HDR Broken?

[Taylor Machine]

In the demo when I activate HDR the colors just get washed out and the game doesnt properly display in HDR. I'm on win11 with an HDR monitor, I play other games in HDR just fine. Is there something I might be doing wrong?

[Aergistal]

Originally posted by Eagleshadow:

I sent an email with a detailed report and a video capture link.

[wirtold]

Originally posted by f1ac:

HDR off: https://imgur.com/r0kETIi
HDR on: https://imgur.com/y8vcEBc

It looks exactly the same for me. Windows 10 22H2, 19045.3570. Samsung TV 65NU8072 (HDMI). Latest NVidia drivers. Steam overlay looks the same as in SDR. I am not using any other overlay software. And I have no problems with the game DESORDRE, which also uses UE5 and HDR.

[Hofstadter]

Originally posted by f1ac:

HDR off: https://imgur.com/r0kETIi
HDR on: https://imgur.com/y8vcEBc

It looks exactly the same for me aswell.

[Hofstadter]

Any news about this issue? Are you guys going to fix it in the demo, or is it just for the full game?

[ltron]

Originally posted by Eagleshadow:

I've looked through all the logs, but still haven't figured out where the problem lies. Satsun above gave me an idea with mentioning steam overlay. Could those of you who have non working HDR please open the steam overlay during the washed out colors, and check how the overlay looks like to you. Does it look the same as it does with HDR in Windows enabled but HDR toggle in the game settings disabled (which should be very similar to having HDR disabled in Windows), or does it look searingly bright and stupidly contrasty:
Steam overlay in SDR: https://i.imgur.com/5EtapTR.jpg
Steam overlay in HDR: https://i.imgur.com/jNqBqT0.jpg

If you are getting the eye searing steam overlay, that means that game is formally in HDR, but it's internally messing up something like using the wrong tonemapper and sending SDR numbers to be interpreted as HDR, causing gamma mismatch.

If you are not getting the eye searing steam overlay during the washed out look after toggling on HDR in the game, that means that HDR is being properly rendered and tone mapped internally, but some communication between game and OS failed somehow leading windows to think it should treat the game as if it was SDR, and making it interpret its correct HDR signal as SDR, causing gamma mismatch.

In other words, this should answer if problem lies somewhere in HDR signaling or somewhere in setting correct pixel values internally.

____

Also, people who haven't mentioned which monitor you are using, regardless if HDR works for you or not, please do so. I doubt this is related to monitors, but we can't confirm that unless we come across an example of two setups using same monitor, one working and one not.

You could also type winver into start menu search to find out your windows version, it might be useful to cross reference those as well just to eliminate the possibility, though it's a long shot since I have HDR working on both more than year old Windows 10 and on the most up to date Windows 10.

GPU and driver version should be unrelated, as some of you with the problem have same GPU and driver version as I do.

Warnings in logs about setting the console variable being ignored as it is lower priority... etc, those are unlikely to be relevant since exact same lines are present on systems where HDR is working properly.

The line "Tried to enable HDR display output but unsupported, forcing off." only happens in minority of the logs of people who report malfunctioning HDR, and is likely a red herring, as the only way to produce that without access to game console is to leave HDR enabled in the game settings, turn off the game, turn off HDR in Windows and then turn on the game again, which will try to default to HDR bas on remembered setting but will obviously fail.

If there is anything specific about your system that might be interfering and causing this, such as some game overlays or something running in the background that might be interfering somehow, you can try disabling as many of such things as possible to see if the culprit can be identified, in case this issue is caused by interference of some third party app.

And one last thing, if any of you with the problem are willing, it might be useful if you could record HDR footage of the problem. Use shadowplay or OBS configured to record HDR ( https://i.imgur.com/RmmdALe.png ), make sure to start recording after HDR in Windows has already been enabled, record yourself starting the game, going to settings, enabling HDR and demonstrating HDR being washed out. You can also record all this with a phone camera if you want, though digital recording is preferred as it would allow me to analyse exact nit values.

This tool can help people (including the developer) diagnose the problem:
https://github.com/EndlesslyFlowering/ReShade_HDR_shaders

Here is a YouTube video about it:
https://youtu.be/mohENNn-F4Q?si=55bOJBT_vjunzoVq

I remember with Unreal Engine 4 some games used the default built-in HDR and it used the wrong colour space, perhaps that's the issue here given that colours are washed out. The tool will give you an accurate representation of the game's colour space in HDR.

[Eagleshadow]

Thanks for the link Itron!

Originally posted by Hofstadter:

Any news about this issue? Are you guys going to fix it in the demo, or is it just for the full game?

There's no reason not to include the fix in the demo.

News is that I had an email back and forth with one of the people in this thread and they sent me a great HDR video recording of the issue as it happens on their screen, which confirmed that the issue is not internal to the rendering or color spaces or anything like that, but it's that some miscommunication happens somehow between the game and Windows. Game signals to Windows that it's switching to HDR, but Windows for some reason keeps thinking that game is an SDR application, which results in Windows interpreting game's HDR signal as if it was an SDR signal, leading to obvious gamma mismatch, and the signature washed out look of what the raw HDR signal looks like in SDR.

