Poll: Which is the better visual upgrade, HDR 10 or Ray Tracing?

[chrcoluk]

One of the problems with SDR, is games are typically using the 6 bit colour depth, thats why software HDR via reshade has a big effect as well. It would be interesting to see a comparison of HDR10 vs HDR via reshade.

This could probably be done with final fantasy 15, as that game supports HDR, and it also has a reshade profile.

There is absolutely no question though that screenshot posted showing basic SDR vs HDR is a great difference. The issue with HDR of course is that one needs to break the bank to get a display that fully supports it. However given HDR 400 displays will accept the wider gamut colours been used still, and do at least have some higher illuminance I expect there is still a benefit (because I know from experience software HDR is very noticeable and thats on sRGB screens), the problem been though if you have seen and experienced HDR on a £1000+ OLED, then HDR 400 of course will be comparatively poor. HDR 600 should probably be the min standard though, if anything but to stop monitor manufacturers from cheaping out so much.

I expect most people who are amazed by HDR 10 have never seen reshade before.

As an example it seems a lot of people think that to get vibrant colours you need a DCI-P3 display. To get better visual contrast you need a VA or OLED screen. When many games out now dont fully utilise the extremes of the ranges on existing screens, so the difference is not all down to hardware.

 

[Poneros]

The issue with HDR of course is that one needs to break the bank to get a display that fully supports it.

This is not really true. If you stick to monitors then sure, because that market is too small, but if you look at something like TVs then just this holiday season you could get an XH90 55" that's 4K 120Hz has VRR and good HDR capability enough to wow anyone but the pickiest of users. That sold for £650.

You can definitely do nice with reshade but it's absolutely not on the level of real HDR. Actually the cool thing is that with SpecialK you can add HDR to older dx11 titles. It's not as good as native but still a nice addition, and native is not always a hit either (eg RDR2).

 

[Grim5]

One of the problems with SDR, is games are typically using the 6 bit colour depth, thats why software HDR via reshade has a big effect as well. It would be interesting to see a comparison of HDR10 vs HDR via reshade.

This could probably be done with final fantasy 15, as that game supports HDR, and it also has a reshade profile.

There is absolutely no question though that screenshot posted showing basic SDR vs HDR is a great difference. The issue with HDR of course is that one needs to break the bank to get a display that fully supports it. However given HDR 400 displays will accept the wider gamut colours been used still, and do at least have some higher illuminance I expect there is still a benefit (because I know from experience software HDR is very noticeable and thats on sRGB screens), the problem been though if you have seen and experienced HDR on a £1000+ OLED, then HDR 400 of course will be comparatively poor. HDR 600 should probably be the min standard though, if anything but to stop monitor manufacturers from cheaping out so much.

I expect most people who are amazed by HDR 10 have never seen reshade before.

As an example it seems a lot of people think that to get vibrant colours you need a DCI-P3 display. To get better visual contrast you need a VA or OLED screen. When many games out now dont fully utilise the extremes of the ranges on existing screens, so the difference is not all down to hardware.

The reshade filters/injected HDR tone mapping doesn't look good though, it just over saturated the whole image and often crushes black level at the same time. I can achieve the same thing by modifying settings on my TV/Monitor without using a filter

 

[chrcoluk]

The reshade filters/injected HDR tone mapping doesn't look good though, it just over saturated the whole image and often crushes black level at the same time. I can achieve the same thing by modifying settings on my TV/Monitor without using a filter

For me reshade actually darkens blacks, it kind of remaps colours to use more extreme ranges e.g. 8bit vs 6bit can use darker shades. There is HDR filters and also contrast filters, the latter will darken blacks.

On the HDR I agree it does add saturation, some games I deliberately didnt use as I didnt like the outcome, but on other games I used as I felt the improvement was worth it. But then you have the same issue on all these new monitors when not using sRGB modes, where they will saturate sRGB content. I dont consider it the same as just upping saturation settings on a monitor or driver though, it works much better then that.

 

[Haggisman]

What games actually look better in HDR?

I've only experience one decent implementation of HDR in games so far - Sea of Thieves, the difference is night and day.

I've suffered the same problems as others with The Division 2 and RDR2, in that everything goes dull and grey with HDR turned on, like the colour saturation has been set to it's minimum value or something.

 

[g67575]

They do very different things, its a weird comparison

obviously ray tracing has a more noticeable impact on gaming visuals than hdr 10, if properly implemented.

hdr and hdr 10 are often marketing tools, they exist mostly to sell TVs.

but, rt kills performance on almost every GPU, so many have convinced themselves its not worth it / is a gimmick.

some of the screenshots from wd legion look far better with ray tracing enabled. partial implementations often don't seem to look much better than ordinary lighting effects.

will you notice if playing on a hdr10 monitor in games? not if you don't look for in the first place . just play around with monitor settings, maybe you can get sufficient contrast / colour range regardless.

