7.2 Lighting is hurting my eyes.

Hi, I went and made a post in the Dawntrail character graphics update thread, but I wanted to make a thread specifically because 7.2 environmental lighting is hurting my eyes with no way to turn it down, or off. Even in 7.0, some areas like The Quicksands in Ul'dah felt way too dark. And now the lighting is even more aggressive in these already dark areas, which makes seeing things even more difficult.

The lighting was fine enough in 7.0 itself, but now passing by any Dawntrail Aetheryte kind of makes my eyes twitch. I hope these images show just how bright this all comes off as. I am currently playing on 50 for gamma correction, but neither 0 nor 100 really corrects how intense the brightness comes off as.

https://i.imgur.com/4PVOneu.png

https://i.imgur.com/XtIUwln.png

https://i.imgur.com/3NnRPcZ.png

So I'm begging, because it's starting to hurt my eyes and not in a ha-ha toxic kind of hurting my eyes way, in a potential health concerning kind of way... Please undo the lighting changes, or please make the lighting a toggle or something the player can tone down, since I only see options for shadows, and turning my Graphics down from Maximum to Standard (Desktop) does not change how immensely aggressive the lighting is now.

When not looking at the aggressive lighting itself, it's so prevalent that even while staring at my Viera, the lighting has to rear its obtuse head through my ears. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about for Viera ears, I'll post the images I put in the character graphics update thread. I don't like it at all and wish my ears wouldn't do that, like they didn't in Endwalker. But some people may like it, so make it optional.

https://i.imgur.com/Zn5ThRo.png

https://i.imgur.com/2iOvYP4.png

In short, the new lighting is so aggressive that I've had to stop playing after running Vanguard to write this post and my migraine still isn't gone because I've skimmed around to take a few screenshots. Not every source of light needs to radiate intensity two feet away from it. I do not play this game for realism.

If it's hurting your eyes, please seek an eye doctor.

reading this also hurts my eyes

i think theres eyewear for gamers, if that troubles you thaat much?

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

reading this also hurts my eyes

i think theres eyewear for gamers, if that troubles you thaat much?

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Those are just blue light filters, and there are dozens of programs that do the same thing for free. Lighting can still be too intense and penetrate anything like that.

The shadows are jittery and flickering and look terrible (a good example is on Sphene and Krile in Backroom cutscenes around their head and shoulders). It literally looks like "marching ants" on some textures or along edges where shadow meets bright light.

You can see lighting/shadows blinking on and off on the Goblet West marketboard during certain lighting as another example.

The glow/bloom on things are insanely bright and has been awful since the graphics update with no way to adjust it down. It looks like they increased the contrast during 7.2 and it legitimately makes looking at the game make my eyes hurt (and I already see an eye doctor regularly, thanks). Adjusting gamma does not appear to help and there's dark shadows now that are still pitch black even if I max it and I legitimately cannot see what is going on in those areas.

I know multiple people who used to be able to play for hours with no issues and are now getting eyestrain, headaches, or migraines and have to be much more careful when they play and it's already been worse since 7.2

You're right and don't let snotty comments convince you you're not.

It's been an issue for some of us for a WHILE now. Feel free to peruse some well-meaning (and less well meaning :/) suggestions that were made over in the Eye Strain Thread, but it's likely the only consolation will be knowing you're not the only one. I WISH it were a problem with my machine, or my eyes, but it's not. FFXIV is the only game I have issues with, on any device I use to play it, and I've only had issues since the DT update. I'm sorry you're suffering from this, it's really crummy.

I FINALLY FOUND AN EXAMPLE I CAN SCREENIE. I return with evidence.

https://i.imgur.com/GWdNLAh.png

https://i.imgur.com/0eQwDWR.png

Shadows are doing this all over the game.

https://i.imgur.com/iiZjavJ.png

https://i.imgur.com/r80VYmn.png

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Originally Posted by Perella

Hi, I went and made a post in the Dawntrail character graphics update thread, but I wanted to make a thread specifically because 7.2 environmental lighting is hurting my eyes with no way to turn it down, or off. Even in 7.0, some areas like The Quicksands in Ul'dah felt way too dark. And now the lighting is even more aggressive in these already dark areas, which makes seeing things even more difficult.

