Chapter 5, sections too dark? - A follow up.

Following some reports after the release of chapter 5 the other day, I put up a little poll on the question whether or not you thought sections of it were too dark. 

As to date, there's been a good response to that, with about one third of patrons responding. The results were that a significant portion (about 25%) of big screen users (who are the majority of responders) had problems, and that number rose even higher for smaller form factors (but affecting less responders).

That's pretty worrying, because even if it's a minority overall, it's a significant minority. What is more worrying is that I could not reproduce the issue, images looked absolutely fine from my perspective.

It's the only way to be sure.

So since then, I've gotten a bit of hardware in, in this case a SpiderX pro. It may not be a top of the line photography professional hardware, but it should serve the purpose of finding out if I've been working with a configuration that was set up too bright, resulting in the production of images that are too dark. The results were... not what I was expecting.

What I was expecting was finding out that either my monitors were configured too bright (explaining one quarter of players reporting problems) or finding out my monitors were set up right (explaining the three quarters that reported it wasn't a big problem). 

If I did create the images too dark, that would have been embarrassing. It would also mean it was easily fixed: set up the monitors correctly from now on, and crank up the brightness of images already created.

What I found out, however, is that if anything, my monitors were configured too dimly. They were set up just about right for nighttime (moderately dim) lighting conditions, but way to dim for daytime work.

So, you were right, Naughty. Argument won!

Well, no. In fact, far from it. What I'd hoped was for this to answer to why a significant group of people were not seeing the images the way I created them. 

In fact, it would have been nice in a way to have found out I messed up and I should have been creating with brightness turned way down, because that would have been the answer to fix this and avoid this in the future. 

So, instead, I'm sort of back at square one, but at least we can cross out the option of faulty equipment or setup on my end, so that's reducing the problem space a little. 

So now what?

Well, there's been quite a bit of speculating about what could be the reason people are reporting problems with this scene. Ranging from "not getting it", to cheap, faulty or misconfigured hardware, problems with poor lighting conditions and glare, etc. 

But this exercise shouldn't be about proving a quarter of players were wrong. Obviously, they weren't wrong, because they didn't get a good experience. The reasons for that are secondary really, except as a way to find an answer the question on how to prevent that from happening.

But, with the results from the hardware calibration, a clear cut technical answer to the question of why seems farther away rather than closer. 

Still, there's something of an answer to be found in this result, perhaps something as simple as: as light conditions in a scene grow darker, the user experience will begin to vary strongly, with a significant minority reporting issues on their end.

It doesn't offer much of a solution, and that's too bad. But it's something I will need to account for in the future, in one way or another.

Edit: let's not forget

Thanks everyone who voted and offered their experiences. It's been very helpful even if for now the results are somewhat inconclusive.

Some tech details

The SpiderX Pro comes with an ambient light sensor, and it recommended about 120 cd/m^2 for moderately dim conditions during nighttime. It'll measure brightness as part of the calibration process and prompt you to turn it up or down until it's in the correct range. It turns out 120 cd/m^2 was just about what I had my system set up to prior to this. 

It recommended cranking up to 180/200 cd/m^2 (a significant increase on my prior settings) during a daytime measurement, with the strong suggestion of closing the blinds when I ran it during daylight as it indicated lighting conditions in the room were too bright.

In fact that daylight setting is too much for my aging secondary monitor, it can just about muster the dim lighting conditions setting with brightness cranked all the way up.