Gamma correction

[Blastfrog]

Why does it seem like so many people set their gamma correction so high? Why do so many source ports (especially Boom based ones) have high gamma as the default? It looks so ugly, especially when the 8-bit colormap is taken into account. Are people's monitors really that dark? Why don't they play with normal, unaltered gamma (1.0)?

[Maes]

BECAUSE SOME MONITORS ARE REALLY DARK!! SERIOUSLY!!!

[Blastfrog]

Maes said:

BECAUSE SOME MONITORS ARE REALLY DARK!! SERIOUSLY!!!

So they should set their GPU's gamma up, not the game's. I don't mind if people play with high gamma, but it bothers me when people record videos and take screenshots for others to see when it's not using the default gamma. And I hate sourceports assuming that I want high gamma.

[NiuHaka]

Soda. Be careful. I don't like the look in his eyes.

[Blastfrog]

NiuHaka said:

Soda. Be careful. I don't like the look in his eyes.

Who's eyes? Maes's? i iz confoozed :(

[Gez]

NiuHaka said:

Soda. Be careful. I don't like the look in his eyes.

Just lower the gamma setting on his eyes.

[Clonehunter]

Yes lets all care about the settings people use. Because it's that important.

[Blastfrog]

Clonehunter said:

Yes lets all care about the settings people use. Because it's that important.

I already said that I don't care what people use. What I was trying to get at is that it's bad for sourceports to assume that I want my gamma correction to be higher than what's usually normally off, and that it bothers me when people take screenshots for the public eye while using their own gamma correction setting.

[Memfis]

It bothers me too. The only times I use gamma correction is when I want to speedrun a map with many spectres in dark areas, and I really don't like how the game looks with it.

[Maes]

Sodaholic said:

So they should set their GPU's gamma up, not the game's.

What GPU? :-p

1993 VGA DOS boxen don't have a separate gamma setting, so altering the palette itself was the only way to go, other than cranking up brightness/contrast.

[Blastfrog]

Maes said:

What GPU? :-p

1993 VGA DOS boxen don't have a separate gamma setting, so altering the palette itself was the only way to go, other than cranking up brightness/contrast.

Right, but I'm talking about using modern OSes on modern computers in 2012. The way gamma correction was done in 1993 is perfectly understandable, but it shouldn't apply these days since there are better ways to do it.

[Clonehunter]

Sodaholic said:

I already said that I don't care what people use. What I was trying to get at is that it's bad for sourceports to assume that I want my gamma correction to be higher than what's usually normally off, and that it bothers me when people take screenshots for the public eye while using their own gamma correction setting.

Bah, all those posts weren't there before. It is annoying for screenshots and videos. But that's about it. However, then again, I don't really take the time to notice or be bothered by it that often. (Though thinking back then yes, it does seem to be annoying)

Hm, if I understand right, perhaps source ports that enable screenshots should have like an auto-gamma corrector or something, or take two pictures, one at the users setting, and then another one is created at normal gamma.

[qoncept]

Sodaholic said:

So they should set their GPU's gamma up, not the game's. I don't mind if people play with high gamma, but it bothers me when people record videos and take screenshots for others to see when it's not using the default gamma. And I hate sourceports assuming that I want high gamma.

People "should" do something that's a pain in the ass instead of using a simple setting that affects only the game they're interested in because you'll be happier with their screenshots and videos?

What about if you turned the gamma DOWN on your GPU and turned it up in Doom?

[ComicMischief]

Sodaholic, do you like anything?

Save for, of course, finding the most insignificant minutiae to whinge about. :v

[TwinBeast]

I usually only alter the brightness/contrast/gamma settings depending what time I'm playing.. how much sunlight is coming to the room. But usually I go outside during the brightest hours of the day and play during morning or evening/night.

[Acid]

Many competitive players I know prefer a high gamma so they don't have to bother with slightly darker areas. I used to play with gamma 3, then moved on to 2, and now I use 1.3

I remember some guy playing everything on gamma 6. That way, he'd see everything in a dark cave, but that defeats the purpose for me.

[Phml]

Even vanilla Doom sometimes looks too dark under gl2 in GlBoom+ on my screen. On that same screen, almost every other media looks perfect, and you don't break three legs from a table if only the fourth one is bad.

In addition, there's no real consistency within PWADs when it comes to darkness. Some maps are extremely dark because people play with gl4 and possibly screen gamma cranked up to the max. I remember seeing a super bright WIP Scythe X screenshot... With Erik Alm commenting it was perhaps too dark!

So it makes more sense to adjust manually ingame, especially considering within a single wad (i.e. community compilations), you can have to change your settings while playing for all levels to look and play right.

I agree it's fairly stupid PrBoom+ is distributed with gamma level set to 4 by default. For a while it made me think the renderer was broken...

[GreyGhost]

My old CRT was a bit dark so everything appeared ultra-bright when I switched to an LCD monitor - the factory defaults were overly bright. Fortunately, SonicIce saved the day with this handy wad (more details here) that I use to adjust monitor brightness at gamma 0 in DOSBox before fiddling with gamma settings in ports. That wad should be in the archive. If a few more players used it before posting screenshots, Soda would have less to complain about.

