Topic: HDR in games

Hello! I got a good 4k HDR10 samsung TV (1 year ago), and I recently installed the HDR update for Destiny 2. The difference is amazing, much much more noticeable than any other game. This got me wondering wether the Destiny 2 implementation of HDR was sublime, or for some reason my TV was not showing real HDR on other games.
So which games you think benefit most from HDR? My eyes only spotted the Destiny difference.

Is the HDR patch live on Destiny 2? Might have to revisit it in that case.

Horizon was amazing in HDR, as were Uncharted, GT Sport and Assassins Creed Origins.

@Mergatro1d yes it went live on tuesday, check the brightness settings. When you turn HDR on/off in destiny you will find a major difference. With other titles (like the UC4, Horizon and Origins, I failed to see such difference)

I agree with @Mergatro1d - HZD, Uncharted (4 and Lost Legacy) and ACO are great - don't know about GTS as I don't own it but its regarded as one of the best implementations of HDR and 'future proof' too as the standards of HDR in displays improve - most TV's have 'poor' HDR (compared to the mastering standards and ultimate goal) and few only just pass the 'MINIMUM' standards. This should mean that as manufacturers improve their HDR performance, GTS should also look better.

Other games worth looking out for are Infamous (especially first light as the Neon at night looks great), Last of Us, Ratchet and Clank (looks amazing) and even ME:A (particularly the planets - the 'forest' one looks fantastic) has good implementation. ME:A was slated, its story wasn't the best and facial animations can be 'laughable' but the worlds looked great and I spent 100hrs beating the game and Side Quests. Might be worth picking up for £10-15 if you like RPG's.

@BAMozzy how noticeable is the difference in uncharted, origins and horizon? I find it mind boggling that I see a huge difference in destiny, and practically nothing with other titles.
Ps: my samsung is 2016 KS series, HDR10, supposedly one of the "good" HDR displays

@Jorjk I noticed quite a significant difference in those games. I admit though that I am playing Origins on my Project Scorpio and not the Pro. In Horizon for example, the colours are more vibrant - reds look more 'red', sunsets look more rich. Also things like fire glow more and when you hack a Tallneck, the electric glow is more intense. If you have the 'ultimate' armour too, the light on these is more intense as well. Overall the picture is brighter and richer in colour. I do find 'dark' scenes with 'neon' type lights have more impact (look at Lost Legacy on the rooftop with the Pink Neon lights as an example - another good example is Infamous: First Light as Fetch as Neon powers and its set mostly at night). The same is true for Uncharted 4 - brighter and richer colours (not 'every' colour is 'richer' btw but I notice it more in the greens and reds). The overall scene is 'brighter' but as a lot happens during 'daytimes' its maybe a bit more subtle than a 'dark' scene with Neon glowing.

If I go from HDR to SDR, I do find that Reds tend to look more 'brownish' for a while until I acclimatise. In Horizon, there are some reddish plants that look more brown when in SDR. I was watching a video and thought a game was trying to copy Horizon but looked flat and almost ugly by comparison - then I realised it was H:ZD - just in SDR...

Just a reminder for best effect to manually crank brightness up to 20 on the ks7000 when playing HDR content.

I didn't notice any issues with Star Wars: BF2 - although I am playing on the Xbox (if that makes any difference). If anything, the increased resolution may well be the reason I haven't noticed any issues but it could equally be that I just wasn't paying enough attention to these cut-scenes.

@RogerRoger Even if you could take a screen shot of the HDR and upload it, the chances are none of us would be able to see 'exactly' what you mean. Our displays are not HDR enabled and therefore wouldn't get the contrast or the wider colour gamut information anyway. I doubt you could take a 'HDR' image and send that to someone with a HDR screen as most of the HDR data would not be saved.

Set up of both HDR options in the 'Settings' menu of your PS4, in-game settings (if available) and TV settings are very important to get the most out of HDR. Setting some things to 'Auto' for example in the PS4 and on your TV don't always give the 'best' results. Even though the KS is able to cope with Full RGB for example sometimes, the PS4 (in Auto) will send either Full or Limited but the TV will not 'automatically' switch between full or limited. Its generally the PS4 that doesn't send the correct information - ie its sending limited but the TV is registering as a 'Full' signal. Its a known issue.

