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What is HDR, anyway?

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790 points _kush | 6 comments | 14 May 25 12:46 UTC | HN request time: 1.174s | source | bottom
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gyomu ◴[14 May 25 13:44 UTC] No.43984462[source]▶
As a photographer, I get the appeal of (this new incarnation of) HDR content, but the practical reality is that the photos I see posted in my feeds go from making my display looking normal to having photos searing my retinas, while other content that was uniform white a second prior now looks dull gray.

It's late night here so I was reading this article in dark mode, at a low display brightness - and when I got to the HDR photos I had to turn down my display even more to not strain my eyes, then back up again when I scrolled to the text.

For fullscreen content (games, movies) HDR is alright, but for everyday computing it's a pretty jarring experience as a user.

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dmos62 ◴[14 May 25 15:40 UTC] No.43985865[source]▶
That's not inherent to HDR though. BFV (unless I'm confusing it with something else) has a HDR adjustment routine where you push a slider until the HDR white and the SDR white are identical. Same could be done for desktop environments. In my experience, HDR support is very lacking in PCs atm. You can't even play Dolby Vision on Windows, which is the only widely-used HDR format with dynamic metadata.
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Suppafly ◴[14 May 25 15:57 UTC] No.43986066[source]▶
>HDR support is very lacking in PCs atm.

I think it's because no one wants it.

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1. altairprime ◴[14 May 25 17:00 UTC] No.43986780[source]▶
No; Windows 10 barely supports it, and of my hundreds of Steam games, exactly none have any code making use of it; seemingly only AAA mega-budget games have the pipeline bandwidth, but e.g. Dune Imperium and Spaceways have no reason to use it and so don’t bother. Windows 11 focused on improving wide color support which is much more critical, as any game shipping for Mac/Win already has dealt with that aspect of the pipeline and has drabified their game for the pre-Win11 ICC nightmares. Even games like Elite Dangerous, which would be a top candidate for both HDR and wide color, don’t handle this yet; their pipeline is years old and I don’t envy them the work of trying to update it, given how they’re overlaying the in-game UI in the midst of their pipeline.

(It doesn’t help that Windows only allows HDR to be defined in EDID and monitor INF files, and that PC monitors start shutting off calibration features when HDR is enabled because their chipsets can’t keep up — just as most modern Sony televisions can’t do both Dolby Vision and VRR because that requires too much processing power for their design budget.)

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2. Suppafly ◴[14 May 25 17:23 UTC] No.43987049[source]▶
Nothing you're written disproves that no one wants it, if anything the fact that nothing really supports it implies that it's not a valuable feature that people are clamoring for.
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3. altairprime ◴[14 May 25 18:37 UTC] No.43987811[source]▶
Given how popular it is in modern console AAA gaming, which many people do play on PCs, one can reasonably expect that any studio desiring to target high contrast gaming — a valuable niche for stealth games, where a bright torch should absolutely stand out brightly against the darkest shadows, as well as star exploration and anything with landscapes or specular highlights — would like to be targeting HDR on PC, if only to simplify their cross-platform build and test pipelines, but cannot due to platform barriers that don’t exist for consoles.
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4. Suppafly ◴[14 May 25 22:03 UTC] No.43989679{3}[source]▶
>Given how popular it is in modern console AAA gaming

What are some of the games where it's necessary?

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5. qingcharles ◴[14 May 25 23:26 UTC] No.43990234[source]▶
It's an absolute mess on Windows. It's one area where I totally bow to Apple's vertical integration which makes this stuff flawless.
6. altairprime ◴[15 May 25 10:17 UTC] No.43993534{4}[source]▶
You’ll have to do that research yourself, apologies; I haven’t looked for that data and so I don’t have it available for you.