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Is it just me, or does HDR on most games look bad?

H

Hemingwayoffbase

Member
Lies of P
Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty
Alan Wake 2

What am I doing wrong? I’ve calibrated my TV and my PS5 in their system settings. I play a PS5 on a Sony X900h for reference.

Maybe I just don’t understand proper implementation, but anytime I turn HDR on in a game, the colors become super washed out and all of the black levels seem gray.

I’ve looked online, but I feel like I need a mechanical engineering degree to make sense of half the shit I read. Maybe I’m just dumb (entirely possible).

Is there a source that can just tell me what to set all of these games respective image sliders to so I can make my games not look like shit? I’m so sick of spending like an hour of my gaming time tweaking settings.
 
E

EekTheKat

Member
www.neogaf.com

News - Analysis - PS5's "Auto HDR Tone Mapping" Feature has Gone Live on Sony TVs! But...

From HDTVTest: The "Auto HDR Tone Mapping" feature on the PS5 - first described in Sony's "Perfect for Playstation 5" campaign - is now operational, following a firmware update on compatible Sony TVs, namely those with the BRAVIA XR processor (Sony X90J, X95J, A80J, A90J & Z9J on firmware...
www.neogaf.com www.neogaf.com

This old thread apparently may be relevant here. It sounds like the set is auto adjusting causing a bit of an issue to some calibration.

TLDR - manual set 15 clicks/15 clicks on the HDR adjustment menu according to Vincent.

For cyberpunk at least - play around with the peak brightness setting in the in game HDR adjustment menu.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
Looks like washed out ass most of the times, yeah.

You probably need a professional tv calibration and lose time adjusting ingame settings on a game per game basis to get good results.

Most people don't have a calibrated tv nor like to lose an hour playing with brighteness settings.
 
Last edited:
Calverz

Calverz

Member
NinjaBoiX said:
Looks amazing on my LG C2.

Definitely sounds like it’s not displaying correctly.
Click to expand...
HDR looks amazing on my lg CX and c2. Some games it’s not implemented correctly like tekken 8 on pc, but I was playing mk1 on pc last night on my c2 and it looked great.
 
Shtef

Shtef

Member
I have almost the same tv, sony x900f and hdr is amazing, better than my newly bought lg c3. Probably something is not setup correctly on your side. If i disable hdr i can see noticeable worse picture quality.
 
Daneel Elijah

Daneel Elijah

Member
I often have the same problem. I tried RE 4 Remake with HDR and it was washed out. It seems to work on GOW Walhalla so it depends on the game and settings I suppose.
 
E

EekTheKat

Member
The mistake I made in the old days was running HDR with eco friendly brightness settings. I wanted to save the panel badly from burn in and or damaging the thing due to my gaming centric use.

It made for an extremely muddy and unpleasant image compared to simply setting the thing on SDR, as brightness was sort of vital to how HDR looks. Local dimming being the other part that helps a ton.
 
Dr.D00p

Dr.D00p

Member
I personally find the super saturated colours of HDR somewhat overbearing sometimes.

...and it's a right pain in the ass for taking screenshots on PC, as none of the capture software plays nice with HDR.
 
cormack12

cormack12

Gold Member
HDR is very hit and miss in gaming. I used the Spears and Munsil calibration media and also have the X90H.

A lot depends on the implementation itself. And it varies game to game so you find yourself messing with settings more often than not especially with games like Valhalla.

The question for me is not usually does HDR look better (which it generally does), it's more can I be arsed tweaking each game individually to get the best picture only to have to change it a few hours later for a different game.
 
Soodanim

Soodanim

Member
Tomi said:
Hdr 1000 monitor and every hdr game look phenomenal
Even hdr on when browsing websites looking awesome
They finally fixed hdr completely
Pg32uqxr monitor here( expensive as fu*k, but rdr 2, horizon, alan wake 2, cyberpunk, everything just looks totaly different with hdr )
Click to expand...
When did websites implement HDR?
 
M

Magik85

Member
You either have wrong HDR settings or poor TV.
Nearly every game ive tried looked massively improved with HDR. Even those 3 listed listed in OP (aspecially Cyberpunk).
 
