Ocean Dweller
Member
Last edited:
There is now an official HDR Den subreddit
- Thread starter Ocean Dweller
- Start date
Haint
Member
The fact that these studios spend 100s of millions making these games, pumping millions into DEI Sweetbaby contractors, but can't hire a single video level expert to "master" the final output is so beyond embarrassing it should be criminal.
joeygreco1985
Member
I disabled in-game HDR in Silent Hill F and use RTX HDR instead. Looks great 
forsakkenSoul
Member
Good to know. I used to be part of the RenoDX Discord server, but since I use Reddit more nowadays, I'll follow the community's work there.
I used RenoDX on Dark Souls Remastered. The result turned out great.
I used RenoDX on Dark Souls Remastered. The result turned out great.
Last edited:
crazyriddler
Gold Member
I have to admit that I haven't paid much attention to HDR for a long time. My PC monitor doesn't have "real HDR" like my TV.
But it's gotten to the point where when it's on, it doesn't impress me as much as it did at first, and when it's off, I don't miss it.
But it's gotten to the point where when it's on, it doesn't impress me as much as it did at first, and when it's off, I don't miss it.
Gaiff
SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Comes with a performance cost though.I disabled in-game HDR in Silent Hill F and use RTX HDR instead. Looks great
analog_future
Resident Crybaby
I'm the opposite. Properly implemented HDR can completely transform a games visuals IMO
MDSLKTR
Member
Did you have to disable Windows HDR/Auto HDR too? What about when you enable rtx HDR, does it show the Nvidia notification on startup in the very bright green?I disabled in-game HDR in Silent Hill F and use RTX HDR instead. Looks great
crazyriddler
Gold Member
It's true that it has a wow effect, especially when there are particles, fire, spotlights, or a sunset, but then when I see them on an SDR screen, it's like... well, the "simulated" glare effect is enough to me.
Last edited:
Pagusas
Elden Member
Half the time I'm annoyed at how poorly devs handle HDR and the final video output, and I spend a lot of time customizing the output with Specialk/RenoDX/Reshade to make it better, but than the other half of the time I see so many idiots with horribly configured setups that haven't a clue what the hell they are doing and complaining about great implementations of HDR that look like shit on their setup because their setup IS SHIT. It doesn't help the electronics industry has done a piss poor job of standardizing HDR in a user friendly way, but still, be mindful of advice from some people on the forum, sometime they don't even understand what HDR is.
Last edited:
joeygreco1985
Member
I disabled auto HDR and have HDR turned on on the desktop. RTX HDR auto enables itself if the games HDR is non-existent or disabled. It's pretty seamless.
Ocean Dweller
Member
yep
KuraiShidosha
Member
My biggest complaint about HDR on PC is that if I want to use it in games, I typically have to have it enabled in Windows and in doing so I end up with horrible colors and contrast in desktop content. It just looks so washed out and ugly. The ONLY thing that looks good when I enable HDR is HDR enabled videos on YouTube like this Tokyo night walks. Those look phenomenal. Literally everything else looks like a massive downgrade compared to plain old SDR. It's a shame.
nemiroff
Member
You're not supposed to be in HDR mode when not showing HDR content (or auto HDR or RTX). There's no difference between platforms in that respect. The difference is that just a few Windows games are automatically switching modes.
To easily switch, use the keyboard shortcut or a tray app.
Negotiator101
Member
Yeah agreed, just purchased an OLED for the first time going from an LED and HDR on an OLED is incredible. I'd notice it on the LED but now it changes the dynamic of a scene entirely.
b0uncyfr0
Member
My only issue is with Special K - getting the right settings for a HDR amateur like myself is painful. With Reno, you can always post on their discord and someone will help you out.
Burger
Member
There are 2 scenarios.
First, devs cannot get things right despite spending years working on a game and the engine is bad and they give up and say 'good enough'
Second, you have a bunch of nerds deciding for themselves that creative decisions are actually problems that need technical corrections and have no idea what they are talking about.
