Black surfaces appear strangely bright

[Solar Prominence]

Playing in several different missions, it seems that black or very dark areas of the screen seem to take on a bluish-gray tinge, and stand out very strongly. This is visible in a variety of places - dark portions of wall near windows or sky; the spaces between cobblestones or other patterns and guards in shadow are especially so. It's less apparent in sections of the screen near my character, and also more apparent on the top half of my monitor than the bottom half.

 

I've fiddled with my ingame brightness and gamma, turned the LOD up and down, recalibrated my monitor's display, and installed the most recent video drivers, but it still persists, both ingame and in screenshots. Black areas on other people's videos and screenshots appear normal, so I don't think my monitor itself is the problem.

My video specs are:

Video card:AMD Radeon HD 6700

Monitor: SyncMaster 920NW/920LM (I do have it set to 32bit color)

 

I've also attached a screenshot; the wall in the mid-right of the image looks bluish-grey and is more visible than it should be.

[Lux]

Judging by that particular monitor's response time (5ms) I would say its a TN panel and this is just something that goes along with TN panels in my experience. Regardless if you're using 32bit color output in Windows/Linux, the monitor is limited in its color spectrum as are all 8bit panels.

 

10bit panels can provide the full color gamut but they are prohibitively expensive.

 

Also, since its an older monitor, it more than likely has CCFL backlight which is something else that hinders proper black color reproduction.

 

LED backlighting is much better at producing black blacks.

 

Looking at your screen shot and owning 3x TN panels myself, I don't personally see anything different about it vs. mine so my advice would be.... get used to it?

 

You can possibly tilt the monitor either UP or DOWN a bit to alter the colors shown on the screen.

 

just my 2 pennies.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Lux

[stumpy]

on my crt monitor all i see are the lit windows and light, the rest of the image is pitch black.

[Lydecker]

I see nothing but pure black on that SS on my old LG Flatron. It's IPS, so it should explain that. I upped my monitors brightness and gamma, didn't really change it. Pitch black turned to very dark gray. It's not even that expensive, cost me 550e back in 2010. Still a very good balance between speed and quality.

 

I must be getting delirious on this fever or something... I was sure this topic had something to do with sun spots, even after reading a few lines... The topic and that little avatar of the surface of sun. Yeeeah... back to bed...

[Solar Prominence]

Looking at your screen shot and owning 3x TN panels myself, I don't personally see anything different about it vs. mine so my advice would be.... get used to it?

 

You can possibly tilt the monitor either UP or DOWN a bit to alter the colors shown on the screen.

 

Ah, thanks for the information. I can definitely get used to it - I just was hoping there was some obvious solution I had overlooked in my ignorance. Guess not! And yeah, tilting the monitor doesn't help all that much.

[Lux]

Most TN panels get darker the lower your view point so tilting the monitor backward should at least improve that somewhat if you can stand not having your monitor plumb.

 

Personally I can't stand my monitors not being level and plumb so I just have learned to accept it.

 

I do have an S-PVA Dell panel as well (2407wfp) and it has much better blacks and color in general but getting 3 of those for triple monitor was cost prohibitive. :\

 

For gaming though, TN have adequate color reproduction and excellent reponse times and they're inexpensive so they're hard to beat.

 

Hopefully one day all panels will be 10bit full spectrum, per pixel backlit, tiny bezels, and be inexpensive.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Lux

[Bikerdude]

Got a camera shot of what your referring too..? rather than a screenshot..