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Am I doing HDR wrong? (feddit.nu)
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Cralder@feddit.nu to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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I have never used an HDR display before so I'm not sure how it's supposed to look.

I have been playing Spider-man both with and without HDR and unless I'm staring right into the sun there is literally no difference. I have always heard people talk about HDR as something incredible but I'm honestly disappointed.

I also played Tetris effect: connected and HDR seemed to just make all the menus darker, but the rest looked the same.

Have I done something wrong or is this how it is supposed to be?

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[-] conciselyverbose@kbin.social 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

HDR stands for high dynamic range. It means you can have detail in shadows and highlights without losing detail in the middle.

At the end of the day, it's just how your computer or console talks to the display. It doesn't change what your display is capable of. It can't magically make colors more vibrant, for example. What it does instead, with a quality display, is allow you to make specific colors more vibrant while keeping their detail, without losing it elsewhere. It should usually be subtle, except in specific showcases designed to push the edges of what HDR can do.

It also doesn't make a mediocre display not mediocre. If it can't accurately present the whole range, receiving it doesn't help a lot.

Edit: oh, didn't realize this is the steam deck sub. You probably can get actual feedback on the quality of the display, then. But it will still really only make a difference to quality if the developers made a specific effort to utilize it. Realistically, that's mostly on high quality lighting the steam deck can't really do.

[-] stu@lemmy.pit.ninja 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah, the difference should be easily visible assuming one has quality source material and a nice display. I was kind of assuming OP was talking about using the Steam Deck in docked mode, but maybe that was a bad assumption.

[-] Cralder@feddit.nu 8 points 7 months ago

Sorry I should have been more clear. I'm using the steam deck oled with the regular display, not an external display.

[-] conciselyverbose@kbin.social -5 points 7 months ago

Someone else said the actual OLED doesn't support it. I never paid attention because I talked myself out of needing one, but if that's the case you obviously wouldn't see it on the deck screen.

I think you'd run into the limitations of render quality for most stuff 3D, though. There might be 2D games that play with it, and I'm guessing there are demo videos. I know my first (non-HDR) OLED I enjoyed trying some OLED demo clips out to really see what it could do.

[-] Cralder@feddit.nu 14 points 7 months ago

The oled deck does support hdr, dont know why some people are claiming ut doesn't.

General HDR is not supported in Linux yet though, only in games. So videos are unfortunately not a thing I can use for comparison.

[-] averyminya@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

The ability to display HDR mapping and actually being HDR are two different things which leads to this confusion a lot.

The Steam Deck (OLED) can display HDR, but it itself is not "true" HDR, essentially due to the nit output of the screen.

This is why things often look weird with HDR (in general on non-HDR monitors) - it suggests there's the capability of showing the HDR mapping but there is no support from the display to make sense of the mapping. This is when things look washed out or have a soft of halo shimmering effect.

From my understanding, the OLED is able to display HDR content mapping natively, but itself is not true HDR (basically due to not being bright enough). An example of this in action would be Spider-Man OLED Native (1), Spider-Man OLED Docked with a true HDR display (2), with Spider-Man non-oled HDR on (3) (if possible) and HDR off (4) for reference.

With 1), you see the Steam Deck's ability to display HDR

With 2), you see the displays ability to display HDR

With 3), you see what HDR looks like on a non HDR display

With 4) you see what HDR looks like on a HDR display

Basically, the Steam Deck screen can display HDR content but isn't true HDR because it caps out at 1,000 nits. External displays supporting HDR can take advantage of it, and generally even HDR-lite still "looks good". There's a number of monitor manufacturers that claim HDR but it's actually HDR-400. IIRC the Steam Deck is HDR-1000, but true HDR can go all the way to 4,000 nits which is why the Deck isn't "true" HDR.

This is all just my understanding from information I've gathered over time and I'm likely somewhat inaccurate, but I think overall it's a good guideline that explains the differences.

Hope that clears things up!

[-] stu@lemmy.pit.ninja 7 points 7 months ago

To be clear, you're not going to find many displays that can reach 4,000 nits yet. A lot of HDR content actually is mastered for 1,000 nits and that's considered kind of the target for the mid-high range OLEDs right now. My pretty much top of the line QD-OLED Samsung S95C maxes out at something like 1350 nits. A 1000 nit capable Steam Deck OLED has plenty of range in luminance for HDR to be effective there. And I'm sure it's got pretty good color reproduction which is the other big aspect of HDR.

