# Physically-correct light reflections seem to be unrealistically bright at steep angles
**URL:** https://discourse.threejs.org/t/physically-correct-light-reflections-seem-to-be-unrealistically-bright-at-steep-angles/56873
**Category:** Questions
**Tags:** lights, color
**Created:** [October 10, 2023, 9:13pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/physically-correct-light-reflections-seem-to-be-unrealistically-bright-at-steep-angles/56873 "2023-10-10T21:13:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@trusktr](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/trusktr)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2023, 9:13pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/physically-correct-light-reflections-seem-to-be-unrealistically-bright-at-steep-angles/56873/1 "2023-10-10T21:13:15Z")
I don’t have a live sample yet (need to publish latest Lume), for now I’ve got some local changes (namely I updated examples for r155+ including color space and lighting updates).
Here’s a scene that, when I move the camera to a steep angle, the light reflections seems to get unrealistically brighter than the lights themselves, and some shadows appear only at steeper angles. It seems unrealistic. I can’t seem to reproduce this in real life with what “physical materials” I had laying around.
It is using the new color space default (r152+), physical material, physically-correct lighting by default (r155+), a PlaneGeometry for the black surface, with several points lights floating around:
[ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rUgWcMLgew)
Does this look correct? Especially the brightness of the light reflections?
With a phong material, it is overall softer with the same light, and not as harsh at steep angles:
[https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/threejs/original/3X/8/4/84ecdb62cb326d1f6abdb48ba2be6fafbb27f47e.mov](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/threejs/original/3X/8/4/84ecdb62cb326d1f6abdb48ba2be6fafbb27f47e.mov)
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### Author:  [@donmccurdy](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/donmccurdy)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2023, 2:22am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/physically-correct-light-reflections-seem-to-be-unrealistically-bright-at-steep-angles/56873/2 "2023-10-18T02:22:50Z")
> [@trusktr](#):
>
> the light reflections seems to get unrealistically brighter than the lights themselves, and some shadows appear only at steeper angles.
I think what you may be referring to here is called the Fresnel Effect. It’s a real thing, but whether it’s realistic in your scene depends on many things (material settings, light settings, tone mapping, scale, …) that I won’t try to guess at.
To my eye, your images appear over-saturated. If you aren’t using tone-mapping yet, I would – that’s necessary to get realistic dynamic range from any lit render, and will limit the overblown highlights.