"Official" gamma 2.2 or 2.5?

[Spikee1975]

The 25th anniversary update notes state that the game's recommended gamma is now 2.2 ("we don't use CRT monitors").

Fair enough, but why does the default cfg still has gamma "2.500000" then?

[Snark]

The gamma levels will depend on your monitor configuration. You have to adjust it manually to get the look you want, originally HL1 was supposed to have deep black shadows, so you should tweak the gamma till you get that effect (if that's what you're aiming for).

[Spikee1975]

Yeah, I'm aware - but my monitor's well calibrated and I was wondering why they state that in the Update notes if they haven't made it a default.

Just wondering if it was a mistake on their end to not update the default cfg. I do find it perfect with 2.2 and Shaders (= ex gl_overbright 1) though.

[Урал Interceptor]

Originally posted by Spikee1975:

The 25th anniversary update notes state that the game's recommended gamma is now 2.2 ("we don't use CRT monitors")

Thx for mentioning it. I changed gamma to 2.2 and game started to look much better.

[Ikagura]

Originally posted by Spikee1975:

The 25th anniversary update notes state that the game's recommended gamma is now 2.2 ("we don't use CRT monitors").

Which begs me the question about how games will be made when OLED and other more modern display technologies will be standard.

I know that games, even from the 80's, were drawn with CRT in mind.

[Spikee1975]

See how each dev made their own standards back in the days? RtCW for example uses 1.3 as default gamma for giving you the same result as HL's 2.5 - it's all about defining standardised texture colour spaces I guess. Each game had their own settings.

As long as we can customize it everything's fine.

I'm just a sucker for knowing default cvars and this puzzled me a bit. Slight OCD thing :D (still playing the original Doom via the best vanilla source port ChocolateDoom in 320x200 :D)

[Garrec]

Originally posted by Ikagura:

Which begs me the question about how games will be made when OLED and other more modern display technologies will be standard.

I know that games, even from the 80's, were drawn with CRT in mind.

They'll be made the same way. It's largely a myth that games are "designed for" specific displays. Yes, some games were, but most were not.

Hardware variations are incredibly vast. There was no standardization of CRT displays. Televisions and monitors were different. Brands were different. Connectors were different. Supported screen modes were different. All had impacts on brightness and quality. This is why graphics options exist within the monitor's hardware, and within a game's settings. Developers can only provide recommendations. It's up to the user to decide what looks best.

[Spikee1975]

I've got my answer. Removing my config.cfg and starting HL with launch parameter "-autoconfig" gave me a new default config using gamma of 2.2, and brightness is at zero per default.

Case closed. It's indeed "official" :)

The new default brightness of 0 instead of 1 is interesting. Indeed, it makes the game look much better.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3426981190

[xXMarT1naXx]

2.5 was the standardized gamma value for CRTs while 2.2 is the standard for flatscreen displays. With CRTs the gamma of your monitor kinda depended on your monitor type and how it was set up but a properly calibrated CRT should be around 2.5

Tbh back in 1998, LCD monitors were already a thing. It's just that tons of people still used CRTs because they had much better color accuracy and contrast, sometimes even higher refresh rates than 90s LCDs. It took flat screens some time to catch up and CRTs really didn't start vanishing from PC setups until mid to late 2000s.

So it made sense for Valve to set 2.5 as default due to the prevalence of CRTs back then but technically nothing prevented you going to 2.2 if you happened to be a flatscreen user.

So short TLDR; answer is 2.2 on a flatscreen, 2.5 on a CRT.

I actually have an older 2000s PC setup with a CRT as my secondary rig so I got to test this first hand xd

[Spikee1975]

I was more intrigued by the fact Valve chose to reset the age old brightness "1" to zero!

This thread was more about where are the defaults stored and playing the game like Valve intended it to look now - and you do not get them by just deleting your config if you've played the game before - you must use -autoconfig parameter once.

Btw audio defs are (sfx) Volume 0.7; MP3Volume 0.8 and SuitVolume 0.25