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

[Snoopkirby]

Messaggio originale di White ⁧⁧Wolf:

I do indeed have dying/dead pixels at the bottom right and have for quite some time(maybe since I bought it), but didn't look at the spot for a while before noticing. Thanks for the tip though, it's thankfully not noticeable unless looking in that spot. Is it a common OLED issue?

I noticed that without the game in fullscreen exclusive mode, that the game's HDR is greyed out, even though it's enabled in Windows. Do you get that too? Maybe it makes sense, as you might otherwise get 'double' HDR. It does seem like the game is using fake HDR as when using Afterburner OSD the text becomes red instead of the default orange(correct me if I'm wrong on that) and thus is just saturating all colours.

It's a known phenomenon with LG, the rumor is that it's oxygen getting inside and oxidizing the light emitting material, affected TVs last a varying amount of time(usually 1 to 3 years but more is possible) before it suddenly gets worse faster and faster and the edges have many dead pixels.

It's normal with UE5, games on other engines can detect HDR support and toggle it for you then restore SDR when you exit or turn it off. The red could be afterburner not having explicit HDR support.

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

Messaggio originale di Snoopkirby:

It's a known phenomenon with LG, the rumor is that it's oxygen getting inside and oxidizing the light emitting material, affected TVs last a varying amount of time(usually 1 to 3 years but more is possible) before it suddenly gets worse faster and faster and the edges have many dead pixels.

It's normal with UE5, games on other engines can detect HDR support and toggle it for you then restore SDR when you exit or turn it off. The red could be afterburner not having explicit HDR support.

That is disturbing news. I wonder if I still have some warranty left. Probably not...

Just another flaw of UE then I'm guessing. Some folks are claiming that it's a good way to test if a game is using true HDR. If the overlay becomes saturated it seems like a game is not using true HDR(whatever that means) and instead just saturates the whole image(think simple post-processing filter), while true HDR I assume works per-pixel and could be called 'real' HDR. By all means correct me if I'm wrong though.

Afterburner doesn't have HDR support I don't think, but again I think that means with true HDR it(AB) will stay SDR while the game is in HDR. Stalker 2 doesn't seem to have real/true HDR.

[Snoopkirby]

SDR is affected with the raised black level too, it is just harder to see because of the bright HUD.(toggle the HUD off in options menu, then it becomes obvious the image can't generate perfectly black pixels in dark scenes)
Increasing contrast to 60% fixes it but causes a similar too bright and too dark at the same time image issue i have with HDR.
I had contacted GSC and they told me to check if the new update fixed it, which it didn't.
I'll give updates when they reply again.

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

Messaggio originale di Snoopkirby:

SDR is affected with the raised black level too, it is just harder to see because of the bright HUD.(toggle the HUD off in options menu, then it becomes obvious the image can't generate perfectly black pixels in dark scenes)
Increasing contrast to 60% fixes it but causes a similar too bright and too dark at the same time image issue i have with HDR.
I had contacted GSC and they told me to check if the new update fixed it, which it didn't.
I'll give updates when they reply again.

What you're describing could be due to the game's awful 'eye adaptation', which makes darker scenes extra dark and brighter scenes (possibly)brighter. The next time you encounter a dark area for example, move the camera to a lighter area and then back to dark. You will see the dark briefly illuminate. Really stupid feature, and made one area nearly impossible to do while sneaking. It was under a factory I believe in some tunnels. There were 2 human NPCs at that part but it was 100% pitch black and that proves it that the game's presentation is not accurate, even when our screens/settings are.

They have a lot to work on. I'd really like to see them prioritising quality and fidelity instead of cheap, lazy, shiny effects.

I haven't had any issues in SDR though, except inconsistencies in lighting intensity that are just part of the engine. If we try to correct that we'll just be running into more issues. It's up to them to fix it.

[MrSoul]

Looks phenomenal to me on my LG OLED

[White ⁧⁧Wolf]

Messaggio originale di MrSoul:

Looks phenomenal to me on my LG OLED

I use a properly calibrated/set-up LG OLED myself and while some parts can look nice, it's definitely not without its issues. If you want it to look even better overall and more consistent - try SDR. That's how I'm playing right now as I highly prefer it over HDR. The game seems to be using some fake HDR anyway(it's just saturating a lot of stuff/raising brightness essentially like some sort of post-process filter) - doesn't seem like anything per-pixel is going on. What's more, with OLEDs it's important not to play in HDR/high OLED pixel brightness with static UI elements visible(due to large increase of burn-in risk), unless you're watching movies/series without subtitles. I've been playing with all HUD elements off for a huge boost in immersion and difficulty and of course heavily reducing burn-in issues. In these games with such potential for immersion I'd highly recommend the max. difficulty mixed with all HUD off and even music off. Otherwise it becomes far too 'gamey'.

[Snoopkirby]

Anyone knows how to disable film grain for good?
I found the root cause of the raised black floor for both SDR and HDR(it seems they're separate)

It's the HUD causing the black floor to be raised in HDR, the only partial workaround for this is to set UI brightness to the minimum which grants you a 0.001473 nits black floor, the maximum value degrades the black floor to 0.005365. The default value has 0.002215 nits black floor.

In SDR, it is a faulty film grain implementation that causes the black floor to be raised, this screenshots with the reshade analyzer explains everything : https://www.cjoint.com/c/NLeohzkUQwS ( my guess is it's adding some quantity to the color values rather than only substracting, creating the raised black floor, the vignette effect when crouched is visible)
Now the problem is i can't find a film grain option in the game and nothing i do can disable it. Anyone knows what to do? people on nexusmods explain that modifying the GameUserSettings.ini file stops it but my testing shows that it doesn't work. I tried by creating a Engine.ini file and adding the lines there but no change...

