Housing graphics update

[SeerValtial]

Yoshi-P has responded: https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...e4e7501facc4d6

[StrangeSkirt]

Since patch 7.05 brought us adjustments to housing lighting and shadows, I decided to post some additional comparisons between pre-7.0; 7.0, and 7.05 visuals.

Overall it seems that after the update the quality of visuals is much more similar to those of the original pre-7.0 patch. At least on Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (further AO) GTAO Standard setting. I’m still unsure of how I feel about the GTAO Quality setting, it's very rough, dark and has occlusion culling issues. It works well in new areas where object complexity is much more advanced, but in the old maps, to me, it still feels like too much and creates weird ghosting effects around objects.

Metal objects still seem to be missing their original shininess, highlights, and reflective qualities. This makes me wonder whether those assets just haven’t been appropriately updated yet, or whether this is their intended new look.

This is a link to my lodestone blog post, where it might be easier to compare the screenshots with the gallery view.


COMPARISON NUMBER ONE




GTAO: STANDARD comparison:






GTAO: QUALITY comparison:

[StrangeSkirt]

COMPARISON NUMBER TWO




GTAO: STANDARD comparison:






GTAO: QUALITY comparison:

[Khryseis_Astra]

Metal objects still seem to be missing their original shininess, highlights, and reflective qualities. This makes me wonder whether those assets just haven’t been appropriately updated yet, or whether this is their intended new look.

To me, the bottom in each grouping of screenshots looks better. And overall, their fix greatly improved my dimly lit home, and colors are back to normal on furnishings.

I seem to remember them saying that the PCs and the environments were getting the updates first, and they’d go back and retouch everything else as they could get to it. Looking at some pieces of furniture, I definitely don’t think they got any updated textures.

[Clerith]

The new update (30/31 July) is horrible. The light / mirror reflections are gone. Sure, it's now dark and bright again but in a complete shitty way. What a downgrade. >.<

[Clerith]

My character also looks bad in all the apartments and houses I checked. The lighting and reflections are just off. It's so miserable that I don't even want to bother with housing until it's fixed.

[Clerith]

Water reflections also don't look good anymore. (Inside houses.)
And the light cast from windows also is bad now.
I'm just going to log out of FF14 for now.
Don't feel like playing with how bad the living looks now. It's just too frustrating.

[Merton9999]

Thank you for posting this update with detailed pictures. I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately my rooms still look too unpleasant to enjoy updating, or even being in since the 7.05 fixes.

I do think the overall lighting levels are better. Thankfully my rooms no longer have the dusty haze that made them look like the fog weather effect had been turned on inside houses in 7.0. Overall brightness seems to have been fixed.

Unfortunately, that was not the extent of the problems:

There are still ugly, jagged, blocky. shadows cast by objects. The shadows are so comically severe in houses that the bottom of stage panels in brightly lit rooms (level 5) look extremely dirty, like someone forgot to clean the baseboards in their home for years.

Open partitions and half partitions are still several shades darker with all color choices compared to the "white partition" furnishing with the same dye applied. This makes any room that combines both look ridiculous.

Marble and iron plate floors still look like cardboard. As the OP stated, it appears their material effects have been removed so they all look flat, like paper now. The iron plate floor in my apartment used to show subtle reflections of other objects but have no reflective quality at all now.

I don't know if furnishing textures themselves have been updated but some change is making them look bad. The bottom of leather sofas look pixelated. Cash shop gold walls look like yellow rust still, instead of being smooth and shiny. They look nothing like the advertized cash shop image.

I'm not as repulsed as I was before 7.05 but so many things still look so obviously wrong that being in my rooms is upsetting rather than enjoyable. Currently as it stands, player housing isn't a system I can participate in to create anything I would be proud of.

[Clerith]

-rooms still look too unpleasant
-material effects have been removed so they all look flat
-no reflective quality

The worst thing is the lighting (4K/PS5).
If you stand next to a window in daylight, your character will turn completely white and all texture details will be erased.
And there is now not a single wall or floor lamp that provides enough light. Basically, you need to place the lamp directly in front of your face to get some glow.
Of course, you can increase the character's self-illumination and gamma, but then you'll look like a white ghost whenever you leave the house.
HDR settings have also been missing since 7.0.
7.0 housing wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better than what we have now.

[Merton9999]

The worst thing is the lighting (4K/PS5).
If you stand next to a window in daylight, your character will turn completely white and all texture details will be erased.
And there is now not a single wall or floor lamp that provides enough light. Basically, you need to place the lamp directly in front of your face to get some glow.
Of course, you can increase the character's self-illumination and gamma, but then you'll look like a white ghost whenever you leave the house.
HDR settings have also been missing since 7.0.
7.0 housing wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better than what we have now.

Yes, it really is a bad lighting issue. The OP referred to this and it is mentioned all over the forum thread on eye strain. The old zones have really suffered from the lighting changes.

It looks to me like what may happen if someone criticized the shadows and contrast on my work, I got offended and, in spite, applied a high contrast filter to it 10 times.

I zone into Thavnair or Limsa and feel attacked by jet black ink splattered in some places and glaring, focused bloom in others. In houses, custom light sources produce hyper focused splotches now instead of natural looking illumination. And items that should be affected by light (metal)... just aren't anymore.

I can just ignore this in the open world as something I just don't enjoy looking at anymore. Oh well, I'm traveling around an ugly world now. In my house, it's a very different feeling. I designed it, spent months of time tuning it, hundreds of millions of gil and hundreds of real dollars. Then someone vandalized it.