Are people remembering to disable their shaders before leaving graphic feedback?

[Thais]

Except you posted the same photo with two different settings and one is a way worse comparison than the other, clearly demonstrating you do not need third party game tools to present misleading photos.

You don't even necessarily need to use the game itself to produce misleading photos.

That's a fair point as I did make a mistake. Granted, the color wasn't the primary concern of my post.

The post was meant to show the differences in the eyebrows and the gamma settings were irrelevant to that. It was more to demonstrate how the *shape* of something changed. I did state in my first post that the color difference was likely because of the benchmark settings. But yes, the chief reason was to show the difference in eyebrow shape.

[decomposer]

Just circling back around to say, because this is about shaders and gamma correction, I think it should be noted that for skin tones and color to be more accurate to the base game's settings at 50, that the gamma in the benchmark has to be set at 0. That leaves very little wiggle room for those of us with darker skinned characters in the event that total darkness (likely) disappears our characters entirely (see, Ultima Thule, places in Amaurot, most darker dungeons, etc. It's why I have my base game set at 50 to begin with. At 0, currently, he disappears in Ishgardian Overcast Evenings, lmao.)

So, if anyone's here wondering, "am I using the right gamma?" it's hard to say, because the lighting is calibrated differently.

[Catwho]

Just circling back around to say, because this is about shaders and gamma correction, I think it should be noted that for skin tones and color to be more accurate to the base game's settings at 50, that the gamma in the benchmark has to be set at 0. That leaves very little wiggle room for those of us with darker skinned characters in the event that total darkness (likely) disappears our characters entirely (see, Ultima Thule, places in Amaurot, most darker dungeons, etc. It's why I have my base game set at 50 to begin with. At 0, currently, he disappears in Ishgardian Overcast Evenings, lmao.)

That's a great catch. I think a lot of us are going to have to be tweaking our settings with 7.0 to adjust for the new reality of what the lighting engine does. Monitors themselves also offer some of these settings, so we can go in with a combination of darkening the monitor and brightening the gamma once the full game is out to find optimal playing levels.

[Zhav]

Just circling back around to say, because this is about shaders and gamma correction, I think it should be noted that for skin tones and color to be more accurate to the base game's settings at 50, that the gamma in the benchmark has to be set at 0. That leaves very little wiggle room for those of us with darker skinned characters in the event that total darkness (likely) disappears our characters entirely (see, Ultima Thule, places in Amaurot, most darker dungeons, etc. It's why I have my base game set at 50 to begin with. At 0, currently, he disappears in Ishgardian Overcast Evenings, lmao.)

So, if anyone's here wondering, "am I using the right gamma?" it's hard to say, because the lighting is calibrated differently.

Ahh, that's very helpful. I normally set my gamma to 50 in the current game, as well (for the same reasons you've mentioned), and used that setting for my initial screenshots from the benchmark. Setting it to 0 improved the colors, though she still seems lighter than normal. I use the darkest option for Female Hyur Highlander and can't go any darker, unfortunately.

Endwalker (Gamma 50):


Benchmark (Gamma 0 - Graphics set to "Maximum"):

[decomposer]

I use the darkest option for Female Hyur Highlander and can't go any darker, unfortunately.

This is my problem too. I have no where to go in terms of darkening gamma (or) darkening skintone for my character. And even at the lowest gamma setting, he was still washed out (and in the opening cutscene, the shadow was so harsh that it disappeared his face. Once again bringing me back to why I have gamma set at 50 in the base-game to begin with.)

So, that's all to say, gamma isn't the end all be all. They still whitewashed skintone. And facial features on a lot of the races. It's sad ):

[Turtledeluxe]

That's a fair point as I did make a mistake. Granted, the color wasn't the primary concern of my post.

The post was meant to show the differences in the eyebrows and the gamma settings were irrelevant to that. It was more to demonstrate how the *shape* of something changed. I did state in my first post that the color difference was likely because of the benchmark settings. But yes, the chief reason was to show the difference in eyebrow shape.

