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[YCoCg]

Even still I don't think they messed it up

Oh come on, stop being foolish.

Just like movies limiting HDR to 200 nits make an intentional choice.

Limiting HDR to an SDR range is a "choice" instead of just shipping as SDR which in the end would look better on a persons display??? Again, stop being foolish.

Just like having specifically elevated black levels is an intentional choice etc.

It isn't JUST elevating the black levels though, this is what you seem to be missing, it's scaling an SDR bracket in an HDR container, meaning there's no real improvement going on, it's just messing up the image by shifting the range. You keep talking about creators intent when SDR in these games IS the better option as it provides the exact same range just in the proper container for the TV/Monitor to handle.

And really you should stop saying things like "looks worse than SDR" when you have people in this very thread saying the exact opposite based on testing it out for themselves (besides me). Use your eyes and judge, stop relying on youtubers to tell you what you should think. The games goes from 0.025 nits all the way to >1000 if you display can handle it. It's also in WCG. That's as HDR as possible. If you want to restrict HDR to only arbitrary levels like 0.00 nits, then why stop there, why not also only 4000 nits? In which case we do only Dolby Pulsar as "true HDR" display. Or hell, why not 10000 nits? After all, RL HDR measures in 100.000s of nits, so why stop at "lowly" 10.000 nits? In which case everyone be equally (un)happy as there's no true HDR anywhere except RL. No movie, game, no display. All fake HDR. Oh no.

And this is just you babbling making excuses for CDPR. At a baseline MINIMUM HDR needs to exceed the 200 nits range of SDR, shifting around a 200 nits range doesn't magically make it HDR, it just cripples other areas instead, the the case of Cyberpunk, raising the levels to achieve a higher nit counts drags up the black levels. Lowering it drags down the highs, a properly adjusted game can achieve having a high level range AND good black levels below 50 nits, that's the whole damn point.

Same goes for WGC, it's pointless to advertise your product is graded in WGC if it doesn't exceed Rec.709 at ANY point!

Fact is, a lot of studios don't have the proper equipment to test HDR in-house, they don't have grading monitors, they don't have the proper tools to test ranges and output, instead they're doing it blind and assuming it will work in most cases until it's pointed out, the bare minimum a studio will do is to just shove SDR into a HDR container and have that be adjustable, but that's not exactly taking advantage of what's being provided. It'd be like saying your game renders in 4k but only 1280x720p in the middle of the screen is visible and everything else around it is a black bar, sure your TV is getting a 4k signal but you're not going to call that true 4k are you?

 

[thebigmanjosh]

This is false. This guy is an idiot who doesn't understand how a) light works; b) how GI and graphics in general work; and c) what the creator's intent is. In fact, it's laughable he's complaining about perfect blacks & HDR but meanwhile he's testing in the plaza surrounded by bright lights & reflective surfaces all around - what a moron!

HDR looks great but you shouldn't expect perfect blacks because the way light works is that you will never have perfect black unless you're in a vacuum, and since the game has a global illumination system on at all times, and you're always surrounded by numerous light sources, then it will always be illuminated. On top of that the general cyberpunk aesthetic is towards 'haziness', that's why you see a lot of smog or smoke effects in all the works (eg very obviously in Bladerunner), and CP2077 is no exception.

Sure, you could create perfect blacks if you wanted to, but then that would veer into the more cartoony side, and that's not the Cyberpunk aesthetic and certainly not how the game wants to portray itself.

I get your point but this game scales a ~500nit range to your peak brightness and doesn’t widen it.

Ideally, you should be able to set the dynamic range to 0-1000nits and see both ends of that spectrum somewhere in gameplay. If you set your peak brightness to 1000nits, it raises your 0 values up to 250-500nits. This is more similar to RDR2 than RE2 which I believe was more of an aesthetic/engine choice since you can still find absolute blacks in gameplay.

It shouldn’t be this hard to implement HDR in games, especially when the consoles have system level HGIG calibration.

 

[Rikkori]

Limiting HDR to an SDR range is a "choice" instead of just shipping as SDR which in the end would look better on a persons display??? Again, stop being foolish.