First, devs cannot get things right despite spending years working on a game and the engine is bad and they give up and say 'good enough'
Second, you have a bunch of nerds deciding for themselves that creative decisions are actually problems that need technical corrections and have no idea what they are talking about.
Shockwave_Fox
Member
I gave up on HDR on my PC - connected to my Samsung with a high specced cable it just absolutely TANKED game performance for some reason.
Are these just HDR mods for certain games or for overall catch all HDR?
Are these just HDR mods for certain games or for overall catch all HDR?
Haint
Member
Windows Key + ALT + B is a shortcut that turns HDR on and off.
keefged4
Member
Special K is one of the easier ones to set up, all you really need to do is make sure that tone mapping is tuned on if you are using HGIG, and set the colour space to match the game itself. by default its at 2.2. If it looks too dark and blacks are being crushed, then change it to SRGB. If it still looks too dark you may need to change it to linear.
Honestly though, most games these days have a renodx style mod available, where it's literally just a case of installing reshade and copying the renodx addon files in the folder with the game's exe. Easy stuff, and will give the best HDR image possible:
Mods
Renovation Engine for DirectX Games. Contribute to clshortfuse/renodx development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
analog_future
Resident Crybaby
The issue with both Reno and Special K for me is that it's honestly too much of a chore to get going.
With in-game HDR, Auto HDR, or RTX HDR, it's literally a couple clicks and you're good to go. Sure they're often not as good, but I think Reno/Special K need to figure out a way to implement this in a more user friendly way if they want more people to adopt their approaches.
With in-game HDR, Auto HDR, or RTX HDR, it's literally a couple clicks and you're good to go. Sure they're often not as good, but I think Reno/Special K need to figure out a way to implement this in a more user friendly way if they want more people to adopt their approaches.
keefged4
Member
Renodx and to a certain extent Special K are basically a one click solution though. Reno DX you install reshade (with addon support) and then just add one file to the game's exe folder. Once in game press home and set your peak brightness on the renodx window. That's it. You don't need to change anything from that point onwards.
Special K is the same, you either open it using it's launcher, or add "SKIF %COMMAND%" to the steam launch command if you already have the Special K launcher installed. Then, in game press CTRL, SHIFT and Backspace to bring up the SK menu, click on HDR, and choose HDR10. You may need to alt+tab or restart the game, but from that point onwards SK will convert sdr to hdr. The only thing you may want to change as mentioned above is the colour space, and turn on tone mapping. That's it. Set and forget.
RTX HDR doesn't always produce the correct colour space either. There's a lot of games that will look bleached without massively adjusting the mid point (middle grey). Auto HDR forces everything into a srgb colour space, so games mastered for 2.2 gamma or below will have raised blacks, unless you then start mucking about with windows icc colour profiles, but at that stage you are just overcomplicating things imo.
Obviously native HDR is preferred, but it's not always the best choice especially if the HDR implantation is half arsed, which is unfortunately more and more common these days.
What are you having trouble with that you are finding them a chore? I don't know how more user friendly reno and sk can get tbh.
keefged4
Member
KCD2 was recently updated with native HDR which may be conflicting with it. I done an entire playthrough using renodx with no issues, but this was back nearer launch so things may have changed now. The native HDR in KCD2 is pretty good as is though.
nemiroff
Member
Why would you want to be in HDR mode when not showing HDR content.
Not saying you're wrong, just curious. I have calibrated two color profiles, one for SDR, and one for HDR through the HDR calibration app. It seems to be the best practice consensus.
Last edited:
Pagusas
Elden Member
For me, it's because I have a dual setup where my computer is driving both my office setup (57" Samsung ultra wide) and my living room (85" Sony X95L). I want windows ALWAYS running HDR on the desktop because I do a lot of HDR photo and video editing, and watch a lot of HDR programming. Switching hdr on and off would be annoying as all hell, esspecially as 99% of displays have to do a full screen black/refresh when they switch between SDR and HDR. Thats annoying. Additionally, Windows 11 as of last year actually does do a good job of SDR to HDR conversion (90ish percent of the time). We're out of the Windows 10 and early 11 days where HDR was broke completely.
