PS3 Muted colors/lighting in some PS3 tables

Someone with a really good camera setup or capture card could do a much better job of this, but here's a stab at getting started, taken with my cheap camera off my Sony Pearl 1080p projector's wall display, with a ball cradled and viewed in locked game camera view 3. I have my PS3's display settings set to Full RGB range.

The colors and/or lighting on some tables in the PS3 version of The Pinball Arcade are very muted. I'm going to show the photos I took of them in order from what I think are the worst to the still-bad-but-not-as-bad, and next (since I'm limited to four images per post) contrast those against Creature from the Black Lagoon, which I think has the best lighting, and Gorgar, which seems to have the most forum mentions for good lighting.

Apologies for the slight blurriness. Also, keep in mind that my inferior camera setup actually oversaturated the images somewhat--so this is only a relative comparison between photos. Creature from the Black Lagoon and Gorgar actually look quite nice and not oversaturated in person, and likewise the other tables look even less saturated than they appear here.

The bad:

Harley-Davidson


Medieval Madness


No Good Gofers!


Taxi

versus The Good (keeping in mind my camera has oversaturated all of these, so they are only a relative comparison between tables):

Creature from the Black Lagoon


Gorgar


While my camera hasn't preserved them quite as they appear to the eye, hopefully it is at least clear that there is a vast difference in the quality of lighting between some of the tables. I also hope that someone with a video capture card or other superior setup can come along and provide decent images.

I suppose what prompted me to post this is the worrying trend that the lighting has been very blah in three of the last four released tables, whereas the success rate was better in the earlier tables. If there isn't enough time to do the PS3 version's more sophisticated lighting scheme properly, I wonder if its worth considering switching to the simpler lighting scheme currently seen in the other versions--Xbox 360, for instance. Perhaps that would also improve rendering performance (ie flipper lag).

/end wild speculation

A good comparison is to look at the yellow flippers in Gorgar and then the yellow flippers on Taxi. Big difference.

I think they are purposely dimming the ambient light on the table to make it more apparent when the lighted
targets are lit, but I agree they go to far and it makes the whole thing look bland.

It's bee mentioned in here quite a lot and to be honest I'm really surprised no one from Farsight has commented on weather they plan on
improving it. Actually, now that I think about it Mike may have spoke about the upcoming day/night slider on one of the threads regarding this, but I'm not positive.

With the exception of a couple tables, Gorgar comes to mind, they are need better color saturation and they need to be much brighter, but not just a gamma adjustment either.

I posted this a while back, but even just a slight curves adjustment in Photoshop gives you a slightly improved picture



This isn't anything new though. This is months now and not a single improvement makes me worried that Farsight is OK with the dull, muddied look.
I know they are devoted to making these the best they can so I'm starting to wonder if either their Dev system isn't set to "Full RGB" or their displays are not up to spec because something is going on here.

I can't speak for the 360 version because I haven't played it, but if you search around the forums for people's thoughts on the newer tables you will see these adjectives:
"muddied, muted, washed out, dark, weird, undersaturated, Dull

And keep in mind, these are not the FB haters.. These are their core fans, me included, and it's sad to see this when these tables should pop off the screen.

So please Farsight, improve the colors and lighting before you release more like this.

NGG is missing light bulbs under the kickbacks.

What I would really like to see is a side by side comparison of the tables for each platform. Im curious how they look on the Xbox compared to the PS3.

Lord Boron said:

What I would really like to see is a side by side comparison of the tables for each platform. Im curious how they look on the Xbox compared to the PS3.

Click to expand...

I Have all of the tables available for both systems. The ones that look dark and muted on PS3 definitely look much more vibrant on the 360. Unfortunately with the newer packs I have nothing to compare it to. There are a couple of tables that I prefer graphically on the PS3, (TOTAN and MB) but For the most part 360 has it beat hands down.

When I first got The game on both platforms I had initially preferred the PS3 until I got used to them. But there is a HUGE discrepancy in the look between both platforms.

Although TAXI is muted in color after you adjust it looks really good, maybe just crank the color up on your TV

One of the worst offenders is BOP especially when you compare it to the ios version (which is prob too bright) somewhere in the middle would be great.

To give further perspective, here's a comparison of the ps3 screenshot from above for Harley vs Android vs a real table from IPDB:

PS3:




Android (Samsung Galaxy S2):




Real table:



Pretty stark difference, no?


Tabe

I thought I was just my tv. I use iPad and PS3 and the difference is night and day...

Literally...

On the ifad (not a typo) it looks like your playing in the day and PS3 like your playing at night.

@Tabe yes it puts it into perspective quite well.

Chrome:

FarSight needs to stop cutting corners with chrome textures. It's one of the easiest texture maps around and we still see blurry grey chrome texture , Im not saying I understand how they program or how their models work in the engine , but clearly I do believe they are taking unecessary shortcuts rendering the tables on PS3 .The top edges on the right and left are supposed to be chrome railing . The detailing over the Harley bikes are also chrome accents . These are defining moments for the game , not details to be skipped .

Lighting:

This is my other peeve , the sides of the black box interior do not refract any of the nearby light sources , we should see the diffused lights from the traffic signal hitting the right side of the box and a tint of that lighting on that side .(for that matter Funhouse still does not have it's interior side walls blue , a graphic bug we pointed out back when it first came out on Ps3) This effect can be best seen in Circus Voltaire when the neon tube goes lit, everything on the playfield gets lit up.
You need to keep that effect constant .

Toy Models:

With Monster Bash , they paid careful attention to render those toys , the same cannot be said on Harley Davidson . The Bikes are in the wrong scales , the red transparent pieces are not convincing around the playfield .(makes me want to do comparison photos of my own to see if my LED TV in HDMI looks better than Tabe's screen caps.)

HD is a terrific pinball table in TPA , but it can and should be better .

Yeah Sin I agree about the CHROME Ive been saying how it is crucial to get the chrome right just look at ProPinball the chrome is perfect I also made a thread dedicated to pointing it out I need to update it.http://digitalpinballfans.com/showthread.php/1894-Chrome-rails

@Tabe, I have the Harley table for the Android smartphone and there it looks great, even better than on the picture from the real table.

ScotchYeti said:

@Tabe, I have the Harley table for the Android smartphone and there it looks great, even better than on the picture from the real table.

Click to expand...

Although this is a PS3 thread, I took a screenshot from my Galaxy S2 and have added it above as it further makes the case that Farsight screwed up the PS3 version of this table.

Tabe

Wow aside from the jaggies GIVE US THAT!

Look at the dramatic difference between these screen shots and this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXq9mY4rXcs&feature=relmfu

I think this video is a little dark for my tastes, but the color saturation is there. These PS3 shots are simply washed out.

heres TPA taxi and PHOF taxi
TPA

PHOF

The above video of Table Pack 5 is at least a little closer to the way things should be. Still too dark as mentioned but at least there's color.

In the above TPA vs PHOF comparison, it's like they took a layer of gray film and just laid it over top of everything to get the TPA version. Why the heck aren't the YELLOW flippers, ya know, YELLOW?

Tabe