RTX HDR for games!

[Nexus18]

Not tried myself but expected this to happen, imagine it won't be long till Nvidia officially support it themselves. They're killing it with their rtx feature set now!

NvTrueHDR - RTX HDR for games

Nvidia's AI-powered HDR converter, now for games too. (alternative for Windows AutoHDR)

www.nexusmods.com

Ps. By the same guy who created dlss tweaks.

EDIT:

Now in the beta nvidia driver app:

Test Drive The New NVIDIA App Beta: The Essential Companion For PC Gamers & Creators

The NVIDIA app is the easiest way to keep your drivers up to date, discover NVIDIA applications, capture your greatest moments, and configure GPU settings.

www.nvidia.com

 

[Nexus18]

Damn, thank you so much for this. I had tried RTX HDR on youtube videos and wasn't happy with how much it shifts colors and adds saturation. It seems like it does the same in games, but it can also look wonderful , and it's on the right path to beating MS AutoHDR.
I wrote a comprehensive (but fast) review after trying it for a bit

• From a quick test, it looks better than AutoHDR
• Good gamma (~2.2, maybe a mix between 2.2 and sRGB) (massive advantage over AutoHDR as there's no raised blacks anymore)
• Shifts colors a bit too much. The brighter the color, the more it's shifted. Hopefully they will add a toggle for that, as I personally don't like it, it often ruins the artistic look
• It has a paper white of about 250-300 nits based on my perception (that doesn't mean that SDR 1 1 1 becomes 250-300 nits, it's remapped around mid gray or so)
• The peak seems to be between 750-1000 nits based on my perception. I don't know if it follows the Windows 11 HDR calibration profile
• The SDR to HDR Windows brightness slider value is ignored, there's no way to change the average picture brightness
• It's purely a straight forward pixel by pixel remapping, with no temporal or positional awareness
• The UI doesn't seem to be detected by AI or anything like that, so pure white UI will go to 1000 nits
• It doesn't seem to try to generate missing/clipped detail on highlights (in case you thought AI could do that)
• Cannot be captured by Game Bar screenshots nor NV screenshots (probably it happens at the end, at driver level)
• Games need to start in SDR for it to ever engage. Enabling native HDR in the game breaks the native HDR, but you can always toggle back to SDR and RTX HDR starts applying again
• For it to engage, you need to enable it with emoose tool before starting the game. Having RTX HDR enabled in the NV control panel is not necessary
• It only works when the game is borderless fullscreen and fullscreen exclusive (at least in DX11 and 12). Any kind of overlay temporarily disables it
• I could not see any banding on the few games I tried, it's possible it adds debanding filters due to upgrading 8 bit buffers to 10 bit
• It works with DX9, DX10, DX11 and DX12 games. Vulkan and OpenGL are untested: supposedly they also work if they are presented with DXGI swapchain

If anybody wants to discuss this further, they are welcome to join our HDR focused discord: https://discord.gg/55ySUgZ7YD

Good reports on this so far:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1ai73d6/nvtruehdr_rtx_hdr_for_nonhdr_games/

Optional file to add it into nvidia profile inspector now too instead of running the exe

With these options being present, it looks like nvidia is working towards this themselves too, not too surprising.

 

[Nexus18]

Tried this out in dying light 2 and it looks great, black levels/shadows/dark areas aren't crushed and aren't raised either and highlights etc. all look about what I would expect from HDR. I think there is about a 5-10 fps hit at times maybe, but well worth it.




Looks like an update already too:

 

[Nexus18]

Tested this out in other games now including comparing to windows auto hdr and so far, this is a much better solution than windows auto hdr.

For games which have broken/crap hdr, I would recommend using this mod instead so basically enable HDR in windows, activate the profile either via the cmd tool or via nvidia profile inspector and make sure HDR in the game is turned off (and windows auto hdr is turned off). This guys coverage is always great for HDR if you're not sure on a games native HDR capability:

https://www.youtube.com/@GamingTech-YouTube/videos

 

[Nexus18]

Let's hope we don't get lazy Devs and we lose any dedicated HDR implementation going forward.

There are already a few ports where HDR is missing on the PC version.

Sadly devs are already lazy as **** when it comes to hdr So it's great to have this as an option now for those games. Windows auto hdr was ok, only game I ever used it for was starfield though (but that got somewhat fixed/improved)

Does it work on old games? Or just new stuff? Sounds good. Get beta testing for me with mrk

Yup, works on basically everything I've tried so far. Haven't found any games where it looks bad/worse than SDR so far.

