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.

 

[Coolasmoo]

Looks promising, I have read it still needs some work as it raises the black levels to mid grey.

 

[Kirby Wurm]

Looks promising for Nvidia users. The only issue that would bother me (die to OLED) is the fact the desktop is displayed at HDR brightness as it breaks the SDR slider when HDR is enabled, but then in practice it's only to be enabled directly prior to launching a game.

 

[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

 

[Coolasmoo]

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.

 

[TNA]

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.

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

 

[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

 

[BananaDunka]

H8ers gonna H8

 

[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)

 

[BananaDunka]

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

And certainly not fake HDR

 

[Neil79]

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)

Same! HDR looks amazing in most games, DayZ for example

 

[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

 

[Devious]

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...

 

[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.

 

[Devious]

Yes I am on windows 11 and have all the settings as you show.

Normal HDR works fine in games if I switch AutoHDR back on.
HDR is on in the nvidia video settings and activates if I watch a video.

I was putting eldenring.exe in then I saw just eldenring in the reddit link in the OP. Both seemed to detect the exe.

I was just typing H for Hud and it does seem to toggle the option. I will try HUD tomorrow.

 

[Nexus18]