What's with the HDR setting?

[Sawtaytoes]

I have an HDR display and enabled HDR, but there's no setting for your peak nits. Is it 1K or 10K or what?

The menus have color issues when enabling HDR like I'm actually in SDR mode or something.

The colors in the SDR mode look more like what I would've seen on the back of the box. The HDR mode, right off the boat, look like the sun's about to set. I don't get what's going on.

Compare these two images of HDR vs SDR:
https://imgur.com/a/yQWa2vT

I don't know what I'm supposed to do to get this to look right. Is the HDR one some new color grading that you're going for? It seems like it has crushed blacks. And the SDR one has a gray haze over it (as most SDR does).

I tried running Special K on the SDR version, and it does okay, but it's not great like a native presentation because I'm running the DX12 version. If I ran DX11, then Special K can do more with it.

[Elara]

I’m not sure if what I’m going to say will help you:

I use this site to check if a game is natively HDR compatible (I’m not sure if the list is exhaustive): https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_high_dynamic_range_display_(HDR)

If a game isn’t on the list, it means that the developers haven’t integrated this feature.

But if you have HDR enabled on your Windows, it will still try to apply Automatic HDR (which is also called SDR and is done automatically, without human adjustment or verification). Having poor experiences with SDR in general, I have completely disabled it for all my applications (although you can do it case by case).

I also add that I have greatly improved my HDR experience in general by using "HDR Calibration" (official tool from Microsoft, here’s the link from the Microsoft Store):
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n7f2sm5d1lr

This allows you to calibrate your HDR on Windows.

HDR is great, but if it’s not calibrated, it turns into a nightmare. And if a game doesn’t offer in-game calibration, the quality is generally not very good.

[Elara]

I just took a screenshot of the game with HDR enabled, so you can compare:
https://imgur.com/cTM7N5h

Also, I'll try toggling ray tracing and DLSS on and off, as it can have a significant impact on the lighting.

[Sawtaytoes]

Issues

First, great point about PCGamingWiki. It might have more info: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Myst_(2021). More on this below.

I've done the HDR Calibration in Windows and AutoHDR is disabled already.

What I'm trying to figure out are 2 things:
1. Peak nits. What are they set to for Myst? It doesn't let me choose, so it must have some internal value, and it may be configurable.
2. Is the SDR or HDR presentation correct? From what I saw in the 90s game, the SDR presentation looks correct. The HDR should be something added to it, but it's a completely different presentation with a different set of lighting, colors, tone, grading, etc. That's not how any other game works with native HDR including Riven.

Your version of HDR looks like mine. I think something's wrong in the game code to make it look like it's evening time; all orange like that.

HDR in Unreal

It looks like the game runs on Unreal Engine 4, so there are `ini` files you can use to configure the game's HDR settings. Still, the color grading is way off, so I'm not sure if that'll fix it. It's worth a shot. Overall, the game is too dark in HDR mode. Not because of peak nits, but because the gamma is probably wrong.

Here's what PCGamingWiki says: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Engine:Unreal_Engine_4#High_dynamic_range_.28HDR.29