Looks like it might be quite similar to dlss as there appears to be variious presets:

>I'm also wondering if NV made different "AI" presets like they have for DLSS, I suppose each game would work better with slightly different values.

Did just find out there's one value that can affect FPS a lot, eg:

- HDR disabled: ~450FPS
- HDR enabled: ~380FPS (oof)
- HDR + value set to 0: ~430FPS (much better)
- HDR + value set to 1: ~400FPS
- HDR + value set to 2: ~380FPS

Guess 2 is probably the default it uses, fortunately looks like these might get setup from the NV profile flags, looks like adding flag 4 would set this to 0 while flag 8 sets it to 1, maybe can update the tool to add low/medium/high modes - haven't checked how much difference these might make to the image yet though.

There are a bunch of boolean values which I didn't add to the INI before too, looks like VideoHDR does use different values for them so might be interesting, will post an updated ASI shortly.

E: just posted 0.5 up, Unknown_38 should be the value which seems to affect FPS.
(also added a small fix there that should help with tweaks not applying despite log saying they are)

@mrk doesn't ever use HDR as he is too much of a screenshot whore

 

[Nexus18]

H8ers gonna H8

In all seriouesness I am amazed tbf. I think HDR (when done well) for me is the biggest improvement to a games visuals you can do (outside of well implemented ray/path tracing)

 

[Nexus18]

I'll use it sometimes, just not most of the times

And certainly not fake HDR

I'm not a fan of fake hdr either in the sense, these ones that claim to be real hdr then end up crushign shadow detail, blowing out highlights. Special k works well but it's a faff to get working and based on my experience, can't be used with rivatuner/msi ab and other little niggles, not to mention, anti cheat flagging it. Windows auto hdr works well enough if the game is officially supported but had issues with raised black/incorrect gamma. Nvidias method so far has resolved basically most of the issues those other tools/methods have whilst also looking to provide a much more native like hdr representation.

 

[Nexus18]

Another update:

TrueHDRTweaks ASI changelog:

• (0.5.1) Renamed Unknown_38 -> Quality, moved to top of INI - this can help reduce TrueHDR's performance cost (also updated the NvTrueHDR tool to v1.1, which can let you change the quality without needing the tweaks ASI)
• (0.5.1) Fixed issue with x86 DX9 hooking
• (0.5) Added a lot more (currently unidentified) tweakables, and improved compatibility

TrueHDRTweaks identified settings (will be added in next release):

• Unknown_48: appears to control the indicator HUD on top-left, without needing NVProfile changes
• Unknown_30: seems to handle debug visualizations, 1 shows HDR overbright pixels?, 2 just gives me black screen (but TrueHDR does check for it specifically...), 0 is default / no visualization

If anyone finds a method for capturing screenshots/video of the RTX HDR effect please let us know - haven't had any luck with it so far ;_;

 

[Nexus18]

Update:

Version 1.2a

• Allow editing base/global profile
• Add support for older pre-535 drivers (531.18 onwards)
• Add warning for unsupported drivers
• Fix issue with displayed filename always having ".exe" appended to it
• Add icon for app (where most of the size increase comes from...)
• VirusTotal 0/66 false positives, w00t: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/e41a176ff1a25c15e70fd74dc48f1b50793a0bf4f6bf9da69a0f021ce7d90b5d

 

[Nexus18]

Been trying a while tonight but cannot get this to work on my AW3423DWF in any game, even Eldenring. keep looking for the Grey HUD icon but it never appears

Waiting for an how-to vid on YouTube to see if im missing the obvious.

Ive got the latest driver, unplugged my other non-HDR monitor, not sure what else to try.

Spoiler: NvTrueHDR.exe

NvTrueHDR - RTX HDR toggler, v1.2a
by emoose - https://github.com/emoose

Driver version: 551.23

Usage: nvtruehdr [--high] [--medium] [--low] [--disable] [--hud] <appExeName>

Entering interactive mode

Enter app executable name (use "base" for base/global profile)
> eldenring

Fetching settings for app 'eldenring'...
Found settings for app 'eldenring.exe'

Current TrueHDR state: Enabled (1, 2, 1, 1) (VeryHigh quality)

Enter action (VeryHigh / Medium / Low / Disable / Hud / Quit), or hit enter to toggle
> H

Applying TrueHDR state: Enabled (1, 3, 1, 1) (VeryHigh quality) (HDR indicator HUD enabled)

Profile settings saved, changes should take effect on next app launch.

