Forcing HDR

[TheRat62]

I've been playing the Master Chief Collection on PC and everyone has been saying the game does not support HDR.

However, when I toggle "HDR" on and off through the windows display setting menu and go back to the game the look of the game changes.

Everything looks brighter and more crisp in the game when HDR is turned on whereas things look a little less sharp, washed out and dim when HDR is not on.

Colors are not that different but are a tad bit less washed out with HDR on. My TV is not one with 1000 nits for brightness it has 500 so I know it's not true HDR.

Can anyone tell me whether or not I am indeed using HDR or not? Everyone is saying the MCC does not support HDR on PC and there are definitely no "HDR" settings in the menu of the game.

But I still feel like HDR does work in the game when you toggle it on and off through the windows menu.

But now I'm second guessing myself as to whether I'm actually experiencing the effects of HDR or not.

[xSOSxHawkens]

no, no hdr in mcc

[TheRat62]

Originally posted by xSOSxHawkens:

no, no hdr in mcc

That's what they say>

But when I turn HDR on in the windows display setting the game looks much better.

[EnclaveEyebot]

windows seems to force its own type of hdr when that setting is turned on, its not true game supported hdr though. This setting can cause serious problems in games that do have true hdr support, such as Destiny - the entire game becomes a washed out mess that is unplayable.

If you want good 'fake' hdr, check the nexus for a good number of enb/sweet fx mods that can really transform the look of the games in the master chief collection.

I use the "enhanced Halo reshade preset" that adds a number of toggle-able effects, including depth of field, motion blur, etc.

[TheRat62]

Originally posted by EnclaveEyebot:

windows seems to force its own type of hdr when that setting is turned on, its not true game supported hdr though. This setting can cause serious problems in games that do have true hdr support, such as Destiny - the entire game becomes a washed out mess that is unplayable.

If you want good 'fake' hdr, check the nexus for a good number of enb/sweet fx mods that can really transform the look of the games in the master chief collection.

I use the "enhanced Halo reshade preset" that adds a number of toggle-able effects, including depth of field, motion blur, etc.

Honestly, the windows 10 "forced" HDR looks pretty good on my Samsung NU8000.

Colors don't look wildly different. But the MCC games look pretty darn close to the "Game supported HDR" on the Xbox One X MCC version.

I was comparing the PC HDR to the ONE X HDR side by side on different inputs and it's pretty close.

I find the HDR effect makes colors slightly less washed out, the games look brighter, and everything looks very crisp with it turned on. Texture detail becomes so much easier to see + looks more detailed.

I dig the windows 10 HDR it'll hold up until the games properly support official HDR profiles.


Even Halo 3, with the windows 10 HDR setting turned on looks great. The covenant armor specifically the grunts all have this nice glare and shine... pretty well the same as the HDR on the One X.

Thansk for letting me know about the fact that it breaks the games that have official HDR support.

So when I play a game like Destiny I should turn off the Windows 10 "HDR" setting? Then when I fire up the game it'll turn on HDR itself?

[EnclaveEyebot]

Originally posted by JohnnyGamer:

Originally posted by EnclaveEyebot:

windows seems to force its own type of hdr when that setting is turned on, its not true game supported hdr though. This setting can cause serious problems in games that do have true hdr support, such as Destiny - the entire game becomes a washed out mess that is unplayable.

If you want good 'fake' hdr, check the nexus for a good number of enb/sweet fx mods that can really transform the look of the games in the master chief collection.

I use the "enhanced Halo reshade preset" that adds a number of toggle-able effects, including depth of field, motion blur, etc.

Honestly, the windows 10 "forced" HDR looks pretty good on my Samsung NU8000.

Colors don't look wildly different. But the MCC games look pretty darn close to the "Game supported HDR" on the Xbox One X MCC version.

I was comparing the PC HDR to the ONE X HDR side by side on different inputs and it's pretty close.

I find the HDR effect makes colors slightly less washed out, the games look brighter, and everything looks very crisp with it turned on. Texture detail becomes so much easier to see + looks more detailed.

I dig the windows 10 HDR it'll hold up until the games properly support official HDR profiles.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the forced hdr can be great with many games on the market, have you tried forcing anisotropic filtering through your graphics card control panel? That had a huge effect on how textures present themselves at distance!

Kinda crazy that xbox got the hdr support, but not pc!

[TheRat62]

Originally posted by EnclaveEyebot:

Originally posted by JohnnyGamer:

Honestly, the windows 10 "forced" HDR looks pretty good on my Samsung NU8000.

Colors don't look wildly different. But the MCC games look pretty darn close to the "Game supported HDR" on the Xbox One X MCC version.

I was comparing the PC HDR to the ONE X HDR side by side on different inputs and it's pretty close.

I find the HDR effect makes colors slightly less washed out, the games look brighter, and everything looks very crisp with it turned on. Texture detail becomes so much easier to see + looks more detailed.

I dig the windows 10 HDR it'll hold up until the games properly support official HDR profiles.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the forced hdr can be great with many games on the market, have you tried forcing anisotropic filtering through your graphics card control panel? That had a huge effect on how textures present themselves at distance!

Kinda crazy that xbox got the hdr support, but not pc!

Honestly, as much as the MCC is improving. I feel like the fact that it's been a work in progress for so long is kind of pathetic.

I'm not a game designer so I don't know how hard it is to fix these things and get everything working... Im sure covid19 has slowed a lot of down.

But it just feels ridiculous that they still have so many things to patch/fix.

[EnclaveEyebot]

I'm not sure that this collection has been worked on for too long, I kinda feel like the pc, 'official' 343 port has been a very recent thing probably with a new team working on it. We all know about how broken the original pc port of Halo 1 was. Hopefully Microsoft will see the value in porting their games to pc so we can see Halo Infinite on steam, and also get the much needed experience porting to a different architecture.

[TheRat62]

Originally posted by EnclaveEyebot:

I'm not sure that this collection has been worked on for too long, I kinda feel like the pc, 'official' 343 port has been a very recent thing probably with a new team working on it. We all know about how broken the original pc port of Halo 1 was. Hopefully Microsoft will see the value in porting their games to pc so we can see Halo Infinite on steam, and also get the much needed experience porting to a different architecture.

Halo Infinite is coming to PC. I have no doubts that a brand new game will hit the PC with tons of issues - it could happen, but is not as likely.

But MCC has been a joke in general since it launched on the Xbox.

Each time they release a new game it has issues of some sort. Even Halo 3 needs work. Wouldn't be so bad if they didn't deliver us a broken game on the original Xbox One launch years ago... but I mean come on 343.

Stop repeating past mistakes. They're pretty much making us pay to playtest their games.