AndrewRyan

AndrewRyan

Member
HDR looks incredible on my LG OLED. Looks like hot garbage on my TCL, which is otherwise a good monitor. TCL does a poor-man's HDR by dimming the main picture and making the HDR elements normal brightness.
 
clarky

clarky

Gold Member
Mini-led laptop here. HDR is absolutely fucking awesome. Like someone posted above, i never turn it off.

Also on the LG CX at home, shits the tits.
 
Last edited:
A

acm2000

Member
It's just you, some games mess up their implementation and a few require you to set the levels in game to match your TV (cyberpunk for instance needs settings tweaking)

Games won't look as stunning as TV/movies but in general still look pretty sexual.

As another note, your TV doesn't get very bright for HDR content, I have the older x900f and it's HDR peak brightness is upto twice that of your 2 years newer h model such is the weird period TVs went through 😂
 
Last edited:
elbourreau

elbourreau

Member
Everyone complaining about washes visual during HDR, please, post specific tiltes that we can check as OP did !

Almost every game I played in HDR are dead gorgeous (horizon, ff7, FF15, etc...)but I will check those OP titles.
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
What? No.
HDR looks incredible most of the time. Without it, games look almost black and white.

Lies of p had very good hdr. Cyberpunk too. I hate aw2 but hdr was good in it. Not amazing. Good.

I just use lg oled c1. As she settings, these games don’t support pa5 calibration. Almost 0 games do. I just use proper settings for my tv and either hgig or dtm. Lately more dynamic tone mapping. It looks great. I even calibrate games with it which is kinda blasphemy but actually makes sense
 
Last edited:
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
EekTheKat said:
www.neogaf.com

News - Analysis - PS5's "Auto HDR Tone Mapping" Feature has Gone Live on Sony TVs! But...

From HDTVTest: The "Auto HDR Tone Mapping" feature on the PS5 - first described in Sony's "Perfect for Playstation 5" campaign - is now operational, following a firmware update on compatible Sony TVs, namely those with the BRAVIA XR processor (Sony X90J, X95J, A80J, A90J & Z9J on firmware...
www.neogaf.com www.neogaf.com

This old thread apparently may be relevant here. It sounds like the set is auto adjusting causing a bit of an issue to some calibration.

TLDR - manual set 15 clicks/15 clicks on the HDR adjustment menu according to Vincent.

For cyberpunk at least - play around with the peak brightness setting in the in game HDR adjustment menu.
Click to expand...
It barely batters. Almost no game supports ps5 calibration.
And it’s bs anyway. 15 clicks is proper setup for hdr with hgig on oled c series (800nits). Only.
But when I play with dtm, I calibrate as soon as square disappears with dtm. That’s 4k nits which dtm is created by lg to accept and show the whole range compressed in 800 bits with dtm. Resident evil games look better this way for example
 
elbourreau

elbourreau

Member
rofif said:
Without it, games look almost black and white.
Click to expand...
iron man eye roll GIF
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
GymWolf said:
Looks like washed out ass most of the times, yeah.

You probably need a professional tv calibration and lose time adjusting ingame settings on a game per game basis to get good results.

Most people don't have a calibrated tv nor like to lose an hour playing with brighteness settings.
Click to expand...
You don’t need calibrated tv. Just change basic settings. Professional calibration is just for colours which normal humans barely see difference anyway.
My c1 I just put to warm 50 which is about d6500 and that’s proper colours. Otherwise it’s too blur out of the box. But that’s not calibration. It’s just settings. Calibration would ensure it’s really exact and is just an icc profile anyway worth nothing on console
 
Nemesisuuu

Nemesisuuu

Member
Generally most of the games look great in HDR, but Resident Evil 4 looked pretty bad, blacks were completely off - looked more navy blue than black. I didn't lose any sleep over it, switched to SDR and finished it that way.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
rofif said:
You don’t need calibrated tv. Just change basic settings. Professional calibration is just for colours which normal humans barely see difference anyway.
My c1 I just put to warm 50 which is about d6500 and that’s proper colours. Otherwise it’s too blur out of the box. But that’s not calibration. It’s just settings. Calibration would ensure it’s really exact and is just an icc profile anyway worth nothing on console
Click to expand...
The basic settings are already good because i followed the guide from that asian dude who review oled tv and a lot of gaffers use that dude settings.