You have more control in HDR even when limiting to 200 nits than in SDR, you can see this in action here:

The Mandalorian Episode 3 | FrameCompare.com

The Mandalorian Episode 3 - Screenshot comparisions

www.framecompare.com

I'm tired of repeating the other points, you want HDR to mean what you want it to mean, to which all I can say - good luck to you.

I get your point but this game scales a ~500nit range to your peak brightness and doesn’t widen it.

Ideally, you should be able to set the dynamic range to 0-1000nits and see both ends of that spectrum somewhere in gameplay. If you set your peak brightness to 1000nits, it raises your 0 values up to 250-500nits. This is more similar to RDR2 than RE2 which I believe was more of an aesthetic/engine choice since you can still find absolute blacks in gameplay.

It shouldn’t be this hard to implement HDR in games, especially when the consoles have system level HGIG calibration.

That's not true, and if you think about it the image would look insanely washed out if what you were saying were true vis-a-vis the elevated 0 value. And hey, don't take it from me, look at Vinnie's video itself and pay attention to both the waveform and the image itself. You can see most things remain at the same level (which makes sense, it's a dark-ish scene somewhat) but you can also see the picture brightening up, which is what you'd expect to see from the GI bounce combined with higher peak brightness for HDR. And indeed on the wave form you can see that the elements that go up to the new limit are exactly those you'd expect to see, ie lights etc.

Remember it's not just about EMITTED light it's also about REFLECTED light! And that's exactly what happens when you have GI + PBR materials that are properly reflective + SSR.

And if you look at his other analysis like Valhalla you can see - wtf? 200 nits compressed window during a bright day with snow. And he calls it "tasteful HDR". Why is not broken? Has this guy never seen snow in his life, has never been outside? Does he not understand that brightness level should be eye-popping due to how white should be handled?

Again, nothing against the guy in particular but he's full of shit and picks & chooses what he wants to consider HDR, just like the poster I was arguing with earlier, EVEN AGAINST the creator's intent. That's not recognising fake vs real HDR, that's just simply being solipsistic.

 

[YCoCg]

I'm tired of repeating the other points, you want HDR to mean what you want it to mean, to which all I can say - good luck to you.

Would you be happy with games doing this?

And calling it true 4k? OH BUT WAIT, I can move it around this space...

Of course not! You keep trying to pass this off as "creators intent", hell let me use an audio example, it'd be like selling a 5.1 track but only Front left and Front Right are active, the rest of the channels contain blank audio, you wouldn't call that true 5.1 and I'm sure you'd agree in that case it'd be best to just provide the Stereo track as is and let your sound system attempt to work it instead, or like in the above image, I'm sure you'd prefer if a game just outputted 720p and let your screen scale it. Why treat HDR and WGC any different?

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

This thread is hilarious.

Today I learned that horrible HDR with muted colours and artificially raised blacks is a legitimate artistic choice.

This game is perfect for HDR but alas is the only game I own where SDR just looks plain better on my LG CX.

 

[GaviotaGrande]

This thread is hilarious.

Today I learned that horrible HDR with muted colours and artificially raised blacks is a legitimate artistic choice.

This game is perfect for HDR but alas is the only game I own where SDR just looks plain better on my LG CX.

Weird. I prefer how it looks in HDR. Same TV, PC version. My family thinks the same.

I'm not saying it's perfect but it still makes the game looks better.

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

Weird. I prefer how it looks in HDR. Same TV, PC version. My family thinks the same.

I'm not saying it's perfect but it still makes the game looks better.

I’m running the PS5 version so it could be that.

I’ve spent close to an hour trying to tune the settings and in the end, SDR with gamma set at 1.10 just looks more vibrant.

 

[CthulhuPL]

For me HDR in CP works fine (i'm on xsx). If it is broken the the same can be said about HDR in Uncharted 4.

 

[recursive]

How was the Witcher 3 HDR? I mean, are they clueless or just broken husks at this point?

Witcher 3 HDR was ok by the time I played through it with it although not sure it started out that way when it was first patched in.

 

[TJC]

Anyone saying HDR isn't. Broke and looks better than the SDR are blind as bats, Vincent over at HDTV has already made video's on this.

 

[Hostile_18]

I played it today for the first time and can confirm its broke exactly the same as RDR2 HDR was broke. OLED users if you want those inky blacks make sure to keep the option off. The fact it's off by default is rather telling. I wouldn't be so sure it's a quick fix either if Rockstar couldn't get it fully fixed either.

