PC Have Dtg Considered This Alternative Tonemapper Option?

So for the past few days, I've been playing around with a few UE4 settings and found an interesting one.

I found a setting called 'r.ToneMapperFilm' This affects the lighting, contrast and colour of the game.

By default it is set to r.ToneMapperFilm 1. The top image shows this in action. The bottom image shows this set to r.ToneMapperFilm 0.

What I found interesting is that the latter looks a lot more colour accurate to me, as well as brings out the detail of the sky.

I believe this also has ZERO performance impacts - as its simply colour and lighting related corrections.

Notice how the 314 front is no longer yellowish-green looking and now has a warmer orange tinge to it, as per real life. Also notice how the backlit light of the 314 destination display is now actually visible compared to before.

I also found that it helps brighten up darker areas, as well as brings about the details of things.

Some comparisons below - with the top image being the default and the bottom image being the alternative option.


Next, a comparison with the 465:


Once again, notice the colour accuracies. Top has a yellowish-green tinge to it and the bottom has the accurate orange look to it. More importantly, notice how much more noticeable dirt details are, both on the front of the roof and at the bottom of the train.

 

Should there not be an = before the 0 or 1? Or is it indeed a space? (Just going on all the other .ini adjustments I have).

 

Ah yes. I apply it in Unreal Engine Unlocker, so it doesn’t require an =

However, if you’re adding it to your ini, add the =

 

Thanks for that one- I had neutralized virtually all of the UE color-and-lighting "improvements" which instead simply make things look worse, but I didn't know about that one.

 

By default, for some reason, TSW’s colour and lighting looks really off. This command, in my opinion, fixes that and makes things look a lot better.

 

A small example here - two different tones of green for the LED signals. Left is default and right is with the command.

The one on the right is much more colour accurate.

 

It seems that whoever wrote the Tonemapper Film filter decided that film always fades and washes out colors.

 

Don't usually do mods to the engine.ini, but will give this one a try.

Just ran a bit of LBM in a 387 and, to my old eyes, the colours do look better.

 

Hmm. Tried it out, but I got the exact opposite results on Boston Sprinter.With "r.ToneMapperFilm=0" things look worse. Sure, the sky is more blue, but everything else looks more washed out with less contrast.

You can see the difference for me here. Screenshot without HUD is the original, the bottom ones with HUD are with "r.ToneMapperFilm=0".



Again, top one is original, bottom one is with the new setting.



The sky looks good, but everything else is worse.

 

On first try, I agree that it looks like a contrast lowering filter is slightly overdone, but I find it preferable to the original. Does the setting have to be integer, or can one use, say, =0.5?

 

I'm pretty sure all the "Film" commands are binary, on/off.

 

Isn’t it the other way round? It is a film filter that is on by default and increases the contrast too much amongst other effects on the colour and setting it to 0 turns it off and makes everything look more natural.

That’s the same result as LM got though. Thinking it looks worse will just be your preference for the filter being on as it is by default.

I’m wondering if it’s one of those things that will make some things look better and others look worse to different people and the difference will be how people like it to be. High contrast always seems to mean less detail in shadow areas, so my preference would always be for slightly lower contrast to keep those details and more vibrant colours. It’s a shame I can’t use it being on console but I think it is an improvement in all the examples shown and shadow areas are nearly always too dark in TSW.

 

It would be good to make it more realistic. My monitor is colour calibrated and TSW always looks like a cartoon

 

By default it seems like TSW almost has a ‘film/movie’ effect enabled to it, by neutralising the colours and shadows being too dark.

In simplified terms, this change pretty much changes it from the ‘film look’ and makes it look a bit more like a game, by adding vibrance to colours and reducing the ‘dramatic’ dark look TSW has to it.

 

Dinosbacsi Bear in mind if you're playing on an older TSW 1 route or a route which has a lot of bloom by default, it'll have a negative effect. This is more for TSW 2 routes, which are generally a lot darker looking by default.

 

Umm, no? My screenshots are from Boston Sprinter, which is a TSW2 release from last year.

 

Another comparison - top being the default and the bottom one altered. It's clear by default, there is a 'film' filter being applied. Notice how the shadows are a lot more darker, with the colours neutralised.

 

Another comparison sees a comparison of the headlight output of the Class 387 in a tunnel. As you can see, the top (default) doesn't illuminate light in the tunnel all too well, however, the bottom image shows the tunnel walls quite a lot more well lit.

 

All this setting is doing is reverting to the legacy tonemapper which was disabled by default in 4.15
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphics/PostProcessEffects/ColorGrading/

 

You very well could do that by reducing your other Engine.ini settings. You have been obsessed with making everything look really (unrealistically, imo) dark and contrasted, and this command tells the game to switch to a tonemapper which decreases the overall contrast. It's unnecessary and probably why others aren't finding the same results as you, because your baseline is already so dark.

Cheers