noticeable but not sharply defined.

Brightness 60 of 100

cheers,

Tim

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Yes. This is what I'm seeing.

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What you are seeing depends entirely on how you have your monitor set up.

The screen shot in post #11 looks, to me, exactly the way I see the game but my answer to this question is NO, I DO NOT see that bar.

When I turn the brightness up on my monitor 25% I can say I can see it as "level 2" but that's not the way I run my monitor normally and it's obvious everyone who's answered back see the game somewhat differently than the guy who's created most of the graphics and photos in the game.

Years back ....( I can say that now because we've been at this 14 years as of the end of last month ) ... I asked the same question after seeing the game displayed on a friends computer and I was, quite frankly, appalled at how the game looked on his monitor. I can say with confidence that if that was how it looked to me in 1998 I would never have bothered developing it further because it looks as washed out, colourless and drab as a desert in the hot sun

The diagonal bar was deliberately put into the rebel flag as a gauge for brightness. It's just been so long since I viewed the game on another computer I forgot this might still be a problem but I had to run some tests on another machine the other day and it was a serious Deja vu moment

The bottom line is you should not be seeing that diagonal bar to be viewing the game "correctly". If you adjust your brightness down to the point it almost blends completely with the pure black background of the flag then give it one or two more clicks lower you are seeing the game the way I see the game.

Now, there's more to this than just viewing it "my way" . All the graphics produced for the game, the colours selected etc etc are based in that adjustment.

The diagonal bar is a deep blue grey. If pure white is colour #1 and pure black is colour 256 that diagonal bar is 242. It's DARK. It should be barely distinguishable from black with a good pair of eyes.

If most of you had said it's "barely noticeable. I have to look for it" you wouldn't be out by much, maybe 5-10% too bright but when you get into "Noticeable but not sharply defined" to me it washes the game out way too much to be even enjoyable to look at and I'm serious when I say if that was the way I saw it day after day there would be no day after that.

HUMOUR ME. Try playing the game with your monitors adjusted as described above. If you think it's too dark then so be it but thats the way the graphics have been set up to be viewed.

My eyes aren't perfect, far from it, but I cannot run any of my programs at the brightness level that would give me "Noticeable but not sharply defined" on those flags so it's not just a game issue

Don

Re: Monitor brightness TEST
 

The screenshot in #11 is a little more defined than mine, I think. I have the excuse that I'm running a Dreamcolor IPS monitor, though, so I don't really want to muck around with the settings too much.

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Yes

Brightness 20/100

Contrast 70/100

I think that it is clear and distinct.

Re: Monitor brightness TEST
 

Hmm, I just tried your settings, but I had to put brightness on 0% and Contrast down to about 15% before the bar disappeared which was long after the rest of the image was way too dark.
But then I think a good quality monitor is supposed to be able to do this to be honest.

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Every Monitor is different. Mine *seems" normal to me but it may nearing the end of it's life. That said I've never had to make yearly adjustments to make it "right" again.

If the original setting shows that bar appears distinct on your monitor AND you do not feel the colours displayed seem washed out and black seems deep and rich then I guess your original settings are good for your monitor and the game. It does seem like you have a higher end monitor. I'm basing my observations on two views of the game on other peoples machines and on both the colours were almost pastel in comparison to what I'm used to seeing on my Trinitron CRT.


Don

Re: Monitor brightness TEST
 

I did blow about £500-£600 on my monitor only a year or two ago, so it is fairly good.
But yes, I think I have been playing at a 'correct' setting because I've never thought the colours were washed out or pastel. The game has always looked ace to me!

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OK that's very good to hear. The examples that prompted this discussion may have been abnormalities or just poor monitors ( one was a laptop the other probably a low end LCD). It occurred to me that issues that occasionally crop up with the "quality" of the graphics might be related to that because the examples I cited were really washed out and did not look very attractive.

If players see that diagonal and feel the colours have good saturation then thats " a good thing" (tm):) It may be too that perhaps my monitor does not show the range some of the newer ones can and still maintain rich colour saturation

Don

Re: Monitor brightness TEST
 

LCD monitors struggle with the dark colors. There is a backlight on LCD monitors that is always on. This means that you can not get pure black. Perhaps higher end LCD monitors and ones that use LED for backlight can cope better with the dark colors, but they will never be as good as CRT monitors IMHO.

CRT monitors on the other hand have the electron beam that lights up the phosphor layer to produce pixels at exactly the wanted brightness levels. So CRT monitors usualy have a lot better color gradient and are able to display a wider range of brightness levels.

I have a 2 year old 22" LCD monitor that was in the middle price range when I bought it and it is impossible to make that line in the example picture disappear.