 

[vpance]

I think this may never get fixed. All of their trailers and gameplay footage has raised blacks, so they probably just like the style.

Lots of movies have raised blacks but still deliver a proper high nit HDR image. But here their HDR bracket thing makes little sense.

 

[base]

Cyberlosers...

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

I think this may never get fixed. All of their trailers and gameplay footage has raised blacks, so they probably just like the style.

Lots of movies have raised blacks but still deliver a proper high nit HDR image. But here their HDR bracket thing makes little sense.

Given it’s a dark and gritty game filled with bright neon lighting, it makes no sense to elect to have raised blacks levels.

 

[vpance]

Given it’s a dark and gritty game filled with bright neon lighting, it makes no sense to elect to have raised blacks levels.

Tell that to CDPR. But raised blacks has been a thing in movies for a while now. Some directors just like that style, even using it in space sci-fi films. Space being grey is more cinematic looking I guess.

Instead of the nits slider controlling both black level and highlights just have it separate like most other games. Then anyone can set their black level to 0 if they want or leave it at the default of 50 or whatever.

 

[liminalcadet]

How do I turn HDR off on XSX for this game? It's washed-out to fuck and back.

 

[JeloSWE]

...only 100.

Can you clarify what this means?

The Sony X310 has a full screen brightness @ 1000 nits and is now considered a top end reference monitor. Early on content providers were asking for Dolby Vision masters @ 4000 nits - which could only be done on a Dolby Pulsar. As there were only a few made and you couldn't actually buy one - this was dropped for the 1000 nit standard, which Sony were the first to market with the X300.

Perhaps many bedroom colourists grade for 200-600 nits. But they are not working on Netflix Originals I can guarantee you that.

I still think this is an issue for gaming studios as they probably don't invest in a €30,000 grading monitor and just use a consumer OLED for it, hence the many games poor HDR implementation. Secondly, I cry every day a little bit that most releases has regressed into max 1000 nit territory, and many colorists like to grade for ever lover peaks yet. But one can only hope that the majority of consumer displays will become 2-4000 nit capable soon if QNED or MicroLED takes off.

 

[Tchu-Espresso]

One thing CDPR should be commended on though is being able to independent control the brightness of the HUD. That should be standard along with HDR that works.

 

[Night.Ninja]

How do I turn HDR off on XSX for this game? It's washed-out to fuck and back.

In the system setting

 

[captainraincoat]

There’s a part later in the game where you are out in the dessert testing out Something after you steal it (no spoilers)

the HDR through the whole scene is way to overblown that you can’t see anything and then there is a sequence which reminds me of the willy wonky death tunnel

 

[Rayderism]

All I know is that I have many games for my PS4 Pro that do HDR, most of them look really good in that mode, but NOT CP2077.

 

[GhostOfTsu]

I have it on PC and I have HDR PQ and HDR srgb. I'm playing on a regular 4k TV. Which one should I take?

Then the headache starts when I go in HDR gamma settings. There is 3 sliders and I can't make it look good. The image is always too dark but the blacks are still gray. Makes no sense. It feels like I don't see anything while playing.

 

[lucius]

It can look ok at times but overall your better off turning it off and adjusting gamma slightly for console versions this makes it more playable. Don’t be fooled by a couple areas that might look better. Overall it’s busted

 

[Tiamat2san]

Between 2 sessions of cyberpunk I played the hive busters DLC of gears 5.
On series X, the game’s HDR is phenomenal, bright and vivid Colors , real blacks and the difference between dark and bright is amazing.
Then I came back to cyberpunk, a game that I truly love despite the bugs.

YES, the HDR of cyberpunk 2077 is broken.
you need to tweak the hdr setting to have a decent image and if you don’t want a greyish tone, you won’t see shit in certain missions.

maybe it will be better with patches.

 

[EDMIX]

Because the actual dynamic range is too low in SDR. You will not see the same behaviour as HDR (and it's the same for movies) - should be obvious no? Or to flip it back around do you think the creator's intent is to showcase a bright sunny day at 100 nits? HDR will always be the authorative version, always, because it actually gives you more options to showcase things the way you want it.

It's really the same for colours, if you turn on HDR and start seeing things be different shades than in SDR then the right version is the HDR one, because you can see what the actual shade was meant to be - but in SDR you'll always be limited to sRGB (mostly); unlike HDR where you can go wild and even have the full BT2020 spectrum.

But either way I would say you can't compare HDR & SDR that much, they have different limitations and each will be targeting different things.

Smh... just stop man. This game has so many issues, I don't really think it actually makes sense to try to defend some of this stuff. Enough issues exist that if someone is having trouble with this feature, its best to just assume its another bug. How the fuck know its not in the next patch? Too much things are wrong with this game to really take much of the game's features at face value. If someone feels off about a feature, it very well could be a bug.

They've lied about so much, I see no reason to argue that the feature MUST be working as if none of us have used HDR before. I've seen this questioned enough times that its more logical that its a bug or a glitch or something.

Unless you going to tell me its also normal for cops to teleport out of thin air also..

 

[Rikkori]

Smh... just stop man. This game has so many issues, I don't really think it actually makes sense to try to defend some of this stuff. Enough issues exist that if someone is having trouble with this feature, its best to just assume its another bug. How the fuck know its not in the next patch? Too much things are wrong with this game to really take much of the game's features at face value. If someone feels off about a feature, it very well could be a bug.

They've lied about so much, I see no reason to argue that the feature MUST be working as if none of us have used HDR before. I've seen this questioned enough times that its more logical that its a bug or a glitch or something.

Unless you going to tell me its also normal for cops to teleport out of thin air also..

Teleport out of thin air? You mean spawn as they do in every game ever made? And wtf does that have to do with HDR?

 

[DemonCleaner]

I have it on PC and I have HDR PQ and HDR srgb. I'm playing on a regular 4k TV. Which one should I take?

Then the headache starts when I go in HDR gamma settings. There is 3 sliders and I can't make it look good. The image is always too dark but the blacks are still gray. Makes no sense. It feels like I don't see anything while playing.

just put it to SDR. this games HDR is not saveable at this stage.

 

[Hugare]

Guys, it seems like HDR IS ONLY BROKEN ON CONSOLES

Ive seen people playing on PC saying that it looks great, while people on consoles unanimously say that it looks bad (including me, PS4 here)

Watch Digital Foundry tech review of the game

Its the game running on PC with HDR on. Looks brilliant.

Again, it seems to be due to the lack of care with optimization on consoles, so they also fucked up with HDR on the process.

The game even turns off HDR every time you start it, for fucks sake

 

[EDMIX]

Teleport out of thin air? You mean spawn as they do in every game ever made? And wtf does that have to do with HDR?

Just stop man, the shilling being done for this company is ridiculous.










I see legit zero reason to really pretend this isn't a issue and is perfectly normal. If the game has MANY FUCKING BROKEN FEATURES, its more then likely the HDR issue isn't simply someone fucking eyes, but actually yet another issue. Relax with the apologist and ultra defend on this man. It seems zero critique is allowed with this game to die hards.

 

[DemonCleaner]

Guys, it seems like HDR IS ONLY BROKEN ON CONSOLES

Ive seen people playing on PC saying that it looks great, while people on consoles unanimously say that it looks bad (including me, PS4 here)

Watch Digital Foundry tech review of the game

Its the game running on PC with HDR on. Looks brilliant.

Again, it seems to be due to the lack of care with optimization on consoles, so they also fucked up with HDR on the process.

as im playing this on a 3080 and a LG OLED i can assure you that HDR is also broken on PC. if you turn it on it will raise black levels to a greyish mist. if you try to correct that via the given ingame settings, it will destroy color balance in a unbareable manner. its exactly the same as shown on consoles in Vincents video. so it's either live with horrbile overblown dark scene brightness or turn HDR off.

 

[Rikkori]

Just stop man, the shilling being done for this company is ridiculous.
I see legit zero reason to really pretend this isn't a issue and is perfectly normal. If the game has MANY FUCKING BROKEN FEATURES, its more then likely the HDR issue isn't simply someone fucking eyes, but actually yet another issue. Relax with the apologist and ultra defend on this man. It seems zero critique is allowed with this game to die hards.

Again, that's how NPCs spawn in every game ever made. That's not a critique of anything, it's just reality of it being a game and not the matrix.

as im playing this on a 3080 and a LG OLED i can assure you that HDR is also broken on PC. if you turn it on it will raise black levels to a greyish mist. if you try to correct that via the given ingame settings, it will destroy color balance in a unbareable manner. its exactly the same as shown on consoles in Vincents video. so it's either live with horrbile overblown dark scene brightness or turn HDR off.

Try this (but understand that the game will never ever have perfect blacks):

I think some of the issues above have been tweaked and aren’t as bad as they were.



After playing around some more I *think* I have a better understanding of what is going on.

Max brightness doesn’t appear to interact with the typical brightness roll-off that we expect a Game to provide - much like we have seen in a few other titles - God of War and Destiny 2 being some of the most well known titles to do the same thing.



Max Brightness appears to control the gain, or the contrast setting - I suspect 10,000nits is in fact the default as the game’s output is scaled from it’s base set up to the game’s SDR tuned output.



The problem with then reducing this is that it then brings down the mid tone brightness by the time you move the white point down to a useable 1000nits or so.



The Mid tone adjustment had 2 effects on the image - reducing it will make the darker parts of the image - increasing the perception of contrast- increasing it creates more of a bloom like effect , which smooths out some highlight detail.



Now my objective is to have an image that is

A: Bright enough for general play

B: Not so obviously raised at the dark end of image

C: Pulls out some additional highlight detail to exist in very high-not parts of the image.



So one way around this is to choose an EOTF curve that retains highlights



On the LG sets this is DTM OFF - a 4000nit roll off.

On Samsung Sets you can change gamma / ST2084 to -3.



You can then set the games maximum output to 3500-4000

And drop back the mid point value to somewhere between 1-1.8 (depending on if you want a more contrast or more bloom)

This will brighten the image, provide a brightness roll off, an image that is not so dim and a slightly more contrasty image.

Give this a go and let me know what you think!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/cyberpunk-2077-44862107

 

[EDMIX]

Again, that's how NPCs spawn in every game ever made.

Yet provides zero evidence of cops materializing in thin air as well as spawning IN THE WALLS in "every game ever made" . This game can't even fucking meet GTAIII level features. That is some massive denial, as I've seen even the BIGGEST fans of this game asking for that to be fixed, yet to you, no issues here I guess, the games perfect, everyone must be lying about that feature and those videos must not exist. Going to have to add you to that ignore list man.

 

[Rikkori]

Yet provides zero evidence of cops materializing in thin air as well as spawning IN THE WALLS in "every game ever made" . This game can't even fucking meet GTAIII level features. That is some massive denial, as I've seen even the BIGGEST fans of this game asking for that to be fixed, yet to you, no issues here I guess, the games perfect, everyone must be lying about that feature and those videos must not exist. Going to have to add you to that ignore list man.

Sounds like you have an issue with the game, what happened, CDPR kill your kitty? Good luck dealing with it either way. Rest assured no one's ignoring the game's issues, but there's a difference between recognising the game has issues and going around with a hate-boner for it talking about unrelated things just so you can rag on it.
Meanwhile, more than half a million people are currently enjoying the game:

 

[Hugare]

as im playing this on a 3080 and a LG OLED i can assure you that HDR is also broken on PC. if you turn it on it will raise black levels to a greyish mist. if you try to correct that via the given ingame settings, it will destroy color balance in a unbareable manner. its exactly the same as shown on consoles in Vincents video. so it's either live with horrbile overblown dark scene brightness or turn HDR off.

Strange. Maybe he recorded his footage in SDR, 'cause there are some deep blacks there and no sign of grayish mist

 

[Burger]

Can you clarify what this means?

Nits. So for TV delivering to Netflix, Hulu, Apple etc you grade in Dolby Vision - you must grade in HDR first and you do this master at 1000 nits. This is looking through an HDR output transform, say P3D65. Then a 'trim pass' is done on the picture at 100 nits for Rec709 (or SDR). You have a reduced set of controls available to you to adjust the image, as it's stored in metadata. The SDR stream essentially does not exist. That's then packaged up and delivered as an IMF.

Lets say you want a Cinema DCP after that. You switch the output transform to DCI-P3 and adjust the grade on a projector for about 14 Foot Lamberts instead of nits.

Keep in mind - almost everyone is asking for a NAM along side the graded master these days, a Non-graded Archival Master. It's basically the show, with no grade and no output transform. This will be in ACES or camera native colourspace and can be used to remaster the show at a later date for new technologies. Netflix were the pioneers in this.

I still think this is an issue for gaming studios as they probably don't invest in a €30,000 grading monitor and just use a consumer OLED for it, hence the many games poor HDR implementation. Secondly, I cry every day a little bit that most releases has regressed into max 1000 nit territory, and many colorists like to grade for ever lover peaks yet. But one can only hope that the majority of consumer displays will become 2-4000 nit capable soon if QNED or MicroLED takes off.

Games and TV, while both can be in HDR are very different. TV and Features are mastered to a reference level. Games are not. Netflix doesn't have HDR calibration sliders - because everything is mastered to the same reference level. Your TV settings are the calibration and ultimately up to you.

Games almost always have calibration sliders in a menu, or in the system OS. Part of the specification for HDR10 is the MaxCLL and MaxFALL. That is the brightest pixel in the video stream, and the average luminance of the video stream. With games - there is no videostream, it's all dynamic. So you have to give people a way of setting these values for their display. Now you have 2 sets of calibrations. Your TV and the game settings. It's crucial that the TV is correct for the game settings to be correct.

Game studios don't need a £30,000 reference monitor - because they are not worked towards a particular reference. Games are dynamic, can output to any colourspace at any time. But I don't think the choice of monitor leads to poor HDR implementation, rather that there is no reference, technically it's very difficult and it's also a dynamic medium that people want to perform like TV and features.

Many colourists hated HDR when it came out. Some still do. What used to look like a nice evenly lit scene now had a very distracting window in the background that took all your attention away from what was actually happening. Then they figured out that just because the range was there - it didn't mean they needed to use it. It's a maximum, not a target.

 

[JeloSWE]

Keep in mind - almost everyone is asking for a NAM along side the graded master these days, a Non-graded Archival Master. It's basically the show, with no grade and no output transform. This will be in ACES or camera native colourspace and can be used to remaster the show at a later date for new technologies. Netflix were the pioneers in this.

I like this line of thinking, that means when majority of consume displays finally gets closer to 4000 nit they can re-release movies and shows again. But honestly, they should just release everything as 4000 right now and let the displays tonemap it so that better displays can take advantage of the extra dynamic range. For me with a 1700 nit display it's really frustrating with shows that are graded to only look good on OLED and sub 1000 nit LCD, like Mandalorian and The Witcher. They look so dim it maddening.

Game studios don't need a £30,000 reference monitor - because they are not worked towards a particular reference. Games are dynamic, can output to any colourspace at any time. But I don't think the choice of monitor leads to poor HDR implementation, rather that there is no reference, technically it's very difficult and it's also a dynamic medium that people want to perform like TV and features.

I'm still think and worried that many studios look at their games in HDR on a consumer OLED at best and a shity monitor at worst, probably with tonemapping enabled as well. Spiderman for PS4 was probably such an example of horribly dim looking HDR on 1000+ nit screen with no slider to set max nit. But the remastered version on PS5 where it obeys the system wide HDR setting it looks pretty good actually.

Many colourists hated HDR when it came out. Some still do. What used to look like a nice evenly lit scene now had a very distracting window in the background that took all your attention away from what was actually happening. Then they figured out that just because the range was there - it didn't mean they needed to use it. It's a maximum, not a target.

I understand this and am not against artistic intent. It's just so frustrating to see The Mandalorian with hazy artistic darks and dim highlights on my very capable Sony Z9F Master series, it just looks so dim and lacks so much contrast I ended up watching it in SDR instead which I don't think was the colorists intention.

Also, the whole movie industry is mastering for dark cinema viewing lacks the incredible impact a regular HDR home videos can bring where on screen values closer match their real world counter parts. I love for games to just look like a window into the real world, not a dimmed down post card versions.

 

[Burger]

I like this line of thinking, that means when majority of consume displays finally gets closer to 4000 nit they can re-release movies and shows again. But honestly, they should just release everything as 4000 right now and let the displays tonemap it so that better displays can take advantage of the extra dynamic range. For me with a 1700 nit display it's really frustrating with shows that are graded to only look good on OLED and sub 1000 nit LCD, like Mandalorian and The Witcher. They look so dim it maddening.

Not happening. Nobody makes reference monitors that bright. We cannot master stuff to 4000 nits if we cannot see it at 4000 nits. A Sony X300 or X310 is not expensive because it's bright, it's expensive because it's accurate.

A Sony Z9F is not accurate. It doesn't hit P3, and has poor uniformity (when compared to professional montiors). It sounds like everything you don't like about HDR is you don't like how it's not hitting the technical extremes, due to creative decisions. You will never win that battle.

Nobody wants to master content to 1700 nits. It's too bright. Going from 100 nits to 1000 nits was a massive change. Going from 1000 to 1700 isn't. Human perception of light is a logarithmic scale, not a linear one.

 

[alucard0712_rus]

This is false. This guy is an idiot who doesn't understand how a) light works; b) how GI and graphics in general work; and c) what the creator's intent is. In fact, it's laughable he's complaining about perfect blacks & HDR but meanwhile he's testing in the plaza surrounded by bright lights & reflective surfaces all around - what a moron!

HDR looks great but you shouldn't expect perfect blacks because the way light works is that you will never have perfect black unless you're in a vacuum, and since the game has a global illumination system on at all times, and you're always surrounded by numerous light sources, then it will always be illuminated. On top of that the general cyberpunk aesthetic is towards 'haziness', that's why you see a lot of smog or smoke effects in all the works (eg very obviously in Bladerunner), and CP2077 is no exception.

Sure, you could create perfect blacks if you wanted to, but then that would veer into the more cartoony side, and that's not the Cyberpunk aesthetic and certainly not how the game wants to portray itself.

And it's okay in SDR at the same time?

 

[Rikkori]

And it's okay in SDR at the same time?

It's ok in HDR too. But go Northside during a sunny day and compare sdr vs hdr it will look 100 times worse in sdr because there's no brightness pop so it will be like a washed out photo from back when they still printed those. I have no idea how anyone would prefer the sdr which has no brightness or specularity but hey, everyone can choose for themselves. I know for myself I turn HDR on and it looks great, not sure what else to add.

 

[Futurematic]

Not happening. Nobody makes reference monitors that bright.

Good luck finding a Dolby Pulsar but they do exist.

 

[thatJohann]

One thing CDPR should be commended on though is being able to independent control the brightness of the HUD. That should be standard along with HDR that works.

Agree. I love being able to control the HUD brightness. I hate blinding white HUD elements like on Gears 5. Made me turn off the HDR altogether.

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

I'm at 1000 nits with the tone curve between .9 and 1 depending on what you are going for (.9 for me in my current scenes in the bar and hotel).

 

[Burger]

Good luck finding a Dolby Pulsar but they do exist.

I think 1 exists in the UK, at Dolby in London. That's it for us.

 

[JeloSWE]

Not happening. Nobody makes reference monitors that bright. We cannot master stuff to 4000 nits if we cannot see it at 4000 nits. A Sony X300 or X310 is not expensive because it's bright, it's expensive because it's accurate.

A Sony Z9F is not accurate. It doesn't hit P3, and has poor uniformity (when compared to professional montiors). It sounds like everything you don't like about HDR is you don't like how it's not hitting the technical extremes, due to creative decisions. You will never win that battle.

Nobody wants to master content to 1700 nits. It's too bright. Going from 100 nits to 1000 nits was a massive change. Going from 1000 to 1700 isn't. Human perception of light is a logarithmic scale, not a linear one.

There are the pulsar monitors for 4000 nits mastering. Both are very expensive and I don't expect any game company to use them unfortunately.

My Z9F is very good with color accuracy for a consumer TV but doesn't not encompass the full P3 and of course it's not meant to be used for grading.

Well you are right in that I think the movie/tv industry is making HDR too dim at the moment, it's obviously graded to look good on avarage consumer OLED of around 600 nit. About brightness, Vincent Teo saw the Sony 10.000 nits prototype screen at CES last year and I believe him when he said it's not as blinding as people think, rather it was very life like, like looking out of a window. We see these kinds of brightness daily in our life with out feeling blinded, just a blue sky is around 8000 nit. Considering the sun is 1.6 billion nit I don't think 10000 nit is that bright. Of course, transitioning to quickly from dark to bright might pose a problem for all HDR content and there the creators have handle it smartly.

There are some movies mastered for 4000 nit, Mad Max and BvS, booth look quite impressive on my TV and I didn't need sunglasses Also every I match every game with a slider to my displays peak and they look great without being to bright.

 

[Mister Wolf]

What HDR settings are people using for their OLED? I wish Cyberpunk would have just used a simpler HDR calibration method like the RE Engine games.

 

[vpance]

I understand this and am not against artistic intent. It's just so frustrating to see The Mandalorian with hazy artistic darks and dim highlights on my very capable Sony Z9F Master series, it just looks so dim and lacks so much contrast I ended up watching it in SDR instead which I don't think was the colorists intention.

Also, the whole movie industry is mastering for dark cinema viewing lacks the incredible impact a regular HDR home videos can bring where on screen values closer match their real world counter parts. I love for games to just look like a window into the real world, not a dimmed down post card versions.

Just up the dynamic contrast or whatever similar setting.

The artist intention thing for HDR movies I think is largely bullshit. More often than not studios don't take much care to make HDR look as good as it can. It's the same with games.

 

[Connxtion]

HDR looks alright on my CX, though I did set mine to 800, 150 and 1.80 (XSX)

 

[Burger]

There are the pulsar monitors for 4000 nits mastering. Both are very expensive and I don't expect any game company to use them unfortunately.

Dolby Pulsar's are not for sale, and even if they were nobody would buy them. You think we can say to clients that the hourly rate for this colourist has gone up 10 times because we had to buy a brighter screen?

Well you are right in that I think the movie/tv industry is making HDR too dim at the moment, it's obviously graded to look good on avarage consumer OLED of around 600 nit.

Again, nobody is targeting any particular screen. It's graded to a reference. Currently, where I work - that is almost exclusively 1000 nits for television. Features (like DCI or Dolby Cinema) are different again. Keep in mind this is to the specification of Netflix, Apple, Amazon etc - we work to what they want. I would guess that if we were working to 4000 nits - the content coming out of our building wouldn't look significantly different.

The artist intention thing for HDR movies I think is largely bullshit. More often than not studios don't take much care to make HDR look as good as it can. It's the same with games.

There was some bullshit article on Ars Technica about how some idiot had 'analysed' The Mandalorian and come to the conclusion that it was SDR that was converted to HDR, and how it was a terrible practice and it has to stop as it's ripping people off.

I know that The Mandalorian was graded as an HDR project. It's just that's how the director of photography and the colourist made it look. As far as I know it was so it didn't look wildly different from the original films in terms of look.

Studio's often do not care to make HDR look as good as it can - that's true - they don't give a flying fuck. Neither does the colourist, neither does the DOP, neither does the Director. They want their film to look good - and sometimes that is not the same as making some HDR showcase. (see Red Dead Redemption 2)

 

[Radical_3d]

The slogan of this game should be that one from Nixon: Four more years!

 

[vpance]

There was some bullshit article on Ars Technica about how some idiot had 'analysed' The Mandalorian and come to the conclusion that it was SDR that was converted to HDR, and how it was a terrible practice and it has to stop as it's ripping people off.

I know that The Mandalorian was graded as an HDR project. It's just that's how the director of photography and the colourist made it look. As far as I know it was so it didn't look wildly different from the original films in terms of look.

Studio's often do not care to make HDR look as good as it can - that's true - they don't give a flying fuck. Neither does the colourist, neither does the DOP, neither does the Director. They want their film to look good - and sometimes that is not the same as making some HDR showcase. (see Red Dead Redemption 2)

I think Vincent was the source of that Mandalorian analysis. A Youtube comment made an interesting observation. Super bright highlights might not be easy with the panoramic projector backdrop setup.



BR 2049 is also another popular release with a relatively dim look. At the end of the day it's what the director or whoever wanted. My suggestion is to just adjust it to your liking via the TV or player (Panny is the best for that ) if it annoys you enough.

But the main issue I imagine most people are having is that they simply aren't watching the material in near darkness. Really helps a lot even with the dimmer releases.