So HDR is not coming back? Why is there no communication?

[Sacb0y]

Should I just refund the game? We're like two updates since they quietly removed HDR support, and they still haven't even acknowledged it's removal.

There's like no communication which doesn't even give me confidence in the rest of the game (I refuse to play until it's added back).

Far as I can tell it's like they just gave up after it was broken on launch.

Sometimes it's fine to just say "hey we ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it up and are working on fixing it". Cause apparently even consoles have broken HDR. This game should be gorgeous, and even games with hacked HDR work fine.

[Industrial_AI]

While it's always nice when devs add good HDR support out of the box, there is a way to retrofit HDR into games even without Windows 11, that you may be interested in if you don't know it already. The tool is called Special-K and it's a pretty good solution for any game that isn't running an anti-cheat. I've been using it on Redout 2 since launch. And I've even used it on Redout 1 because it beat the native presentation in my opinion(since redout 1 didn't have any dials to tweak HDR brightness and the native HDR made the speed line vignette unbearable)

It's not that hard to use either.
1. You just grab the injection frontend from here: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/SpecialK/Tools
2. Make sure Windows is in HDR mode.
3. Start the desired game through the injection frontend. Chances are, you just open the tool and it shows you your installed games to choose from.
4. once the game starts there should be a banner at the top of the screen. Use the shortcut it tells you to (ctrl+shift+backspace) and a window will open in the middle of your screen.
5. Open the collapsed Widget menu and enable the HDR widget.
6. There should be a window in the top right now. Select scRGB HDR and restart the game.
7. Open the same HDR menu again. There is a hotkey for this(for me it's the button the enter key wraps around). Alternatively just ctrl+shift+backspace again and check the widget box again if the window isn't there immediately again.
8. You can now dial in your peak luminance, paperwhite, middle gray, saturation and gamma.
I personally have it pretty dark, but VERY HDR and vivid right now.
800 nits peak on my CX, 150 paperwhite, +4% middle grey, Aces Filmic as tonemap mode, 125% saturation and 1.3 Gamma.
You can dial things differently as you please though. To make it brighter reduce gamma back to 1 and raise paperwhite(you can try out up to 300 or something, 150 is pretty low end I think). To decrease the HDR impact, lower middle grey back to 0. Saturation is also a matter of taste. You can lower it back to 100%. If that's not flat enough for you yet you can also switch from Aces Filmic to Passthrough tonemap.

Just one last thing. Make sure to close this program before starting multiplayer games with anticheat. Depending on what you chose in the settings, it might interfere with Anti-Cheat systems. Personally I've never had an issue with this though and I've been using this for a while now.
Special K was a gamechanger for me for HDR gaming. It opens up so many more games. It's really cool. I'd advise you give it a shot if you care a lot about HDR gaming on PC.

[Sacb0y]

SpecialK from what I've used is not actual HDR or HDR as it's ideally used. It's basically Auto HDR (which can be easily activated on most games in Windows 11) which is nice and good for making games look good on an HDR screen, but not what I'm really looking for.

Proper HDR implementations are what really make it shine. SpecialK just makes SDR games more viable on HDR screens.

[Wylie28]

If its proper HDR you are looking for, it never existed then.

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Wylie28:

If its proper HDR you are looking for, it never existed then.

There was a toggle for the feature at launch then they quietly removed it. Thats why i bought it in the first place, but the implementation was broken.

[Wylie28]

So you want broken hdr back?

And hang on. Your buy games, not based on the games. But because they have HDR?

My god. How much was the monitor and why are you so desperately trying to justify its purchase?

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Wylie28:

So you want broken hdr back?

And hang on. Your buy games, not based on the games. But because they have HDR?

My god. How much was the monitor and why are you so desperately trying to justify its purchase?

There's a lot of games to play and I don't have time to play many. So sometimes I buy (presumably good) games just cause they would look pretty to play on the honestly expensive TV I use as a monitor. Same ♥♥♥♥ if you have a good GPU you want ♥♥♥♥ that uses it. If i'm going to buy a NEW game I prefer it take advantage of my hardware. It's not like it's difficult for me to spend my gaming time and money elsewhere.

