Well all three look acceptable to me. If I was to choose a favourite, it'd be Soft 75.

However, what you might want to consider is programming a specalized lighting shader that is a little less realistic. Have it accentuate the colours around the edges of objects like trees and such. If done right I think it could give them a kind of cartoony "pop" and look really good. The terrain I'd light normally.

I prefer soft 75.

Soft 75!

I am for soft 75. However it would be wise to test the fallen land too. Would it be possible to arrange few enemy units to the picture too? I have found the friendly one after a minute of watching the pictures. It is not good. If the enemy units are as invisible as this one, it is actually prety bad.

Suggestion: NWN has a feature if you press the Tab button, all important objects on the screen start to glow. If you release the button, the scene is rendered normally.  It may be good if there is such feature in Elemental too. Press some hot-key and all army units and cities start to glow at*) the color of its faction. It may even even be useful if this option can be turned on/off.

(* Sorry,  I am not sure whether the preposition is right. But I hope the idea is clear.

The pics are strange since the trees on the hills are there on one pic but not the other...and the no HDR pic got graphic artifacts or something. So no HDR is gone....

But they do look really similar. I really like the top pic with its dark scene.

Heh, I really don't got the patience to compare pics like this.

i like soft 75 most of those three. 100 is really too blurry.

I think it is hard for me, like for many other posters here, to give a qualified answer. Most of the posts here have been very subjective -- which is not surprising, since most of us here are not specialists in computer art. I can only say which screenshot "appeals" to me slightly more than the others (75), but I think most of us need help in learning the details so as to give a qualified feedback.

Soft 75

I agree, it looks pretty gloomy on all three accounts.  I think it's more due to the dim, desaturated coloring of your textures more than the lighting that's at fault though.  A small shift towards green and marginal saturation boost to soft100 and I got this:

http://www.copernicanstudios.com/elemental_satshift.jpg

Much more appealing imho.

The middle one is blurry. I prefer the first one.

I want to see crease lines on the cloth map, darn it. I've seen only one I can remember without them. Lighting is important there too!

I prefer the no HDR one.  Guessing it looks a lot different in motion, but in the stills the blurriness bothers me.

BreadMan017: Better!

BreadMan: It is better for the human side, but for the Fallen it looks worse than before. It has a look, as if moss or something like that is coming through, so mother nature tries to reclaim the ground.

Concerning the original three pics: With HDR it looks less like a cartoon, for the cost of a blur-filter. I think Soft50 or Soft25 would be the best choice. For the moment i prefer noHDR slightly before Soft75.

The best would be to add an option for the HDR-usage. An on/off switch and a slider for the strength of the effect. At least for the beta test this would be nice, so you could ask the testers, which variant has the best look&feel for them.

How about Soft0?

That would be HDR without the blur, so it only creates a glow (blur) when the colors go overbright, not everywhere.

 Perfect, because maximum appeal is what we're going for...in most things art there is seldom a 'right' answer 

There may be a distinction between what looks good and what's most playable over the long term. I'm trying to think of a good example. Maybe calligraphy fonts work as an example. They look very cool and are nice for flavor, but I wouldn't want to read an entire book in that kind of font.

No HDR didn't look quite as "nice" as soft 75, but it seemed crisper and easier to pick out the details, which is something that I'm going to want in my graphics when I'm still playing at 3am.

soft 75

Quoted for truth!

Same goes for spell graphics. Elaborate and beautiful animated spell effects sure are awesome to look at, but in the heat of battle I still want to know where my hero is and what's happening to them. Something to keep in mind I guess

You just made me remember the mess about Neverwinter Nights 2 spell effects: pausing the game in the middle of a battle to queue new orders wasn't as simple as it could have been, considering all the characters hidden by layers of magic balls and such

About the screenshots, I support the observation made by BreadMan017 about the saturation level.

No HDR is by far the best looking of the bunch as a screen shot, but without seeing it in full motion, I can't really judge it properly.

New coke is a great example. It was supposed to be much better and got great scores on all the taste tests and totally bombed in the marketplace.

Put the decision off. Thow a slider and a checkbox on the configuration screen and instrument collecting what configuraiton the beta testers play with.

Ralph