The only good thing about an LCD monitor is that it weights less than CRT and takes less room. Also it has a wery sharp image quality at its native resolution.

Other than that CRT monitors are supperior especialy in color richness and displaying various brightness levels. Also CRT is able to produce any resolution not just the native resolution. LCDs suffer in image quality while trying to emulate lower than native resolutions.

Down side to CRT is that they may struggle with the HD resolutions at 1920 × 1080. Also CRT monitors may flicker anoyingly if they have a lower than 85 Hz refresh rate. LCD monitors do not have this problem since they do not have a beam riding the screen. Granted some early LCDs had the trailing problem due to the crystals turning too slow.

Re: Monitor brightness TEST
 

Even with that would you consider the colours you do see in the game rich and saturated or weak and thin?

It would be so much simpler if we could exchange screen shots but everyones monitor shows the screen shots to their individual performance level


Don

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Rich and saturated. Not as rich and saturated as I would like, but good enough. I have a laptop with a horrible LCD screen and that could be described as having weak and thin colors.

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Here is a gradient I made using the grey bar in the flag.
The gradient is split into 4 segments.
On the last segment (the darkest one) number 28 would be the color seen in the flag. The gradient starts at luminosity 240 and ends at luminosity 1.

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And here is a gradient using the blue color.
This time the gradient starts from luminosity 120.

If the monitor is set up too bright you will loose detail on the high luminosity levels. The bars fuse together in the brighter colors.

If the monitor is set up too dark you loose the colors in the dark segment of the gradient.

You need to find a good balance for you monitor where not too many bright colors or dark colors disappear.

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The line is well defined & stands out well as it is several shades removed from the black background, I would describe it as a dark grey rather than a lighter shade of black.

There are free tests out there (try google) to allow people to set their monitors brightness contrast & gamma correctly so the monitor shows true colour to the best of its abilty.
That way things like photos display correctly as they assume you have your monitor set like this. As would most game designers I would guess & indeed these games look very good indeed on these settings.
I have seen it on other monitors both oversaturated making it look "gamey" & washed out with poor greys & greens, I would guess set to bright & lacking contrast, looked horrible.

XP & Win7 come with a very basic set of tests under display if I remember correctly that are better than nothng.

All monitors vary there are good & bad ones but it looks equally clear on my desktop & on my laptop. The laptop however has a small viewing angle otherwise the colours are washed out slightly. The line is still cllearly visible but the black is no longer a "rich" black its like the brightness is set to high & is possibly due to the backlighting.

Somebody mentioned LCDs cannot display pure black, this may or may not be true I dont know but the gradient supplied displays fine on my laptop. All the colours are distinguishable apart from the first & the last (lightest darkest) which look the same as the one beside it. Also tried looking at a photo of a black car & there are lots of shades of black so detail is defned.

ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5470 graphic card on Dell Inspiron N7010 Laptop display so probably an above average graphic card for a laptop. Setting it up correctly makes up for the deficencies in the display near enough so long as its viewed "head on"

That said the game is not graphic intensive it does nothing fancy & I think runs in 256 colours so even a basic on board graphics card & monitor should be able to display the game correctly if setup properly.

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First appologies for multi post upon reading think you were wanting line not to be visible so hope this helps though it throws a spanner in the works.

Size makes a big diffrence to the visibility of the line.
The picture you provided I can see the line just as displayed on the web page thumbnail but very clearly if I view the full picture.

However

If I run my game setting magnifcation so flag is approximately the same size I cant see the line. Infact I cant see the line at all on any magnifcaton for unit flags but I can cleary see the line at any magnification on the victory flags.

Ths is probably due to the human eye & extra width of the stripe letting your eye defne it.

Guessing here but this says to me if anything my game is fractionaly darker than yours or at least the picture provided.
Perhaps also my graphic card & or monitor is better than yours allowing the line to stand out easily to the eye once it gets above a certain size/ width.
On the gradient provided a diffrence of 3 or more along is clearly visible. In otherwords on a casual (normal) look 3 adjacent colours would not be noticed but the next would.
Considering its 20+ shades away from black it therefore stands out easily

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The line is only on the Victory flag graphic, so it is normal that you do not see it on the other flags.

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Here are the Red and Green gradients.

Figured I'd post these too so that we have a proper set of RBG colors...

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Okay my bad for wasting time thats what happens when do several things at once.
Suffice to say the game looks clean clear & crisp with vibrant colours I have commented before on how good it looks in the higher resolutions.
My brightness is set at about 43% through windows not the monitor & if I adjust it lower so the line vanishes all the last 7 shades of black in the gradient merge into one.
Modern grapic cards are very good went & looked at the car picture again & zoomed in on the tire, I could read most of what was writen on it & the shades were much closer together than the 2 in the game.