New TrueHDR state: Enabled (1, 3, 1, 1) (VeryHigh quality) (HDR indicator HUD enabled)

Press enter to exit...

I think you need to add the .exe to the end of the executable file there, does say it found settings for the full .exe but worth doing anyway, at least it's what I have done and no issues so far.

Make sure:

- you're on w11 (do the windows hdr calibration although not sure if this is really required but should be done anyway)
- auto hdr in windows is turned off
- hdr in the game if present is turned off
- rtx hdr is turned on in the video settings of the nvcp (not sure if really required either but probably worth doing)
- won't work when upscaling/DLDSR

EDIT:

Are you just entering H for Hud? Might also be worth entering the full action/setting.

 

[Nexus18]

 

[Nexus18]

Absolute game changer this! Resident evil games HDR broken (apparently an update broke it and not been fixed since) so blacks are raised and everything looks washed out but now, no problemo Resident evil 3 looks stunning maxed out with RT and now HDR.

 

[Nexus18]

Hmmm, I really need to give this new technique a go, but for any game I'm not happy with the HDR I usually use SpecialK HDR which works with most stuff. It's getting better all the time too and is really tweakable now. Latest versions have EOTF gamma tracking settings as well...

I've tried special k every now and then and it's just a faff especially if using any tools that inject other things e.g. frame gen, dlss tweaks or/and even rivatuner/msi ab overlay can cause some issues depending on the game.

RTX hdr just works with very little faff and no conflicting software causing issues.

 

[Nexus18]

Must be an update cause I played re2 and re3 remakes at launch and at the time they were the best looking hdr games I'd ever seen

Yup it's all over Reddit about HDR breaking with an update as I also remember it working very well with the demos

 

[Nexus18]

There is a way to revert to the older version as I recall reading. But then no RT I think?

 

[Nexus18]

Dead island riptide is free on steam and using rtx hdr makes it look great, locked to 168 fps too Just need RT now

 

[Nexus18]

@Nexus Only just got around to trying this today - colour me semi-impressed! This is definitely something else to muck around with for those of us who are big HDR fans.

The first game I fired up to test was the Mafia remake (Definitive Edition) - has no built in HDR, doesn't support AutoHDR and I've always had trouble getting SpecialK HDR to work with it (got it working once and then it just wouldn't, really buggy).

I'm using the 'Hud' preset so you get the 2 little squares indicator to show it's definitely active, and this uses the highest quality settings - the game takes a ~15fps hit at these, which is pretty surprising and not great.
I've also download the file for Nvidia Profile Inspector so you can double check what's what in the game profile. Just need to find a way now to set a lower quality but still have the Hud indicator showing - any ideas?

If it is working with hud, it'll work just fine with the other profiles too. I haven't found a huge difference between veryhigh and high in terms of IQ, at least nothing has jumped out to me but far less of a hit to performance but I find it depends on the game too.

 

[Nexus18]

DF/Alex has spoken, nvidia are indeed killing it with #RTXON!

 

[Nexus18]

I've been doing a bit more testing today. I think this has a ton of potential, but it needs to have fine grain tuning.

At the moment I'm 99% sure it does not track with your Win11 HDR calibration tool profile, and therefore in some (EDIT - MOST!) games it definitely has a problem with blowing out highlights due to not being able to set any peak brightness limits (and it not tacking your Win11 HDR profile). So it's just not there yet, but I have a feeling it will be very soon....

What do you mean when blowing out highlights? Is that when you look at for example, mostly land/dark area with a little sky (blue sky and clouds) in the background which looks just white but when you look at more sky instead of land, it's like the exposure adjusts to show the clouds and colours more accurately? If so, yeah I have noticed that although think that might just be down to the AI i.e. it has to adjust based on new information/area?

It probably will improve quite a bit in terms of quicker exposure adaption, less performance hit and so on though, after all look at dlss, dsr to dldsr, reflex, rtx video super resolution (massively improved)

 

[Nexus18]

You'll never use hdr anyway screenshot snob

YouTube videos never translate/show HDR well, also, I'm not sure how Alex has captured this as to my knowledge there isn't any way to properly capture this rtx HDR.

I haven't encountered any issues with highlights/whites other than slower exposure change, it's not cp 2077 hdr level of quality but it's so close and far superior to just sdr.