Dawntrail Graphics Update - Eye Strain

[zipkin]

(snipped)

I started on the lowest settings, since my laptop is getting towards the older side I wanted to be sure my machine would handle the update well. I actually thought the graphics being low and jagged/weird might have been what was bothering me at first, but it was not :c

I do play a lot of other games, and this updated FFXIV is the ONLY one giving me this problem. I haven't gone through and checked what engines everything else uses, but, for me, it feels more efficient to point to "This is the singular problem" vs "Here's a list of all possible other options"? To be honest though, if the devs aren't interested in addressing the eye strain issues, I really don't feel they'd accept a push to use different drivers. Might be worth looking into for my personal laptop I guess, but that does nothing for anyone else struggling and doesn't feel like an optimal solution. I don't love the idea of changing my machine, which works fine, because one game of many had a bad graphics update. I was already a bit cranky to be adjusting my laptop settings knowing full well I'd need to adjust it all back for everything else. I appreciate the suggestion of what I could try next though, thank you for taking the time.

(snipped)

RIP our vision but at least there's grass~

(snipped)

Wanted to reply directly so you don't feel ignored <3 I've changed every setting I can find to try making the game bearable to look at. Console players have even fewer options. Changing the settings available to us in the game, and making additional adjustments to my laptop display, did not fix my eye strain issue. That includes the antialising options unfortunately :c

Alright, we have our first official response from the Square Enix Support Center: (snipped the rest)

Thank you for sharing the update, I'm glad to know there was at least an acknowledgement of receipt.

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I initially thought the brightness was the issue, and it DOES seem to be part of what's bothering me. It feels like there's "brighter brights and darker darks" in a way that is difficult for me to look at. Considering I played (and watched) a substantial amount of Neon Sundown a few months ago, I'm not sure how this is happening o.o

Adjusting to reduce blur DID seem to help a little, but, as the options stand, I can only tweak settings enough to get a few more minutes before my eyes hurt, rather than getting to a point where I can play without pain. Makes me think the blur might be my biggest culprit, but it's all new to me so I'm not sure.

I think there's something going on with the text/font too. I can't seem to adjust it to be easy to read. It either looks small/thin or seems blurry? I can close/hide the text elements (mostly) and still get the eye strain issues, but I think the font changes might not be great for my eyes either.

[Payadopa]

I noticed that in the first two zones I've been to, when you look at a hill it looks glossy and it has that shiny wave going on. I've never seen that before. I'm in PS5.

[gllt]

I thought I noticed there were more glossy textures or things that looked like they had some kind of specular lighting going on.
The screen feels busy/noisy with small spatterings of contrast differences. I hope that makes sense, I don't know how to really express it.

[HauntedLasagna]

I'm glad to see we got something from the support center. I never got a response from the report I sent in. I wont be content until I see an official news post about it being an issue. I know its a bit pessimistic but the response from the SC feels like it is just a blanket response they give to everything. I've been playing XIV for however long ago the ps3 beta was and before that I played XI for 8 or so years. You get used to seeing stuff like that from SE.

Still crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. Keep on fighting the good fight.

[Ceridwenae]

What worked for me was going into my FFXIV.cfg config file and changing GraphicsRezoUpscaleType to 2 then setting the file to read only. Then I turned the AA off in-game. That said, a lot of the new textures are pretty soft-looking so you might still want some form of sharpening e.g through your gpu's drivers settings.

As of now, things look about the same as they did before but with better textures. Which all I wanted in the first place. For console players, best of luck here and I'm hoping you get some additional options.

So I tried this, and used my graphics card software tool to override a lot of the other settings such as the brightness and saturation, and that stopped that part of the eye bleeding, so this could definitely be a temporary solution for some. I also removed as much sharpness as possible since it doesn't help with the stress on my eyes. Now I have a softer looking game, and a little more of the washed out look that I personally prefer and is a bit more like the game used to look like. However, what I don't seem to be able to do a thing about is the sharpening of objects and back, even with the FXAA off, creating the disorienting visuals at the slightest camera turn, so I'm still getting headaches and eye strain even after the "improvements" I've made. I can keep tinkering and see if I find a furthered tailored solution for myself, but until then, I'll just keep an eye on this thread and send a report in to SE about the general discomfort.

[Maxilor]

My main complaint as someone going through ARR again is while the graphics look great, and it feels like the game essentially got 'Remastered'...some of the lighting on cutscenes just seems way too bright.

It's like characters constantly have spotlights on them, I'm guessing this will be fixed later and it's just a symptom of porting the old cutscenes with the new lighting and models.

[Daralii]

My main complaint as someone going through ARR again is while the graphics look great, and it feels like the game essentially got 'Remastered'...some of the lighting on cutscenes just seems way too bright.

It's like characters constantly have spotlights on them, I'm guessing this will be fixed later and it's just a symptom of porting the old cutscenes with the new lighting and models.

They also changed where the light sources are, so places or scenes that might have been in shadow or well lit before are now the opposite.

[Wind-Krysvein]

I'm in PS5.

Good heavens, someone help this man!

I know its a bit pessimistic but the response from the SC feels like it is just a blanket response they give to everything.

It does certainly have that feel of "stock response" to it, doesn't it? Still, even if it was a stock response, that still wouldn't necessarily mean they're not researching the issue.

Maybe I'm becoming a little too optimistic, but my biggest fear at this point isn't even that they'll ignore the issue. I'm more afraid that they'll just implement some half-solution that works for the majority of people, but not for me personally, and in the end I'd still have to stop playing. Here's hoping this doesn't happen.

[Wind-Krysvein]

Bump. If the issue was any less serious, I wouldn't be doing this so often.

[Rustic11]

edit: this may be incorrect and i have to swallow my own words. FSR at 100 and aa off doesn't seem to differ from the config file trick. I don't know what's real anymore, it's all placebo now Still bad menu design that they don't have a off option for the scaler.

Luckily i found a way to (at least seemingly) fully disable dlss/fsr with just the games config file, so i'm happily playing without constant blurring. (i don't know if details about that kind of stuff is permitted to talk about here.)

Signed up just to add to this, because i'm so happy to see i wasn't the only person to be bothered by the dlss/fsr problem, and not being able to turn them off.
Also tired of seeing the misinformation about what settings "disable them", because none do.