Auto-HDR preview for PC [2021-03-17]

SKYRIM

The sky, bluer, and the clouds, more real with more intense brightness and contrasts.



Idem.



The clouds behind the Dragon Alduin, with more intense glitters and colors on the right.



The brightness and meteors of chaos, much more intense with HDR.











Bonus, Hollow Knight. Better lit background, shinier, also the letters.

 

Age of Empires 1 Definitive Edition​

Better lighting.





The roof of the building at the bottom center, much more intense sand-like color in the part with HDR on -right-. Clouds too.

Age of Empires 2​

Barracks on the right, wood has a much more intense colour. Ground "patches" also differentiate A LOT, colour wise.



The dirt areas on the road again, much more intense in colour.



Tents, more vibrant colour, green and white flags and other stuff. Dirt patches on the road, etc.

 

RESIDENT EVIL 7​

Left -HDR off-, right -HDR on-. RE7 has native HDR, but for some reason is not enabled on the gp pc version. Still the original HDR implementation doesnt seem that great



Fuse and green light.



Microwave.



Copper red intensity.

 

According to this video :
auto HDR causes problems with realtek network chips unless you have the latest drivers,
also hdr only seems to work at 60hz or 120hz if you try 144hz it lock your games to 60hz
forward to the 2:20 mark

 

very interesting. Saying it's like going from 2D to 3D might be a bit of a stretch, but other than that...

While maybe it's not like going from 2D to 3D, my best friend has a great 60" HDR 1000 TV and it has HDR disabled on the Xbox Series S. I showed him my HDR monitor and told him to enable it.

He did and he called me, he was speechless with the image quality! And that's using a Xbox One S, which is subpar in all regards. So...go figure.

I was experiencing internet issues, and followed the guy's advice to download new drivers and it worked.

 

the gods (or digital fraud, depending on which console war side you are on and their analysis favour your biggest rival) of DF mentioned SpecialK time ago. I remember trying it, but I mostly play gamepass PC games and it wasn't suitable for me at the time.

However, SpecialK is now compatible with gamepass PC games, even the new Nier Automata from gamepass PC, using global injection.

A very simple step by step and super short guide as to how to install it. Only 7 brief steps (remember to create a Global folder under the SpecialK subfolder, 'cos this is where the whitelist.ini file will be when you add the NierAutomataPC line)

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ni...dr-and-ui-textures-upscaled-4k.395863/page-11

 

DF video on SpecialK, the Auto HDR mod for PC which has been out for some time.

 

new video from the DirectX 12 guys. So....., Auto HDR is an AI, which uses machine learning data to make HDR out of SDR. Similar to what DLSS does, but upscales colors instead of resoluiton.

Its overhead is very small, as it seems it's a simple post-processing shader.

Video from a few days ago.

 

They really insist on the fact that AutoHDR has been trained on "billions of pixels" , whatever that means.

Some screengrabs from the presentation below.

 

I'd say it sounds more like some algorithm discovered by doing ML, not that it's actually "an AI" running in real time. Similar to DLSS 1.9 more or less, not at all the same as what DLSS 2.x is.

 

Interesting how they implemented it on PC since it doesn't have the customized hardware the Series consoles have.

 

Which customizations are you referring to exactly? I'm not aware of any customizations in XSX|S hardware which would be related to this or the Xbox Auto HDR, it's software running on shaders on all platforms.

 

I was under the impression it was done in the display controller on XS.
Could you post where you heard its done in shaders on XS please.

 

don't need it. It's just a model that runs on the pixel shader part of the pipeline. Even directML isn't required here. A very old school way of doing ML on GPUs prior to the release of CUDA.

 

They've said it's running in real time utilizing AI/Machine learning, which is a dead giveaway it's running on shaders, not the display controller.
XSX|S's "ML features" are faster INT8/4 support in the shader units, included in PC RDNA2 chips too (and select earlier models) and it's something you can run on any GPU even if it's not faster than higher precisions

 

That's the theory, and how i originally thought it would work.
But they specifically said it was doing it in the display controller, which I couldn't get anyone here to reconsile that with the ML aspect.

I'll see if I can dig up where I believe I heard where it was done.
I think it's why they also said there was no impact to the running game on XS, compared to pc which can have a minor one.

 

Where exactly did they say it's on display controller? I can't remember seeing such mentioned anywhere.
There's "no impact" because it's for old games which run at solid capped FPS anyway, while on PC games run according to what your hardware can push (and if GPU is in no way limiting factor, there shouldn't be overhead there either)

 

Xbox Series X Backward Compatibility Enhancements Detailed [XSX BC]
From here onwards was discussed a bit, can't remember right now if that was the only source or maybe he was the initial source.

If I get a chance I'll try to Google it

 

damn, the search function actually worked for you.

 

Could technically be as little as 220 frames @ 4k or 4 seconds of game @ 60fps