Should Counter Strike be so BRIGHT AND COLOURFUL? 

It adds more visual clarity and less depressing washed colors make me feel better playing even if I'm losing

Yes. We will finally see players in connector on Overpass

6:44 honestly, the "5:30am pre-sunrise" look is pretty sick. It would be cool to see that on a map, it would give a feeling of quiet cold sleepyness whereas the normal look feels energetic and loud in the warm afternoon lighting

Seeing the different sun positions on the maps made me think that it would be pretty cool for maps to have a randomized time of day for that match.

I don't think bright/crisp/realistic/high-quality graphics matter as much as visual clarity and consistent art direction. I know a lot of people say this and it's kinda repetitive at this point, but you can have a game with low-poly visuals and 64x64 textures and still have it look good with readable enemies and objectives. Tag: The Power of Paint is a game that I hold exceptionally close to me even after all these years. Almost all of the graphics are either black-and-white, chromatic, or flat red/green/blue. The game definitely looks flat and unrealistic, but with the three main paint colours each representing a different ability when you interact with them (red = more speed, green = more jump, blue = stick to walls), you're very easily able to figure out what everything is at a glance.

Old lighting gives a grungy look in dark corners. While the new look is more accurate, I wouldn't mind more dirt and grunge textures and decals to account for the new lighting. Some wear and tear would do a lot to counter criticism 😏, but maybe it'd hurt visibility so idk

One of my big takeaways from this is how lighting works in CS2. It very much looks raytraced, while still retaining the performance of being (mostly) pre-calculated. Valve really does have some clever tactics up their sleeve

A hammer 2 editor video would be super sick hope its coming

I think the only problem to me is that maps are a bit too similar with the lighting. I would a map like office or aztec to be a different type of bright

for me personally it doesnt have to be BUT you need to see your enemies clearly

5:00 The reason that the outside is so dark when standing inside is likely due to automatic exposure. Sometimes games will automatically set a "longer" exposure when you are indoors to make it easier to see, the downside of this is that when there is something like an open door or window, it is noticably very bright. It does, however, feel more realistic since it emulates your eyes adjusting to light.

For CSGO's Lighting, its a mix of the dark and edgy lighting era of video games with today's modern colorful/realer lighting we usually see in maps now and in my opinion surprisingly looks great when done

I feel like the CS 1.6 versions of maps actually are more realistic in terms of lighting in some ways (e.g. if you're in a shaded area, bright outside areas look much brighter). I feel like CS2 is going less for realistic lighting and more for lighting everything well enough to try and fix the existing problems with distinguishing players (plus a shift in artstyle that we've already been seeing in the non-default player models in CSGO)

I really like the gritty aesthetic of css, and cs2 just looks too clean and nice.

don't forget, the original Half Life map editor had global illumination baking built into it! I remember in the late 90's baking GI into maps I made, and that's why over the past 20 years I'm constantly disappointed in games that come out without baked GI

CS2’s aesthetic is quite nice, but I wish it felt less “flat”. Give it just a dash more contrast, for depth.

Thx philip for the hammer editor tutorials, ive recently gotten interested in starting to make CS maps as a new hobby, ive been wanting to quickly learn the basics and get up to speed so im ready to join the hype when CS2 rolls around, your vids have greatly helped me to get started

So the main thing I learned in this video is that you can get 90% of the results you'd get with raytracing using rasterized techniques and the game will run much faster as a result

The light are too much yellow in Mirage update CS2 and there are some leaked images that look the same on the other maps, different from previous showed.

The art style is still pretty faithful, so changing some saturation and brightness doesn't bother me. Would love to see future maps make use of updated lighting engines, taking place in the early morning or at night with additional light sources baked in

Honestly even though I started on GO I always thought that counter strike source’s maps looked the best. Something about the warm lighting and good art direction that still left a lot to imagination captivates me, without it going overboard on bright colours and saturation like later GO maps

Notably though, that mod for HL1 received a lot of criticism for how absurdly bloomy and bright it made the game. It's an aesthetic choice, one which drastically alters the way Half Life 1 was supposed to look with the original art direction. I think, with some exceptions, there are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to recapture the look of baked lighting from original 1.6, Source, and GO maps with newer lighting systems. After all, a lot of how the ground reflects sunlight IRL depends on what kind of sunlight it's getting - how the sky looks that day, what color it is, etc.

01:14 damn that transition. Philip is trying to level up his game.

