HDR Gaming

London Geezer

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Since we seem to be taking about the merits of HDR in a few threads, this should be the place where we can share views on HDR gaming on new consoles.

Which games support it, which games support it well, which TVs give you a good HDR experience and which do not.

I find HDR to be the biggest upgrade in visuals we've had in years. Much more important than the pixel count race (real/fake 4K rubbish).

Mods, feel free to dump all the off topic posts from other threads into this one. There's a few at least on the Destiny 2 thread.
 
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As a proud owner of what's been called the HDR master race TV out now and for the foreseeable future, the Sony ZD9, I'm happy to enlighten someone on what you're supposed to get out of HDR. I think I have the majority of the big games that support it.

Needless to say, you should absolutely not see a washed out or dull image when viewing in HDR. If this happens to you, there's something wrong in the setup.
 
That too. The best way to describe good HDR is that it adds a real sense of depth to the image. It almost makes the image 3D while still being 2D.

This is not about oversaturated colour or super brightness in the whole screen. It's all about lots and lots of different shades of natural colour at all brightness levels.

Going back to SDR, the biggest difference is that skin tones all look like they're made up of the usual few colour shades. Same for vegetation for example.

While those things in HDR just look like the right shade, which is made of countless different shades of pink, green, whatever.

Plus of course you have the bright highlights and black levels that make everything punchy.
 
That too. The best way to describe good HDR is that it adds a real sense of depth to the image. It almost makes the image 3D while still being 2D.

This is not about oversaturated colour or super brightness in the whole screen. It's all about lots and lots of different shades of natural colour at all brightness levels.

Going back to SDR, the biggest difference is that skin tones all look like they're made up of the usual few colour shades. Same for vegetation for example.

While those things in HDR just look like the right shade, which is made of countless different shades of pink, green, whatever.

Plus of course you have the bright highlights and black levels that make everything punchy.


You just made me feel as if I am not seeing half the HDR you are seeing.
But thenmOf course I am the HDR peasant with Samsung KU7000 ! lol , so yea I am most probably only seeing half of what u r. But I can say even that half is amazing and feels bad to go back to SDR.

What I would really want is a comprehensive list of games supporting HDR and their quality of implementation.

For example, in my 1 day experience:

1)RnC seems to have the most well balanced HDR +4k implementation. It lacks in game options of HDR toggle and Birghtness control though. But thankfully it looks amazing out of the box.
2)Followed by UC4, whose in game brightness control helped me in getting that oh so awesome final result.
3_and then Horzon, which I do not think does it that very well or my TV cannot display it very well. Mostly results in very clear highlights on my TV. Also sometimes the transition from a dark area to a bright area produces overtly bright areas.
4)Resogun and Nex Machina give me no control over turning it off or on and on top of that these games do not let me control the gamma/brightness from inside the game, making my task to tune the HDR to my budget peasant display impossible. I end up with a lackluster display.

Also what I would like is a sequence in which settings need to be done to get a good result and not end up i a loop of changin parameters. Changin Brightness of the TV at the very last, after setting up everything else, helped me a lot.

Do help out each other by havig a good todo list and a list of games to enjoy good HDR. The list at gaf is very incorrect about a LOT f games. For example, it says Nier and Gravity Rush 2 support HDR whereas none of them did when I booted them up. A verified good list is needed to help in game purchases. I would say lets have two lists, one for good 4k and one for good HDR, after all its B3D not some Casual gaming cacophony ! :cool:
 
The list on Gaf I use did not list Gravity Rush 2 or Nier as supporting HDR so maybe we're looking at two different lists.

This is the most comprehensive list and it's quite an amazing achievement.

http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1324251

I found Deus Ex in HDR to be the most impressive example, especially the night leve.

I didn't find Horizon or Uncharted as the pinnacle of HDR, but they already looked so amazing it's hard to tell.

The problem is that a lot of games (or TV shows on Netflix for examples) only really use HDR for the bright highlights - so you only really see a difference when there's an explosion or fire. Resogun was one of those. Uncharted too, in practice.
 
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The problem is that a lot of games (or TV shows on Netflix for examples) only really use HDR for the bright highlights - so you only really see a difference when there's an explosion or fire. Resogun was one of those. Uncharted too, in practice.

Is this a limitation of the HDR games use? I assume it's HDR 10 so they have to set a fixed range or whatever it is, they cannot dynamically alter the HDR settings as they have no dynamic metadata.