And I'm a Wipeout fan looking for a fix.

But also HDR is kind of a necessity for this TV, cause SDR is often either too dull or super bright or worse has tons of color banding (Splinter Cell Blacklist).

Also fixing the HDR would be easy, I make games for a living and Unreal probably has the easiest HDR implementation. So easy you can often just change a config file to force it on, I do this in Octopath Traveler.

[m3klan]

"I make games for a living", that's what gave it away.

[SeeNoWeevil]

Picked up the game in the sale, pretty disappointed to see again HDR is really poor, just like the first game. HDR is dimmer than SDR. I tried all the typical Unreal Engine settings for HDR without any change, which is odd. The game won't trigger Auto-HDR either, potentially because the native HDR is blocking it.

It's hard to say if the game is actually outputting dim native HDR or it's just Windows putting the SDR into a HDR signal/container. I could experiment with the Windows HDR brightness slider which will tell me if it's even native at all.

EDIT: The Windows HDR slider alters the brightness in game, proving the game doesn't have any native HDR at all and it's just a straight Windows SDR>HDR conversion.

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by SeeNoWeevil:

Picked up the game in the sale, pretty disappointed to see again HDR is really poor, just like the first game. HDR is dimmer than SDR. I tried all the typical Unreal Engine settings for HDR without any change, which is odd. The game won't trigger Auto-HDR either, potentially because the native HDR is blocking it.

It's hard to say if the game is actually outputting dim native HDR or it's just Windows putting the SDR into a HDR signal/container. I could experiment with the Windows HDR brightness slider which will tell me if it's even native at all.

EDIT: The Windows HDR slider alters the brightness in game, proving the game doesn't have any native HDR at all and it's just a straight Windows SDR>HDR conversion.

Yeah it had official support at launch but it was broken, then they just removed it without saying anything and haven't said anything since.

[Xaviruso]

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

I make games for a living

yet my man doesnt know what HDR is or how it is implemented. So... you want broken, ilimplemented HDR back? I would expect someone who makes games for a living to at least be smart enough to think "Oooweee im glad this broken piece of ♥♥♥♥ feature that was implemented like crap and that even while disabled caused problems is now gone! i look forward to it getting added back when these incompetent devs finally figure out how to implement it!", but no, instead you come here to say that HDR implementation is easy af and that you can add it to any game editing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ config file. Like ♥♥♥♥♥, you can do that if there's an implementation for it in the game's engine, and in the case of unreal, features that are not used can be disabled on the packaged build. So tell me, how does this magical text file work? Does it somehow make a binary injection into the game's files and hacks itself into the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ matrix or some ♥♥♥♥ to add HDR support to all games? Maybe i misunderstood your message but holly ♥♥♥♥, if you really meant that editing a text file can magically add HDR support to any game, im gonna have to shoot myself in the balls.

Edit: You are our apartment's dev??? WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥. AND YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS? talk about ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hypocrisy. Your game's good btw, nice faps i've had there, but ♥♥♥♥, you cant exactly talk crap about other devs when your own game stutters like crap and doesnt have a proper HDR implementation itself. Know the amount of crashes your game has because someone doesnt know how to code shaders for ♥♥♥♥? Yeah, cry me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ river. Oh by the way, when will YOU fix the bugs in your game that have been there since you released the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ demo. I guess its ok when you do it.

And, as a side now, i must add that no, im not defending RO2 devs, i've got plenty of complaints about the way they do things and how much of a big pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash this sequel has turned out to be, but ♥♥♥♥, how can you expect people to take you seriously when you make comments like that??

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Xaviruso:

I would expect someone who makes games for a living to at least be smart enough to think "Oooweee im glad this broken piece of ♥♥♥♥ feature that was implemented like crap and that even while disabled caused problems is now gone! i look forward to it getting added back when these incompetent devs finally figure out how to implement it!"

