What is your gamma setting?

[RealScenery]

More recent versions of X-Plane have introduced a gamma setting. If you are not familiar with this setting, it is located under the Settings menu > Rendering Options. The default gamma value is 2.5.  Gamma is a control of the overall brightness, or luminance, of an image. Images which are not displayed at a proper gamma setting may look either too washed out or too dark. To make my scenery look the best that it can in X-Plane, I try to use the default gamma, or even a bit lower, with values of 2.3 - 2.5, and develop my images at these settings. Two factors which affect the quality of the entire X-Plane application, both aircraft and scenery, are the time of day, and also the gamma setting. You may notice that with photo-based image textures, there is a large variation in the luminance of the image at mid-day and also with increased/decreased gamma values.

With that background, I'm curious to know what gamma setting you use and why. How does the gamma benefit, or detract from, the quality of the entire X-Plane application window? My real motivation here is to find the gamma values used by most people and use those values more heavily when evaluating image quality during development of new scenery.

I look forward to hearing how you use this setting to hopefully enhance your flying experience.

Thanks!

Eric

[Airbus]

I keep gamma levels at default, especially when building and texturing planes. Hopefully X-Plane 10 will have better global illumination! Seems as if the sim gradually got darker from v6. I think X-Plane v6 had the best world lighting, ever since Ive hated the lighting with a burning passion! I think it may have something to do with how v9 works with contrast. Its really irritating! Even today if you compare X-Plane's sun to other simulators or games you'll notice that the worlds are much more vibrant. The key is the way lighting is rendered, it can make 3d involvement much more livelier.

Here is a great example of great lighting!

[woweezowee]

2.2

[garrettm30]

My gamma is at 1.8, which is the default on my machine. I have never changed that setting. In fact, I just trashed all my preferences three days ago, and that is the number that was left by default. That's why I'm surprised you say the default is 2.5. Perhaps it is different according to system. I am running a Mac. Until recently, the default system gamma (not X-Plane specific) has been 1.8 on Macs, though in Snow Leopard they have finally changed default to 2.2. I have never messed with X-Plane's gamma (left at 1.8 ) because I never thought it looked dark.

To sum up my situation:

X-Plane setting: 1.8

System setting: 2.2

Edit: Forget that last bit. I got to thinking about this and realized I wasn't sure what my system gamma is set to, only what its default is. Default is now 2.2 on Mac, but my screen was last calibrated when the default was 1.8 and it may very well be that now.

[Jack Skieczius]

My X-plane is at the default gamma of 2.5

I checked the Nvidia control panel and that is set to 1.0, but is also set on application settings control.

my monitor only has three gamma settings and i have it set on the middle value whatever that may be since it doesn't say.

[Lukasz]

X-Plane setting: 3.0

nVidia panel: 1.00, all other sliders left at default 50%

LCD screen settings:

brightness 0%

contrast 50%

gamma 50%

The net result is bright on midday, yet dark at midnight.

[woweezowee]

2.2

I changed to 3 now on my iMac, 24‘‘, previous generation. It's just better inside some cockpits. It wasn't so much the outer world that bothered me.

[garrettm30]

Ben Supnik wrote an article on his blog earlier this week on the subject of gamma in X-Plane that some might find informative.

http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/2010/06/dds-has-no-gamma-which-is-very-sad.html

[MaidenFan]

Wow, that scenery is amazing. Where did you get it?

[Cameron]

Wow, that scenery is amazing. Where did you get it?

It's not X-Plane.

[MaidenFan]

Oh, because I've never seen anything like that on x plane like that before.