I am not sure a ks7000 is peasant it being certified "premium". I ended going cheap on an LG uh850v for a few reasons but HDR content looks cleaner with less of the TVs compromises, but it does not wow. Hopefully it's upgrade time will fall as decent quality sets become available for sensible money.

Part of this HDR generation is also the move to wide colour gamut. I am not sure all games with HDR are also WCG?
 
Is this a limitation of the HDR games use? I assume it's HDR 10 so they have to set a fixed range or whatever it is, they cannot dynamically alter the HDR settings as they have no dynamic metadata.

I am not sure a ks7000 is peasant it being certified "premium". I ended going cheap on an LG uh850v for a few reasons but HDR content looks cleaner with less of the TVs compromises, but it does not wow. Hopefully it's upgrade time will fall as decent quality sets become available for sensible money.

Part of this HDR generation is also the move to wide colour gamut. I am not sure all games with HDR are also WCG?

The problem is that there is no set standard of production. Most games go full on with WCG but sometimes some of the material itself isn't very impressive. I found this on Wipeout Omega for example, which can look amazing in one track, and downright flat and SDR in other tracks. Wipeout also seems to have forgotten that explosions and suck should be BRIGHT which half the time they're not.
So it's an issue of content creation I'd say.
 
I am not sure a ks7000 is peasant it being certified "premium". I ended going cheap on an LG uh850v for a few reasons but HDR content looks cleaner with less of the TVs compromises, but it does not wow. Hopefully it's upgrade time will fall as decent quality sets become available for sensible money.

If you are referring to what RenegadeRocks said, he has the KU-model, not KS.

The Neon and other effects look pretty nice in Infamous First Light. I'm thinking about playing the main game again due to the HDR-support to see what it's like now.
 
The problem is that there is no set standard of production. Most games go full on with WCG but sometimes some of the material itself isn't very impressive. I found this on Wipeout Omega for example, which can look amazing in one track, and downright flat and SDR in other tracks. Wipeout also seems to have forgotten that explosions and suck should be BRIGHT which half the time they're not.
So it's an issue of content creation I'd say.

I don't have a PS4 only a One S and fairly sure they don't do WCG only HDR.

Had to go check, from the Euro Gamer interview

www.eurogamer.net/amp/digitalfoundry-2016-inside-xbox-one-s-tech-interview

Digital Foundry: Are you using the wider colour gamut (DCI P3) for HDR-enabled titles?

Albert Penello: Not currently. We are not supporting WCG for games in Xbox One S. We are supporting the wider Bt.2020 color gamut in Xbox One S for media, however.

:( unless this has changed
 
Yeah. The Xbox One S doesn't support WCG for games but the 1X will actually. Wonder why they did that. They might add it later though. Also, the Samsung KU series are 8bit sets I think while the KS series has 10bit panels.
 
As a proud owner of Sony ZD9 I fully concur with the OP:), HDR ain't no gimmick, it's the truth period. What I would like to add is that there isn't a unified HDR experience for the end users at least for now and that's mainly due to the vast variation and capability of their display unit. You have TVs ranging in peak brightness display anywhere from 300-400 nits to 2000 nits, sustained peak brightness display on different windows, APL, edge lit vs direct LED, self emissive oled vs LCD LED, 8 bit vs 10 bit panels and different level of picture settings/calibration, all leads to a moderate to significant difference in HDR viewing experience. So, how should we quantify a standard or good enough HDR experience? Going by the Premium UHD certified standards it has to be 10 bit WCG compatible with a minimum of 90% DCI P3 coverage, 1000 nits peak brightness minimum and 0.05 nits for maximum black level for LCDs or 540 nits peak and 0.0005 nits of maximum black level for Oleds. Then there's self emissive vs LEDs, full array backlight dimming vs edge dimming, individually controllable LEDs vs non controllable LEDs all would make a big difference in highlight performance, blooming and clouding elimination that's directly related to HDR.

Now unless everyone plays on a high end enough Premium UHD certified TV for HDR gaming, the perspective and experience of the HDR would never be the same otherwise. But my personal opinion be, you should be able to get a meaty HDR experience once you hit 700-800 nits, WCG compatible and even on an Edge lit. I'm surprised there's not a recommendation or set of standards for HDR gaming issued by neither Sony or MS since they're pushing the medium so much nowadays. It's kinda confusing the gamers and anyone without a lick of AV knowledge is gonna be spinning in a vortex of jargons. I say big company and devs should start uploading HDR encoded videos so that at least people with HDR TVs could see what's been advertised properly not to mention the word of mouth would help them to encourage the rest to get on board? I swear to god they need better marketing man!
 
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