There's been zero communication on this issue, far as I'm concerned they act like the feature never existed in the game in the first place. I'm not going to infer what their intent is when they just ignore it.

Originally posted by Xaviruso:

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

I make games for a living

Maybe i misunderstood your message but holly ♥♥♥♥, if you really meant that editing a text file can magically add HDR support to any game, im gonna have to shoot myself in the balls.

YES YOU CAN, there's several games this works on, for example Octopath Traveller, does not support HDR but you can enable it by modifying the config file. The main difference is if the game forces it back off.

As proof here's a JXR screenshot of octopath, this is well known. (This image is only viewable in windows photo app)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4aqervjad7wyjw3/OCTOPATH%20TRAVELER%20%2011_21_2022%204_26_33%20AM.jxr?dl=0

The reason this works is cause internally every game now uses HDR colors, it's just tone mapped to work in LDR. That's why features like bloom doesn't suck anymore, it's not working with 0-1 it's working with like 0-10 with 0-1 no longer being considered light.

It's not perfect to just turn on HDR like this, there's differences and incorrectly mapped brightness can wash out bright areas. In Octopath it breaks certain UI effects, but those would be simple fixes, but otherwise don't hurt the game. But it does work. Outside of artistic vision it's not a hard feature to implement especially when the engine provides a solid solution.

This is not like raytracing, this is more like upping game resolutions from 480p to 1080p. Might cause a couple issues but as long as you had it in mind it should work without much fuss.

Originally posted by Xaviruso:

Edit: You are our apartment's dev??? WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥. AND YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS? talk about ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hypocrisy. Your game's good btw, nice faps i've had there, but ♥♥♥♥, you cant exactly talk crap about other devs when your own game stutters like crap and doesnt have a proper HDR implementation itself. Know the amount of crashes your game has because someone doesnt know how to code shaders for ♥♥♥♥? Yeah, cry me a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ river. Oh by the way, when will YOU fix the bugs in your game that have been there since you released the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ demo. I guess its ok when you do it.

And, as a side now, i must add that no, im not defending RO2 devs, i've got plenty of complaints about the way they do things and how much of a big pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash this sequel has turned out to be, but ♥♥♥♥, how can you expect people to take you seriously when you make comments like that??

Yes I am! And you're talking about development builds, these builds have long had partial feature implementation (and experimental stuff) which caused a lot of issues. Unlike normal game development online game development releases builds early rather than ensuring a foundation and gameplay first. If it was my choice the builds you're talking about wouldn't be available at all, but I owe that to people who support the game.

But yeah ♥♥♥♥ like that is partly why there hasn't been a proper build release in like a year. Can't have it both ways. :P

As for HDR my game is on Unity, and it runs on URP. Unity URP did not support HDR until just recently (Unity 2023.1), like the last few months. Unreal has had the feature since 2017, and apparently everyone can get it right but the redout devs.

I'm a HUGE HDR enthusiast, Our Apartment doesn't have HDR yet cause it can't. But it will. But not until Unity 2023.2, and even then probably not until after the steam EA release to ensure that release is stable.

[Xaviruso]

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

YES YOU CAN, there's several games this works on, for example Octopath Traveller, does not support HDR but you can enable it by modifying the config file.

OK, SO, i was correct. Yes, you can enabled it in Octopath traveller because the engine has support for mapping to HDR built in. Does that mean you can edit a config file and add support for HDR, or at least mapping HDR to LDR ranges, in all games???? NO. If the game engine does not support HDR, how do you expect adding a few lines to a config file will add HDR support? Do you really think i can go to DOOM for example and add HDR support by writing "HDR = TRUE" In some config file? lmao.

What you can do is faking HDR in many games that dont have true built in HDR support, but if that is not built into the game's rendering pipeline, then you wont be able to add true HDR support.

You can even force a display to act as if everything on the screen was HDR at the operating system level, but that doesnt mean that the game you want to add HDR to will have a config file that will allow me to enable HDR.

