HDR game analysis & setup guides (PC + Consoles) - From a gamers perspective. youtube.com/@HDRgameAnalysis
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Find my HDR analysis and setup guides on my website hdrgameanalysis.com
In the websites article section you can read about setting up peak brightness, paper white, HDR settings in Windows / Consoles, installation of RenoDX HDR mods etc.
On this X account I answer questions about HDR.
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I have made my first RenoDX HDR mod. It's for Spider Man 2.
On PC the game has a gamma lift (lifted shadows and mid tones) compared to the PS5 version. Musa has made a RenoDX HDR mod that fixes this.
Spider Man 2 also has a massive black level raise at night time on both PC and PS5. And on PC the game can't output more than 1500 nits.
What my RenoDX HDR mod does:
1) It uses Musa's RenoDX mod with the gamma fix. I have tuned it from 2.35 to 2.40 gamma to better match shadows and mid tones to the PS5 Pro version. You can change it on a slider in the mod if you want too.
2) Fixes the massive black level raise at night time. The games night colour grade has a Lift setting that raises the blacks. The mod replaces the game’s colour-table shader with a copy that reduces that Lift. The mod has a slider called Night Black Fix that sets the black levels, from 0 to 100: at 100 the blacks go fully black, and the default 50 leaves about 0.01 nits so shadow detail stays visible. I set default to 50.
3) Fixes the peak brightness cap at 1500 nits. You can now get up to 4000 nits peak brightness on a slider. It uses the tone mapper "exponential roll off" that is also used in the Red Dead Redemption 2 RenoDX HDR mod.
4) Adds the standard sliders from the RenoDX HDR mod frame work for peak brightness, paper white (game brightness) etc.
I hope I have credited everyone correctly in the mods front page. I will test it a bit more over the next days and then I will see if I can get it published some where.
This video shows my mod in action. Look at the massive black level raise it fixes at night time. Night time look so much better now. And see how the mod changes peak brightess above 1500 nits and changes paper white / game brightness.
(It's in SDR until Youtube finishes rendering it in HDR).
youtu.be/_u_ipgQprSE?si=jLxl…
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@MusaRenoDX did I credit you properly for all your work ?
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If you don't care about HDR in your game, than you implement HDR like it's done in Star Wars Galactic Racer ☹️
- Fixed 1000 nits peak brightness. So we can't decrease or increase peak brightness.
- Outputs a fixed 3000 nits peak brightness in cut scenes. Very few displays can show that properly.
- HDR setup screen does not output what the game outputs, so it's useless.
- Brightness on UI elements can't be adjusted independently.
Link to my HDR analysis and setup guide in the next post.
Pictures in my analysis are now in HDR.
The Youtube video will show you Liliums HDR analysis in real time from PS5 Pro (it will be in HDR when Youtube's HDR render is finished).
youtu.be/6sqSvQ9SGFM?si=f7Y6…
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I have now finished optimizing my test PC that captures HDR.
Test PC:
PS5 Pro or PC → GC573 capture card (AVerMedia Streaming Center) → PotPlayer (live view with Lilium) → OBS Studio (recording) → DaVinci Resolve (editing).
It now delivers:
1) An uncompressed 10-bit HDR capture (4:2:0 chroma), recorded at high bitrate, nearly lossless
2) A fully playable, smooth 60 fps live view with no perceivable input lag, in a video player that works with Lilium's HDR analysis layered on top
It was not easy to build. I've written an 18-page guide for myself in case I ever need to rebuild it from scratch.
There might be a professional capture card that can do it all in 4:2:2 chroma, but at a far higher price, if it's even possible to buy, and it's not proven to work. I know of no capture card that can do it in 4:4:4.
The Gran Turismo 7 video includes all my latest improvements. I've also started recording with a 1300-nit peak instead of 1000 nits.
YouTube delivers video in 4:2:0 anyway and compresses quite hard, so chasing 4:2:2 isn't worth it.
I think it looks pretty good. Probably as good as it can get on YouTube, at least to my knowledge.
youtu.be/w5ydvQNfJIo?si=HMQU…
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I have just build in the ability to show pictures in HDR on my website.
55 pictures in my latest 8 analysis have been updated to HDR. Future analysis will have HDR pictures.
I think it looks pretty good in my latest HDR analysis and setup guide for Gears Of War E-day.
hdrgameanalysis.com/gears-of…
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For those wondering why I always have the back wall on the sides of my pictures, instead of just clipping if off.
It's because these pictures are taken by my Iphone 16 that uses auto exposure. If the back wall is the same tone, then the reader will know the cameras auto exposure is the same, which means the pictures can compared, or not.
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I have on my website posted an HDR analysis and setup guide for Gears Of War E-Day on PC and SS/SX.
