Is HDR broken?

[Snoopkirby]

It looks darker than intended, as if it was fake HDR
edit: It appears HDR's handling of contrast is broken, and both HDR and SDR have raised blacks.
SDR raised black can be "fixed" by increasing contrast but it results in an image that looks broken similarly to HDR. HDR has no fix i could find for raised black issue.
edit: The cause of the raised floor issue for SDR and HDR was found at least, see this post for a HDR workaround : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626980689722554555/?ctp=2#c4626981956824887530
edit: new workaround for HDR : https://steamcommunity.com/app/1643320/discussions/0/4626980689722554555/?ctp=2#c592882772895447337

[Slackerdude74]

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

It just breaks the image, unfortunately Unreal Engine requires windows hdr to be turned on unlike every other game with hdr support, you can force it to do hdr like you explained with windows hdr off after toggling on HDR in the game but then the colors are even worse, if you do windows hdr ON and in game hdr OFF you will just get sdr tonemapped to hdr, which looks worse on every monitor and tv i've ever tried this on.
It seems to be an unreal engine thing sadly, i wonder if GSC can even fix this.

I play pc games on my uhdtv so maybe that's different, so playing with win11 hdr on and the in-game hdr off and adjusting the display settings in-game and it looks great to me.

[Snoopkirby]

Originally posted by Warmen:

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

It looks darker than intended, as if it was fake HDR

I mean along with everything else that has been stated,if your HDR is indeed working, the game does have gamma, contrast and HDR brightness sliders to make it less dark. Whats the issue? Unless your monitor's calibration is completely off or you have entirely screwed up your windows HDR calibration , those sliders in game options should allow you to achieve less dark game.

It's unusably dark, i can't reasonably believe being unable to see shadow detail in a sunlit area was intended or is correct HDR behavior, no setting i tried fixed it without completely destroying the image, the auto exposure from UE5 appears to be partly to blame(in indoors areas it makes sunlight hit the brightness limit, in sunlit areas shadowy areas are slammed to the raised black floor or almost) but GSC hasn't added a way to configure it.

[Lucash eLSamuell]

its great to me

[Snoopkirby]

Originally posted by Slackerdude74:

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

It just breaks the image, unfortunately Unreal Engine requires windows hdr to be turned on unlike every other game with hdr support, you can force it to do hdr like you explained with windows hdr off after toggling on HDR in the game but then the colors are even worse, if you do windows hdr ON and in game hdr OFF you will just get sdr tonemapped to hdr, which looks worse on every monitor and tv i've ever tried this on.
It seems to be an unreal engine thing sadly, i wonder if GSC can even fix this.

I play pc games on my uhdtv so maybe that's different, so playing with win11 hdr on and the in-game hdr off and adjusting the display settings in-game and it looks great to me.

It's possible the windows 11 gaming autohdr is better than the ingame HDR. On windows 10 it just does a simple sdr to hdr mapping that looks worse than just displaying sdr natively.

[garchomped]

HDR is greyed out in-game even tho I have an HDr monitor and it's enabled in Windows

[13xforever]

for some reason it's not available unless you use exclusive fullscreen mode, which sucks

[Snoopkirby]

Originally posted by garchomped:

HDR is greyed out in-game even tho I have an HDr monitor and it's enabled in Windows

Try exiting the options menu and retry, it stays greyed out if windows hdr wasn't enabled when you click on options

[[U.S.M.]HunkUmbrella]

Originally posted by Skubaben:

Have to use fullscreen in game

Thank you! I forgot about this! And could not understand why HDR is not working.
The thing was in borderless mode :D

[Lucash eLSamuell]

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

It looks darker than intended, as if it was fake HDR

no its not

[garchomped]

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

Originally posted by garchomped:

HDR is greyed out in-game even tho I have an HDr monitor and it's enabled in Windows

Try exiting the options menu and retry, it stays greyed out if windows hdr wasn't enabled when you click on options

Windows HDR is always enabed on my system

[iamcll]

Originally posted by Pixie:

Originally posted by Snoopkirby:

Yes i have a real HDR screen.
The HDR has both crushed whites and blacks, i can't get the game to generate turned off pixels(i can in SDR) and most scenes have crushed blacks and whites because of the exposure adaptation, the blacks get crushed to a grayish color...
This can't be actual HDR, the default gamma also uses a weird 2.05xxx value rather than the normal 2.2(and setting it to 50% from the menu sets it to 2.201001???)
It's broken i think, it looks like SDR in HDR container kind of broken. SDR looks far more playable.

running an oled and blacks definitely aren't greyish for me. if anything, too much is black. but hdr is working. black is pure and bright stuff is.. bright.

how do you see this hdr video?
https://youtu.be/K1VhUZsK_e4
maybe if you have an oled phone screen or something, you can compare. but yeah, there should be plenty of pure blacks.

https://imgur.com/75FRgeE i can confirm blacks are broken and raised in this game on pc, as shown with this tool

[NijimaXL]

The default in game setting is so broken. Better use the SpecialK one as you can adjust it.

[DrexGodar]

Works in full screen but it's way too dark, during the day you need a flashlight in interiors. lol

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

I thought the base game(SDR) was too dark, and then I activated HDR with the standard ingame values for it and it became brighter(using properly set up LG C1 OLED).

I think the game needs proper explanations for calibrating the values in the menu(like for black point, gamma etc.), so people can properly set things up(including preview images and an explanation on what it should look like when the settings are correct.

[Goodfella]

Originally posted by DrexGodar:

Works in full screen but it's way too dark, during the day you need a flashlight in interiors. lol

I don't don't have that problem on my Alienware monitor. There's something wrong with your settings or your monitor if it's that dark inside during the day.