Has anyone EVER got HDR working???

[Piano man]

I have a Samsung CRG9 that is HDR capable. I have had HDR run fine on Watch Dogs Legion, Doom Eternal, God of War (meh... it was okay) but my GOD it looked INCREDIBLE on Days Gone.

I cannot for the life of me get it to work in Hitman 3. YES, I have enabled HDR through Windows settings before opening the game - didn't work. YES, I tried running in 10-bit colour and still it doesn't work. YES, I have enabled and disabled, and then re-enabled it a million times trying to get it to work but every SINGLE time the colours look washed out to all buggery and HDR doesn't work properly.

IN FACT, when I was so annoyed with it - I went on YouTube to try and watch a few HDR videos of Hitman 3 to see if anyone else had it working... and all of them (specifically labelled HDR) show the same image I have - washed out, grey-ish blacks and drab colours... ALL, except for this guy seemingly, where the HDR looks GORGEOUS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-AiLD6lkpk

I've never had this much trouble running HDR in my life. Has there been a single person on Steam who has managed to get it working properly?

[Death Korps of Krieg]

I am currently already on Windows 11 Pro,
one of the main reasons for me to step over from Win 10 to Win 11 was the function of "Auto-HDR".

But all it does is just whenever a game that has an HDR option, that it automaticly toggles the HDR windows setting before the game starts.....

Which is identical to when i would had done it manually myself.

What it does not do however, is being an solution to the Desaturation of colors/Washed out/brown greyish filter that seemed to go ontop.

So unfortunately Auto-Hdr solved nothing for me, other than making it automatic.

[Ld7]

Originally posted by TheProScout:

I am currently already on Windows 11 Pro,
one of the main reasons for me to step over from Win 10 to Win 11 was the function of "Auto-HDR".

But all it does is just whenever a game that has an HDR option, that it automaticly toggles the HDR windows setting before the game starts.....

Which is identical to when i would had done it manually myself.

What it does not do however, is being an solution to the Desaturation of colors/Washed out/brown greyish filter that seemed to go ontop.

So unfortunately Auto-Hdr solved nothing for me, other than making it automatic.

It also adds HDR to some games that don't support it natively:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_support_Auto_HDR

[SeeNoWeevil]

Originally posted by TheProScout:

But all it does is just whenever a game that has an HDR option, that it automaticly toggles the HDR windows setting before the game starts.....

That's not what Auto-HDR does.

Auto-HDR attempts to convert games that don't have HDR natively to HDR. For it to work you need to;

1. Have Auto-HDR enabled in Windows
2. Have HDR enabled in Windows
3. Start a supported game (if the game does support HDR natively, like H3, make sure it is turned OFF in-game)

You'll see a pop-up telling you it's working. Native HDR and Auto-HDR don't look much different in H3 tbh.

Some games will force enable the Windows HDR toggle themselves (because of the incorrect way they've implemented HDR) but that's nothing to do with Auto-HDR. Elden Ring and Resident Evil 3 are two that spring to mind.

[Markatron84]

I was having the same problem. When I switched from exclusive full screen to full screen, HDR just started working properly. Maybe others will have the same result?

[Cowpox]

Originally posted by Markatron84:

I was having the same problem. When I switched from exclusive full screen to full screen, HDR just started working properly. Maybe others will have the same result?

HDR is disabled by the game when not in exclusive full screen, the HDR settings disappeared

Edit: I managed to get it working after restarting the computer. It is broke more often than not but sometimes it just works

[Piano man]

I just used Nvidia Freestyle to correct the colours for me.

If your colours look washed out when you enable HDR, try putting these settings on Nvidia Freestyle (with HDR enabled):

Exposure - 33%
Contrast - 15%
Highlights - 33%
Shadows - 100%
Leave Gamma as it is at 0%.

Gives me brighter sun glare, more colourful environment and much darker, and richer blacks in darker scenes.

[40ozKilla]

I had the grey washed out colors when I first got the game a couple months ago. For me what works to fix is having HDR turned off from the game launch menu and having HDR enabled in windows.

When I launch hitman 3 I get a popup notification from windows that the game is running in HDR. I can then toggle HDR in game with winkey + alt + B.

[Piano man]

Tried it - believe me, I went scouring through reddit forums and many steam pages trying to find an answer. I tried turning HDR on and enabling HDR before running the game, tried turning HDR on and enabling HDR after getting into the game, tried the same without HDR in windows and see if it would prompt HDR to work - NOTHING.

Game never ever switched to HDR like it does for Doom Eternal or Watch Dogs: Legion... or even acknowledges it is HDR capable.

And before some numpty comes along and assumes I'm trying to enable HDR on a non-HDR screen - it's a Samsung CRG9 which definitely is HDR capable.

[Cat]

HDR doesn't appear to work correctly on my monitor either (ASUS PG27AQDM).
An "HDR mode" is enabled as far as I can tell because the MSI Afterburner overlay has its special HDR color, but in-game, turning the HDR option on and off has no effect on the colors, and neither does the gamma slider.

The image on my screen looks like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34q7iAaM8Fo and not like this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-AiLD6lkpk

[Piano man]

Originally posted by Cat:

HDR doesn't appear to work correctly on my monitor either (ASUS PG27AQDM).
An "HDR mode" is enabled as far as I can tell because the MSI Afterburner overlay has its special HDR color, but in-game, turning the HDR option on and off has no effect on the colors, and neither does the gamma slider.

Try playing with Nvidia Freestyle - I think if you have Nvidia Experience, you can enable it with Alt+F3, and then try adjusting the sliders to what I put here in this post:

Originally posted by Piano man:

Exposure - 33%
Contrast - 15%
Highlights - 33%
Shadows - 100%
Leave Gamma as it is at 0%.

Gives me brighter sun glare, more colourful environment and much darker, and richer blacks in darker scenes.

Let me know if it makes it better.

[Instant Comet]

I think I actually found a cure:
Turn on HDR on Windows, then start the game and change for fullscreen exclusive to fullscreen.
This should help.

[Piano man]

Tried it - doesn't work for me. This was the first thing I tried, as I have to do the same thing for Days Gone, The Last of Us and Red Dead Redemption 2. They don't have an auto-switch to HDR mode within the game.

[knighttime]

do you need a HDR monitor so you can activate it or no? i have a nice monitor but not sure if its HDR.

[Piano man]

Originally posted by knighttime:

do you need a HDR monitor so you can activate it or no? i have a nice monitor but not sure if its HDR.

Yes, you do need a HDR monitor. It's so worth it though.

[Piano man]

Originally posted by Instant Comet:

I think I actually found a cure:
Turn on HDR on Windows, then start the game and change for fullscreen exclusive to fullscreen.
This should help.

See the weird thing for me is that when I enable HDR in the Hitman 3 menu and go to configure the HDR - The white square seems like a pure white like HDR is working, but the game itself is drab, colourless and almost washed out completely. The sun looks like a perfect circle in the sky and doesn't display any intense white brightness surrounding it.

It looks odd and completely wrong. Again I had this discussion with someone in another game forum (Dead Space remastered) where the HDR also seems borked. I suspect that it uses HDR scRGB (the difference between them, I don't know)... but if I enable HDR scRGB (like in Far Cry 5), the colours look washed out and completely awful, YET HDR10 works perfectly fine and looks beautiful.