Can we talk about that massive change to long hall on Italy with what looks like a new connector to mid. Hopefully they intend to make more hostage maps suitable for competitive and available to play. I’m newer to csgo and have never gotten to play 5v5 on assault or italy.

I don't mind the brightness too much but a lot of areas seem way too clean now in my opinion

Counter-Strike’s future is looking “Bright”… I will see myself out

oh man, showing the maps from CZ. I never played CZ for very long, but it was nice that it included some new maps that eventually died and were forgotten.

personally the bright colors are a little off, the CSGO maps feel gritty and lived in, and I kinda like that, but the only one that I think is over the top is some of the lighting on Nuke, it seems a bit TOO bright. otherwise I don't mind it

Yes so i can turn off the insane amounts of colour vibrance i put on to make csgo visible

In 1.6 rt version there is auto exposure that makes outside very bright when standing inside ct spawn which is realistic since you can't compare intensity of artifical light and sun light on a sunny day, while cs go and cs 2 have constant exposure so they have to make inside brightness comparable to outside.

8:56 i didn't know Gordon Freeman was transitioning

Finally new 3kliks video!!! As a side note, I think CS2 uses a larger colorspace, that's why the maps don't look blown out. In order to simulate the sun, it needs to be really bright, so the colors need more bits to represent all the light values. It would be nice if you could get in touch with the developers and ask some technical questions about the new engine calculates light. IMO, CS1.6 and CS:GOs ray traced versions look so blown out because the color space is limited and the game can't represent both really high brightness AND deep shadows at the same time. It would be nice to have some more contrast in CS2 though as the colors look kinda flat, like what you would get by filming in a raw format with a dslr. Also, would be a cool adition to have color profiles in video settings like "Flat","Saturated", "Warm" etc

0:21 i was expecting a case opening montage

Personally, I am very happy with dark areas being made brighter to improve visibility, but I think in turn it's been overdone in the normally-bright areas.

My only complaint right now is the lighter colors look TOO vibrant. Like if you play for a long time you'll start to get eye fatigue. However, I don't have access to the Beta, so I'm only going off the videos and photos I've seen. When i first saw A site mirage I thought "wow... that's really bright and vibrant. Almost painful." But I'm open to it. I'll give it a shot when the game releases. I'm still VERY optimistic

Phillip what's your opinion on the new loadout system? Personally I think limiting options like that is never good and without huge rebalancing it will result in a lot of forgotten weapons unfortunately

8:45 that Frozen Lake skybox on Source 2 would be inspired by the Laguna del Inca, in Portillo, Chile, close to the border with Argentina

A video that actually shows gems among forgotten maps, how an amazingly well done map

awesome as always phillip. i could not imagine anyone else doing what you do for us.

This is such a cool video Phillip.. You always amaze me

Can you do a video of comparisons of the 1.6 CSGO maps? I thought even though the sun looks different it would still be awesome to look at

Will you make guides for map making in cs2 when it comes out?

5:47 i wonder if the color bleeding may actually ruin the vision of the map makers. if they thought italy (real italy) looked a certain color, would the resulting purple color cancel out their vision? is this something that cs2 mappers may need to think about?

textures are looking insane in 1.6 raytraced... from far view, they have really good bump mapping, and from close view, they have this pixelated details that i instantly fell in love into with this plus lightning effects.

Now I won’t have to burn my eyes looking at my browser because I had to turn the brightness up to see people in certain spots

they need to darken the colors and add some grit/dirt textures to compensate for the brightness

Nostalgia when you showed old and forgotten maps like de_tides

Just a heads-up, all the subtitles are bunched up in the first 2 seconds of the video and don't appear throughout the rest.

0:21 man I almost fell into a gambling addiction and had the music playing in my head 😂

Valve's engines always have this odd feeling in the presentation, that instantly makes them recognizable. Be it GoldSrc, Source or Source 2, you can usually tell pretty easily. It really is a weird phenomenon.

I feel most maps have lost their ambience and atmosphere, it's like they have been cleaned and polished waay too much that they lost their distinguishable character.