Messaggio originale di White ⁧⁧Wolf:

Messaggio originale di MrSoul:

Looks phenomenal to me on my LG OLED

I use a properly calibrated/set-up LG OLED myself and while some parts can look nice, it's definitely not without its issues. If you want it to look even better overall and more consistent - try SDR. That's how I'm playing right now as I highly prefer it over HDR. The game seems to be using some fake HDR anyway(it's just saturating a lot of stuff/raising brightness essentially like some sort of post-process filter) - doesn't seem like anything per-pixel is going on. What's more, with OLEDs it's important not to play in HDR/high OLED pixel brightness with static UI elements visible(due to large increase of burn-in risk), unless you're watching movies/series without subtitles. I've been playing with all HUD elements off for a huge boost in immersion and difficulty and of course heavily reducing burn-in issues. In these games with such potential for immersion I'd highly recommend the max. difficulty mixed with all HUD off and even music off. Otherwise it becomes far too 'gamey'.

I tested on a CX and was able to reproduce the raised floor but only in 8 bit and hdr, it seems the CX(and potentially the C1) can't reproduce the difference in raised black floor with 10 bit compared to 8.

[Linkendorf]

I've posted this in a couple other threads, hopefully this will help someone here.

"I've been using these files for some time now to fix most games that have gamma issues with windows HDR.

In Stalker 2 I've been using the "200 Nits" file, and in game Contrast/Brightness/Gamma all set to 50%, HDR black point set to 25. The game looks a lot better, not crushing black level detail, bright points aren't blown out and flashlights seem to illuminate more realistically. It's not perfect, but it seems a lot better to me."

https://github.com/dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm

[Chesty La'Rou]

I will say that I have a Samsung Odessey T1 that is full HDR compliant and while the HDR brightness is a little low in STALKER 2, ALL OF THE GAMES WERE THIS DARK.

Either that or they were FAAAAAAR darker. Like Lost Alpha...good luck romping around in the dark in that mod. You couldn't see 1 cm in front of your face without a flashlight.

It really is supposed to be ultra darkish.

[Linkendorf]

I've been playing stalker since the first game's release, I'm well versed in how dark the games are supposed to be. That said, this doesn't make the game 'bright'. Check out the link, it will explain what these files do.

[feterman]

I have a weird one. If I turn on HDR, all I get is bleached exteriors when I come out of a building or a cave. However, when I hit the Windows key, the game stays in the background and actually shows as authentic HDR. When I switch back to the game, it stays like that for a moment -- then something happens and it switches back to the bleached-highlights SDR appearance.

I run Windows 10, and have a XB273K GP monitor, which is VESA certified DisplayHDR400 -- or so they say. The monitor is advertised as color-corrected to delta E < 1 from factory, so I don't bother with ICM profiles, but now I'm wondering if this could have anything to do.

[bshock]

I do know it's pitch black in the game when there are no light sources around, yet the AI can spot me from 40 yards away without their flashlight, so maybe not? I'm using Dolby Vision HDR on an AW3225QF panel.

[Chesty La'Rou]

Messaggio originale di bshock:

I do know it's pitch black in the game when there are no light sources around, yet the AI can spot me from 40 yards away without their flashlight, so maybe not? I'm using Dolby Vision HDR on an AW3225QF panel.

This is actually standard STALKER jank. The previous games all did this exact same thing with the AI. They could spot you where ever and through whatever and were accurate as heck. It looked like they had it coded that the AI would get kind of "reset" on it's targeting every half second or so in the previous games though.

But either way. You guys are talking about 200-400 dollar HDR monitors. I'm on an 800 dollar HDR monitor and the HDR is fine.

[d1ckeyseamus]

There doesn't seem to be any kind of global illumination indoors.

[Snoopkirby]

There's a new reshade addon that tries to fix the HDR at the source : https://github.com/clshortfuse/renodx/wiki/Mods
Install reshade with addon support into the game .exe with "shipping" in the name, download the addon and move it onto folder where the .exe is.

After that just configure it with reshade's UI and it works, by that i mean there's no raised black floor and highlights such as thunder look like a good HDR implementation; i recommend turn on gamma correction to stop it from looking washed out and set LUT strength to 0 if it appears too dark because of the eye adaptation bs.
Thanks to the addon's author.

Messaggio originale di bshock:

I do know it's pitch black in the game when there are no light sources around, yet the AI can spot me from 40 yards away without their flashlight, so maybe not? I'm using Dolby Vision HDR on an AW3225QF panel.

The official HDR on PC cannot generate black pixels as-is, turn off the lights in your environment and try to look away from the monitor in a pitch black room both irl and ig, it should look obvious that the pixels are still turned on even on a OLED display that struggles with dark detail.

AI is broken too, i've been able to get stealth kills but it's unclear if foliage and terrain props act as cover or if the light level affects their ability to spot you.
Maybe it's using cone of vision with raycasts and your sound level with distance like the older games? that would explain it.

Messaggio originale di Chesty La'Rou:

This is actually standard STALKER jank. The previous games all did this exact same thing with the AI. They could spot you where ever and through whatever and were accurate as heck. It looked like they had it coded that the AI would get kind of "reset" on it's targeting every half second or so in the previous games though.

But either way. You guys are talking about 200-400 dollar HDR monitors. I'm on an 800 dollar HDR monitor and the HDR is fine.

His monitor appears to be a 3rd gen QD-OLED, they have a accurate 400 nits mode with less aggressive ABL and a 1000 nits mode with reportedly worse gamma tracking and more aggressive ABL.
LG/Samsung TVs certainly do better but it should be decent compared to LCD.