Colour Banding in Half Life 2?

[Skrying]

Hook up a CRT and see it go away. I have a 2405 too. This banding is just the lacking color depth of the LCD. It can't reproduce nearly the same range of colors as a CRT, and in dark areas you see it much easier than other places.

That's very wrong. Every CRT I've seen has the same issue... My old CRT was worse than my current LCD.

 

[swaaye]

In just Source engine games? Cuz I know with certainty that Doom3 on my laptop or desktop LCDs looks much worse than on a CRT TV or monitor. I'm referring to banding in the shadows.

 

[hoom]

Homeworld 2 does it on any hardware.

But then they did it intentionally for a sort of cell shading effect in the background.

 

[swaaye]

You ain't seen nothin tell you try playing 16-bit color-only games on a GeForce 8x00!! Words can not describe how it looks.... Well except if you can imagine Quake 3 looking like it's cell shaded? (yah i know Quake 3 isn't 16-bit only, but it was the worst of the dithering at 16-bit I've seen)

 

[Skrying]

In just Source engine games? Cuz I know with certainty that Doom3 on my laptop or desktop LCDs looks much worse than on a CRT TV or monitor. I'm referring to banding in the shadows.

I don't know with a direct comparison to other games (mainly just play Source based games that show it right now) but in the past it was certainly visible on my CRT.

 

[Pete]

This is something that has persisted through all my graphic cards ( ati / nvidia ) since the game came out. It is now very noticiable on my new high contrast LCD to the point of distraction.

Basically in dark areas I see green, purple, red. Like a rainbow effect almost. The current GPU I have is a 8800GTS. Can anyone give me an idea on what is causing this? I also notice it in fear, but to a much lesser degree.

I'm talking more about dark corners and its probably a by product of my competitive playing CS:S. I just need to see everything or I feel like I'm being held back.

Yep, it's most likely cranking the gamma to avoid surprises in dark hallways that's making for evident banding. I see the same thing in CSS if I set the gamma too high. Brightness or contrast won't do it, at least on my CRT. That said, I don't see any banding viewing that HL2 image on this budget laptop LCD (TN, I think).

 

[Recall]

Hi guys, thanks for the excellent responses thus far. I am late replying as been out all weekend.

Anyway, i did indeed suffer the banding problem on a top of the range Iiyama 454 CRT that uses shadowmask.

It certainly does seem related to gamma, and I would disagree that it is an issue with my monitor due to seeing on a CRT as well.

I did adjust the gamma and RGB colours individually and this has helped immensley. For some reason the SRGB is broken on my LG L226WTQ. There is also a gamma setting that is way too high at default. So I set this to minus 50, reduced my brightness and contrast to 70/70.

Jawed, i am gonna try that test and will report back

 

[Blazkowicz]

I'd recommend going through a proper color setup tool such as the one in NVIDIA's drivers IIRC, or similar. Get the settings right in there, and then for the most part just leave them. If a game is too dark, the game designers might have done it that way intentionally... I didn't like Doom3 for the single purpose that I was only viewing 1/4 of my screen at any given time. Moody is one thing, but Doom3 is just *dark* I haven't had much trouble with HL2 though, excepting the portions which are supposed to be black (like the elevator bit in EP1 ).

I'm playing Doom 3 with r_brightness 1 (default), r_gamma 1.2 and r_lightscale 2.4 (strength of light sources, default is 2). It plays and looks better, and pitch black is still pitch black (on my CRT, when making the room really dark)

 

[banksie]

Homeworld 2 does it on any hardware.

But then they did it intentionally for a sort of cell shading effect in the background.

Errr no, not cellshading. Homeworld2 shows banding because they wanted to show bright whites for ships exploding and had dynamic range issues with the backgrounds as a result. If you trawl the relicnews forums there are some detailed descriptions of exactly what the issue it.

It certainly isn't a graphic hardware or driver issue. This is purely a game design issue.

 

[banksie]

Yep, it's most likely cranking the gamma to avoid surprises in dark hallways that's making for evident banding. I see the same thing in CSS if I set the gamma too high.

Yes but being surprised is the whole *point* of the dark coluring of the CT uniforms. Totally destroys half the fun of the game when people do effectively cheat like this.

 

[Pete]

banksie, true, but I suspect I'm not the only one raising brightness or gamma to help with the dark areas. At least, not according to my k/d ratio. Anything over 1:1 is a good day. I should probably stop trying to knife and deagle my way through everything. Seriously, I play casually, and not very well at that, so I'm not too worried that I'm cheating skilled players out of their hiding places. And I'm too much of an IQ junkie to be cranking gamma to the point of banding when I play (blech). I just noticed that effect when I was fiddling with gamma.

BTW, I notice Recall's at 70/70 brightness/contrast. AFAIK, it's better to get close to maxing the contrast, then, starting from 0, raising the brightness just until the point black stays black (which IIRC is what apps like Nokia's Monitor Tester guide you toward). Is this different for LCDs?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You ain't seen nothin tell you try playing 16-bit color-only games on a GeForce 8x00!! Words can not describe how it looks.... Well except if you can imagine Quake 3 looking like it's cell shaded? (yah i know Quake 3 isn't 16-bit only, but it was the worst of the dithering at 16-bit I've seen)

16-bit, ah the memories. Back in the day, I prefered 3dfx's 22-bit dithering of 16-bit sources over Nvidia's 24-bit color.

And going waaaaay back, I still fondly remember the first stuttering steps of games transitioning from 256 colors to 16-bit colors. Ah, IRQ and DMA conflicts... Those were the days...

Regards,
SB

 

[Skrying]

Yes but being surprised is the whole *point* of the dark coluring of the CT uniforms. Totally destroys half the fun of the game when people do effectively cheat like this.

