Dawntrail Graphics Update - Eye Strain

[CuteBucket]

Can you develop on what specifically makes them motionsick in the fight ?
Usually specific elements are to be targeted, and maybe there are accessibility tools that could be developed around those.

For the Zoraal Ja EX fight, I can't remember exactly what my friend said (I didn't really inquire further myself and respected their wish not to run that fight, but I think they said it was something about how you have to spin your camera around a lot to track the fire lines in that one middle part? I've only cleared the fight once, so I'm kind of rusty on what exactly it was. Something about having to track lines while moving the camera around though, I think.

For Sphene EX, once again, didn't inquire exactly what the problem was on a detailed level, only that it had something to do with the lights or effects going off causing eyestrain and headaches after more than a one or two pulls.

I've mostly been unaffected by the changes beyond thinking all the bloom effects are ugly and disliking the new "improved" character models, so I can't speak to my friends' experiences. But I felt I should chime in to say that even a person like me who hasn't been getting headaches or motion sickness is still being negatively affected by these graphical changes because the people I play with regularly are dealing with adverse effects that keep us from running content together, because I'm not going to force my buddies to run fights if it's causing them so much physical distress.

[Ceridwenae]

Oi, thread. Back to the front page with you. Your graphics still need more accessibility options, you slackers.

[Vesplume]

I feel like almost all my comments on the forums are in this one thread and for the first time I hit the character limit LOL

Ironically the trouble here is visibility - we've been told the devs are aware of this but there's no telling if this is even a priority to deal with. It's not as big a problem as people complaining about Wuk Lamat for the nth time because more people are talking about that. It feels like it's better to keep it buried under all the other DT issues.

I've thought a lot about this issue and I'd be happy to compile a solid list of concerns and suggestions from this thread if I had any faith they were being listened to. Many players have attempted to bring light to this problem in different ways. Support tickets have been sent. Someone was given a direct email for accessibility issues but never got a response. It even apparently came up on the JP forums at one point. This thread has been going on for months and I would bet real dollars that it won't even warrant a mention in the next live letter. If content creators want to spread the word, I'm happy to help.

I still enjoy this game for a lot of reasons but SE sure makes that hard to do.

[RedDeathXR]

You can fix the horrible eye straining blur effects by forcing DLSS4 through Nvidia, but this causes other issues like weird artifacting with fog or some foliage in the far distance looking rather warped until you get up close. Whatever is going on with this game, it's SE's horrible implementation of upscaling with FSR and DLSS. This awful blur has been a strain on my eyes since this expansion has released. I'm honestly in shock that despite how long this thread has been going, we have gotten no word or any kind of update.

[TransgressorPterodactyl]

Back to the top

[Anarnee]

Up watching the live letter, might as well bring this back to the top while I wait to be disappointed again.

[Vesplume]

Lots of flashing lights and big bright assets in the new Arcadion raid, so more of the things we've been complaining about this entire time.

Really not expecting any comments regarding additional settings at any point.

[Vesplume]

Now that another Live Letter is over and we've gone yet again without any acknowledgment of this issue or possible adjustments, I wanted to offer a bit of a timeline and some background on the closest we've gotten to a dev response.

This thread was started on 6/28, during the early access period of DT. The official launch was on 7/2, but nothing was said on graphics until 7/5, where this post was made about issues with lighting with regards to housing settings. It goes into some detail about the changes made to how lighting is processed and specifies that the old lighting can't be recreated but they will make adjustments to it in the future. Though it's specific to lighting in housing, there's some insight here into some of the new graphical changes. There's a lot more of it than there was before.

The next related dev post was this one from 9/6 regarding the feedback on playable character models. There's plenty of fan pushback on that here and elsewhere. Rather than go into that, I'm going to talk about the what little info we have to go on as to whether the devs even consider this problem an issue.

The first point of note is that this post describes this as the first phase of the graphical update. I don't know what phase we're on now, as dev transparency has been extremely limited since the release of DT. This isn't like EW where we got live letters roadmapping the future of the game. Early into EW's release the players were told of the intent to update the graphics and how significant dev focus was going into that, well before any of that would be implemented in 7.0. This post is the closest we get to that level of transparency, as YoshiP goes into significant detail about certain issues that were raised. He even notes that some of these fixes involve programming updates and won't be implemented until 7.2 at the earliest.

What are those fixes? Are they coming in 7.2? Tune in on 3/25 to find out!

The new lighting and the issues raised by it aren't mentioned in the post beyond how the models are highlighted in a certain way. It's part of what's considered spec - as in the new graphics working as intended. The devs will not change those things. There's a vague handwavy comment about additional issues that weren't be addressed in the post while asking for patience and understanding from the players. They might even look at things considered spec and reevaluate them in the future.

So what does that have to do with the eye strain/migraines/etc? Either it tells us absolutely nothing or worse - that the issues reported in this thread are the game working as intended and will not be addressed at this time. Given the devs' silence and the patches implemented since then, it's most likely the latter.

[Vesplume]

This thread was started on 6/28, during the early access period of DT. The official launch was on 7/2, but nothing was said on graphics until 7/5, where this post was made about issues with lighting with regards to housing settings. It goes into some detail about the changes made to how lighting is processed and specifies that the old lighting can't be recreated but they will make adjustments to it in the future. Though it's specific to lighting in housing, there's some insight here into some of the new graphical changes. There's a lot more of it than there was before.

The next related dev post was this one from 9/6 regarding the feedback on playable character models. There's plenty of fan pushback on that here and elsewhere. Rather than go into that, I'm going to talk about the what little info we have to go on as to whether the devs even consider this problem an issue.

Quoting a previous post of mine that contains links to the two dev posts on the Lodestone, since the patch 7.2 notes confirm that the issues brought up in those dev posts have been addressed. Only one new setting has been added based on the preliminary patch notes, but it's for the previously described housing issue.

Tuesday is a make it or break it day for this thread. It's noted several times that adjustments have been made to how shadows are rendered, which means changes have been made to the lighting. It seems like the current philosophy is more lighting = better graphics, and if that's the case we're SOL. I'd like to believe some of the changes made will be for the better but my optimism is at an all time low right now.

[Birdbrain]

I don't typically suffer from eye strain issues, but Bloomberg the Bloombird has been giving me a run for my money these past months.

Wondrous Lanner one second after mounting up:

After the glow effect applies:

Intentionally large screenshots to get the full Wondrous experience

A pic of how the glow looked pre-update (thank you, Lalafell youtuber). It's not the same location/lighting situation, but I find the glow is noticeably less intense.

Trying to hold out hope that these kinds of graphical "quirks" will be cleaned up and fixed sometime... eventually? Even if people weren't experiencing eye strain issues, this degree of bloom is still plain ugly.