Why can red be seen underwater?
Fragmagnet
Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 72873Members
Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 72873Members
EDIT: quite a few of the images I made are gone because I accidentally deleted them off my puush account. Rip images. You will be missed.
This may seem like an odd question.
But for those who don't know. The color red cannot be seen underwater unless you have a lightsource pointed at it that isn't the sun.
In pure water at a depth of 5 meters, red light from the sun is absorbed by the water and cannot be seen anymore, however this can be remedied if you bring along a light source.
Green light suffers the same fate but at a much deeper depth.
Blue light suffers the same fate as well, but at an even deeper depth, this is why water looks blue, because blue light is the last to be absorbed.
You could say that this is ignored in subnautica and pretty much every other game with water because well colors are pretty.
However subnautica is a game ABOUT the ocean. Yes it's an alien ocean and odd things can happen, but light is still the same wherever you are.
However a graphics setting to select which method you would like to use would be nice.
This may seem like an odd question.
But for those who don't know. The color red cannot be seen underwater unless you have a lightsource pointed at it that isn't the sun.
In pure water at a depth of 5 meters, red light from the sun is absorbed by the water and cannot be seen anymore, however this can be remedied if you bring along a light source.
Green light suffers the same fate but at a much deeper depth.
Blue light suffers the same fate as well, but at an even deeper depth, this is why water looks blue, because blue light is the last to be absorbed.
You could say that this is ignored in subnautica and pretty much every other game with water because well colors are pretty.
However subnautica is a game ABOUT the ocean. Yes it's an alien ocean and odd things can happen, but light is still the same wherever you are.
However a graphics setting to select which method you would like to use would be nice.
Comments
Sometimes keeping something 'true to life' when turning it into a game makes the game that much less enjoyable. I think it is fair to say that one of the key selling points of subnautica is it looks. To lose the colors red and green from the game would ruin certain biomes,
Personally, I'd like to see them keep the beauty of the game over realism.
Well it's obviously oxygenated since there's evidence to support that the alien creatures need oxygen, and some plants excrete bubbles of breathable air.
And the fact that it IS water since you can strain it with a membrane or clean it with bleach and then drink it as fresh water, shows that it IS H2O.
What else is in it, I don't know, but other stuff in water would just make more light get absorbed faster.
But we have gotten a response of "We want pretty colors.".
So oh well.
Also filtering the colour red from the environment shouldn't be too hard. Maybe they could add a "realism" look alongside the default "omgPretty" look?
Well this can just be proven wrong right now.
Stand on top of your escape pod with your goggles off.
Look down into the water.
You can see red things as being red.
What I don't want to see is two points:
1) Biomes having the same looks no matter what and at what depth
There should definately be more prominent changes than what we have now. It makes it much more exciting.
2) Have everything look boring unless you're a swimming lightbulb
Currently you ARE a swimming lightbulb already (you can try this by getting close to ground below the 200m mark at night e.g.).
I don't particulary like that effect since it's a combination of a sphere based no-fog zone (that looks very odd close to the surface) and a light.
What I would love to see is that things would indeed look differntly when shined upon with lights at greater depths. I was "parking" a Seamoth in the direction of a pack of Reefback and it was really neat to see them being lit by it's lights. That needs to improve at greater depths somehow.
I would create more alien feeling by adding more bioluminescent life-forms. But somehow vision should be affected and not always be the same. Right now, frankly, the best flash light is the brightness setting on your monitor and that is not a great thing at all.
If you really want it to be realistic, just pretend that humans on colony ships were bred to be a foot tall to save on fuel, so everything you see in the game is actually 1/10th its apparent size, and sunlight can penetrate 10x as far as a result.
Which side looks like you're underwater.
use spoiler tags for images please -Kouji San
On the other hand this is one of the case I am happy to suspend my disbelief, sorta like sound in space in Star Wars.