I think they had to bump the brightness for the visibility/blending problems they created with the player skins, it was pretty bad in some areas. I would still prefer a toggle off for showing default only skins, but valve shows an unwillingness to do so.

hey Phillip, I just wanted to chime in and let you know that i’ve been watching your videos for quite a few years now, and that i can attest that your witty, informational yet engaging style has only matured and improved over time. i think one is able to stand out for the quality of their work if we are able to enjoy said quality independently of whether or not the work relates to something we are interested in, which is inherently bound to capture our attention, and i think that’s the case here. a lot of my younger years were spent cozied up some place watching RU-vid video essays. most of the content i consumed back then revolved around things which I’ve now either grown out of or simply don’t engage with much anymore, and when this element is factored out of the equation, it’s up to the videomaker to reel you into the topic and connect the dots; to illustrate with words and visualise with editing, and to bring the viewer standing outside of the subject into it, invest them. id be lying if i were to say i’m your biggest fan, that i watch all of your videos all the time, or even that i play CSGO nowadays, because i rarely do really - but you are one of those content creators that I’ve continued following despite this because I’ve grown to appreciate the simple but carefully crafted way in which you go about exploring specific, obscure and seemingly mundane things and poking at them to show us that there’s always more under the surface. I would have never for the life of me wondered how pre-baked map lighting in GoldSRC differs from its Source counterpart, and more importantly i don’t think i would have ever cared - but the skill lies in the fact that i now do, and that ultimately comes down to the raw ability to explain and to interest the viewer. and so, the nostalgic feeling of coziness emerges in me again, as i follow along with the same involvement i had when i watched sitting in the school bathroom stalls during break time. sorry for the long comment, i hope you keep going 3kliksphillip, peace

real life is pretty bright sometimes, some houses in my neighbourhood are a sandy color and cs2 captures the brightness and how vibrant it is in the summer pretty well

As I’m getting older I find it harder to see in dark areas so I quite frankly like the brightness increases.

The washed and dark colors are mostly going to be missed because of the nostalgia factor, I alrady feel nostlagic when loading up a game on old Nuke. For the sake of visibilty a more colorful game is definitely not a bad change.

I know that the music in this section is Crossing Those Islands but anything after 5:52 sounds really good, i was wondering if the song got updated cuz i really really like how this sounds, where can i hear the whole thing?

One thing to note about this comparison is that the baked lights on 1.6 (and earlier and later : p) had quite a few knobs you could turn. So light could bounce more, or less, shadows could be softer or harsher, the light of the sun and shadows could change, you could add ambient light, brightness, gamma, etc, etc. All of this was under the artistic control of whoever was compiling the map and was taken in consideration when authoring textures and setting up lights. Swapping the lighting for ray-tracing just throws away all of that artistic intention, to a point I don't think it's fair to say it's "more accurate", since it's not what the maps were developed for to begin with: they were made to look as intended on the rendering system of the time, not as real places to be simulated by the engine. You definitely could make bright and saturated maps in the old games, so the artistic intention is clear.

CSS is peak art style. It’s cozy, bright and realistic

The nostalgia I got from you going through some of the older 1.6 maps blew my mind. Banger vid.

Your music kit is wicked, I run it all the time

hi 3kliks, got any plans on map making videos for cs2? kinda want to start working with the new hammer but just don't know where to start. videos about importing old maps could also be useful!

I remember, that Aztec supposed to be Grey-Green, Prodigy - Purple/Blue/Grey, Storm - brown, Survivor - white, Assault - blue all the way, and at different times of day... And only Dust 1-2, Arabstreets and a couple of others were supposed to be yellow/orange. In CSGO EVERY map has some sort of yellow, dusty filter in it, which I hate. It brings joy to my eye, that colors are finally back, and environment on each map is gonna be different color-wise.

Looks like they're trying to be Valorant. In the name of visibility, I say Valve should replace all the level geometry with white cubes and also add thick bright outlines around every player.

Great video, as always! What's the song used that starts at 6:08?

Fam this game hurts my eyes. I never had this with any other game. It feels like I've been staring at the sun

It's a bit too over exposed for me, but perhaps it will look different in game once I can tweak some settings.

Phil, are you superior or inferior to Phil Neville?

mirage at 6:46 is looking like later evening. still warm after a hot day, as a refreshing humid breeze blows through.

A lot of players, myself included, already have similar colors to CS2 with monitor or graphics cards settings. So I think it’s great

I prefer moody 1.6 aesthetic with all its dark night maps and dogs barking in the background. But I grew up in the times when dark and edgy was all the rage so I can't judge too much.

It looks... plasticky? I don't like it. Bring back the mood lighting.

