Guild Wars 2

Wow the game looks even better now with the new Ambient Occlusion and Light Adaptation. I’m running around Mount Maelstrom farming and it looks so beautiful!

Kudos to the devs!

Any chance you can post a screenshot for where you found these settings? There are quite a number of players that are having trouble locating it.

Ambient Occlusion and Light Adaptation are both in the Graphics section of Options. They both have check boxes next to them.

I cannot see the options for the new AA….
all the other new options are there though

Yeah, the AA options aren’t showing up, and that’s been acknowledged by Anet as some sort of “bug”. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Where-are-the-SMAA-low-SMAA-High-Located/first#post5327390

Is it possible for someone to explain what “Light Adaptation” actually does? I have played around with it, but from my point of view all it does is lessen the contrast, and then not even always.

ceanonmurchadh.1368:

Is it possible for someone to explain what “Light Adaptation” actually does? I have played around with it, but from my point of view all it does is lessen the contrast, and then not even always.

I haven’t tested it but maybe it’s the camera adapting when you go between various light sources and/or the lack of? Kind of like what you’d see when coming out of a dark cave. Or coming out of the movie theater on a bright day.

You would think that is what it does by the tooltip, however I have tested it and it does that anyway, with the setting enabled or not. Makes no difference.

ceanonmurchadh.1368:

You would think that is what it does by the tooltip, however I have tested it and it does that anyway, with the setting enabled or not. Makes no difference.

When in HotM i can immediately see a change in lighting, but not exactly what it does. It just brightens/darkens when you have post-processing on (which I usually turn off)

ceanonmurchadh.1368:

Is it possible for someone to explain what “Light Adaptation” actually does? I have played around with it, but from my point of view all it does is lessen the contrast, and then not even always.

Could it be just another word for an HDR setting? I havent really checked out the new options.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Yeah, the AA options aren’t showing up, and that’s been acknowledged by Anet as some sort of “bug”. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Where-are-the-SMAA-low-SMAA-High-Located/first#post5327390

Ah, thanks for posting that mate

Did you happen to notice impact on framerates between the settings?

ceanonmurchadh.1368:

Is it possible for someone to explain what “Light Adaptation” actually does? I have played around with it, but from my point of view all it does is lessen the contrast, and then not even always.

light adaptation is supposed to simulate how your eyes adjust when the lighting around you changes drastically in a short period of time.

for example, you turn a light on in a completely dark room at night. you are immediately blinded because your pupils are dilated for seeing in the dark. so now a LOT more light is being let in. Your eyes need to adjust to the different light level, but they don’t adjust instantly. your pupils “slowly” (over a few seconds) close the opening that allows light to your retina, and the light level goes from being “too bright” to “normal.”

so basically, “light adaptation” simulates the gradual transition of vision from light to dark environments (or dark to light), instead of instantly adjusting.

Except, as i have already indicated, that is NOT what this does in the game. Not as far as I can see anyway. The game already does what you describe, whether “Light Adaptation” is turned on or off. In fact, the effect is WORSE with LA turned ON in certain circumstances.

To go into more detail. I am standing in front of the entrance of “The Shattered Keep” in Sparkfly. With LA turned OFF the transition effect is exactly the same as with it ON when entering the keep. Except, with it OFF there is a heightened contrast between dark and light throughout the entire scene, meaning that the actual effect is slightly more pronounced to my eyes.

Thus, I am no closer to understanding what this is supposed to do.

TheGrimm.5624:

Did you happen to notice impact on framerates between the settings?

I haven’t seen much, if any, of a difference between SMAA and FXAA (i7, geforce 970), with respect to framerates. I feel like it looks quite a bit better, though.

To be fair, I haven’t been in the game much today — just tinkered with the XML file and ran around LA while reading about new bugs.

I can not find “Ambient Occlusion” in graphic option but only see "Light Adaptation. Are they mutually exclusive?

Ambient Occlusion is right at the top of the check box list.

