SweetFX Settings Database

I've been checking out the bf3 sweetfx database and I must say I'm very disappointed. All of the settings are really awful, namely they are crazy dark! I wanted to start from scratch, reset my sweetfx to default and thought I give it a go just to get rid of the foliage and white-out screen. Removed all turned on settings and tried to make the dark less dark and more visible, remove gloom and the shiny whites. But I ended up scratching my head because no matter what I tried black and shadows are insane dark. What I tried to fiddle with is Bloom, levels, lift gamma, contrast and curves but what I managed to do is just to wash the colors out a bit, tone down the bright but dark still stayed black like hell. I mean in full day light there are no solid dark shadows its just not realistic and most importantly makes the game unplayable, I feel like I need glasses (on top of my current glasses LOL). My goal currently: just get rid of the white-foliage and with sweetfx sharpening make the screen sharp and also make the shadows and black areas MUCH MORE lighter. Any help I would appreciate on the matter!

First of all download a good preset like K-putt's. This is just for trouble shooting and because I know not one of his presets are dark, in fact they are all incredibly well balanced and great tweaks. After that some of the settings that would make a scene darker are: HDR LEVELS CURVES TONEMAP LIFTGAMMAGAIN Turn off all those and see if it's still dark. If it is, it's your monitor. Your going to have to Google how to calibrate your monitor after that, after that's done come back to the preset and poof! It's no longer dark at all. If you'd rather just make a preset yourself: In order to make the scene brighter, Go to levels and lower the white point. Leave the black point at 0 so it uses the game's settings so your not making your game darker. Don't use HDR or curves on mode 0 (or 2) and don't play with tonemap Gamma. This by the way completely sounds like a monitor problem.

I mean, I just checked out K-putt'e Config 1.1 for BF3 and it's pretty damn good. Not one of those shadows are full black on my monitor at all and it's generally just a great improvement. Really sounds like it's your monitor, give that preset a try and do my steps above and if it's still black calibrate that bad-boy or worst scenario, use another monitor if you can.

Many thanks for the replies I check them right away and get back to you. I wonder whats going on with my BF3 setup. Don't think its my monitor though would be weird, never heard an lcd monitor gone bad like that. :D

Ok lets hold on for a second... Before I start talking about the game at all... http://sfx.thelazy.net/games/screenshot/4546/ This comparison screen... Both sweetfx on or off, if you look at the hillside at the picture's right side. Its dark like a dark night. The hill's texture is really hard to see. This is really not realistic in my book so I wan't to get rid of this blackness on maps with bright sun and only dark shadows should occure if there is the area is in a house or something. I mean there is a HUGE, unrealistic contrast between shadowy and lit areas. Let me know what you see,

Ok so my friend also telling me that on that screenshot that hillside area is not black. my monitor and vga settings on totally default (default 50% brightness, saturation, colors, etc.) my brightness on monitor was 60, I even tuned down to 50 because in gaming mode the white still really bright. Got a dell 2407WFP, not a cheap ass monitor to be honest.

Yeah that screenshot hillside is not full black on my monitor either, it's dark, but the details are still there. I don't know, since everyone's monitor is different you should just tweak those things i mentioned that make games dark.

Actually that hillside area looks about the same in both comparison images to me.

hello here, i looked at the comparaison and it's not dark so much on my screen, with sweetfx it's even less darker , the clear greys are more clear so the details are sharper H0PE did you try to calibrate your LCD ? do you have the summer 2006 or january 2007 (rev4) model ? because the 06 one is a lot darker and brighter too ;; if you look at http://ninjafada.com/img/gradiant.png you should see if the dark area is ok or too much black and read http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/562965/0 perhaps can help you calibrate or test values

I was a bit afraid that something happening with my LCD so I asked some friends. We agreed that the black area on the sun/shadow area on that map is not really realistic and there shouldn't be that many black shadows there. One of my friend told me though that its not black for him. However it turned out he had almost maxed out brightness set on his monitor that's why he saw more grey shadows than black. I understand its mostly personal reference and how people look at it, that is why its strange for me that people say its fine, not dark. But I have to accept it, not everyone got sensitive eyes. @ninjafada: Yes, thanks for that gradiant.png, its also a good tool to see that my monitor is perfectly fine. The gradient on my screen got 100% black only around the red line I set in my screenshot to prove to you guys my lcd is perfectly fine. The red line I set is the rough area where I see that there are no more (or non-visible) gradient anymore. https://flic.kr/p/oTd49q Don't mind the bad quality I saved the picture as a gif to reduce the quality. Not sure about the Rev though. Bought it around 2007 or 2008 don't know exactly. So all in all: comparing ANY KIND of shadow drawing and blackness drawing between bf3 and other games, bf3 got seriously wacky dark crazy shadows. Even if I set ultra shadow quality there are still unreasonably dark black shadows. Not on all maps though like played one of the night map recently and surprisingly that was fine LOL. I'll try to fiddle with the settings but I doubt I can improve on the shadow darkness that much in BF3. I let you know what I came up with and prob. copy my settings to BF3 because I really don't like any of the settings in sweetfx bf3 preset area.

you could try Lift Gamma Gain #define RGB_Lift float3(1.100, 1.100, 1.100) 1.1 is a lot si you will perhaps need to go down to 1.05 it's the only setting that will only change the shadows and not the rest yes bf3 shadow are weird because of lights sources , they are not dynamics multi layers shadows i have my lcd set so the black on the gradient is almost a few millimeters, so i have more details in the shadow , that's why all my presets are more darker without loosing details

Thanks.

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