One thing we haven't talked about is the possibility that the Steam Deck is enhancing SDR content with dynamic tone mapping to such a degree that it's difficult to tell the difference when you actually enable true HDR. I'd really have to see this with my own eyes to be able to say with more certainty what's going on.

[-] averyminya@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

Good clarification, I did forget to mention that 1000 nits is the standard with many going a bit above

[-] sfcl33t@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Can you describe how you are enabling it? In-game? Are you adjusting it in game after enabling it? Is your deck itself set to full brightness (you obviously won't get the full 1000 nits if not)

[-] Cralder@feddit.nu 1 points 7 months ago

Enabled it in-game. Tried default setting at first then raised the in-game max brightness from 1000 nits to 1200 nits to see if there was a difference but there wasn't.

I just tried raising the deck brightness and that actually made it look a bit better. I feel kinda dumb now that I didn't try that before. Still not the amazing difference people made it out to be but i could actually see a little bit of difference now, at least when I look at something bright.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 points 7 months ago

People make HDR out to be a big deal. In reality it is barely even noticeable. Like going from 4k to 8k or 120 to 240Hz. Most people can't even tell the difference.

[-] Cralder@feddit.nu 5 points 7 months ago

Thanks for the input. I got confused when people said Tetris effect looked "sooo much better" with HDR and I wasn't seeing any difference at all.

[-] Telorand@reddthat.com 7 points 7 months ago

HDR, from what I loosely understand, is related to the color gamut (the reds, greens, and blues) the display can produce. The sRGB coverage used on most displays today is the BT 709 standard. HDR is the newer DCI-P3 standard, and it covers a wider range of colors.

But that's why games and systems that don't support those extra colors won't give you any extra "oomph" on an HDR display (because it's only coded to utilize the capabilities of an SDR display).

I recommend this article for further reading: https://tomshardware.com/news/what-is-hdr-monitor,36585.html

[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 7 months ago

HDR is actually the BT.2020 color gamut. Films mastered in HDR typically use DCI-P3 because that's the standard for theaters, but it's a smaller color gamut than BT.2020, which is what even HDR10 (the most common form of HDR with the lowest specs) supports.

[-] Telorand@reddthat.com 1 points 7 months ago

The article I cited says that modern HDR hardware can't actually reach BT.2020, though that's the ultimate goal.

Has that changed?

[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 7 months ago

No, it can't. Most hardware is targeting DCI-P3 (though some goes beyond it) because that's what films are targeting in the mastering process, but HDR10 and all other HDR protocols (HDR10+, Dolby Vision, etc) all use the BT.2020 spec on the software side of things.

In other words, the software is ahead of the hardware for now.

[-] jeanofthedead@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago

Idk about most people… the difference in black levels is willlld.

[-] BruceTwarzen@kbin.social 2 points 7 months ago

I still don't know how my HDR works or if. I feel like every time it's enabled it looks weird. Maybe because it's different, or maybe i'm doing it wrong but it's to much of a hassle to play with the settings. I feel like on the tv it's a bit different where i think it looks better.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 2 points 7 months ago

Honestly in many cases it looks worse, and even the opposite of "high dynamic range". I don't get the hype.

[-] osprior@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Likely you haven't seen it on a good display. It is quite noticeable and a big improvement on a nice display. HDR 400 is not really HDR and not worth running it in that mode if that's all your display supports.

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've seen it on SD OLED

As well as several HDR monitors.

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

If nothing else it should make the screen a heck of a lot brighter, max brightness is limited to 600 nits with SDR content but goes up to 1000 nits with HDR. For comparison, the LCD deck peaks at around 400, while this is 1400 from a 32" monitor.

Might also require correct HDR settings from the game to work properly? Not sure, don't have one myself.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago

I have 2 Samsung HDR televisions and I'll never buy another one. The image is dark, muddy and unwatchable in HDR. The only fix is disabling it on all connected devices.

[-] not_a_bot_i_swear@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Aren't there different "levels" of HDR? Most cheap TV's only support HDR10 which basically does nothing. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the only quality the Steamdeck supports too. I haven't checked the specs though.

Edit: Nevermind, this is wrong :)

[-] luci_tired@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

The new steamdeck oled has a peak brightness of 1000nits so I'm pretty sure its real HDR, and in the games I've tried it does look nice.

[-] sfcl33t@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

That's not what HDR10 means at all, it's just a different data encoding standard. Like Blu rays vs HDDVDs. A properly encoded HDR10 looks just as bright/dark in a proper monitor

[-] not_a_bot_i_swear@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Huh, you're right. I just looked it up. I was under the impression that there is also an HDR100 and 200 and so on. Thanks for pointing it out!

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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