The lighting was fine enough in 7.0 itself, but now passing by any Dawntrail Aetheryte kind of makes my eyes twitch. I hope these images show just how bright this all comes off as. I am currently playing on 50 for gamma correction, but neither 0 nor 100 really corrects how intense the brightness comes off as.

In short, the new lighting is so aggressive that I've had to stop playing after running Vanguard to write this post and my migraine still isn't gone because I've skimmed around to take a few screenshots. Not every source of light needs to radiate intensity two feet away from it. I do not play this game for realism.

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I don't have any issues with lighting, you seem to be having one or several of the following:

• Light sensitivity - seek a doctor, this is not normal. May be due to stress or neurological disorder, including a minor case of epilepsy.
• Incorrect room light balance - bright lights in a dark room cause issues, do not do this
• Bad monitor calibration - having brightness set to maximum with high contrast - please calibrate your monitor, desktop and game settings
• Incorrect HDR setting, including "fake HDR" and shaders - please exercise proper color calibration

I have never experienced your issues, and neither have anyone i know of. This is definitely some issue on your end. FF14 is, in fact, quite muted and drab compared to many other games.
The lighting has, in fact, improved and became more accurate this patch. I think you just haven't felt anything until now and your issues are just now surfacing. Please look into your condition.

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Originally Posted by HawkeScream

I FINALLY FOUND AN EXAMPLE I CAN SCREENIE. I return with evidence.

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This is just bad shadow programming and nothing to do with OP's lighting issues i think. It IS an issue and i also dislike it, but i gave up on developers ever fixing it without raytracing.

Ah yes, the problem is our end when before the graphics "update" there was no problem and XIV is the ONLY game now causing problems for more then a few :rolleyes:. When it's a single game causing problems, it ain't us that has something wrong, it's the game.

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Originally Posted by Windfire

Ah yes, the problem is our end when before the graphics "update" there was no problem and XIV is the ONLY game now causing problems for more then a few :rolleyes:. When it's a single game causing problems, it ain't us that has something wrong, it's the game.

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Clearly we're just rubes that can't handle the unmatched level of quality that CS3 is capable of.

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Originally Posted by Gokki

I don't have any issues with lighting, you seem to be having one or several of the following:

• Light sensitivity - seek a doctor, this is not normal. May be due to stress or neurological disorder, including a minor case of epilepsy.
• Incorrect room light balance - bright lights in a dark room cause issues, do not do this
• Bad monitor calibration - having brightness set to maximum with high contrast - please calibrate your monitor, desktop and game settings
• Incorrect HDR setting, including "fake HDR" and shaders - please exercise proper color calibration

I have never experienced your issues, and neither have anyone i know of. This is definitely some issue on your end. FF14 is, in fact, quite muted and drab compared to many other games.

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Can confirm that on my end I've had (relatively mild compared to other reports) eye strain only with FFXIV and the FFXVI demo. Nothing during the Monster Hunter Wilds beta test, nothing with other AAA games released in the past 12 months.
Already checked my monitor, which is already on the lowest brightness setting anyway.
So why would I suddenly have eye strain in FFXIV starting from July 2024 with the exact same setup as before, when this was never an issue prior to 7.0?

I'm also puzzled that you qualify it as "quite muted and drab" when on my end it's the oversaturated colors that tend to be the problem (Vanguard and second half of Euphrosyne in FFXIV, the Ifrit vs Phoenix fight in FFXVI), as well as the heightened contrast between light and dark areas (all drop shadows in FFXIV are a lot more black than they used to be, the final phase of M4n is just... flashing pure white light directly at the camera).
(again, this doesn't happen with other games, and it didn't happen with FFXIV in 6.X)

It's still a mystery to me that the other thread is being ignored, but I'm also wondering if it's a question of GPU, and that's why some players seem to have completely different experiences, and why SE is not doing anything?
(I haven't read the thread in detail, so maybe that was already discussed at some point, or maybe 2 PS5 users have diverging opinions, idk)

Okay, I dissociated from the forums longer than intended, oops.