As @RogerRoger states, HDR can be 'hit or miss' but often, when it misses, its due to not setting something correctly. Some games offer 'sliders' to set up HDR properly to your TV's capability and like I said, sometimes 'Auto' doesn't select the 'best' option. With the KS you also have to manually tweak the settings for the full HDR benefit. I keep Colour Space on Auto as that does seem to switch between the standard and wide colour gamuts but I have to adjust the Backlight brightness manually. Dynamic Contrast and Smart LED are personal preference - both I keep on Low for both SDR and HDR. I am sure I set my PS4 to deliver full RGB and set my TV to full as well rather than have both on Auto. You could pick limited on both too and get just as good image but they MUST both be on the same otherwise you get washed out or crushed blacks images - depending on which is full and which is limited.

The TV is the easiest in general to ensure its offering the best HDR, next is the games themselves - if they have HDR settings, the PS4 settings are a bit more complex and don't necessarily do what you expect - like Auto sending a 'limited' RGB but the TV picking that up as 'Full' - Auto 'Should' register if the TV is capable of receiving a Full RGB and send that but doesn't work properly. Its been over a year since I checked out U4 and didn't spend long as I had beaten the game. I haven't played H:ZD for months either - not after getting the Platinum and I am yet to start the DLC as ACO is grabbing my attention at the moment. If you have a KS TV though, you should have access to HDR content on youtube - DF have some HDR game video's and the HDR channel has some too - inc 1-2 games like H:ZD and Last of Us. The Last of Us is good as it shows side by side the difference HDR makes. Initially, before the side by side, you can easily be forgiven for not noticing a difference - its when you see the Side by Side that the difference becomes much more obvious.

Wide colour gamut for example doesn't mean 'every' colour looks saturated - faces look generally the same. Often its only 10-15% of an image that uses these wider colours. Same with 'bright' highlights. Rarely is everything brighter but you notice things like a brighter and richer looking sky instead of a more even and paler sky. Things like the LED lights on the Robots glow more (this is also where you may notice 'richer' reds too) and fires look richer, brighter too. It really does depend on the scene but if you were to look at a 'map' of where the wider colours and brighter parts are on an image - sometimes these don't occupy more than 20% of the image - the other 80% isn't much different. This obviously varies on a scene by scene basis and HDR isn't just about 'brighter' images either as they can add more detail in dark areas too. It really depends on the scene, the lighting etc. You wouldn't expect peoples faces to look overly bright or saturated just because you are in HDR so these probably won't change much. You may get a bit more 'sparkle' in snow as crystals catch the light or the 'electrical' sparks and arcing looks much brighter and more intense. Not everything is 'cartoony' bright like R&C.

In Destiny 2, its not always obvious either but go into the caves on Nessus (the mission on Nessus in the CoO for example) and the difference is clear. Roaming Mercury for example, the materials you can collect (seeds or whatever they are called) really Glow and the Vex milk looks much brighter but the opening mission where the tower gets destroyed is 'amazing' in HDR because it mostly at night which makes 'brighter' things appear much brighter.

This changed everything, I started looking for those small details, and I see the difference. I always expected a screen wide difference, now it makes more sense.
I tried it in horizon.
Note that in destiny, there s so much color in the UI and in the environment that the difference for me is almost everywhere. Destiny really feels like a different experience with HDR.

Thank you for helping

@RogerRoger I wasn't criticising your comment but merely agreeing that some HDR isn't necessarily always going to be 'significantly' better or as well implemented as others. It varies on a per game basis and even on a scene by scene basis. Coming up to a 'campfire' in H:ZD in the middle of the day isn't going to make the HDR of the fire or glowing elements of the mount stand out as much as at night. No different from real life in that aspect.

The KS series has all 4 ports HDR and HDCP2.2 enabled so picking the right port isn't necessarily going to affect every one - LG's two have all ports full 4k HDR enabled but Sony do only have two ports out 4. Set up for 4k HDR isn't as simple as 'plug and play'. In the past, our TV's only had differing resolutions. Whether it was SD or HD, they still used the same colour gamuts, the same max brightness levels etc so it was often a simple case of 'plug and play'. At most you may have had to look around to find how to enable 'Game mode'. With HDR though, you cannot use the same settings because the colour gamut and brightness levels are different. The colour bit depth is different two - although not sure if SDR games can be 10bit - it may depend on whether its scaled down when output as most TV's were only 8bit (some with dithering to simulate 10bit) or left for the TV to scale down - majority of film/tv is 8bit only anyway.

