Overly Bright Shadows on Ultra Settings with HDR

[Milamber]

The game, built on UE5, looks stunning, but areas that should be dark, like under trees or near rocks where shadows would naturally occur, appear overly bright. I'm running it on Ultra at 4K with DLAA and full raytracing enabled. Since I'm using an HDR monitor, I'm wondering if the game’s HDR support might be causing this issue.

[soupjake]

The game doesn't support HDR out of the box. You can edit a line in GameUserSettings.ini to enable it though which might help:

bUseHDRDisplayOutput=False

Change that to True.

[Milamber]

Originally posted by soupjake:

The game doesn't support HDR out of the box. You can edit a line in GameUserSettings.ini to enable it though which might help:

bUseHDRDisplayOutput=False

Change that to True.

Thank you! It looks much improved, and it's surprising they didn't include this with a toggle option. I hope they add true HDR with calibration and enhanced shadows for a more immersive experience.

[antiism]

ue5 only supports 1000 and 2000 nit monitors out of the box so its better to use autohdr if you dont have a 1000 nit monitor, if you do have one turn off autohdr for the game and add these settings to the end of Engine.ini to turn on ue5 hdr

[SystemSettings]
r.AllowHDR=1
r.HDR.EnableHDROutput=1
r.HDR.Display.OutputDevice=5
r.HDR.Display.ColorGamut=2
r.HDR.UI.CompositeMode=1
r.HDR.UI.Level=0.8
r.EyeAdaptationQuality=2
r.EyeAdaptation.ExponentialTransitionDistance=0.4
r.EyeAdaptation.SpeedUp=5.0
r.EyeAdaptation.SpeedDown=5.0
r.EyeAdaptation.LensAttenuation=1.2

eye adaptation gets messed up after enabling hdr so i tweaked it a bit. if shadowy areas are a bit too bright for you then change r.EyeAdaptation.LensAttenuation=1.2 to a lower number

[Milamber]

Originally posted by antiism:

ue5 only supports 1000 and 2000 nit monitors out of the box so its better to use autohdr if you dont have a 1000 nit monitor, if you do have one turn off autohdr for the game and add these settings to the end of Engine.ini to turn on ue5 hdr

[SystemSettings]
r.AllowHDR=1
r.HDR.EnableHDROutput=1
r.HDR.Display.OutputDevice=5
r.HDR.Display.ColorGamut=2
r.HDR.UI.CompositeMode=1
r.HDR.UI.Level=0.8
r.EyeAdaptationQuality=2
r.EyeAdaptation.ExponentialTransitionDistance=0.4
r.EyeAdaptation.SpeedUp=5.0
r.EyeAdaptation.SpeedDown=5.0
r.EyeAdaptation.LensAttenuation=1.2

eye adaptation gets messed up after enabling hdr so i tweaked it a bit. if shadowy areas are a bit too bright for you then change r.EyeAdaptation.LensAttenuation=1.2 to a lower number

Thanks, appreciate it.

[Motgenror]

I had to additionally tweak these:

[SystemSettings]
r.HDR.UI.Level=0.5
r.HDR.Display.MinLuminanceLog10=-12

1. r.HDR.UI.Level is 0.5, because even 1.0 makes the UI too bright.
2. r.HDR.Display.MinLuminanceLog10 is -12, to stop shadows being too light. Sometimes, this seems too much, I've noticed crushed shadows a little bit in some situations. Maybe -10 is better, idk.
3. In game settings I've also set Brightness to -3.

You might need different values depending on the contrast/brightness set on the display itself. Mine are:

1. OLED Pixel Brightness 100
2. Contrast 100
3. Black Level 50
4. Dynamic Tone Mapping On

The easiest way to play around with these values without restarting the game is installing the https://github.com/UE4SS-RE/RE-UE4SS addon that allows just that. So for example open the console and just enter:

r.HDR.UI.Level 0.5

Note the absence of "=". In the console, you don't write "a=1", but "a 1" instead.

[Milamber]

Thanks for the information, the game does look better!

I am now using the following commands in the engine.ini file:

[SystemSettings]
r.AllowHDR=1
r.HDR.EnableHDROutput=1
r.HDR.Display.OutputDevice=5
r.HDR.Display.ColorGamut=2
r.HDR.UI.CompositeMode=1
r.HDR.UI.Level=0.8
r.HDR.UI.Level=0.5
r.HDR.Display.MinLuminanceLog10=-12
r.EyeAdaptationQuality=2
r.EyeAdaptation.ExponentialTransitionDistance=0.4
r.EyeAdaptation.SpeedUp=5.0
r.EyeAdaptation.SpeedDown=5.0
r.EyeAdaptation.LensAttenuation=1.2