Higher resolution is still king - it trumps both of these, giving both higher detail assets and less / potentially 0 aliasing / jaggies.

 

[chrcoluk]

to be fair hardware hdr does do proper mapping of colours, when I tried auto hdr on my sdr benq everything looked really dim as colours were mapped to narrower points.

I dont like the higher brightness aspect of hdr though as brightness increases glare, and is bad for your eyes. Every screen I buy brightness is significantly turned down from defaults.

on software hdr most software for sdr uses 16-235 range, simply using 0-255 will increase contrast ratio (need at least 8 bit panel), and vibrancy is easily done in software.

What we need is OLED in sub £500 screens and 1440p sub 30inch screens, windows to do proper colour management so DCI-P3 doesnt saturate sRGB, and then we have a good situation. Until then its mainly a console/tv thing and reshade for pc.

 

[ne0]

What games actually look better in HDR?

I've suffered the same problems as others with The Division 2 and RDR2, in that everything goes dull and grey with HDR turned on, like the colour saturation has been set to it's minimum value or something.

That's not the games, that's your display. I've played both of those with HDR and they look amazing.

Some I've played recently are horizon zero dawn, cod mw, cod black ops, gears 5, RE2, doom eternal, borderlands 3, microsoft flight simulator, star wars squadrons

all of the above should be blowing your socks off with their HDR and if they're not then it's your display, not the game.

 

[ne0]

There are so many badly misinformed peeps posting on this thread lol.

 

[Poneros]

What games actually look better in HDR?

I've only experience one decent implementation of HDR in games so far - Sea of Thieves, the difference is night and day.

I've suffered the same problems as others with The Division 2 and RDR2, in that everything goes dull and grey with HDR turned on, like the colour saturation has been set to it's minimum value or something.

As said before, if HDR in The Division 2 is dull & grey then that means you don't have a proper HDR display or the calibration is very badly done both on it & in the game. That game has stunning HDR.

 

[Haggisman]

As said before, if HDR in The Division 2 is dull & grey then that means you don't have a proper HDR display or the calibration is very badly done both on it & in the game. That game has stunning HDR.

That doesn't explain why its the same on multiple displays, and why other HDR content looks great on those same displays?

Or why there are many reports of people having the same experience.

 

[Poneros]

That doesn't explain why its the same on multiple displays, and why other HDR content looks great on those same displays?

Or why there are many reports of people having the same experience.

Depends. What are those displays & how do you know what you think looks great is correct HDR? A lot of people don't realise the brightness maxing & saturation of enabling HDR is very pleasing but that's not what HDR is. So in some content people will like the look of it even if it's not actually HDR (but still think - hey, HDR looks great here) but then in other content that mismatch will no longer be accidentally positive.

As for why people have that experience, again, it's just people not knowing what HDR is or buying some display that has an HDR sticker but none of the capability. Not to mention there's still calibration required both of the display & in-game settings in order to achieve the HDR effect.

 

[Haggisman]

Depends. What are those displays & how do you know what you think looks great is correct HDR?

Well, if "correct" HDR looks ****, then why would anyone want it?

The displays are a BENQ ex3501r, which granted is not the best HDR, but surely still shouldn't look significantly worse with HDR on (but only in some games), and a Hisense U7QFTUK.

Some quick photos of Division 2 and Sea of Thieves for comparison (obviously my phone camera doesn't do it justice, but you can still see the difference).

I could understand if some parts of the game world looked washed out, but it's the UI and everything, e.g. the bright orange accents become a greyish orange, the white text becomes a greyish white, a lot of the detail is lost (e.g. look at the orange patches on the ground to the bottom right of the character photos - they are barely visible in the HDR shots)

Spoiler

Happy to be told what I can do to improve it, but I've tried tweaking all the brightness settings, and it doesn't make a noticeable difference.

Maybe it's a driver or hardware limitation?

 

[Grim5]

^^ you can't see hdr in someone else's screenshots that's unfortunately not how it works

 

[Poneros]

Well, if "correct" HDR looks ****, then why would anyone want it?

Correct HDR looks great, my point is that it isn't correct if the display can't, well, display it.

The displays are a BENQ ex3501r, which granted is not the best HDR, but surely still shouldn't look significantly worse with HDR on (but only in some games), and a Hisense U7QFTUK.

The issue is the BenQ isn't really an HDR display (for the Hisense it would seem it is, but usually these TVs can't do HDR in game mode and I have no data on it, but should be good for video at least; you could test out an HDR demo clip in Movie vs Game mode and see if the algorithm stays the same - see picture below for what I mean), because it fails to have the #1 requirement for HDR: proper light control. That means at a minimum FALD (full array local dimming) backed by a proper algorithm. There were some excellent edge-lit HDR TVs made but they were the exception and very rare (and expensive). That is to not also mention that it also fails to have WCG, it's an sRGB monitor. Nor that it's only 300 nits, which is not enough for any kind of HDR even in a pitch black room.