Yeah it definitely looks even prettier now!
Though for me it wasn’t a huuuge difference, probably because I already play with supersampling on, but it’s a really good improvement still. I noticed that the ‘Ascalon light effect’ that makes metal stuff look extra shiny, now also appears in places like Divinity’s Reach which is great.

What I found even more amazing, is how after today it not only looks better but character control feels more responsive and camera movement feels super super smooth.

Now my pc runs GW2 perfectly and I never had troubles with fps, but sometimes especially with huge events character control and camera movement felt a bit sluggish for lack of a better word, not an fps thing but more as if the game needed to pick up the pace or something.

I dunno what they did but this patch completely eliminated that, it’s super consistent and smooth as butter now. The extra responsive ‘feel’ of the character movement (I noticed it especially with jumping) and camera makes it so much more of a joy to play, so have my love. <3

Ambient Occlusion is nice work really well along side gemfx but light adaptation isn’t worth me turning on the fugly in game post processing.

For me I had to switch between turning them off/on to see what the differences were.. yes, minor in my opinion but still wonderful job on implementing some nice gfx updates.

I guess you can tell the difference more when the sun/lighting is blazing down on your toon because it looks way awesome, or in places where it changes drastically from light to dark (caves, cliff-sides, mountains etc).

Light Adaptation makes shadowy areas brighter, e.g. go to SW starting area near the wp and enable/disable the setting.
Also you have a smooth transition effect when you go to a bright area, e.g. relog your character in DR during the day.

Ambient Occlusion effects are visible when you have lots of buildings/objects around, look around the edges and you’ll see the shadows changing.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Ambient Occlusion is right at the top of the check box list.

Hmm .. i only see this :
I also tried fullscreen mode, didn’t changed anything.

Beldin.5498:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Ambient Occlusion is right at the top of the check box list.

Hmm .. i only see this :
I also tried fullscreen mode, didn’t changed anything.

Look at that screen shot closely. Look for check boxes.

+1 Agree with the OP, ambient occlusion looks gorgeous! Looking forward to SMAA working when they fix the bug, though with supersampling and FXAA turned OFF it looks good anyway.
Thanks ANET! Looking forward to exploring more now rather than just playing PvP.

Neat more graphics options that I can’t turn on because the client can’t handle it and will cause it to crash incessantly OOM when ever doing a task with lots of people around (world bosses, wvw, etc).

Behellagh.1468:

Beldin.5498:

RoseofGilead.8907:

Ambient Occlusion is right at the top of the check box list.

Hmm .. i only see this :
I also tried fullscreen mode, didn’t changed anything.

Look at that screen shot closely. Look for check boxes.

Ah .. ok .. for some unknown reasons i understood combo-box .. -wallbash-

Well, The AO isn’t bad, but the new SMAA setting sucks. Just like FXAA it ignores everything within a window. So previewing gear, opening the hero panel, etc, all of it remains a jaggy mess. I don’t see why they can’t make it work on that as well since an SMAA injector has no problem covering everything properly.

Kodiak.3281:

Neat more graphics options that I can’t turn on because the client can’t handle it and will cause it to crash incessantly OOM when ever doing a task with lots of people around (world bosses, wvw, etc).

Sounds like your computer is a piece of crap tbh. I’ve done hundreds upon hundred of world bosses on high settings with no crashes to be seen.

Blackhearted.1264:

Well, The AO isn’t bad, but the new SMAA setting sucks. Just like FXAA it ignores everything within a window. So previewing gear, opening the hero panel, etc, all of it remains a jaggy mess. I don’t see why they can’t make it work on that as well since an SMAA injector has no problem covering everything properly.

This. I appreciate that we have SMAA now very much, but please allow it to affect panels as well.

it’s cool but i find that Light Adaptation is a pale imitation of true HDR effect .. i have it off all the time because it’s annoying. Ambient occlusion is great i use it , however the SMAA options are so weak even when set a high. my SMAA setting in my SweetFX are far more aggressive and do a better job.

They need to transfer more tasks from the CPU to the GPU like shadows and reflections.. then ill be happy.