The likes on the post demonstrate that the average player did not interpret it that way imho. At the time of writing, your negative post had 7 likes, and the one that was more comparable to your OG character (barring eyebrows and shadows) had 1 or 2. Negativity sells on the forum. Which btw, is also why I push so hard against it. I think sometimes negativity has a valid application-- for example with ongoing trends like job design. It's fair to be frustrated when months / years have passed and the dev team seems to be ignoring your feedback. But in the case of the gfx update, I honestly feel like because a handful of users have legitimate photos displaying problems, other players then parrot that and post their own photos that look completely fine. I also think this is why we are seeing more posts and threads calling for some kind of consolidation of feedback/consistency.

I also agree with your post btw, that maybe eyebrow thickness is a feature they could look at generally, or something.

[angienessyo]

Another setting that's missing in the benchmark from what I can tell is an option in the live game called "character lighting". I've used it for the longest time because I have one of the darker mooncat skin tones you can have so it makes some lighting situations better for her. So in my situation the gamma+lack of character lighting option means I can't do a true comparison.

[FakeCirka]

I've also seen a ton of people post SS comparisons with benchmark graphics not being set to max, so the overall image looks pretty bad. I guess not everyone knows they can go to the settings and tweak their graphic settings on the benchmark.

[Zhav]

I've also seen a ton of people post SS comparisons with benchmark graphics not being set to max, so the overall image looks pretty bad. I guess not everyone knows they can go to the settings and tweak their graphic settings on the benchmark.

I had my graphics set to "Maximum" and the model still lacked some of the depth that the Endwalker version has--it's possible that that's the case with the screenshots of many others, as well. The lighting in the benchmark doesn't seem to have the nice dark shadows and highlighted edges that the current game lighting has, so certain features seem to sort of blend in and disappear (like chins, for instance) in screenshots.

[Thais]

The likes on the post demonstrate that the average player did not interpret it that way imho. At the time of writing, your negative post had 7 likes, and the one that was more comparable to your OG character (barring eyebrows and shadows) had 1 or 2. Negativity sells on the forum. Which btw, is also why I push so hard against it. I think sometimes negativity has a valid application-- for example with ongoing trends like job design. It's fair to be frustrated when months / years have passed and the dev team seems to be ignoring your feedback. But in the case of the gfx update, I honestly feel like because a handful of users have legitimate photos displaying problems, other players then parrot that and post their own photos that look completely fine. I also think this is why we are seeing more posts and threads calling for some kind of consolidation of feedback/consistency.

I also agree with your post btw, that maybe eyebrow thickness is a feature they could look at generally, or something.

I tend to lurk on the forums occasionally so I have seen some of the more emotionally charged conversations play out from time to time. Because I didn't find the gamma the actual problem, I neglected to make the necessary change to make the comparison as accurate as possible initially. I had essentially handwaved the fact that the colors were different because that is something that can easily be corrected by making adjustments. So I figured, "that's not even a big deal" ...Wrong! I realized too late that I had forgotten how the benchmark defaults the gamma correction to 50 (presumably when you don't bring over you own settings, I think) so that was definitely sloppy on my part. Both my current game and benchmark are at maximum settings. I had loaded up the benchmark and just went "Setting it to Max, just like my game!" but forgot about gamma correction. This was an oversight and I was blind to how that would influence opinions. I should have realized that it would send a different message than the one I intended. You know what they say about good intentions!

Also, I don't disagree that there may be some people posting in bad faith but thankfully most of what I've seen has been fairly constructive feedback overall. Thankfully, the eyebrow thing isn't a deal-breaker for me, of course, but it was one that definitely made me do a double-take. Even though I don't find it a high priority (although I still want the improvement), it still is something that I think could use a second look as well.

I'll be more careful with my posts in the future! (I'm not much of a forum poster if you can tell by my join date)