Spoiler

Some quick photos of Division 2 and Sea of Thieves for comparison (obviously my phone camera doesn't do it justice, but you can still see the difference).

I could understand if some parts of the game world looked washed out, but it's the UI and everything, e.g. the bright orange accents become a greyish orange, the white text becomes a greyish white, a lot of the detail is lost (e.g. look at the orange patches on the ground to the bottom right of the character photos - they are barely visible in the HDR shots)

The reason it gets that washed out look is because the display cannot control the light & output it only where necessary, so instead the whole screen gets brighter and that turns the image into having a haziness to it because it just goes all over the place. In Sea of Thieves this isn't so apparent because the severe black crush counteracts it.

Happy to be told what I can do to improve it, but I've tried tweaking all the brightness settings, and it doesn't make a noticeable difference.

Maybe it's a driver or hardware limitation?

There's nothing you can really do because the BenQ is, sadly, not capable of HDR. Maybe the Hisense could be, but you'd need to check. At least in The Division 2 one thing you can do is lower UI brightness to a minimum in HDR settings.

 

[XeNoNF50]

I have an LG OLED with an OLED panel, Sony 49 inch XF9005 with 60 zones of full array local dimming and ASUS ROG PG27UQ with 384 zones in this house - can confirm HDR is excellent on all of them. There are various implementations on a game by game basis (and also film by film on 4k blu-ray) but it is almost always excellent. Get a proper HDR display and you will see proper HDR. Simples.

 

[Haggisman]

^^ you can't see hdr in someone else's screenshots that's unfortunately not how it works

I know, that's why I took photos

Obviously they don't actually show in HDR, but they do show the difference in how it appears on screen

Correct HDR looks great, my point is that it isn't correct if the display can't, well, display it.

The issue is the BenQ isn't really an HDR display (for the Hisense it would seem it is, but usually these TVs can't do HDR in game mode and I have no data on it, but should be good for video at least; you could test out an HDR demo clip in Movie vs Game mode and see if the algorithm stays the same - see picture below for what I mean), because it fails to have the #1 requirement for HDR: proper light control. That means at a minimum FALD (full array local dimming) backed by a proper algorithm. There were some excellent edge-lit HDR TVs made but they were the exception and very rare (and expensive). That is to not also mention that it also fails to have WCG, it's an sRGB monitor. Nor that it's only 300 nits, which is not enough for any kind of HDR even in a pitch black room.

The reason it gets that washed out look is because the display cannot control the light & output it only where necessary, so instead the whole screen gets brighter and that turns the image into having a haziness to it because it just goes all over the place. In Sea of Thieves this isn't so apparent because the severe black crush counteracts it.

There's nothing you can really do because the BenQ is, sadly, not capable of HDR. Maybe the Hisense could be, but you'd need to check. At least in The Division 2 one thing you can do is lower UI brightness to a minimum in HDR settings.

Thanks - that does make sense for my monitor at least, but doesn't explain why the TV is having the same issue :/

I've tested it in various modes - it does correctly switch to HDR picture mode when I turn it on in game (regardless of whether I have game mode on or not), but it still looks just as washed out as on the monitor.

This is streaming via the Steam Link app on Nvidia Shield (which all supports HDR). One thing I haven't tried is plugging the PC directly into the TV, but I wouldn't have thought that would make a difference if it's streaming the HDR picture properly?

 

[SilverCider]

Ray-tracing is an exciting technology and I look forward to it being used correctly in modern game engines (despite rasterisation looking pretty good for the last couple of years), however, having recently bought an OLED I am firmly in the camp of HDR. It is simply stunning! In dire need of a GPU upgrade so that I can haul my pc down to the living room to take advantage of it, though I don't see that happening any time soon!

 

[deuse]

Lots of fake HDR out there.
This is why the colors look washed out.

 

[Poneros]

Thanks - that does make sense for my monitor at least, but doesn't explain why the TV is having the same issue :/

I've tested it in various modes - it does correctly switch to HDR picture mode when I turn it on in game (regardless of whether I have game mode on or not), but it still looks just as washed out as on the monitor.

This is streaming via the Steam Link app on Nvidia Shield (which all supports HDR). One thing I haven't tried is plugging the PC directly into the TV, but I wouldn't have thought that would make a difference if it's streaming the HDR picture properly?

For streaming I don't know what changes, but I can't imagine it's totally painless and hassle free. For the TV the big Q is whether the local dimming algorithm can keep up in game mode or if it gimps itself so that input lag isn't sky high. You can see in the previous image what I mean, you have 2 premium 8K TVs both in game mode but only one can keep the picture quality the same in both game mode & movie mode. Besides Sony TVs & a single Samsung model (Q90T), I haven't seen TVs be able to keep up the same PQ in both modes, talking about non-OLED.

To test it's simple: watch this video on the TV and switch between the TV's game mode & movie/cinema mode, and see if you can spot any differences particularly in relation to blooming.

https://youtu.be/VOBytpDiDuw