The game's black levels look a bit too bright and washed out

[Crims]

So I've been playing the game and really enjoying it and it looks great. Despite that the black levels look a bit off, turning the brightness down doesn't really seem to do anything (and it's at the suggested setting anyway). Is there some setting that might be affecting this? Is it just how the game looks? I also turned the brightness down on my monitor using the nvidia control panel, is it possible that the game is overriding this setting?

[EricHVela]

There are several factors involved. The monitor's own settings, the video device's own settings, and the game's own settings. There can be monitor limitations based on the monitor design.

The black levels on my gaming monitor are not lit at all. (OLED)

I'm sure if I moved it to one of my touch screens, I wouldn't be able to get the black levels down to zero as they're LCD with the intention of visibility instead of gaming.

[Grandmother CFO]

Chromatic aberration turn it off

[Jouchebag]

I've heard a lot of talk that Cyberpunk's implementation of HDR is half-ass. The game does seem a bit gray regardless of noHDR or HDR and settings. And of course we have played other games to compare to.

I figure it was a result of not giving the player a flashlight. They're hyper aware of dark places being impossible to navigate in pitch black.

[Mexicola9302]

The black levels are perfectly fine for me playing it on a LG OLED B9.

I use these HDR settings ingame. Max brightness 550 (my TV only does 550 nits), tone mapping 1, paper white 150 and the last setting is at 0. I use HDR10 scRGB, got HDR activated in Windows 11 and i use RGB and 10 bit color depth so full RGB in Nvidia control panel. There are only a couple of very very dark spots in the game, if it's too extreme i just set tone mapping to 1.5 temporarily.

I only had to do this once so far, while being inside of the Delamain factory, it's so freaking dark in there.

But everybody uses different settings for their TV's and monitors so, yeah you just gotta figure it out yourself.

[★REM★]

It sounds more like you need to better calibrate your monitor, as i have not any washed out black.

[Zero McDol]

Originally posted by Grandmother CFO:

Chromatic aberration turn it off

That's blur, not color. Aberration specifically blurs the edges of the image to give, I'm guessing, the natural feeling of looking at something whereas only the direct focus is sharp. Kinda like vignette, but it's blur related instead of color related.

[identity]

There's actually a mod specifically for this problem. Some HDR thing or whatever. Go check it out. I don't use it, personally.

[ProudTiger]

Gamma setting in game.

And make sure you turn the nit level down to the hdr limit of your monitor in Cyber's hdr settings.

[Crims]

I don't have an HDR monitor. So I can't use that.

[PanPan]

No HDR no RT but i use NovaLUT Vibrant and it looks similar to HDR with saturated colors.
It also removes the yellow sandy atmosphere.

[Death Approaches]

Originally posted by ProudTiger:

Gamma setting in game.

^This^

You have your gamma slider set way lower than 1.0, probably 0.6 or 0.5... maybe even lower if black is showing up gray... remember it's on the sidebar, press settings, graphics video, then Z for gamma settings.

[Soul]

the year is 2077.... where technology is advanced enough to replace skeletons, eyes, arms, legs....

can even make weapons smart.... or shoot through walls..... eyes that can peer through obstacles....

yet somewhere along the way someone seemed to have lost schematics for on how to make a portable flashlight....

[Death Approaches]

maybe they thought giving you a personal light was too Fallout-ish and didn't want the comparison... there's what, 6 flashlight mods? I'm sure one of them works with 2.12.

Me, I like the night to be scary and dark, it's a vicious violent city with death around every corner even in the daytime... I wish the enemies has worse aim than they do, though, but I guess that will require another mod for AI tweaking to make them miss more at night... but as a smartgun netrunner on this run, she has no problems whatsoever in near-total darkness.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3174331793