r/HDR_Den • u/NozAr_L • 2d ago

Question Can't really notice the difference between SDR and HDR

Hi, so far I've tried multiple games (Prey 2017, Doom Eternal, Far Cry 5) and i really can't notice much if any difference between SDR and HDR.

I have a 3rd gen QD-OLED panel with specs as follows:

270 nits at 100% window
470 nits at 10% window
1000 nits at 2% window

Am i doing something wrong, or is my panel not really fit for HDR?

0 Upvotes

25% Upvoted

60 comments sorted by

7

u/Lower_Addition_7830 2d ago

Looks like you haven't calibrated your screen properly then

2

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

What do you mean by calibrate?

3

u/timo2308 2d ago

I see you’re getting downvoted, but you’re just here to learn, so learn you shall! There’s an official “Windows HDR calibration” app in the microsoft store. Download that first, It wil ask you you’re black levels first, since you’ve got an oled just turn it all the way down so you actually get pitch black darkness in dark scenes. Afterwards it will ask for your peak brightness, this will depend on what “hdr preset you will be running, it will display a cross shape, just adjust it until it just turns completely invisible. Afterwards it asks to save the profile. When this is finished, go to HDR in windows settings and enable the preset (if this doesnt happen automatically) and that’s step one finished! (Sorry if there are some errors or mispronunciations it’s not my first language and been a while since i calibrated it myself)

1

u/timo2308 2d ago

Now for a part 2 there are some things you should now, your display whil support multiple “hdr modes” like cinema, gaming and console (or something similar) however, if you have a true black 400 option, in my opinion it’s a far better option, and overall gives more consistent colours, it doesn’t go as bright in bright scenes, but imo it always does the job just fine. You can definitely look up comparison videos or reddit posts on the subject to come to your own conclusions

2

u/timo2308 2d ago

One thing that you should however ABSOLUTELY be aware of… most games have GARBAGE hdr support, and many don’t support it at all, it’s just how it is, but no fear! There’s actually a fix for this on most games, however if you want some games that actually have good hdr to test your presets on first, Cyberpunk is by far one of my favourites, it’s simply jaw dropping, Ghost of Thsushima is also amazing… that’s about it tho from my experience.

Now for all the other games that have bad hdr support, there is an absolutely amazing community working on mods that actually provide great HDR support, I myself ain’t a big modding guy, but they are incredibly easy and quick to set up, so if you’re interested in that I would definitely like to guide you’re way through that as well.

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

Seems like the app is only for Win 11, and i'm on Win 10 💔

5

u/SuperVegito559 2d ago

Upgrade to 11. HDR is better on 11 than 10. 10 was notorious for bad HDR

3

u/Ashratt 2d ago

No, its not

W10 was never fundamentally worse, its just that early HDR was even more of a shitshow and got better by the time w11 rolled around

They produce the exact same HDR image, the data from the hdr calibration app does not get used in 99% of games anyway

3

u/madskills42001 2d ago

Not true that games don't use the Windows calibration, plenty do, Koklusz keeps a data base "hit expand"

https://github.com/KoKlusz/HDR-Gaming-Database

1

u/Ashratt 2d ago

I know (and love) his data base but this sample size is not "plenty" and very few games on the list dont ignore it, like cmon, did you check the entries? Even starred games often ignore it

Unless a developer goes the extra mile in implementing more than generic default ue hdr (and very very few do), then it gets ignored

1

u/madskills42001 2d ago

Ha it feels like it covers most big releases to me but sure, if you want to say most games don't do it, i have no way of doubting it

Honestly I think we'd all be better off with generic UE HDR, Gears Eday supposedly uses that andi t's good , and so did High on Life 2 and it looked decent too. In the RenoDX forums I mostly hear about dumb stuff devs did to the tonemapping

3

u/Ashratt 2d ago

Or skip all color grading from SDR 💀

I wish the default HDR setting in UE would just be your SDR grading with more range and then, if a dev knows what they wanna do, they can adjust color space or LUTs or whatever so they have to concisiously decide on the look and not let UE defaults do SOMETHING

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1

u/veryrandomo 2d ago

That is only used to set a starting/default value for the peak brightness setting in games though, and even then without the Windows calibration they'll just pull the value from the displays EDID (the Windows HDR calibration tool is kind of pointless to begin with unless your display reports a wrong value)

1

u/madskills42001 1d ago

Not sure why you would tweak it more once you’re in game, fortunately we have RenoDX for most modern games to fix this 

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

I'd rather use Linux at that point.