I just don't want to play with the hdr ingame settings on a game per game basis, hdr is hardly good out of the box except for some rare cases.
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Nemesisuuu said:
Generally most of the games look great in HDR, but Resident Evil 4 looked pretty bad, blacks were completely off - looked more navy blue than black. I didn't lose any sleep over it, switched to SDR and finished it that way.
Click to expand...
Re4 remake owning of best lookig hdr games. All re games have good hdr.
Odbyły see a change of color, this means your tv might have entirely different memory for settings with or without hdr and on every input. Lg does that.

Lg game slime higher nits outputs too. I play them with dynamic tone mapping and the. Crank out hdr peak ingame to max right. Otherwise light sources are compressed.

But that way or another, blacks are pitch black, contrast is amazing and there is no weird blue color
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
GymWolf said:
The basic settings are already good because i followed the guide from that asian dude who review oled tv and a lot of gaffers use that dude settings.

I just don't want to play with the hdr ingame settings on a game per game basis, hdr is hardly good out of the box except for some rare cases.
Click to expand...
Just use dynamic tone mapping and move most slider for peak brightness correspondingly. Usually to the right. It’s less accurate than hgig, but imo looks better and is more set and forget.
 
Nemesisuuu

Nemesisuuu

Member
rofif said:
Re4 remake owning of best lookig hdr games. All re games have good hdr.
Odbyły see a change of color, this means your tv might have entirely different memory for settings with or without hdr and on every input. Lg does that.

Lg game slime higher nits outputs too. I play them with dynamic tone mapping and the. Crank out hdr peak ingame to max right. Otherwise light sources are compressed.

But that way or another, blacks are pitch black, contrast is amazing and there is no weird blue color
Click to expand...
I'm saying, I am not losing sleep over things like that, it looked good even in SDR. I know it could look better, but this was rare instance where HDR didn't work as supposed for me.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
rofif said:
Just use dynamic tone mapping and move most slider for peak brightness correspondingly. Usually to the right. It’s less accurate than hgig, but imo looks better and is more set and forget.
Click to expand...
It's not that easy, some games don't like tone mapping and hdr on pc is way more random\less optimized than console hdr, most of the games with good hdr that i played were on console.

Avatar on pc was decent but it still had raised blacks.
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
GymWolf said:
It's not that easy, some games don't like tone mapping and hdr on pc is way more random\less optimized than console hdr, most of the games with good hdr that i played were on console.

Avatar on pc was decent but it still had raised blacks.
Click to expand...
It really is not the case. There is hdr calibration for win11 too now. It makes just as little sense as the one on ps5 since not many (if any) games are using that data.
And you really overcomplicate it. Most of the HDR/brightness menu in HDR games I play:
-Set first screen (usually blackness) to minimum. obviously
-Set peak brightness to 800 when I play with hgig or to 4thousand/max game allows when I play with DTM (re games all to max for example)
-If there is paper white setting, I leave it at 200 usually. It's just how much nits your tv can do full screen white.
-Games with no hdr calibration? ez, dynamic tone mapping

-best case scenario? Game dont support ps5 calibration and dont have slider (like uncharted4) - I just leave it as is and use DTM
-Worst case scenario? I move 2 sliders lol.
And it really is not hat important if you set the sliders correctly. The difference is usually only in some highlights if any.

Some of hdr examples (obviously only iphone pc but what else?) Not only to you - to everyonre

wPRWVHr.jpg

EUamsuB.jpg

nMP0UJs.jpg

c8u7XVv.jpg

dp7wqtA.jpg

I2RETzM.jpg

DW1WWkm.jpg

X7d7jEb.jpg



And some SDR vs HDR: It's HDR in-game (photo mode pauesd) andthen screenshot converted from HDR to SDR by ps5 when you copy it over usb drive. Not the best SDR representation but close enough.
iAP0OWj.jpg

QwOHYKt.jpg
 
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