Then you have TV's which can cope with a full RGB or just limited. As most TV's are (or were) built primarily to the standards of Film/TV content - therefore 8bit and 'limited' RGB - the consoles were always built to deliver on these standards. Game devs would also tone map their games to these standards and why games either target 30 or 60fps (because 60hz is the max refresh rate of TV's. I know some TV's may offer 240hz (for example) but they only display up to 60hz content - they interpolate the missing frames to create the illusion of a faster frame rate. Even with 120fps, it would only display every other frame (60fps) and interpolate the others meaning that the 'real' frame in between is dropped and a interpolated frame inserted making it less accurate - anyway that's a bit off topic.

Because the standards were all the same regardless of whether it was a STB, DVD, Bluray or game, it was a simple 'plug and play' set up. In recent years, we are plugging many more devices in to our TV's. 4k has a higher 'encryption' standard (HDCP2.2) so that needs to be taken into consideration (not all ports have HDCP2.2) and HDR uses a different standards, it needs to be set up correctly. You also have to understand that some people maybe plugging their Pro/X into a 1080p SDR 8bit TV or into a PC monitor so the consoles need settings for these too. Not every 4k TV has HDR either. Like I said we also expect our TV's to cope well with SD (DVD's and 'freesat' channels - most HD set top boxes handle the upscaling of SD content before sending to TV anyway), HD (Blurays, consoles, STB's) and now 4k (SDR and HDR consoles, STB's etc) as well as double up as a PC monitor and either offer all streaming services or external device to deliver streamed content. Point is, these TV's are now being asked to work with a much more varied set of devices and standards than ever before. So its not just consoles that need 'settings' to work with a varied set of TV's and capabilities but also TV's and of course the games need 'settings' too to adjust to get the 'best' image on whatever display and standards you have.

I know you probably knew that, but the information is meant for all to read and maybe explain why things aren't as simple anymore

HDR is too bright and gives me a head ache.

@themcnoisy i get that too when I switch from playing a game in SDR to HDR, but a couple of hours in and I get used it. Thats why when I start a game i tend to finish it before starting a new game. Each game seems to affect my eyes differently and requires some sort of conditioning.

@Jorjk looking at really high brightness screens for prolonged periods of time will effect your eyes. It looks absolutely brilliant though.

@Jorjk
"Staring at a flashlight in a dark room is annoying, right? But standing in a room with the lights on isn't. Your eye adjusts to the average amount of light hitting your retina. A dark room with a bright TV is still, on average, dark. So your iris is wide open. But the parts of your retina getting hit by the light from the TV are overwhelmed. They fatigue, causing the tired, scratchy feeling.

In general, the way to prevent this is reducing the amount of light hitting your retina. You can do this by turning down the overall light output of the TV, or, counterintuitively, increasing the light in the room."

I just read that in a great article. I was playing wipeout and a streak of sunlight appeared and looked amazing. 2 minutes later I had a pounding headache. Same thing happened with Ratchet and clank but this was over the course of half an hour. Im going to switch a lamp on while im gaming at night.

@themcnoisy oh I always play with the lights on, thanks for the insight

@themcnoisy I don't tend to game much beyond 10pm and often start in the early afternoon so the ambient lighting isn't 'dark'. By the time it gets dark, there has been a steady decline in the ambient light and therefore my eyes have had a chance to gradually adjust. I do agree that if you suddenly have a bright light shine in your eyes when you are used to a dark environment, that can be painful.

I have been watching SDR content at night - like someone walking through a forest with a torch but we see the character from behind then suddenly spin round and shine the torch at the camera - that can seem much brighter and painful compared to some HDR because its a sudden injection of 'bright' where as HDR can be 'bright' and my eyes are acclimatised so small fluctuations in the intensity have little affect. In other words, it really depends on the content, what you have become acclimatised to etc.

@BAMozzy yup this. It was mad on wipeout it looked really amazing. But my head went west.

I learn so much for all of you. Thank you!

Ive set my TV up so it shows a better range of deeper colours but only at the minimum setting. So its better than standard hdtvs but only a bit and Im having a better time on the games. LA Noire of all things gave me another headache so I delved into my tv settings and it was set to 3 out of 3, ive knocked it down to 1 out of 3 and it suits me loads more.