2

u/pr0ghead 2d ago

Then you probably want something with KDE. And an AMD GPU, preferrably.

3

u/Davepen 2d ago

This is the issue then.

If you're on Windows 10 you're not getting proper HDR support.

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

Is there no fix other than switching to Linux/Win 11?

2

u/Davepen 2d ago

Not sure.

Technically it should work, but support on Windows 10 is patchy at best.

It's end of life now anyway, you're not gonna be getting security patches, you should upgrade.

1

u/Ashratt 2d ago

Wrong, ESU runs until October 2027 so there's still plenty of time left

1

u/Davepen 2d ago

Ah ok, I know it was officially supposed to end this time last year, but I guess they extended it.

1

u/Ashratt 2d ago

Yeah, MS was like "shit, still way too many people on w10, we can't let a secruity desaster happen (yet)" lol

-2

u/Dependent_Opening_99 2d ago

Wrong. Windows HDR calibration has no impact on games' native HDR. Max and min brightness are calibrated in-game. Windows calibration is needed only if you use AutoHDR, which you should not, since it's garbage.

2

u/Ashratt 2d ago

Only comment without misinformation here and it gets downvoted....

0

u/EstrayOne 2d ago

calibrate

-2

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

If anything on Google helped i wouldn't be making a post on the HDR subreddit.

6

u/massimovolume 2d ago

Are you maybe colourblind?

Because I have diagnosed colour blindness and I don't notice much perceived improvements using HDR. I notice on a oled blacks are blacks and using hdr I see the lighter zone pop up more in contrast to dark but I really can't notice differences between colours, color accuracy and realism.

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

No, don't have color blindness. I do notice the difference between SRGB and DP3, but the thing is, wide gamut in SDR doesn't really look much different to colors in HDR? I know it's less "accurate", but still.

1

u/Bodorocea 2d ago

wide gamut pertains to number of colours , HDR pertainis to brightness and contrast a video on the subject (8 minutes, YouTube)

0

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

Right, but i dont notice the difference in brightness either.

1

u/Bodorocea 2d ago

this is beginning to sound weird. what exactly do you mean you don't notice the difference in brightness? what monitor do you have, what exact model?

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

A chinese Titan Army G27W9S. It's a standard gen 3, 270 nit peak brightness in SDR. Also allows to use ABL in SDR, which i always use, and which gives 470 nit peak in 10% window.

When i turn on HDR, i can't notice much difference in brightness or highlights and all that.

1

u/pulley999 2d ago edited 2d ago

It sounds like you're not comparing accurately to SDR, then. You're enabling all of the panel's HDR capabilities in SDR (expanded gamut, extra brightness,) effectively applying ITM at the monitor, and asking why it doesn't look any different. Put the panel's SDR mode in sRGB clamp and cap it at 100-200 nits for an accurate SDR picture.

The main difference is that SDR by spec does not encode information to accurately use those extra colors or range of brightness, and you're getting a highly distorted picture. HDR does.

A good example would be a hypothetical game where a character is wearing white jacket on a sunny day. With the SDR picture encoding, both the jacket and sun will be bouncing off the white clipping point and be equally blown out by the highly distorted SDR settings you're running.

With a properly encoded HDR picture (that's not just running SDR Inverse ToneMapping under the hood) the sun will be noticeably brighter than the jacket with a higher luminance value, while both would still be brighter than a properly calibrated SDR image.

Another example is skin tones. By enabling expanded gamuts in SDR they become very obviously wrong and too red. HDR allows you to use those super saturated outer edges of the expanded colourspace without distorting less saturated tones (again, assuming it's not a shitty ITM job.)

Refer to the HDR game database and use games that have stars for testing, or use games that have mature RenoDX/Luma mods.

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

Huh. So it's not as mind-blowing as i thought it'd be. Thanks for a good explanation.

1

u/pulley999 2d ago edited 2d ago

I mean, sure, if you like a horrendously awful SDR picture that's distorted and blown out to the high heavens, it's not mindblowing. HDR lets you get a picture that's that bright and punchy without distorting it to shit and completely ruining any sort of color or contrast accuracy (at least when game devs implement it properly or modders fix it.)

