HDR is a Disaster on PC

HDR is a Disaster on PC
HDR is a great way to improve the visuals of your game by increasing the dynamic range allowing for brighter highlights and more shadow detail. In fact HDR may be the biggest visual improvement you can make to your display, and at little to no performance cost its much more practical than something like raytracing. With all that said, it may not be for everyone as at least on PC HDR is somewhat of a mess.

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[GraphicallyChallenged]

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HDR is a Disaster on PC
HDR is a great way to improve the visuals of your game by increasing the dynamic range allowing for brighter highlights and more shadow detail. In fact HDR may be the biggest visual improvement you can make to your display, and at little to no performance cost its much more practical than something like raytracing. With all that said, it may not be for everyone as at least on PC HDR is somewhat of a mess.

[PoRRasturvaT]

Any game that doesn't let you calibrate white point, black point, overall brightness and interface elements brightness has worthless implementation. Period.

[WordWizzard]

Thank you for the Win+Alt+B shortcut. I've been manually navigating to advanced display settings every time. 😭

[badpuppy]

Microsoft needs to stop worrying about the damn AI and just get their OS in order.

[DeadPixel]

HDR does more than "makes your brights become brighter and your darks become darker". It expands the color gamut, increasing the shades of color that can be displayed. In turn, this creates a much more 'realistic' presentation. For example, if you take two pictures of a yellow school bus - one picture is HDR and the other is non-HDR. The HDR picture will display a shade of yellow that is much more accurate to real-life. Meanwhile, the non-HDR picture of the school bus will still be yellow, but when compared to the real-life school bus you'll notice the shade of yellow is slightly 'off', because it cannot display the proper shade of yellow without HDR.

[haakoflo]

I just got a G8 Neo, and at first I had the issues in this video, where I needed to turn off HDR for SDR content. After finding a good set of settings, I just leave it on. Now SDR looks like SDR should, HDR looks like HDR should and even Auto HDR is a good improvement over SDR.

[victorx]

04:48 As a person with an HDR monitor (ASUS PA-32UCX), I never turn the HDR off, except when I need to do an SDR color-accurate grading, and everything looks good. So there's no point in pulling the HDR knop front and back. Turn it on and set it up properly once and forever. Also, there are no more problems with the availability of HDR video content. Even the original Star Wars are now available in HDR. From my experience, very few contemporary releases are not available in HDR nowadays.

[friggindoc]

Oblivion, Crysis and Half life 2 did HDR with directx 9 back in 2007. Tone mapping and eye adaptation was faking HDR really well long before before HDR displays were a thing.

[corzabourne]

Hdr gets broken when games are using gamma 2.2 in a srgb colour space. You can use a windows colour profile to fix this

[HorseWithSnakeLegs]

Using the windows HDR calibration app and resetting it really really quickly and leaving "Auto HDR" on in windows settings has led me to have an awesome experience. If a game wont calibrate it correctly in settings, turn it off and let auto HDR do the work.

[BeginsWithTheEnd]

I just wish Microsoft would fix how Windows looks while in HDR, the black levels are incorrectly raised and midtones are washed out even after using their calibration tool. It would be nice to set it to forget it because some videos on YouTube are available in HDR but you have no way of knowing without already having HDR enabled and it would be nice to not have to disable HDR every time I'm done playing a specific HDR game.

[parkebostrom]

When I launch a Windows game, my 2020 LG CX OLED TV automatically enters HDR mode. I've never needed to press Win+Alt+B. (Prior to this video, I'd never even heard about Win+Alt+B.) When I exit the game, the TV switches out of HDR mode automatically. The TV has done this since 2020.

[rasta-xo]

I have a Dolby Vision / HDR10+ monitor and when i turn on HDR in windows everything just looks worse lol. So over it.

[felixlersha]

Totally agree that HDR on Windows is a complete catastrophe. I actually have a PC with a RTX 3080 connected to a premium Samsung 65" inch QLED TV and HDR just doesn't work as it should, so I don't even bother turning it on in Windows anymore.

It's no failing of my TV and I've tweaked every setting imaginable from the gamma to the color tones to game mode settings and nothing really makes HDR pop in Windows 11 like it should. It also leaves all SDR content (which is the bulk of what I watch anyway) all dull and washed out, even maxing out that stupid slider in display settings.

Given HDR capable displays have been on the market for 10 years now it's frankly an embarrassment how flawed HDR in Windows in 2024 is right now.

[TreenighetMaranata]

Your reaction and opinion is understandable, and what it really boils down to here is being patient about "HDR", ie if you want to use it!

[Razarex]

What's wrong with just leaving HDR on at all times? Then you never have to worry about turning it on or off

[scottie_dawg]

Allen Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing and HDR on my LG 45”OLED untrawide with perfect blacks looks so insane, it’s the literally biggest graphics upgrade in the last 20 years. I toggle HDR on by switching my monitor to gsync and windows remembers. Make sure you run the windows 11 HDR calibration, windows 10 HDR is broken.

[naaaaa-tx]

my display dims each time a close a game on HDR

[SaffronTheBat]

if using a tv for windows hdr, if you find the desktop looks washed out, I've found the tv "color vibrance" settings, tuning that up can actually help make things look normal, and the sdr brightness slider.

[CARTUNE.]

Me, Apex PC Pred, Ryzen 9, 3080, with my entire graphical settings purposefully set to “claymation” because I’m all about that FPS baby. 😅😅😅