Yeah, they added / changed the shaders or something with the 4.0.0 congo river update. You can read about it on steam in the update notes:
The sunsets look really nice now, but for some cases, it's way too extreme. Especially in the night time, it's way too dark. Even with the headlamp, you can't see sh*t on Quanchkin Lake. haha.
For the PC version, they added an option in the video settings to disable what they call "post fx" with the 4.0.1 update:
Unfortunately, the console version(s) don't have the video settings tab at all. Which is a pity, as especially the PS4 version has gotten even more laggy than it was before. It's gotten to a point now where it's almost unplayable. Everytime you change spots, you gotta wait at least 5 seconds for the stuttering to stop, before you can even start doing anything. And the constant 3-4 second lags from previous versions of the game are still present.
It'd be nice if they could give us the option to turn off post fx for more performance, too. Maybe even some options to turn down other aspects of the graphics quality as well. I don't care much for all the glowing and lensflare effects and orange sunsets when I'm in a competition, I must say.
But I don't know if that's technically possible on consoles. Especially since I've not seen graphics options in other games, either. I guess they'd have to do different optimized versions for PS4 and PS5. And that's probably not gonna happen
My friends who are already playing it on PS5 said that the performance issues are gone there. And I do understand that the game is primarily optimized for PC, and PS4 can't hold up with the hardware requirements anymore. But it'd be nice to have the option to play the game like it used to be, and trade away some of the nice graphics for a more stable experience.