Cheating? Uhh, no. If its a game option that can be changed and hasn't be deemed a bug or exploiting then its all good. The CT uniform isn't about surprise, hell none of the uniforms are about anything but a different look. Frankly the game would be the same if everything was solid red or blue for the uniforms (those skins are easily made/found, but THAT is cheating). Anything CAL says is legal is legal, and while I'll crank my gamma it would be near impossible not to in order to do decent.

*Not happy unless I average a 2:1 ratio.

 

[bloodbob]

Using 24bit RGB colour scheme isn't enough banding has been bugging me for years we need more bits 10bits per channel would be a start however I think 12bits per channel would just about kill off the banding completely.

 

[banksie]

Cheating? Uhh, no. If its a game option that can be changed and hasn't be deemed a bug or exploiting then its all good. The CT uniform isn't about surprise, hell none of the uniforms are about anything but a different look.

Nonsense. Part of the art of being a good CT is finding the darker spots where you do blend in and are harder to spot. To then have someone cranking their gamma so much that there are no dark spots is effectively cheating.

Frankly the game would be the same if everything was solid red or blue for the uniforms (those skins are easily made/found, but THAT is cheating). Anything CAL says is legal is legal, and while I'll crank my gamma it would be near impossible not to in order to do decent.

The CAL doesn't make this a rule simply because it is too hard to enforce. Check the settings on the computer and 'athletes' will simply crank the colour settings on their monitors which can't be automaticly checked. It is kinda like the poor sports who put overlay crosshairs on their screen to allow accurate unscoped sniper rfile shots which is completely contrary to the game design.

It was kinda like the constellation scripts in both Tribes and Tribes2 that made accurate blind firing of mortars at extreme range a lot easier than it should have been. Teams used those because anything that could be scripted in game was obviously intended and legal, right? The team I was playing on was wondering how the heck teams that, we when played their individual members at LANs, weren't more skilled than us made such devestatingly accurate long range fire. And when the issue blew up on the various ranking ladders the teams doing it had the hide to claim it was the unscripted team's fault for not using blatantly cheating scripts. Oddly enough we were the best unscripted team on the local ladder and we always wondered what the difference between us and the top eight teams were...

It is this attitude of win at any cost irregardless of the fairness of it that is what sucks about the current Cyberathlete world right now. I am all for skill winning but the number of people who use scripts, tweak the gamma to absurd levels, reduce textures to minimum and overlay their screen make it impossible to have faith in the fairness of the ranking ladders.

But this is a huge aside from the thread topic so I'll stop about there.

 

[Windfire]

Hook up a CRT and see it go away. I have a 2405 too. This banding is just the lacking color depth of the LCD. It can't reproduce nearly the same range of colors as a CRT, and in dark areas you see it much easier than other places. As far as I know there are no LCDs that will get rid of this.

To my knowledge the 2405 is an 8bit display so I'm not sure where you are coming from.

In addition, I have not noticed this in other games--only HL2.

IMHO, the 2405 crushes any CRT's I've seen.

 

[Richard]

I may be wrong, and someone please correct me, but I think what the OP's problem deals is with the lack of colour precision in the use of lightmaps. There is one particular scene I remember from HL2 near the end of the hovercraft map where this is most visible (and jarringly so).

 

[swaaye]

To my knowledge the 2405 is an 8bit display so I'm not sure where you are coming from.

In addition, I have not noticed this in other games--only HL2.

IMHO, the 2405 crushes any CRT's I've seen.

In brightness and contrast, most definitely. I think they are too bright by default cuz if bothers my eyes in the evening. My 2005FPW is brighter than my 2405 and isn't as shifted towards red, FWIW.

If you play some dark games such as Doom3, Prey, Quake 4, FEAR, Oblivion (dungeons) etc you will see banding in the shadows. I've beaten every one of those except Quake 4 on the 2405. My 6 year old Samsung Syncmaster Pro 19" 950P CRT, which is positively dim in comparison, does not band in shadows. That would seem to indicate a color depth issue, eh.

LCDs aren't all that when it comes to color depth or color accuracy. Just look up some serious reviews of them, where they use proper tools to compare and test screens. Here's a decent look at the 2407, 3007, and 2405. I believe page 5 (subjective evaluation) explains the banding in dark images.
http://www.anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=2940

IMO currently the worst problem with LCDs by far is the backlight. They simply can not make a decent black as a result of that light inside. And, quite often, you also get a bunch of light leakage at the sides in addition to the fundamental "glow" of the LCD. That is definitely not something that we had with CRTs.

 

[AlNom]

I may be wrong, and someone please correct me, but I think what the OP's problem deals is with the lack of colour precision in the use of lightmaps. There is one particular scene I remember from HL2 near the end of the hovercraft map where this is most visible (and jarringly so).

It looks like it. I see it in Max Payne 1&2 all the time. If you have the second game, you can check out similar artifacting in the starting level; after the elevator crashes and prior to entering the morgue, you can see the problem on the walls in the shade. The green and red tints are similar to those on the stairs and slightly on the walls in the OP's screenshot.

 

[Recall]

Ok reporting back as promised, wanted to leave it a week of testing to be sure. My findings are as follows:

1 It was the nVidia drivers configured wrong!
2 Set SRGB in monitor
3 All other monitor settings at default.
4 Gamma at 1.9 in Half Life 2
5 Nvidia CP settings 40% brightness, 32% contrast


Results:

Perfect colours, well as good as to be expected on a LCD My games look better than ever, no blue tint either. The monitor also seems to have improved after a week of use, do LCD's have a burn in time?

Anyway I really appreciate your help guys! If you want me to post any other feedback do not hesitate to ask or PM me.