Colour-tweaking mods have become fairly popular over the last few years, as visual filters degrade what could be beautiful environments for the sake of authenticity or style. In a game like Fallout, rectifying the game's very green visuals is as simple as installing the Fellout mod; try that in Battlefield 3 and you risk having your account banned , over fears that it gives an unfair advantage. Well, DICE have finally seen sense , revealing that the game's next update will add "a console command for disabling the color grading entirely in the game", meaning that such mods should now be unnecessary.
As discovered by PCGamesN on the MordorHQ forums , EA Dice staffer Mikael Kalms said that "there will be a console command for disabling the color grading entirely in the game included with the next PC game client update. We believe that turning it off gives no major competitive advantage/disadvantage."
However, he did go on to reveal that the "IRNV scope and a few others which turn the image into greyscale or greenscale don't work properly without color grading and will look real ugly," and also that "there will be no in-game UI for turning it on/off", so you will have to rely on console commands to achieve the desired effect. Still, you can now pretty up your game without risking a ban, so it's a minor victory for common sense. You can see pics of what BF3 looks like without colour grading here (achieved via this mod ), which is where we grabbed the image for this post.
Update (Oct 23, 2012) - DICE has decided not to implement the feature
DICE has retreated from its retreat, and will not be adding in a "disable colour grading" option. Mikael Kalms posted an update in the forums which reads:
After discussing this further with my colleagues, we have decided to not implement this feature. This is the studio's take on this matter, and I support this decision:
"As a studio, it is extremely important for us at DICE to have a unique identity in our games, not only from a gameplay perspective, but visually as well. While we appreciate that some players might want a slightly different look to the game, we are proud of the visual identity of Battlefield 3 and do not wish to change it."
I apologize for getting anybody's hopes up, and if you have any further questions on this subject, I will refer back to the above statement.
