Tweaking the lights and the visual effects in Heroes & Generals is both a matter of making the game look great as well as ensuring the best possible gameplay experience. Reto.Colding and Reto.Hal9k has gone through the light settings and adjusted them – bringing more light to the darker areas of the game while keeping the richness of color.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUhGsHyenA
Overall brightness
Some of the light settings are now brighter than before - especially in the "day overcast" and the "night" settings you will find that they are brighter than before. The scale of the brightness slider in the settings menu has also been changed a bit, ensuring that the game will not be all "white in white" if turned up all the way.
Eye adaptation
One of the central things being tweaked for 1.09 is the eye adaptation model. So what is that? When you walk from a bright environment to a dark environment or the other way around your eyes adapts to the change in light. We simulate the same phenomena in Heroes & Generals, so when you enter areas in shadow or with less light we automatically turn up the brightness (or more correctly the exposure), and when you exit those areas we turn it down again.
In 1.09 we have made the eye adaptation more distinct so you can better see the environment when in shadows and in areas with less light.
Muzzle smoke
The muzzle smoke is now more transparent and shorter, making the smoke less visible. This enables you to better see what you're shooting at.