How can I make Half Life / CS brighter?

[John]

I have GF2 GTS and the brightness is all the way up in the game gamma/brightness options. I have the latest patches. How can I make it brighter?

 

[ultravox]

Isn't there a brightnes/gamma setting you can play with in the game video options? I have that problem with Alice and I just turn up the monitor brightness but in HL I do it from the game.

 

[Shagga]

I find I can only really play it when the curtains are closed and the lights are off. Somehow, playing in complete darkness has improved my game, albeit I have a 56k modem, so how good can I possibly be?

 

[erikiksaz]

Strange, what's up with all these dark games on nvidia cards? i've never had any of these problems with my riva128, tnt2, or geforce2. I have my gamma set to 1.3, and my monitor is set to the brightest setting. Heh, try hiding in a dark corner in CS, i'll still see you...

 

[celeritas]

For HL, try this: Tweak3D autoexec creator. For CS, the autoexec.cfg might work if you copy it into the cstrike directory -- but I haven't tried it. I see that there's already a config.cfg file in there that contains similar info; you might want to backup the file and play with the gamma and brightness settings...

From the Tweak3D link:

<< Brightness/Gamma

Brightness adjusts the brightness of the characters, weapons, and other objects only. It can brighten up objects very well. This command has no effect on performance. Gamma adjusts the brightness of everything. This value can be set from 0.0 to 4.0 and has no effect on performance. I recommend setting the brightness to 2.0 and the gamma to 4.0 if you have a TNT based card or any other card that you believe is too dark. Also, make sure to read about the command below. If you adjust these brightness settings, you must type exec autoexec.cfg at the CONSOLE and restart the game for changes to take effect. (only after making changes)

Texture Gamma/Light Gamma

Texture Gamma (texgamma) adjusts the overall gamma of all textures in
the scene. If you set the above to 2 and 4, try setting these commands to 3 and 2 (respectively) Otherwise, set these commands to 2 and 2.5 (respectively) which is default. It is recommended that you experiment with the settings to find your personal preference. These commands have no effect on performance. If you adjust these brightness settings, you must type exec autoexec.cfg at the CONSOLE and restart the game for changes to take effect. (only after making changes) >>

 

[Deslok]

John,
These are the four variables I messed around with in my autoexec:
textgamma &quot;2.0&quot;
lightgamma &quot;2.0&quot;
brightness &quot;4.0&quot;
gamma &quot;4.0&quot;

If I remember correctly, the first two had more of an impact.
Lower is brighter. I set both to 0 at first - superbright : )
Try 2.0 for text and light, it really brightened up the maps for me on 32meg DDR Radeon.
Hope this helps