HDR Night Too Bright

[hyp(no)sin()]

Everyone online is saying that the game is too dark, but I have the opposite complaint -- while my OLED monitor can stretch its legs with the inky blacks in occluded indoor areas, nighttime outdoors looks greyish-blue, and all the grass looks oversaturated for how overcast the sky actually seems to be. Playing in SDR, with proper brightness and contrast settings, I can get a darker night and more naturalistic colours for the grass. Is this just how the game is truly meant to look? I have my HDR black point at -10, HDR brightness at minimum, and I have calibrated my display with the Windows 11 HDR calibration tool.

[hyp(no)sin()]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3423720947
Here's an example screenshot, though the HDR game looks even brighter on my monitor. Still, I think you'll agree that this is definitely not a dark and spooky night, and the grass is quite colourful.

[SteppenWolf]

I feel the same way. I want darker nights and I've done everything with HDR as well.

[MattsCreative]

well adjust the settings and fix it

[GrenadeMagnet6]

I do HDR on an OLED TV, and use the game's default HDR settings.

In the Display settings lower the Gamma settings to 40% or lower. There is also a Gamma settings screen to help calibrate the gamma level.

[Tilen]

Same here.

[hyp(no)sin()]

Originally posted by MattsCreative:

well adjust the settings and fix it

HDR brightness is already at the lowest possible value. I don't know what settings I could possibly adjust at this point.
The gamma settings seem to impact the brightness of UI, but not the actual 3D environment (since the latter is rendered in HDR)

[hyp(no)sin()]

On top of that, my gamma is already at 25%, so your advice is definitely not applicable

Originally posted by GrenadeMagnet6:

I do HDR on an OLED TV, and use the game's default HDR settings.

In the Display settings lower the Gamma settings to 40% or lower. There is also a Gamma settings screen to help calibrate the gamma level.

[hyp(no)sin()]

Apparently, I was wrong — those settings do affect the HDR image... weird. I guess I really can lower my brightness even more...

[GrenadeMagnet6]

Originally posted by hyp(no)sin():

On top of that, my gamma is already at 25%, so your advice is definitely not applicable

And how I was supposed to know what your Gamma settings were already at? I'll remember not to provide you any help for next time.

[doscomputer]

I've spent so much time playing around with the brightness settings on this game and I think its all due to how lumen is setup for this game. Just like how the bloom when looking out windows is so insane, the lighting in this game is always going to be a compromise. either you can make daylight look right, make night look right, or make interiors look right. no in between

[hyp(no)sin()]

Originally posted by GrenadeMagnet6:

Originally posted by hyp(no)sin():

On top of that, my gamma is already at 25%, so your advice is definitely not applicable

And how I was supposed to know what your Gamma settings were already at? I'll remember not to provide you any help for next time.

If I had been expecting you to know that, I would not have prefaced my statement with "On top of that". It was an additional piece of information not directly relevant to my statement. Besides, you did help, because it turned out I was wrong about my initial assessment. Granted, I have also found that making the night look dark makes interiors, like bars, look overly dark and over-contrasted, and checking the gameplay trailer, it seems like the blueish-grey nights are just the intended experience.

[Stephen7853]

I think it's genuinely broken with how this game's exposure works. I've been playing HDR this whole time, also on an OLED, just tried it with it off and it looks completely different at night. Actually dark. Exposure noticeably changes when I turn my flashlight on, HDR must be doing something entirely different cause it always just looks kinda dim, kinda grey, way too dark in some places, the balance is all over the place unfortunately.

There's a mod called RenoDX that lets you fine tune HDR further, but it doesn't seem to quite match this contrast I'm seeing with it off. RTX HDR does a similar thing where the sky just looks way too bright at night

[hyp(no)sin()]

Originally posted by Stephen7853:

I think it's genuinely broken with how this game's exposure works. I've been playing HDR this whole time, also on an OLED, just tried it with it off and it looks completely different at night. Actually dark. Exposure noticeably changes when I turn my flashlight on, HDR must be doing something entirely different cause it always just looks kinda dim, kinda grey, way too dark in some places, the balance is all over the place unfortunately.

There's a mod called RenoDX that lets you fine tune HDR further, but it doesn't seem to quite match this contrast I'm seeing with it off. RTX HDR does a similar thing where the sky just looks way too bright at night

Well, as I found, the HDR seems to be somehow additive onto the SDR image, where the SDR brightness setting still affects the HDR image. It almost looks like the game is just brightened across the board with HDR on. I ended up settling for settings where indoor environments looked normal, and the bright daylight looked normal, and the night was just not dark at all. It seems like to get a dark night with HDR, you'd need to completely crush indoor environments into darkness. It's truly strange, especially given that, if memory serves, The Talis Principle 2 had excellent HDR in both bright and dark environments on Unreal Engine 5.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally posted by GrenadeMagnet6:

I do HDR on an OLED TV, and use the game's default HDR settings.

In the Display settings lower the Gamma settings to 40% or lower. There is also a Gamma settings screen to help calibrate the gamma level.

Ditto, I do the same on my 42" LG C3 OLED.

OP, what OLED are you using and what are your OLED Brightness, Contrast, and Black Level settings on it? Reason I ask what brand/model is some OLEDs now have a pretty aggressive amount of enhanced brightness built into the screen.

[iamcll]

Here i found out why, On pc the HDR black level is hard locked into being raised if you check my image out here https://imgur.com/75FRgeE

min nits seems to be at 0.002215, But on SDR you get true 0.00 nits

Anyone who doesn't see slightly raised blacks has a incorrectly calibrated oled