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HDR games analysed
- Thread starter EvilBoris
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i have a C7 and is this the first time i hear about this device, do you mind pointing me in a "noob" guide direction please, if this really makes a big difference i will definitely invest on it, thank you.
No Man's Sky should be getting an updated HDR mode soon per their Steam patch notes!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/275850/discussions/0/3570700856123427223/?ctp=33
So this will be updated for consoles too? I wonder what techniques they use.
As long as the keep the option for the old one like Red Dead did in case they introduce some BS that many might not like then this'll be great.
As long as the keep the option for the old one like Red Dead did in case they introduce some BS that many might not like then this'll be great.
I have a similar issue. I have a Samsung NU8000, according to RTings this set has features closer to the Q6, despite lacking the Quantum Dots. I know i cant expect bleeding edge HDR, but with its 800 nits peak one could expect something like decent HDR. The thing is, in ps4 Spiderman i see a noticeable upgrade in lighting (for me it looks more realistic on day time), but in Uncharted 4 and some areas of Infamous SS it looks washed out and, specially in Uncharted, 4 some levels i feel it looks way better on SDR, specially the vegetation, with deep greens that almost pop up from screen. Is almost like you see what they promise ya with HDR, but actually turning it off. In fact, i dont know if that happens due the migration to Pro and a 4k TV, because i originally completed U4 two years ago on a FAT PS4 and a full HD TV, and then played it again until now for testing the Pro and TV purposes. Maybe i see the big upgrade on SDR just due to the Wide Color Gamut, i dont know. Anyway, back to HDR, with Horizon i dont see a big change between SDR and HDR, and on RE 2,RE 7 and GoW i see some changes, but its not big deal. My point is, you guys talk about setting the brightness, is the brightness of the games? the TV? Both? What can i do to get the best HDR possible from this mid class TV? Please help!
I've had a Sony x800d with no local dimming and I now have a TCL R617 with it. Local dimming has been so great that it put me off upgrading to even OLED for the time being since the black levels in HDR can be jaw dropping in the right conditions. I can't even look at the Sony sets HDR anymore it is such a downgrade!
Try and keep it on!
On uncharted 4 hdr is used to give a more natural look so things are less saturated.
You can increase your saturation if you want the pop which is not what hdr is.
I think with your criticisms you must have your sdr image really bright and saturated which will make hdr seem underwhelming.
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Overall it's ok, it's a little overexposed on the default settings with some white clipping, dropping it back with this will help a little.
And other times it looks a little grey. Most of the time that's just some volumetric fog or alpha effects
Areas are graded very differently, so there are areas that are noticeably darker than others, particularly later on
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It depends on the model, often it's not just the "dimming" that is being controlled but also the brightness it can achieve
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Good to see they have improved it, I played it recently and it's already pretty nice. I wonder what they are changing.
Rocket league has been updated also, it's gone from not great to great in a more recent update
Interesting, I have sony x900e . And I feel like local dimming sometimes a bit too aggressive on high and medium. Also is TLC R617 considered higher tier than sony x900 series?Afaik they are not available in UK
Right now its very broken, as is the performance on Nvidia. I wouldnt hold out hope, its a bit of a mess. I know its in beta with HDR but progress is veeeery slow, and they havent tweaked HDR at all since the original beta release.
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Yeah it's had HDR for a while on Xbox and then they added it into PS4 a little later.
Thanks for this. Would you say overall it's worth keeping on or is it best to just turn it off and forget about it?
Our TVs are around the same! RTINGS mention that they found the local dimming on yours to be too aggressive on high so you should def turn it down if you feel the need to!
I tried it out on a Sony KD-75ZD9 and found the HDR Implementation really good. Not Horizon: Zero Dawn level but there are several areas with deep blacks which also retain enough detail. I also found many punchy highlights. It´s not the best compared to some highlights but overall great for such a "small" game.
It's interesting how a lot of people think Horizon has a good hdr implementation when EvilBoris has said that they didn't get it quite right.
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I can't remember saying much about it tbh, It's a bit overexposed due to it having no upper cap, but otherwise it's very good. I might of had a gripe with it the brightness adjustment, but that's all I can think of really .
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That's how I set mine.
That should give you 4:2:2 for HDR and 8bit RGB for SDR.
Interestingly I now actually set my Xbox at 120hz 1440p and this only seems to engage on a few non-HDR X enhanced games.