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Originally Posted by USAFJerrySo

If it's hurting your eyes, please seek an eye doctor.

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I do actually have plans to see one sometime, not directly for Photophobia, I believe is the correct medical terminology, but I'm going to bring it up anyway just to see if it leads to anything.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

reading this also hurts my eyes

i think theres eyewear for gamers, if that troubles you thaat much?

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I'm also going to look into this, but nothing else has triggered it outside of FFXIV. Even things that I feel should probably be more intense.

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Originally Posted by HawkeScream

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Yeah, the shadows themselves don't bother me that much at least... I'm kind of used to it, the sheer intensity of the lighting is another thing entirely though. The glow/bloom is crazy though, it doesn't look right. I can ignore it usually though, but in some spots the lighting effects themselves are intense. So I've started just sort of staring at the floor if I'm in an area with those kinds of effects. I actually didn't know there was a thread about the lighting going on when I made this one, or I'd have probably chimed in there instead of making this one. (Didn't scroll very far back with the forum post dates)

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Originally Posted by zipkin

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Yeah, I was wondering if it was a problem with my PC since I let my brother take a look to see if anything was configured wrong before maintenance because my PC was having a GPU issue when trying to play MonHun Wilds, but he fixed that. But then one of my friends told me that lighting changes/updates hit the game, so it's probably that, I've had friends in the discord mention seeing an eye doctor, and since I need new glasses, might as well bring it up even if nothing else (to my knowledge) triggers it.

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Originally Posted by Gokki

snip.

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It could be stress manifesting in ways I haven't experienced before, I haven't felt that stressed lately, but I'm not going to not consider that being the reason too. I don't think it's room lighting balance, nothing in my room has changed in the past four years in particular but, again, I'll take that into consideration. I'll probably see an eye doctor first as it seems more likely to be stress or I've developed something new over the years. As for my monitor, the Brightness is 60, Contrast 50, Sharpness is 63, and my Gamma is set to 'Mode 3' which is the monitor's lowest setting.

Also for what it's worth, you're correct, that isn't what I'm calling a lighting issue in my case. For me, this only started happening in 7.2, and it doesn't happen everywhere. Just specific cases like that final zone in 7.0 msq, DT Aetherytes in specific, and Vanguard. Everything else has been pretty fair, but I haven't done any of the 7.1 and 7.2 content yet. I'm still greatly enjoying my playtime, I just have to look away from a couple of things sometimes.

It may sound silly but... as a meantime option, could try sunglasses? It wasn't really enough to solve the eyestrain issues for me, but a friend finds it helps a lot in some fights. It's easier to grab them for particularly bright bits than to be constantly trying to adjust my graphics for just ONE GAME, especially since making everything darker makes some other things in FFXIV impossible to see.

I actually got a new gaming laptop since the DT update, the problems persist for me no matter if I'm on my old device, new device, borrowing my partner's gaming computer, or if I use our TV screen. I'm glad your brother could help you check out your computer, but I'm not especially surprised that you didn't find that to solve your problem :c

Hope your doc visit goes well <3

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Originally Posted by Windfire

Ah yes, the problem is our end when before the graphics "update" there was no problem and XIV is the ONLY game now causing problems for more then a few :rolleyes:. When it's a single game causing problems, it ain't us that has something wrong, it's the game.

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Seconding this. Before the update, zero issues. None. Not one. Photography is a hobby of mine and I edit photos. My screen is calibrated, the lighting in my room is fine, and I can SEE with my EYES when there is a change in lighting/contrast/colors because I have personal experience making tiny adjustments to photos that make a big difference to the final outcome. I am on the same computer, with the same settings, that I have always been on while playing FFXIV. I do not have this problem with other games. I do not have this problem with other programs or websites. It is not me or my PC or my settings, it has been specifically ONLY FFXIV since the graphics update. Lol. Lmao even.

edit: was not trying to imply people who don't have experience with editing can't or won't notice anything and realized it could be taken that way and wanted to clarify. I was just talking about my personal experience, not trying to invalidate anyone <3