Still have to figure out why this works for some people, but doesn't work for others.

[Hofstadter]

Originally posted by Eagleshadow:

Thanks for the link Itron!

Originally posted by Hofstadter:

Any news about this issue? Are you guys going to fix it in the demo, or is it just for the full game?

There's no reason not to include the fix in the demo.

News is that I had an email back and forth with one of the people in this thread and they sent me a great HDR video recording of the issue as it happens on their screen, which confirmed that the issue is not internal to the rendering or color spaces or anything like that, but it's that some miscommunication happens somehow between the game and Windows. Game signals to Windows that it's switching to HDR, but Windows for some reason keeps thinking that game is an SDR application, which results in Windows interpreting game's HDR signal as if it was an SDR signal, leading to obvious gamma mismatch, and the signature washed out look of what the raw HDR signal looks like in SDR.

Still have to figure out why this works for some people, but doesn't work for others.

Thanks for the update! I wish you the best luck on fixing this issue.

[wirtold]

If I add these lines to the Engine.ini:

[SystemSettings]
r.AllowHDR=1
r.HDR.EnableHDROutput=1
r.HDR.Display.OutputDevice=3
r.HDR.Display.ColorGamut=2

HDR in Windows and in game is enabled, and when I start the game, HDR with beautiful colors engages for about two seconds during Croteam logo, and then it switches to washed out.

If I remove these lines, picture is washed out from the begining.

[Havoc]

Originally posted by Eagleshadow:

some miscommunication happens somehow between the game and Windows. Game signals to Windows that it's switching to HDR, but Windows for some reason keeps thinking that game is an SDR application, which results in Windows interpreting game's HDR signal as if it was an SDR signal, leading to obvious gamma mismatch, and the signature washed out look of what the raw HDR signal looks like in SDR.

Still have to figure out why this works for some people, but doesn't work for others.

Maybe worth taking a look at the DXGI mod I linked you on reddit before in case you missed it, for me Elden Ring & Armored Core both had the exact same kind of HDR issue with it only partially switching, seems the DXGI mod was able to fix that by changing the colorspace DXGI gets told to use.

Mod does also seem to fix the broken HDR for me in Talos2, but only in main menu, going ingame seems to make things even worse sadly.. think that might just be some incompatibility with the rest of the mod though (it uses some old ReShade code to handle hooking stuff), or maybe UE is overriding colorspace after this mod had ran.

https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/2794 is the mod, the download there includes the source for it, looks like the main change it makes is in dxgi_swapchain.cpp, there it added the following inside DXGISwapChain ctor which I guess is ran whenever game creates a swap chain:

	DXGI_SWAP_CHAIN_DESC desc = {};
	original->GetDesc(&desc);

	if (desc.BufferDesc.Format == DXGI_FORMAT_R10G10B10A2_UNORM)
		static_cast<IDXGISwapChain3*>(_orig)->SetColorSpace1(DXGI_COLOR_SPACE_RGB_FULL_G2084_NONE_P2020);

Maybe there's some way Talos2 could call into SetColorSpace1? I know nothing about UE programming though, probably more involved than that.

In any case hope some solution can be found for it, for now SpecialK works great for upgrading the SDR game to HDR, but I'm praying SK won't get broken by antipiracy in the release like it is in Talos 1 :/

[Q]

I will hardly be surprised if the source of problem is Windows.

[Hofstadter]

Originally posted by Cyvan:

I will hardly be surprised if the source of problem is Windows.

I've tested in two different windows installs. Same issue. But it could be.

[Skyperson375]

Same issue for me with the demo, HDR just washes out the UI but doesn't actually make the game HDR.

[Skyperson375]

Originally posted by Havoc:

In any case hope some solution can be found for it, for now SpecialK works great for upgrading the SDR game to HDR, but I'm praying SK won't get broken by antipiracy in the release like it is in Talos 1 :/

How did you get SK to work? I replaced a file (sl.interposer.dll) because SK said it needed to do so to launch, but I can't turn HDR on in SK or else the game crashes.

[ltron]

Originally posted by Hofstadter:

Originally posted by Cyvan:

I will hardly be surprised if the source of problem is Windows.

I've tested in two different windows installs. Same issue. But it could be.

What version of Windows are you using, is it up to date? Is it Windows 10 or 11? You can type winver into the start menu to see all the details like build number, version etc.

You haven't disabled the Game Bar have you?

[Havoc]

Originally posted by Skyperson375:

How did you get SK to work? I replaced a file (sl.interposer.dll) because SK said it needed to do so to launch, but I can't turn HDR on in SK or else the game crashes.

Hmm, don't think it had any issues with sl.interposer for me.. I did have an issue with game crashing with something SL related tho (without SK being used), which I got rid of by renaming the nvngx_dlssg.dll file included with the game, maybe doing that let SK work better with it?

This was around when demo first released tho, there's been a few updates to game & SK since then, really hoping it'll work fine come release date.