I'm playing a lot of R6 siege, which benefits, but I will still get a full 4K output automatically in other games
I thought about doing 120hz/1440p, but when I enable Freesync/VRR (I've got a Samsung Q9FN), the panel still refreshes at 60hz. In order to get 120hz, I have to disable Freesync/VRR which seems counter productive.
I had the chance to try the new HDR implementation of RDR2 on my Sony X930E. Here are my settings if it can be useful for anybody else with a Sony LCD TV that behave roughly in the same way (X930E, Z9D, X900F, etc.)
I began calibrating by setting the Peak Brightness value first, and only then went to tweaking Paper White. I had to set the Peak Brightness value to 1400, which roughly corresponds to the nits specification of the X930E. More than that and it began losing details in the highlights. It means that for Peak Brightness, you should put in the nits value corresponding to the specifications of your own LCD.
For Paper White, I played with it a bit and settled for something between 140 and 150 (still tweaking to find the exact value). Higher than that and it began to quickly eat details in the highlights. To find the right value, I went to a very bright scene with lots of highlights (like staring outside after entering a dark building, or staring at the sun on a cloudy day), and tweaked the value until it was as high as I could without removing details in the highlights and raising the blacks too much. For me it was in the 140 - 150 range. Again, Peak Brightness should be set properly first before modifying the Paper White value.
I'm very pleased with the picture quality using these settings. It produces very bright highlights, and I don't find the blacks to be raised that much. I think it gives a very beautiful picture. RDR2's HDR does desaturate the colors though, and there's unfortunately nothing that can be done about it. But I think I might choose to live with this for the impressive highlights that it gives.
Edit: oh, and don't bother with the reference images in the HDR configuration menu. For me they were inaccurate and useless. It's better to calibrate in game using a very bright scene with lots of highlights.
I began calibrating by setting the Peak Brightness value first, and only then went to tweaking Paper White. I had to set the Peak Brightness value to 1400, which roughly corresponds to the nits specification of the X930E. More than that and it began losing details in the highlights. It means that for Peak Brightness, you should put in the nits value corresponding to the specifications of your own LCD.
For Paper White, I played with it a bit and settled for something between 140 and 150 (still tweaking to find the exact value). Higher than that and it began to quickly eat details in the highlights. To find the right value, I went to a very bright scene with lots of highlights (like staring outside after entering a dark building, or staring at the sun on a cloudy day), and tweaked the value until it was as high as I could without removing details in the highlights and raising the blacks too much. For me it was in the 140 - 150 range. Again, Peak Brightness should be set properly first before modifying the Paper White value.
I'm very pleased with the picture quality using these settings. It produces very bright highlights, and I don't find the blacks to be raised that much. I think it gives a very beautiful picture. RDR2's HDR does desaturate the colors though, and there's unfortunately nothing that can be done about it. But I think I might choose to live with this for the impressive highlights that it gives.
Edit: oh, and don't bother with the reference images in the HDR configuration menu. For me they were inaccurate and useless. It's better to calibrate in game using a very bright scene with lots of highlights.
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Ok, so I changed from 10-bit/Standard/4:2:2 to 8-bit/Standard/4:2:2, and immediately noticed color banding in the sky while playing Rage 2. I've been playing the game a lot lately and the difference was immediately noticeable. I flipped back and forth between 8-bit and 10-bit a couple times, and I can immediately see the different in the sky. No change between 10-bit and 12-bit that I can see, but 8-bit produces clear banding in what should be a smooth sky gradient.
Not sure why 8-bit / Standard isn't the right setup for a Samsung Q9FN, but 10-bit was clearly better than 8-bit for this panel.
Not sure why 8-bit / Standard isn't the right setup for a Samsung Q9FN, but 10-bit was clearly better than 8-bit for this panel.
Ah, that was just my take away from this post:
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Ah yeah, the magic 35 number. Weirdly the spot I always ended up at in certain games.
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There are all kinds of other implications for why you might get banding. Xbox is setup to output 2.2 gamma, but the Samsung panel uses BT1886 gamma, which is closer to 2.4, this in itself will make banding. Not sure why that might be different between 10bit and 8bit modes.
Edit: my Q9FN tracks gamma 2.2 in game mode, even though it is saying bt1886 .
This is on the 0 setting in the TV.
It's doesn't track different beyond some rounding errors, whether in 8bitRGB or 10bit422
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I know this is a bit off topic but does anyone know the best audio settings for Xbox if you have a Dolby Atmos setup? I've found I have to set it to Atmos output to play Netflix Atmos stuff but what is the Xbox doing when I play DTS or DD stuff because my amp still says it's receiving an Atmos signal.
