Dawntrail Graphics Update - Eye Strain

[Laerune]

I too had eyes being strained, but after reaching the Moblin town, the pain went away.

Have my eyes adjusted to the new graphics or something else is going on?

[Klauth]

I too had eyes being strained, but after reaching the Moblin town, the pain went away.

Have my eyes adjusted to the new graphics or something else is going on?

From what i can tell it depends which map/instance of the game you're playing on.

I just did the EW normal raid "Abyssos: Eight Circle" and the crazy difference in -> Black/White Contrast + Glare/Bloom + FSR gave me a massive headache.
And yes ive tweaket them to the minimum i can as mentioned on this thread so far. And also adjusted my monitor + graphic card menus.

But if i do just some crafting and gathering i wont notice it as much and its bearable.

All in all the more stuff you have going on in an instance or map the worse it is with these new graphical changes.

[Ceridwenae]

I've been doing more adjustments, and have settled with something that's more or less playable. Unfortunately, it's a custom setting between my graphics card software and the game's settings. It doesn't clear everything, but I've found that using the game's FXAA, but with grass off, no dynamic grass, and making sure the LOD setting is unchecked on that side, then my graphic card software to adjust image sharpening (to 10 out of 100, but your mileage may vary) and adjusting the colour temp, hue, saturation, brightness and contrast to a setting I personally find comfortable (similar to how the game looked before).

What it doesn't fix: now the blurring versus sharpness is not an issue, what I see is a flickering effect on some objects and some light sources (see flags around Dhoro Iloh, for example). With my custom settings, I've been able to reduce the impact of it, but it is still there for the moment. This flickering, or shimmering, will occur irrespective of FXAA being on or off. Additionally, my husband sees this shimmering in his game too, and his graphic card is Nvidia, and mine is AMD. It doesn't happen to bother him in any medical sense, however. The effect gives extra movement in something where it's not necessary, giving already tired eyes something extra to take in, although unchecked LOD seems to help to an extent, and then an effort not to spend too long hyperfocusing on it.

[Wind-Krysvein]

I'm just trying to help. It fixed mine and a few others I know in game.

While I obviously appreciate any and all attempts of helping, I'm also afraid that seeing people come up with these "close enough" workarounds will only serve to make Square Enix complacent in a "Ehh, they'll figure it out somehow!" sort of way.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record: this isn't something the users should have to "fart around and find out" on their own. A game should not be causing this much physical discomfort for anyone, sensitive eyes or no.

What's also good to keep in mind is that console users have none of the graphical settings needed to make any of these changes.

[KisalaSaizuki]

As a person who does play on PS5 i can say with 100% certainty that the blur issue is a problem, the graphics overall feel worse and i am getting really bad eye strain from it, getting blur from the slightest of movements not just from my character but anything in the game that is moving, whether it be another player of from camera movement, PS5 does not have the same graphic options like PC does with motion blur, bloom etc and i feel these should be box standard options regardless of platform.

[LucisBlack]

"Patch" day and the official release are now here.. and still no way to actually turn off bloom since the removal of the option in 7.0.

*cries in tears of blood from the eyebleed levels of bloom*

I feel for the people that are affected by the blurry upscaling too, but why, oh why, is there still no fix for the bloom? That seems like it would be such a simple thing to add back in as opposed to tweaking the upscaling on their end (not a dev, so I could be wrong). Unless the glare/bloom setting truly is bugged, which is seeming to be the case at this point.

It's a shame though SE doesn't seem to want to make public statements about these things like other companies will. Just a simple, "we're working on it ASAP" would be dope. A stock reply of "We know" doesn't cut it in 2024 in my opinion, but what do I know? lmao

[Starlord]

I logged in and did not have this issue at all. What is causing it for some?

Same here, everyone is different, I am sure there are some people that had similar issues with the old graphics that are now potentially fixed for them.

I think its an individual kind of issue, which is why they need to add options (whatever they maybe) to help those that are having "eye strain".

[Guasta_Ryets]

.... will only serve to make Square Enix complacent ...

No, my settings are to help people suffer less eye strain or to get it back to something that I felt was possible only in 6.58. It won't "only" serve to make them complacent,... that's like blaming me if they don't do anything from here onward. Respectfully, screw that whole notion

I'm not trying to undermine any of the calls for change you and many are asking for. SE should STILL reconsider all of these new settings that are causing people eye strain, discomfort or annoyance (and even old ones if there were any that are bad, especially if any have gotten worse after 7.0), remove them and give better options for AA. (DLSS mode has the TSCMAA on by default so switching it to AMD FSR and then the slider below that to 100 with FXAA enabled for edge smoothing makes it work "like 6.58" for me and quite a few others even as the camera and/or character moves).

It is very obvious that due to simple nature of all of the issues that we see in this thread and others that have been reported on this topic that SE needs to give us a drop down menu button at the top of the graphical settings page that when altered between "6.58" and "7.0 and after", gives us settings that work based on those 2 distinct game versions. This would be the simple solution on our end (and not too complex to implement on their end since they just need to package in the 6.58 rendering calls into game... and test that they all work with all the content added or changed from 7.0 onward [but I'm pretty sure it will anyway because I highly doubt anything that they've added in the game explicitly requires 7.0's unique rendering solutions])

Don't conflate me trying to help others with giving SE a pass. You too SE, you all have work to do on this specific set of issues. Others have pointed out other eye strain or annoyance issues from 7.0 onward that are not blur related too so please don't get it twisted. For all those who wish to protest the game, do what you must and be loud about it. For all those who wish to keep playing and are willing to try different things as a stopgap, consider the solutions the community has come up with in this thread that mitigate core eye strain issues but for the sake of those who want it dealt with easier, please voice your support for having the 6.58 options returned to the game as a basic setting drop down option at the very top of the graphical settings page (or something similar that gives us full control over the game settings as we did in 6.58 [I just think that a drop down option would be the easiest method imo]).

Peace

[RevaC]

It's a shame though SE doesn't seem to want to make public statements about these things like other companies will. Just a simple, "we're working on it ASAP" would be dope. A stock reply of "We know" doesn't cut it in 2024 in my opinion, but what do I know? lmao

Feels like Squenix only responds to critique from Japanese-speaking twitter most of the time.

Really hope this whole thing gets resolved. I may personally be used to having to research weird little work-arounds for the majority of pc games in 2024 but this still isn't great. And it's beyond unacceptable for console players.

[gllt]

It's incredibly ridiculous. Removing settings for turning off things like bloom just feels like straight up ignorance from the dev team.

Did the want to prevent anyone from taking footage of the game without all the pretty effects on or something?