Darker Nights - Black Floor Fix and Adjustable Night Exposure

Description

Night in Forza Horizon 6 never gets truly dark. Shadows sit in a

flat grey haze instead of black, and no in-game setting pushes them down.

This mod fixes the cause, and lets you pick how dark the night gets.

Installation instructions

Download one of the four presets.

Extract the download and copy the "mediapc" folder into

that same place,

There is no backup step, because nothing gets overwritten.

Switching presets

Install a different one over the top and let it overwrite.

One exception: "4 - Black floor fix only" ships no TimeOfDay

file, so installing it over another preset would leave the old

exposure in place. Going to that one, delete

mediapc\TimeOfDay\TimeOfDay_Brio.ppr first.

Uninstalling

Delete these:

mediapc\colourgrades\Forte_NightFilmStock.lut

mediapc\colourgrades\Forte_NightFilmStock_City.lut

mediapc\TimeOfDay\TimeOfDay_Brio.ppr

If "mediapc" is now empty and nothing else put it there, the

whole folder can go. The game is stock again immediately - no

file verification needed.

Main features

Black floor fix

The night colour grades carry a lifted black level - a fixed

offset added after exposure and tone mapping. Because it sits

downstream, no exposure setting can remove it. This is why the

dark parts of a night scene look washed out and grey.

Measured on HDR captures of the same frame, before and after:

darkest pixel        0. 149 nits  ->  0. 000 nits

0. 1st percentile    0. 154 nits  ->  0. 002 nits  (-6. 5 stops)

pixels below 0. 01 nits    0. 00 %  ->    5. 33 %

Stock, nothing on screen ever reached black. Nearly a fifth of

the frame sat in a flat grey band that no setting could move.

Every preset includes this fix.

Four presets

The exposure values are matched to the HDR brightness slider in

Forza Horizon 4, measured on captures rather than guessed.

1 - Subtle              exposure -0. 2 EV  lights +1. 0 EV

Close to vanilla, roughly FH4 brightness 50.

Keeps the stock mood, just without the grey haze.

2 - Recommended for LCD  exposure -1. 0 EV  lights +2. 0 EV

Roughly FH4 brightness 35. A safe default.

Shadow detail stays readable on displays that cannot

show true black.

3 - Recommended for OLED exposure -3. 0 EV  lights +3. 0 EV

Roughly FH4 brightness 0. Closest to a real night.

Shadows fall to true black, so it needs a display that

can actually render black. On LCD it will look crushed.

4 - Black floor fix only exposure 0. 0 EV    lights 0. 0 EV

Brightness stays exactly as stock.

For people who like the vanilla exposure but want lower black level.

Three added files, nothing overwritten

mediapc\colourgrades\Forte_NightFilmStock.lut

mediapc\colourgrades\Forte_NightFilmStock_City.lut

Two of the 42 night colour grade tables, with only their

black point zeroed. Everything else in the table,

including the white point, is left as it is. The other 40

tables keep coming from your own game.

mediapc\TimeOfDay\TimeOfDay_Brio.ppr

Exposure and light source values inside the night

sections only, 326 numbers in total.

Nothing else in the game is modified. No shaders are injected, no

executable is patched, and the tone mapper and HDR display mapper

are left alone, so the game's overall look and its HDR calibration

stay as intended. It should stack with RenoDX-style mods rather

than fight them, though that has not been tested extensively.

Because it adds files rather than replacing them, it also coexists

with other mods that use "mediapc", such as camera mods.

(The optional display mapper file below is the one exception. It

does change HDR calibration, and it is not compatible with

RenoDX. The presets themselves are unaffected either way.)

Night only

Only night sections are modified. Daytime, sunrise and sunset are