The graphics look amazing (especially on PC) and HDR also looks good when setup correctly.
But HDR is not so intutitive to setup, it looks very dim at default settings (Mid tones and secondary highlights) and it outputs less peak brightness than the HDR Max Nits slider indicates, especially on higher nits displays.
I don't like when gamers basically needs HDR waveform analysis tools to setup HDR properly in a game.
Link to the analysis in next post.
In this Youtube video you can see the HDR waveform analysis in action during the very first part of the campaign.
youtu.be/i3yKGyFdQ4M?si=dcty…
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I made a rant about the un-intuitive HDR sliders in Gears E-Days beta.
The only change they made in the final game is to add a new slider that adjusts UI brightness😪
I’m currently playing the game and working on an HDR analysis and setup guide.
Quick look at HDR in Gears of War E-Day beta.
$400 million in development budget and this is the HDR they can give us ???
Only the bare minimum and broken standard Unreal Engine 5 HDR with 3 basic sliders, they didn’t even cared to setup into something understandable for the gamer.
See picture 2. What does the default -5.0 and 7 mean ? Why is default settings not 0 ?
Why are there only two lower settings on the Min Nits slider.
Why does the HDR midpoint slider have 97 clicks above its default of 7. Makes no sense what so ever. At 12 the midpoint slider pushes upper shadows a lot, so no need for all these clicks. It only confuses.
UE5’s standard HDR means oversaturated colors in HDR compared to SDR. In SDR the game has this gritty sandy look. HDR ruins this look.
Look how much more saturated the menu look in picture 3 and 4.
You might like this over-saturated look, but its not how its supposed to look.
The game will not output the peak brightness you set on the Max Nits Slider, unless you push the midt point slider way to high.
At 2000 nits on the slider the game only outputs 1730 nits at default mid point.
At 1000 nits the game outputs 950 nits, so not as bad.
I don’t like that the mid point slider has an effect on the games max output.
It’s a beta, so things can change. Maybe the will give us better sliders / adjustments, but it will still be the standard UE5 HDR.
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Remedy just updated HDR in Control Resonants in a patch.
This is what is fixed according to the patch notes;
-Fixed over-saturated HDR highlights in AgX (tonemapper)
Not only is the over-saturation fixed/improved. Also the color changing hue is fixed. Now yellow is not orange for instance.
Picture 1 is PC before the patch. We see an orange color that is not present in picture 2 (after the patch) and picture 3, that is SDR. Picture 4 is from PS5 Pro and that also got the same fix.
We also see lower saturation in the neon colors on the right. So no longer this over-saturation in HDR.
My written HDR analysis on my website has been updated.
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The RenoDX HDR mod is a massive improvement in Witcher 3 Remaster on PC.
I have posted several videos on my Youtube channel showing the game with and without the mod (captured in 10 bit HDR and 1000 nits peak brightness).
Go and support the modder John for his great work.
The mod is only in beta, and I see it's been improved further since my videos.
I will probably make a new video when the mod is fully finished and then delete the first videos.
youtu.be/UeWHl4vXidg?si=OqPo…
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It seams to be bloom that is the reason for the extra gamma raise that makes the image in HDR look much worse on PS5 versus PC.
Picture 1 is with bloom off on PC and picture 2 is with bloom enabled on PC.
We see how shadows are increased, but also mid tones. Thats the same as a gamma increase that washes out the image.
I at least hope this issue is an easy fix on PS5, to add this option on PS5.
I’m not posting an HDR analysis and setup guide for Witcher 3 Remaster.
I recommend to wait playing the game. Console gamers to wait for HDR to get improved (hopefully) via future patches and PC gamers can wait for the RenoDX modders to hopefully improve/fix this.
HDR looks much worse on console (PS5 Pro) than on PC. At least in the first area of the game where I was able to test it on both PS5 Pro and PC.
Console suffers from issues with tone mapping of big brighter lightsources. PC does not suffer from this so severely.
PC has significant to massive black level raise in some regions. I have not been able to test all these regions on PS5 Pro.
However in the first region PS5 has even worse shadow and gamma raise than PC. It was not always the case but I could trigger it at all times of day on PS5 Pro with certain sky patterns.
If you have to play the game now, then set the Paper White slider to 200 or less and set Max Monitor Brightness to what your display can maximum output.
Picture 1: Shows a massive black level raise in Skellige on PC at all times a day, including night time (I have not tested if PS5 has the same there).
Picture 2+3: Shows the massive difference in shadows / gamma in the first area between PS5 and PC. Its the same time of day and with the same sky pattern.
Picture 4 to 7: See next post. They show how much more correct PC tone maps the big brightest lightsources compared to PS5 Pro.
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