[Blzut3]

BloodyAcid said:

Many competitive players I know prefer a high gamma so they don't have to bother with slightly darker areas.

This is why I started using increased gamma. ZDoom/Zandronum's gamma level of 1.2/1.3 is enough to make it significantly easier to see in darker areas without washing out the colors too much.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I'd be lying if I said PrBoom+ still defaulting to gamma correction 3 didn't bug me a bit. It gives a bad first impression when you recommend the port to new players, since practically every monitor made in the past decade already renders Doom too brightly at level 0.

[Never_Again]

GreyGhost said:

My old CRT was a bit dark so everything appeared ultra-bright when I switched to an LCD monitor - the factory defaults were overly bright. Fortunately, SonicIce saved the day with this handy wad (more details here) that I use to adjust monitor brightness at gamma 0 in DOSBox before fiddling with gamma settings in ports. That wad should be in the archive

... along with the disclaimer that it's for LCDs only. Calibrating a CRT with it may be a good way to start spending less time at the computer, though.

[Enjay]

My old monitor needed gamma to be bumped a bit.
My current monitor doesn't.

When people used to share their screenshots and videos and I was looking at them on my old monitor, I didn't understand why everyone was playing the game so dark that nothing could be seen.

I don't have that problem on my new monitor and if someone is bumping the gamma, sure their screenshots look a bit washed out but, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

[fraggle]

Sodaholic said:

it bothers me when people take screenshots for the public eye while using their own gamma correction setting.

In Vanilla Doom, at least, gamma correction isn't applied in screenshots.

[TimeOfDeath]

I use a 12 year old crt monitor with 80% brightness, 100% contrast, and gamma 4 in prboom-plus and it's still too dark imo. I was just playing cc4 and some maps I couldn't see anything.

[40oz]

fraggle said:

In Vanilla Doom, at least, gamma correction isn't applied in screenshots.

Thats a shame most source ports didnt inherit that quality, because viewing other people's screenshots is one of the only reasons I don't like gamma correction. That, and source ports that divide gamma correction levels in tenths so you gotta press F11 40 times to get to the beginning of the cycle.

[abyrvalg]

glboom+ is insanely dark on my screen, even with max gamma, that's why i prefer a software mode (and lately not using it at all except for demorecording). Never had any problems with brightness in anything else but doom games btw. On the other hand, gzdoom/skulltag are either too bright or i have to switch gamma all the time because inbetween sectors brightness levels often change drastically. I played around with different settings, it didnt matter much.

it bothers me when people take screenshots for the public eye while using their own gamma correction setting.

why? Maybe it looks best for me if i use high gamma level, why would i post a screenshot that looks worse in my opinion? It's actually quite annoying that when i try to take a screenshot in gzdoom, it disregards all my gamma levels and produces a crappy dark pic where nothing is visible. Might as well dump a blank black square.
I'm probably just a dumbass, haha. Also my screen is crt and 16yo, and i use old radeon videocard.

[Gez]

jongo said:

It's actually quite annoying that when i try to take a screenshot in gzdoom, it disregards all my gamma levels and produces a crappy dark pic where nothing is visible.

It's a problem with people not implementing the PNG standard correctly. ZDoom stores gamma in PNG as the gAMA chunk instead of altering the RGB values. Relatively few image viewers make use of this; and web browser certainly don't.

[Porsche Monty]

I've always wondered what combination of video cards and monitors the original Doom artists at ID were using when they created all the graphics.

My CRT monitors from that era (ranging from mid to super-high quality) were bright enough to function properly without gamma correction, provided you had video card with a decent palette DAC. However, out of all the 4 video cards I tried in the lapse of a year, only one allowed Doom to look perfect under default gamma settings.

[Never_Again]

TimeOfDeath said:

I use a 12 year old crt monitor with 80% brightness, 100% contrast, and gamma 4 in prboom-plus and it's still too dark imo.

Many video cards allow to change desktop brightness, contrast and gamma via the drivers' control panels. These settings can be saved to a profile, the profile can be quickly applied with a hotkey combo.
That's how ATI drivers work, at least. nVidia drivers used to as well until a couple of years ago; now you have to use the nView Desktop Manager to assign a keyboard shortcut to a limited number of functions.
Control Panel -> nVidia nView Desktop Manager -> Hotkey tab -> Display Settings. Of the functions available here I have "Adjust Display Gamma" (Increase Display/Decrease Display) and "Reset gamma, brightness and contrast to default" hotkeyed. These help everywhere except three cases:
- non-DosBoxed vanilla
- Choco without the -8in32 switch
- prB+ software 8-bit with "Use GL surface for software mode" set to NO

[Doom_user]

jongo said:

glboom+ is insanely dark on my screen, even with max gamma, that's why i prefer a software mode (and lately not using it at all except for demorecording).

Which sector light mode are you using? In my experience the "GLBoom" and "GZDoom" sector light modes are too dark, but the "Fog Based" sector light mode looks perfect and is a close match to software mode.


"GLBoom" sector light mode


"GZDoom" sector light mode


"Fog Based" sector light mode


Software mode

All of these screenshots were taken with gamma and glgamma set to 0.