I don't know why the Xbox can't just output whatever signal a game/video uses like other devices.
I don't know why the Xbox can't just output whatever signal a game/video uses like other devices.
The big spring update is going to include Atmos upmixing, so soon you'll be able to just leave it set to Atmos and get a good experience regardless of what the original source is. In the meantime, I usually leave it set to PCM, so my receiver can just upmix using DTS Neural X or Dolby Surround.
Sounds like there is some dithering enabled at 10 bit and above that is just not available for 8 bit.
At this point I'm not sure that if Samsung TV's can even display RGB signal properly, they internally run in YCbCr (422?), so the banding you see might be from TV converting RGB to YCbCr, and not bit depth.
Apparently LG TV's suffer from similar issue, the infamous banding in PC mode can be fixed by sending YCbCr 444 instead of RGB.
Source
If the banding in PC mode is due to that then why is YUV422 horribly banded on LG?At this point I'm not sure that if Samsung TV's can even display RGB signal properly, they internally run in YCbCr (422?), so the banding you see might be from TV converting RGB to YCbCr, and not bit depth.
Apparently LG TV's suffer from similar issue, the infamous banding in PC mode can be fixed by sending YCbCr 444 instead of RGB.
Source
My settings were the same recommended at https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/samsung/nu8000/settings but i changed brightness to -4 (it was on 0), and it reduced the washed out, still some of it on very bright scenes on Uncharted 4 but i guess its the price the TV not reaching 1000 nits), but overall i now can see a difference for good on Uncharted 4 with HDR. Color format on my Pro is set to YUV420 .I played Last of Us, which i completed originally on PS3 in 2014, and played Left Behind for the last time in 2016 on full HD TV and PS4 FAT....And now i could compare and with this game HDR is a MUST.... looks like a remaster of the remaster: I tried without HDR to compare, and colors and specially contrast between light and dark zones looks flatter, I feel this game makes a better use of HDR than Uncharted 4.
On uncharted 4 be sure to play with the in hand brightness slider. Ignore the text. I find it best to have it lower than suggested on my a1.
The slider is set up for sdr so the guidelines don't match up too well.
HDR on tlou is good though.
The only thing I can think of is that perhaps PC mode can't display anything other than YCbCr 444 correctly. I don't own LG display, and the example I posted isn't mine, I put it there because I figured out it could be useful to someone here. Since there's no reason why YCbCr would look better than RGB (All modern panels I can think of are using RGB sub-pixel matrix after all, so it's reasonable to think that those TV's would be operating internally in RGB), so there's definitely something funky going on with signal processing on LG and Samsung displays.
Just wanted to say thank you. I have felt like a crazy person for a while, not being happy with the picture. I have been using game mode with very minor settings tweaks for a few days and I love the picture.
Picked up Metro Exodus off GamePass and was surprised to see a color space option to select either SRGB, Limited SRGB, or Rec.709. I watched EvilBoris's video from a few months back, but it looks like it was uploaded before the patch that allows you to choose the color space.
What have you all found to be the best setup for Metro Exodus? I'm using an X1X and Samsung Q9FN.
What have you all found to be the best setup for Metro Exodus? I'm using an X1X and Samsung Q9FN.
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The colour space setup doesn't affect the game in HDR mode , so don't worry about it
On the Q9FN leave the game on default, but set your TV's gamma st2084 to -3 to retrieve some highlight detail with a 4000nit tonemap
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Thanks for the reply. Question about your suggestion - is that for all games, or just Metro? I've been using settings I found on the AV forums that have me doing -3 to Brightness and +3 to Gamma st2084 to offset. Should I be doing -3 Gamma and 0 for Brightness?
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The Gamma option adjusts the EOTF curve. Very broadly 0 is the default hard rolloff, -1 is 2000 slow rollof -2 is 3000 and -4 is 4000
Picking a matching setting will preserve highlight detail, but you may notice the image becomes slightly darker.
Metro is uses the full 4000nits which can't be adjusted.
Every single display is different , so there is only so much you can glean to get it "perfect" but without anything to validate what you are doing it's hard to make a reccomendations.
However based upon what I've seen and what I've read from others about that display
Drop Contrast down a little, maybe to 47
Leave brightness on 0
st2084 on 0
Unless you are playing a game where you notice white clipping and has no peak brightness (Metro is one where it was really noticable to me)
I would only go the the + options if you are watching a piece of HDR content and it is too dark to see.