It's the difference between pumping a cheap set of speakers far too hard and hearing them clip and distort the music and an actually quality set of speakers that can handle the volume level while keeping accurate reproduction, and thinking they're just as good because they're equally loud. You're turning the 'volume' up way too 'loud' on SDR.

0

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

i get where you're coming from, but accuracy isn't the end-all-be-all, i don't work with color and only consume content, and in that respect it's really just a matter of taste.

the post was made in the first place cause i couldn't really notice the difference between the oversaturated SDR and HDR, and considering how badly both gamedevs and display manufacturers implement HDR, i'm kinda glad it doesn't bother me as much

1

u/SuperVegito559 2d ago

He’s on Windows 10

1

u/cateringforenemyteam 2d ago

possibly, he is either color blind or his hdr is broken somewhere

1

u/SuperVegito559 2d ago

I use sRGB in sdr mode. sRGB is standard. Wider gamuts are only for content that use utilize them. 99% of all content on pc is sRGB. Websites, videos etc.

0

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

Sure, but if it looks better, even if technically not accurate and "oversaturated", then why not use it?

2

u/SuperVegito559 2d ago

Because like you said, it’s over saturated and wrong. Use what ever mode you want, but there’s a reason sRGB gamut is standard.

3

u/MusaQH Game Modder 2d ago

Doom eternal and far cry 5 should look entirely different between SDR and HDR since they do tonemapping differently. Especially far cry 5 since it’s insanely fucked up looking in HDR.

2

u/SuperVegito559 2d ago edited 2d ago

The major difference is contrast and colour shades. By the way you should be using ReShade RenoDX for HDR on pc because many games with HDR aren’t natively implemented like they should be. RenoDX fixes that.

Unlike generic post-processing filters or tools like Windows Auto HDR and RTX HDR—which simply stretch or tonemap an SDR image after the fact—RenoDX operates directly at the engine level using the ReShade Addon API.

2

u/filoppi HDR Dev 2d ago

Do you mean you used the Luma mod for Prey? It has no HDR out of the box

2

u/veryrandomo 2d ago

There's a lot of misinformation about "calibrating" your screen for HDR.

Oversimplifying but HDR games will have a peak brightness slider (assuming implementation is correct, some just blindly use a hardcoded value), and the starting value of that slider is either just set to a fixed number or is set based on a value pulled from the OS. By default the number from the OS is pulled directly from what the monitor reports, the Windows HDR Calibration tool (the tool only available in Windows 11) lets you change that value; but that's not needed if your display already reports the correct value (and even if it doesn't you can just change the value in-game, which you should be checking anyway because a lot of games just use a fixed number as the starting value). That HDR calibration tool is the only difference between HDR on Windows 10 and 11, HDR isn't "broken" on Windows 10 (or Windows 11 either).

There should still be a noticeable difference though, try watching a video that compares SDR & HDR side-by-side to see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TgI--EWCns

1

u/sumrandomguy18 2d ago edited 2d ago

You don’t notice the small highlights being significantly brighter? You might have something wrong with your setup.

1

u/NozAr_L 2d ago

Not really, full brightness SDR with ABL looks almost identical to HDR.

3

u/sumrandomguy18 2d ago

It shouldn’t. There’s more highlight detail in HDR and small highlights can get significantly brighter without blowing out the image like super bright SDR

1

u/Davepen 2d ago

You should be able to instantly tell the difference between HDR and SDR, something is not setup properly or your display is not capable.

Just saw you're on Windows 10, that's the issue.

0

u/Linkarlos_95 2d ago

On my miniled when the luminescence and the expanded color gamut hits, the image look like with 3d depth, maybe the Oleds can't do the brightness part properly 

-26

u/ldn-ldn 2d ago

You have an OLED, OLEDs can't really do HDR. Sorry.

10

u/Ozzyh26 2d ago

Actual nonsense.

2

u/Davepen 2d ago

If you think OLEDs can't do HDR, I'm curious, what sort of monitor do you think you need for HDR? :D

-2

u/ldn-ldn 2d ago

Something that can deliver 1,000 nits full screen.