I would like them to at least tweak some of the contrast in the lighting, dark coreidors are just so bright right now that it just doesn't even look right or realistic, it's just BRIGHT bright, besides that though, the slight bit of colorful bounce lighting is welcome and the lighting itself is much better obviously, just these things that need and deserve tweaking for the final release

7:57 nice bit of poetry/rap going on here

As good as the newer and updated maps look, I miss the grittier look and feel of older games/maps. I won't mind the new versions of cs2 as long as they don't look too cartoony.

FYI, Half-Life: Ray Traced has a hardcoded small bounce limit, which is probably why it matches CS:GO more than CS2, when it does. Otherwise the sun is just that much brighter in there than in CS2. Oh and also, there's a (minor?) bug in HLRT with how sky light ignores surface albedo, so green grass may appear purple if the sky is purple, even though green grass can not reflect red and blue.

I believe what valve have done is for the good, Although with exactly what we have seen in CSGO, It will need many patches and iterations for it to be the best version of what the new CS can be. Lets not forget it is highly likely that Valve has made these changes based on how pros and enthusiasts play CSGO right now: Digital Vibrance set to 80-100%, Along with every colour, dark stabiliser, and brightness setting on their monitors maxed out, Just to eek out the highest visibility that they possibly can to give them an edge. Or enthusiasts even using Nvidia Geforce experience image enhancing tools to push it further to get an advantage when playing 3rd party servers like Faceit, Myself included. I personally would love not having to adjust any of those settings just so I can get optimal clarity ingame. Valve removing these complicated limitations is holistically a net benefit to the playerbase, Although like I said earlier It will require endless tuning on their end to get it just right. Good thing they are known to do just that thanks to the boatloads of evidence of this during the CSGO era.

Cant wait for your Hammer 2 editor tutorials

The better and brighter lighting in CS2 is literally THE new feature for me. I'm highly visually impaired and I can barely play CS:GO on master guardian elo. This will change a lot for me, can't wait to get my hands on it.

man you or your father's music you use in the background, it feels like the Emotional End of a Movie. you make it seem so Dramatic it makes you cry for no reason 😂 great work

To me, I do believe color change does lowers the vibe of a hostage situation or a literally boming attack, but it does lighten up my gaming mood and will be willing to play longer

I hope you were enjoying the vacation that I assume you were on during the latest update.

3:00 Weapons dropped do have shadows..

I think best result would be baking in the raytraced lighting permanently into the map, so it doesnt shift around and bug out.

Been thinking of this before seeing this video. Main thing is that brightness is GOOD if enemies stay dark and distinguishable, but it does not need to be gaudy and kitschy with SATURATION. Brightness good, excess saturation not so good.

the 1.6 raytraced shadows showcasing interior/exterior lighting contrasts on different versions of dust 2 reminds me of earlier in csgo's lifespan before lighting adjustment was added and peering into tunnel was like staring into the abyss and glancing outside was the equivalent of staring into the sun

Hey Philip, could you do a video overviewing the new Hammer editor? Would love to see what they have done with it!

Hello, could you do a comparison on steam profile picture on cs go or 2, when you have an animated profile picture featuring effects on the animation it usually slows down performance in game when you have the second plane steam running on background, in my case it increases input lag and server variation a lot. when i close the friends tab it goes away.

honestly, yes, i think it should be. with the player models so dark, it really helps them stand out well and increases readability

Philip seems to never disappoint in any video he makes, a true legend

Well I didnt pass colorblind test so for me even looking for cursor on three screens is kinda hard. Every step that improves visual clarity helps me a lot looking for the enemies.

Thanks that made me feel a bit better now onto movement 🙏

There really has to be a point where yet another remake of a game does add different visual themes like this. So long as the older games still have some players, everyone can be happy.

I've always had my gamma and digital vibrance turned up really high so I'm in love with the CS2 lighting.

what program are you using at 4:30 to have 3 images and zoom and pan them all at the same time?

I think the astethic looks cool but I liked when the colors were “grey and Matt down” since then I could adjust my preference with nvidia and to how I liked it, but now I guess I have to do vice versa

I miss the old, more gritty style of CS:GO. Before the Dust2 overhaul, before panorama. It seemed more serious. Now CS2 is more colourful than a playground!

I think cs2 looks good but it's a tad too bright, for instance mirage CT spawn. Also I feel like the dark areas aren't dark enough

Super fascinating, also reassuring to see Valve promote this vid on the official CS account especially when the vid explicitly mentions mods and fan demakes of CSGO maps.

What sountrack do you use in your videos? Is the background music your authorised track?