Last edited:
nemiroff
Member
Yeah, some people have niche needs, that's fully understandable. But for most people, keeping a display in HDR mode is not optimal. It's the same on consoles with a TV as well; if the content asks for it, the TV switches to HDR. But if not, it stays in SDR as default. There are many obvious reasons for that (AI helped format this list):
- Prevents Washed-Out Appearance: SDR desktop elements and applications look dull and faded when displayed using the HDR brightness curve (PQ).
- Ensures Color Accuracy: SDR content is mastered in the sRGB color space. HDR mode can force the display's wider color gamut, resulting in inaccurately saturated or undersaturated colors on standard content.
- Reduces Power Consumption: HDR mode forces the display's backlight to run at or near maximum brightness, which significantly increases power draw.
- Minimizes Display Wear: Constant high-brightness operation accelerates panel degradation and wear, especially on OLED displays.
- Avoids Local Dimming Artifacts: For displays with Full Array Local Dimming (FALD), staying in SDR prevents artifacts like blooming or haloing on static desktop elements.
- Restores OSD Brightness Control: Many monitors lock out the manual brightness adjustment in their menu when HDR is enabled, making the screen uncomfortably bright.
KuraiShidosha
Member
Yeah but that just speeds up the process of toggling it. You're still dealing with the monitor blacking out and the frustration of having to toggle it on and off. It needs to reach a point where users can just enable it and everything not HDR looks the same as with HDR off, and then the games and apps that are HDR enabled can be enjoyed without having to worry about toggling it on before launching. A seamless experience.
Senua
Member
Yes that would be nice, but for now the hotkey toggle isn't that big of a deal imo
saintjules
Gold Member
I disabled in-game HDR in Silent Hill F and use RTX HDR instead. Looks great
Looks like I may have to upgrade to W11 because it's not available in 10.
Kataploom
Gold Member
I'm talking about HDR content, I don't like mapping SDR intro HDR it better be finely tuned or I'll just use SDR
nemiroff
Member
I don't share your "frustration" over a ~2.5 second display mode switch since I only do that switch between playing games at most. But I agree that it could ideally be more seamless. Couldn't hurt at all. The Linux solution is interesting, although Windows 11 is closer than it has been since W10.
I think I get it now, I just had to inform myself better (AI):
- Linux (and macOS) approach: Color-managed compositor handles both SDR and HDR content simultaneously, ensuring the SDR desktop/apps are correctly clamped to sRGB and mapped to the display's wider gamut, even when the display is in HDR mode. This provides a seamless experience.
- Windows 11 (ACM/Advanced Color): Windows is now capable of performing a system-wide color space transformation (the "clamp") to display accurate colors on wide-gamut screens.
| Feature | Linux (Wayland/KDE/GNOME Compositor) | Windows 11 (Advanced Color/ACM) |
| SDR Clamping | Yes, system-wide. Non-color-managed content is correctly mapped to the display. | Yes, via ACM. Non-color-managed content is correctly mapped to the display (22H2+). |
| Seamless HDR/SDR | Yes. SDR and HDR content are managed by the same compositor pipeline. | No, not fully seamless. HDR mode still causes various issues for SDR content, often making it look "washed out" or displaying with an incorrect gamma curve (sRGB vs. Gamma 2.2). |
| Current State | Solid, but HDR support is still maturing. | Improved, but the HDR desktop is a "hot mess" for SDR. |
While Windows 11's ACM helps with SDR-only usage on wide-gamut displays (preventing oversaturation), the experience when running the Windows HDR setting permanently turned on is still where it often fails compared to Linux or macOS:
- Linux/macOS: When HDR is enabled, the system uses a single, unified color pipeline. SDR content (like your desktop background, taskbar, browser) is composed onto the HDR surface using a correct transform, resulting in a color-accurate and correctly-luminance SDR image living perfectly alongside any HDR content.
