Hi there, After a long time out of the PC gaming scene, I've fixed up and I'm back in the game, PC is running a treat but I am struggling to better some of the visuals from my PS4 Pro Whilst I have stonking frame rate at 4k native etc, on PC with a 1080Ti, it all looks a bit flat when I compare it to the output from my PS4 on the same screen. I wonder if I am missing any colour profile stuff or something, I think it's related to the High dynamic Range that is faultering, my TV makes that output look superb on PS4 and when I move my PS4 saves from my 4k HDR to another room with a good 1080p non HDR screen things like Horizon Zero Dawn have that similar flat dull look to them the PC is having. Anyone know how to get the best out of HDR on PC, at the moment for example GT Sport is trumping the image from Forza 7 despite Forza 7 having much higher res and details, it's like I might have a gamma setting or something wrong. Display settings on PC does show I have HDR on. Cheers Sandy
It's still a bit of a clusterf**k at the moment. Remember how you needed the stars aligning and various dark rituals completed to get non-sRGB colourspaces (e.g. AdobeRGB) working properly under Windows? HDR is is kind of the same state at the moment. Nvidia (Gsync 2) and AMD (Freesync 2) both have vendor-specific APIs they are in the process of adding support for that games can optionally target, and Windows exposes some degree of HDR information applications (basically: UWP gets the new APIs, Win 32 can Deal With It the same way it always has due to everyone doing their own thing anyway) can be written to use to be HDR-aware. HDR can't be 'applied' to something designed to assume sRGB as everything up to now has been, because then you'd just get oversaturated colours rather than HDR. Even for games that do portions of their graphics pipeline with wider colour ranges, it's very much non-trivial to take that and hack it to get a HDR compliant output image. Short answer is: it's still down to individual applications to implement HDR support. Forza 7 PC does not appear to have had HDR support added in PC, so you're SOL unfortunately.
Ah I thought there was support for HDR, I guess they want to encourage the best way to play is through AMD hardware on console....grrr, I'm not buying an Xbox just for Forza again been there done that once already. Actually Forza does say it supports HDR on the Windows store, so I'll keep digging.
Which version of Windows are you using? AFAIK 7 and 8/8.1 don't support HDR video. On 10, updating to the fall creators update (which launched the day you started this thread) gives you a new HDR video option in the settings app under "apps > Video Playback" which may help: I don't have an HDR enabled monitor at home and don't want to move my 20kg gaming rig to work just to test it out but this might force-enable HDR mode to a display that supports it. If you have Forza Horizon 3 or ReCore (Definitive Edition) I'd give this a try.
Yes that is enabled and when that is on I can tune HDR in Forza 7 ( with it off the ption doesn't exist) and it looks great but ..... I can't get it to look good in desktop and games, so I have to set for one or the other, my RX480 seems to do a better job of it than my 1080Ti, perhaps I should have bought a Vega. I use Win 10, I see no point sticking to old OS with cutting edge hardware, not when Win10 is on the whole very good. That HDR switch will only enable with the appriopriate HDMI link display setting, had that switch for a while, but may be as I had that update for a few months. Not played with it too much on Nvidia though as one of my 1080Ti died and had to be RMA'd Still doesn't look as good as GT Sport but that is probably artistic differences going by the DF tech showdown of the two titles.
Thought I'd have another look after borrowing a TV from work, far easier to move a 43" HDR 4K TV than my rig... Didn't get very far - the setting I found previously enabled HDR globally and doesn't appear to be app specific (the TV reported HDR being enabled when just viewing the desktop).. Tried a few local videos at 1080p which showed an improvement over normal dynamic range but clearly wasn't native HDR. Native HDR YouTube videos also didn't show much of a benefit. As for Forza, it crashed when I attempted to enter the options menu so can't get anywhere with it. My ReCore install is also not right as it refused to load at all. Trying both on my Xbox One S connected to the same TV worked perfectly. For context, HDR on the Xbox One S is only enabled on a supported game or app - The TV reports no HDR signal when going round the Xbox system menu (opposite of how Windows works with the global setting). I have to assume that neither game has HDR support via Windows or that there's something in the NVidia settings that needs to be changed. IMO the global setting does make a difference but not one worth spending the extra money on.
If turning on HDR on the desktop (or any other application that assumes sRGB, as 99.999% do) results in the colour output changing, then something has already gone wrong.
I think it changes from RGB 8bit to YBR422/420 10 or 12bit (memory is sketchy, can check later) so colour does change. As mentioned I can load up Forza in HDR and get the HDR tuning menu, so the game has it when HDR is enabled.
There's been quite a debate about HDR on the Nvidia forums for a while now. If you look at the following post linky and look at the 2nd post you can see it specifically mentions an issue on HDR. I haven't tried my PC on my HDR TV yet, but my Samsung is one discussed in a previous driver release.
Bits per channel != HDR. You can output sRGB at as many bits per channel as you want, or output a much larger gamut with 8 bits per channel (though enjoy your dramatic gradient banding if you do). HDR is a combination of a larger colourspace, and designated absolute luminance transport (rather than assumed relative luminance).