If we need to come up with an explanation within lore to make such SoD easier - I would suggest either cybernetic implant that helps player character process visual information coloring it as needed to make visual recognitions easier (in which case the question is why does it just color not say highlight things) or more likely, since genetic engineering is obviously part of the lore, genetic modifications to character's eyes and Occipital Lobe for enhanced color perception in water (red light wavelength will still be absorbed by the water of course but the character vision would be able to identify such shifts and voids in the spectrum in the world and process them as "red")
Well thanks for that! now I'm reminded by the tragic loss of Firefly
The thing is, if you remove the colour red you're also kinda limiting the creative freedom for the game. As I said, an option for a red filter shouldn't be too hard. I'm inclined to agree the true underwater look does look more what you actually expect to see. But a percentage filter would probably look better. 50% red filter instead of 100%, or hey let's get fancy, customisable
Red glowing lights underwater that provide their own light still look red as long as you aren't too far from them.
Also bringing a flashlight you can see full color since the light is closer to the subject. (which would definitely make the flashlight even more useful)
Meaning a static filter would not suffice.
Well hopefully Firefly game will come out soon ( https://keepflying.com/ ) and there is always PnP RPG. (sorry for the Off-Topic)
There are plenty of ways to make it still look and, more importantly, FEEL like you are underwater when actually playing the game, and I think we can still pull that off without completely removing some very important colors from our game palette.
The left one looks like you're just swimming around above ground.
But I don't find it needed for the game, as long as we feel like we're underwater and in another foreign ocean it's good gameplay to me! If you took away major colors like that, it might get dull.. if you want an example of dull colors you can launch a game called counter-strike global offensive and let your eyes feast on desaturated grey, tan, and all the pale colors in-between making environments non vibrant and blending.. sort of like working a 8 hour shift at fast food, quite miserable x]
But the entire game in bleak shades of green? no i guess bright colors underwater it is.
Well you seem to forget.
If there is a source of light that isn't the sun being shined on an object, then you can see the full colors within the light.
And if an object glows its own color you would still see that color.
I think that Fragmagnet went way too far with desaturating all reds to 0, and personally I don't like neither left nor right version. He has a good point though, right now because of the sphere of clarity around player everything looks like it's in front of the water and the underwater world only begins 10/15 metres away from the player. I'm a photographer by profession and maybe I'm too sensitive to it, but SN could very much use a slight blue-green colour cast on things near the player. The way how abruptly the fog starts is quite jarring.
Well if we don't want 100% red desaturation
Let's try desaturating it down to 3/8ths since 2/8ths would be too much and 4/8ths wouldn't be enough.
And remember, if you have a flashlight or something glows with its own light, you still see the full color.
Something like this isn't removing part of the color palette. It's just changing the way you see it.
well to me 50% red desat just doesn't look right for underwater since there's so much red. Most people probably wouldn't notice a difference between 5/8ths and 50% but I definitely do.
Here's 50% desat
-Everything in Subnautica
Oh short list I guess.
I get what you're saying, but I think it's completely silly to expect this to be forced in a game that is very clearly not a realistic sim. It's a game about wonder and exploration, and even after multiple devs have chimed in saying the same thing, you still seem to think you've got it figured out w/ your desat. images. The one w/ the flashlight looks terrible and I'd uninstall immediately if that's what it looked like.
The company is called Unknown Worlds, it's a sci fi game, and there's also hundreds of other things that are not accurate to real life. You wanna link me to where I can find a DNA splicer so I can go around nabbin DNA strands from wild creatures to inject and fuse into my own? How about if it's going to be such a struggle for you to accept, you just remind yourself that it's just a game, just for fun, and on an alien planet. Perhaps tell yourself there is high mineral content in the water which refracts light from the sun down to further depths.
I don't know, just seems stupid especially from an artistic stand-point to remove so many colors from the pallet (no it's not just changing the way you see it if you never see it like that) when like 90% of the draw of the game is to be immersed in a stunningly beautiful aquatic realm. The drabness of you images is a big do not want in my book and is far from stunning or beautiful. This isn't an uber realistic realm, clearly. I think you should just drop your argument. Devs already said it's how they like it, and I think it only makes sense.
But as it stands the fog feels weird the way it starts so far away, and it doesn't make you feel like you're underwater.
That's what I was thinking as well. However if it doesn't allow lights that aren't the sun to show the true colors of the objects then there's no real point. A static filter cannot be used.
A static filter wouldn't make it feel like you're underwater, it would just make it feel like you're playing a game without any red in it.