LDR ranges color values for every fragment from 0 to 1 and HDR allows these values to exceed the 1 cap, allowing for, well, a high dynamic range! But the way your monitor displays this information also affects how the final image will look. If your monitor has a 0 to 1 pixel range for each channgel, that is, when your display is an LDR screen, then you cant display HDR properly. What games do to solve this problem is map the higher range back to the 0 to 1 range. What you are describing in Octopath is a built in support to simulate HDR by mapping a higher range of values to the 0 to 1 range, which means that there is built in support for this feature in the game's engine.

The reason why HDR exists is because when you have multiple light sources together in an area, they can make a single fragment's light value go over 1, which will obviously get clamped to 1, which means that too many lights of low intensity together makes surfaces look nuclear white as if god himself was trying to go through the walls to give you a message. And the message is that your lighting sucks.

Now where does this wall of text take us? It takes us to the fact that not all games have this feature built in into their rendering pipeline. Sure, modern games that make use of game engines DO have support for this, because well, they are using a big game engine that already does the work for them, so they dont have to worry about such implementation details. But you cant just edit a config file and expect all the binary information required for HDR support to magically appear into the game's code for any given game!!!

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

I'm a HUGE HDR enthusiast, Our Apartment doesn't have HDR yet cause it can't. But it will. But not until Unity 2023.2, and even then probably not until after the steam EA release to ensure that release is stable.

Im looking forward to that, at least i am very glad to hear that you are waiting for it to have a stable release before implementing it, but considering how things have been rushed in the previous builds im scared to see what the new shader crashes will be about. I look forward to your game putting my GPU on fire as i stroke my goose at max speed lmao.

This conversation feels kind of awkward now.

[Xaviruso]

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

There's been zero communication on this issue, far as I'm concerned they act like the feature never existed in the game in the first place. I'm not going to infer what their intent is when they just ignore it.

Thats how the redout devs work. I dont like it either, and it is a total ♥♥♥♥ move. They already acted like this in the first game, so it doesnt seem like its ever going to change. I actually have a bunch of threads where i made some complaints about the way they were ignoring game breaking collisions in the first game, i've found a bunch of game breaking collisions in this second game as well such as floors that you can clip through, walls that you can go through, invisible bumps in flat road that send you flying into space and literally break the game because your player pawn is destroyed because you literally get launched outside of the world bounds, which makes the unreal engine delete your pawn, etc etc... and they never do a thing about it. The games are cool and all but the devs really dont like communicating with the community at all. They dont fix ♥♥♥♥. But oh boy can they keep churning out new DLCs to pocket more cash. Thats something they sure as hell know how to do!

[Sacb0y]

Originally posted by Xaviruso:

Originally posted by Sacb0y:

YES YOU CAN, there's several games this works on, for example Octopath Traveller, does not support HDR but you can enable it by modifying the config file.

OK, SO, i was correct. Yes, you can enabled it in Octopath traveller because the engine has support for mapping to HDR built in. Does that mean you can edit a config file and add support for HDR, or at least mapping HDR to LDR ranges, in all games????

Did I say that? No I did not, like Octopath, Redout is an Unreal Engine 4 game. I never said ALL GAMES. What are you talking about? This is specifically an Unreal Engine thing.

Because this is an Unreal Engine game HDR support should be easy, it shouldn't have been broken at launch, but especially shouldn't take months to fix.

ALL Unreal Engine games can generally support HDR, cause the internal rendering is already HDR. You would have had to do some dumb unnecessary ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to break that.

[SeeNoWeevil]

I did a bit more playing around with Redout 2's .ini files and you can actually bring native HDR back but it looks terrible, I'm assuming this is what it looked like at launch and on the consoles. I'm pretty sure the original Redout looked very similar with HDR enabled, really oversaturated colours and just broken.

The only games I've ever turned HDR off in because SDR looked better was the original Redout and Mortal Shell, both Unreal Engine. Monster Hunter Rise HDR is also pretty terrible (Auto HDR actually looks quite good)