- Windows 11: Even with HDR enabled, the SDR part of the desktop is often mapped incorrectly. It can appear dimmer and "washed out" because Windows uses the mathematically accurate sRGB transfer function (gamma) for SDR content in HDR mode, whereas most PC monitors and content are mastered for the slightly brighter Gamma 2.2. Users often have to manually adjust the "SDR content brightness" slider or use third-party ICC profiles to compensate.
- Clamp Wide-Gamut to sRGB: Fixes the historical problem of oversaturated SDR content on wide-gamut monitors by performing the necessary color transformation.
- Enable App-Specific Color: Allows color-managed apps (like Photoshop) to use the full wide gamut while the rest of the desktop remains clamped.
Last edited:
Kataploom
Gold Member
I wonder how to enable it, it still looks too different from windows than it looks on Linux, YouTube app and Switch 2
KuraiShidosha
Member
To be clear the bigger frustration by far is the need to remember to toggle it before launching certain games,and then having to toggle it off after I'm done. The black out mode switch on the display is a lot longer than 2.5 seconds for me though I will say that. It's more like 5 seconds which in a world where living with SDR only sees 0.0 seconds lost throughout my boot cycle switching display modes, asking me to wait 5 seconds before starting a game and 5 seconds after exiting it (IF I remember to do it at all) is a tall order. It's just not usable in my eyes right now.
To be honest with my InnoCN 27M2V, I don't even see a difference with it on or off. I use the display in SDR with local dimming enabled at max brightness at all times. On this monitor, that means about 700 nits full field and highlights in SDR with absolutely no ABL occurring. Compared to HDR which peaks around 1100 nits and does dim down over larger fields in a matter of seconds, I hardly even notice a difference. Not even colors look better in HDR. I thought the jump from 8 bit to 10 bit depth would have had a more meaningful impact but it didn't like going from 6 bit to 8 bit did decades ago.
Overall it's super underwhelming from both a software and hardware perspective. When Windows can have it toggled on at all times without sacrificing color and contrast and when a monitor comes along with a truly revolutionary HDR experience (think 10k+ dimming zones, true 12 bit color no FRC crap, and 4000+ nits sustained full field) then I will be stoked to use it. Until then I truly feel something like this InnoCN just works better parked in SDR mode 24/7.
Bojji
Gold Member
nemiroff
Member
I found an intermediate solution for the latest version of W11 to keep the display in HDR mode without the need to switch back to SDR mode:
(the result might depend on how you calibrated your local monitor settings in the first place..)
- "Settings -> System -> Display -> HDR -> SDR content brightness", set the slider to 5%
- "Settings -> System -> Display -> Color profile", download the file linked below and set it as a HDR color profile
github.com
There are several profiles there, but for 5-10% SDR brightness, normally you'd use the "100" profile (the profile is used to avoid washed out colors when in HDR mode).
So far in my testing SDR content now looks pretty good in HDR mode. Some slight black crush issues might occur in HDR content (idk, I haven't seen any so far).
(the result might depend on how you calibrated your local monitor settings in the first place..)
- "Settings -> System -> Display -> HDR -> SDR content brightness", set the slider to 5%
- "Settings -> System -> Display -> Color profile", download the file linked below and set it as a HDR color profile
win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm/srgb_to_gamma2p2_100_mhc2.icm at main · dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm
Transform Windows 11's virtual SDR-in-HDR curve from piecewise sRGB to Gamma 2.2 - dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm
github.com
There are several profiles there, but for 5-10% SDR brightness, normally you'd use the "100" profile (the profile is used to avoid washed out colors when in HDR mode).
So far in my testing SDR content now looks pretty good in HDR mode. Some slight black crush issues might occur in HDR content (idk, I haven't seen any so far).
Last edited: