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PS5 does not display SDR content correctly

Andodalf

Banned
Let us know when "could" becomes "does".... oh and when someone actually notices or cares.

I know you’re confused about your attraction to Alex, but that’s something for you to deal with on your own. Don’t take it out on him!


It does now, it’s well documented, and it’s why nobody uses ps5 in SDR, only in its weird HDR wrapper for SDR content. Games usually work fine but it’s generally something to avoid for most media. Personally I just use my TVs built in apps to avoids issues like this on PS5 and XSX
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
Man, I don't know. I played Control on PS5 (which I believe is SDR only?), and didn't notice any color issue.

I'm sure Alex isn't lying, but my question is are these issues big enough that most gamers will even notice?

Having said that, a third-option for the HDR settings on PS5 would be nice.
 

Kuranghi

Member
The only game I've had issues with is Control:UE, with PS5 in SDR output mode the games gamma is messed up in certain areas, its not crushed blacks though imo, its sometime to do with the eye adaptation and the different gamma curves they use for each area/room.

Many places look great, but when its an unlit area in a large room that has very well lit other parts the in shadow parts have this blue colour cast over them, which is a part of the visual style I believe but something is going wrong with it and its far too strongly applied.

If I drop brightness down to 40 I can remove the blue hue but now those same areas are actually crushed, ie just dark in terms of not being able to see anything - not in terms of actual brightness of the pixels though, they are very elevated/grey and you can only see near black if you drop brightness down to something really low like 25, it doesn't need to be pure black obviously, but I don't want it to be glowing otherwise, my TV is just doing what its told and it could produce much much deeper blacks if it was asked to in this situation - but that ruins the other areas that look great at the default brightness value of 50.

I played with it at 40 for a while and just accepted crushed blacks in those areas over elevated blacks but still too dark to make out any detail. Then I got to the AWE DLC and parts are unplayable at 40 brightness and even the blue hue is better because you can at least see a bit of what you're doing in these overly dark areas.

If I run the game with PS5 in HDR mode all I get is an further elevated black level but its everywhere now, so it ruins the scenes that looked fine, which leads to more blooming because its an impossible task for LCD to show what its asking - ie max brightness highlights over grey blacks - and also makes the highlights and lights look like you've turned on dynamic tonemapping on the TV, ie artificial and bad for me. So I definitely wouldn't recommend doing that, it just makes the problem worse, if you really like the increased brightness from highlights then just turn on DTM in your TV settings.

If the game doesn't say its HDR then setting the PS5 to HDR is not recommended, also make sure if you are changing from SDR to HDR in the console settings then restart the game fully as soon games don't have a toggle and just output according to the PS5 settings at launch so it can produce weirdness if you change mid-game. Even RE8 that has the toggle is broken if you turn off HDR in the PS5 settings while the game is running, you go back to the game and the HDR toggle is greyed out but if you check the brightness calibration pattern it wont function properly anymore and you need to restart the game.

Hopefully they can fix it in Control: UE soon, but I'm nearly finished now anyway.

I really want them to add a PS5 auto-HDR setting that turns the system-level HDR off at game launch if the game says it only has SDR and back on when the game exits. It gets tiring changing it back and forth all the time.
 

Kuranghi

Member
There does seem to be something thats confusing devs about how it outputs the signal on a base level, with PS5, be that SDR or HDR.

Control has the issues I mentioned above and thats SDR but Miles Morales has some issues with crushed blacks but only in a very small number of areas in the open world, specifically interiors that are still part of the open world, like when you are hunting for the caches. It was only like 3 times I saw in total though so maybe thats just an oversight.

Actually one time was outside, in the open world, it was under the train tracks, a homeless slum all in shadow and that was weirdly crushed. It didn't matter if I quit the whole game, changed my HDR calibration setings to elevate the black level a lot and then went back into the game, these areas were still crushed.
 
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kingpotato

Ask me about my Stream Deck
Crazy that a new console doesn't support outdated low end tv standards. I really hope the PS5 doesn't lose any audio fidelity when playing on a mono setup...

Who can afford a $600 console but not a $300 tv?

HDR makes a world of difference in picture quality and well worth an upgrade for any holdouts.


Edit: From the comments above mine, I may have misunderstood the issue. Don't let that stop you from buying a set that has HDR though.
 
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The only game I've had issues with is Control:UE, with PS5 in SDR output mode the games gamma is messed up in certain areas, its not crushed blacks though imo, its sometime to do with the eye adaptation and the different gamma curves they use for each area/room.

Many places look great, but when its an unlit area in a large room that has very well lit other parts the in shadow parts have this blue colour cast over them, which is a part of the visual style I believe but something is going wrong with it and its far too strongly applied.

If I drop brightness down to 40 I can remove the blue hue but now those same areas are actually crushed, ie just dark in terms of not being able to see anything - not in terms of actual brightness of the pixels though, they are very elevated/grey and you can only see near black if you drop brightness down to something really low like 25, it doesn't need to be pure black obviously, but I don't want it to be glowing otherwise, my TV is just doing what its told and it could produce much much deeper blacks if it was asked to in this situation - but that ruins the other areas that look great at the default brightness value of 50.

I played with it at 40 for a while and just accepted crushed blacks in those areas over elevated blacks but still too dark to make out any detail. Then I got to the AWE DLC and parts are unplayable at 40 brightness and even the blue hue is better because you can at least see a bit of what you're doing in these overly dark areas.

If I run the game with PS5 in HDR mode all I get is an further elevated black level but its everywhere now, so it ruins the scenes that looked fine, which leads to more blooming because its an impossible task for LCD to show what its asking - ie max brightness highlights over grey blacks - and also makes the highlights and lights look like you've turned on dynamic tonemapping on the TV, ie artificial and bad for me. So I definitely wouldn't recommend doing that, it just makes the problem worse, if you really like the increased brightness from highlights then just turn on DTM in your TV settings.

If the game doesn't say its HDR then setting the PS5 to HDR is not recommended, also make sure if you are changing from SDR to HDR in the console settings then restart the game fully as soon games don't have a toggle and just output according to the PS5 settings at launch so it can produce weirdness if you change mid-game. Even RE8 that has the toggle is broken if you turn off HDR in the PS5 settings while the game is running, you go back to the game and the HDR toggle is greyed out but if you check the brightness calibration pattern it wont function properly anymore and you need to restart the game.

Hopefully they can fix it in Control: UE soon, but I'm nearly finished now anyway.

I really want them to add a PS5 auto-HDR setting that turns the system-level HDR off at game launch if the game says it only has SDR and back on when the game exits. It gets tiring changing it back and forth all the time.
So does sdr mode work properly on ps5 or are the games you mentioned wrong in sdr because of the game's tone mapping? If you play an sdr only game like killzone will it be displayed properly if you turn off hdr in the system settings?

Either way, Sony needs to fix this always on Hdr nonsense
 

Kuranghi

Member
So does sdr mode work properly on ps5 or are the games you mentioned wrong in sdr because of the game's tone mapping? If you play an sdr only game like killzone will it be displayed properly if you turn off hdr in the system settings?

Either way, Sony needs to fix this always on Hdr nonsense

I don't know for definite, but SDR output looks fine to me for the PS4 games that don't have HDR I've tried, as long as I turn off HDR in the PS5 settings, eg, I played an hour or so of God of War in SDR and didnt seem to have any issues to me. The only PS5 game that doesn't have HDR I've had issues with is Control, but as I said that appears to be the game, Digital Foundry said it had "gamma issues" in the eurogamer article they wrote and the devs were investigating it, they released a patch and all it seems to do was raise up the shadows in a bad way, it made them more grey/blue, you can still tell there is a problem that wasn't present on Xbox or the original PC release.

As long as I turn off HDR in PS5 settings the SDR games look correct, whether its PS4 or PS5 games. Although I don't own many PS5 games without HDR, I'm still unclear if Bugsnax has HDR tbh, if it doesn't then its SDR output looks more correct/better when the PS5 is set to HDR output so fucks know man, its a fucking nightmare tbh when the game doesn't have an HDR toggle and the devs won't say definitely. I think Bugsnax could be a case of they tested the game with the PS5 set to output HDR even though the game is outputting SDR and they altered the look of the game to make it look correct under the "SDR in an HDR container" conditions.

The reason I think that is because on PC it never looked right to me and the game definitely has no HDR output there. It was probably developed for PS5 primarily. I meant to say when Miles Morales has the crushed black areas its in HDR, but even if I went out and set PS5 to SDR it was still happening, just even worse so I think thats the game.

TL;DR - Most games are fine in SDR or HDR but you need to set PS5 to SDR output for SDR games to be accurately output to your display, the issues I speak of are game specific imo.
 
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buenoblue

Member
Yeah I have a phillips ambilight with terrible hdr, when first got my ps5 all my non hdr games looked totally off and washed out. Turned of hdr and they look great.
 

Three

Member
I know you’re confused about your attraction to Alex, but that’s something for you to deal with on your own. Don’t take it out on him!


It does now, it’s well documented, and it’s why nobody uses ps5 in SDR, only in its weird HDR wrapper for SDR content. Games usually work fine but it’s generally something to avoid for most media. Personally I just use my TVs built in apps to avoids issues like this on PS5 and XSX
Media works fine on PS5. Bluray and netflix. Colour gamut is fine too. XSX exhibits banding but PS5 has absolutely no issue in SDR media as far as I know.
 

01011001

Banned
Man, I don't know. I played Control on PS5 (which I believe is SDR only?), and didn't notice any color issue.

I'm sure Alex isn't lying, but my question is are these issues big enough that most gamers will even notice?

Having said that, a third-option for the HDR settings on PS5 would be nice.

do you have an HDR screen? if you will not have this issue since the PS5 displays everything in HDR if it is on in the settings. it simply tonemaps the SDR image onto an HDR output.
 
imagine people defending this... god fanboys are the worst. i just turned off HDR until this is fixed, i am not gonna switch it on and off per game basis
Problem with that is some games are gimped in sdr mode, off the top of my head, wipeout omega and far cry 5 on ps4. Surely there’s quite a few of em’.

Honestly... I have to wonder if Sony will fix this, with them being on their perch and all. Only if enough people complain, probably.
 
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Moonjt9

Member
I’m playing dark souls 3 on ps5 and it looks better than when I played on PS4 so I’m not really sure what the issue is.

As for Control, I also played that recently and they patched the game to fix the weird black levels. Looks great now.
 

Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
do you have an HDR screen? if you will not have this issue since the PS5 displays everything in HDR if it is on in the settings. it simply tonemaps the SDR image onto an HDR output.
Oh okay. So SDR content on an SDR screen will cause the issue? My bad.

I thought the problem is with the auto-HDR layer that PS5 is adding on top of an SDR content on an HDR screen.
 

DJTaurus

Member
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Some of you goobers sure are acting a fool to protect mother Sony from something you don't even understand... I'm just browsing the thread but it's a little jarring
 

skneogaf

Member
I turn off hdr in Windows when I know the game doesn't have hdr as it looks wrong so not surprised some are unhappy with the ps5 forcing games to play with hdr turned on.

I imagine it's to do with the UI being hdr so it won't get changed as as it's exclusive full screen.
 
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