soft glow with a fading impact.
soft glow with a fading impact.
The fabric shown in the image behaves differently from real life. In reality, materials don’t show such a shiny silver appearance when light hits them at angles. The surface seems rough but not glossy—more like a textured finish, possibly resembling a donut glaze or brushed steel. While the idea behind these visual effects might be plausible, they don’t match accurately. Video game visuals are stylized interpretations of real-world physics, not exact replicas. For example, aluminum does reflect light, but cockpit materials vary widely—from wood to painted metal. Unpainted metal reflects what it touches, but not uniformly across the whole surface. Trees wouldn’t get a noticeable green tint from nearby foliage in this context. The Fresnel effect does contribute to this look, especially on matte surfaces, though many games exaggerate these details for dramatic impact.
Take a close look at the initial picture once more. It seems even the surface is showing this change, which is unusual in real life.
It's definitely not a well-executed scene. The BF4 visuals seem to rely heavily on strong highlights against dark backgrounds, with only black tones in the shadows and tan shades elsewhere—making the model feel realistic. Tarkov presents an unusual effect possibly linked to fog, causing more white reflections than usual. The other images you shared didn’t have fog and looked much better. I’d need a clearer example for your lighting issue. I can explain how materials behave with light, like wood reflecting differently at various times of day or how trees appear green due to light filtering through foliage. The amount of reflection depends on the surface type and surroundings.
Observe how the ground affects the cockpit appearance. During flight it reverts to its usual gray tone, likely because surrounding surfaces are white or blue and don’t reflect enough light. I understand that light bounces off objects to some extent, but this seems unusual. I can’t explain the exact physics behind it, though I don’t notice it in everyday situations. The only time I’ve seen something similar was in a dimly lit room with red emergency lights.
Why we rely on ray tracing? If everything appears instantly, don’t you want to trace rays? The ambient occlusion feels absent. Honestly, games look lacking in realistic lighting.
Oh, so there's... don't exactly quote me on this I'm not a game graphics guy.. a thing called culling, which is probably wrong. ...In essence that plane is basically acting like it has no floor and the light is just bouncing through. It helps to simplify the lighting and shadows, and also helps keep the cockpit from being near pitch black. Just kind of an unfortunate side effect on the ground. The exact same thing is happening in the sky, and the plane isn't a neutral grey, it's pretty blueish as a result. Look around in games and you'll find objects with no shadows, or sometimes only certain parts of a shadow. Most modern games don't really like to do self shadows or self reflections. Hopefully that gets bigger? If not it's the Ford GT from Forza 6. But notice how the mirror doesn't really have a shadow, or how it doesn't line up. The flying buttress in the rear does have a shadow, but notice how it doesn't have self reflection. It's tradeoffs. Same things happen inside the car. Inside the car is a bigger issue though since there's no bounce lighting. Assuming the cockpit has a physical glass object for light to pass through, that alone darkens it and the light path is then terminated upon the first opaque object it hits. The interior as a result is very dark. The solution is to use environment lighting which will add in fill lights around the cockpit so you can actually see, even though it's typically still pretty dark, especially if it's a black interior. In reality, the top brace for the canopy might have some tan tint to it, but it's a little hard to tell with the angle. The wings and just general geometry might get in the way. I'm also unsure what that game is, but it looks a little old and is probably not using PBR, but more along the lines of some environment sphere lighting, because it shouldn't be that reflective with PBR. ...Actually... ray tracing eliminates this problem entirely. Check out this demo if you haven't seen it already. The exterior scenes can be hit or miss, but the interior scenes really show what RT actually does. Without RT they have to use approximated environment mapping, which can look good, but leads to the issues I've described and OP justly hates. I hate it too, I'm in a cave with no light, why is it so bright? You can also eliminate that god awful spawn of Satan Ambient Occlusion.
This discussion covers everything that makes me really enthusiastic about the upcoming RTX models, especially for future releases. It addresses all these issues and delivers far more lifelike visuals with precise lighting.
I've considered this for a long time—CryEngine delivers impressive visuals. Sadly, it's only used in... very limited contexts. The engine everyone praises is hard to work with, but the technology behind it is growing rapidly. HDR is becoming more common now, and when paired with ray tracing, we might finally reach new levels of realism. It’s incredible that we can achieve this kind of performance in real time, just like Pixar did with Toy Story a couple of decades ago.