RDR2: A disappointing HDR mode

BlimBlim
Sunday, October 28, 2018 | 3:21 PM
13 comments

GSY Video PS4 Xbox One

Red Dead Redemption 2 is clearly one of the most impressive technical achievement for this generation of consoles (except on the OG Xbox One...), but there is one disappointing thing about it: its HDR mode. It's of course there, and it's even possible to calibrate it somewhat, but at its best it doesn't really had much, and I'd say that at its worse it makes the image slightly less believable than without it. You'll be able to see how it looks through these 3 videos from the first 30 minutes of the game, captured on Xbox One X. We are also finally moving to a fully HDR capable editing and encoding toolchain with these videos, so right now our "intro" looks way too saturated. Everything else should work normally, and as usual we recommend copying the files to a USB thumbdrive and playing them on your smart tv, or even using Youtube.
Update: Added one last video, just because I found a way to fix the intro colors :)

Téléchargement

Commented on 2018-10-28 11:50:43

So if I have a HDR TV, it is better to play RDR2 in SDR mode?

In reply to

BlimBlim

Commented on 2018-10-28 11:54:05 In reply to Simplex

Posted by Simplex

Many people actually opted to do so!

vansant

Commented on 2018-10-28 13:05:04

Huh. I wasn't blown away by the hdr so I'm not surprised by this write up. But that said I went back and forth and found it was better with hdr.

Xion4360

Commented on 2018-10-28 13:57:24

I turned it off too. Unless you have an OLED screen HDR looks too dull. I cranked up the brightness to 300 (recommended for OLED but I have a LCD) so it doesnt look so dull, but it still has a somewhat saturated look and the dark spots are washed out, some banding too. there isnt a way to make it look right unless you have a high end OLED tv..so SDR is the way to go. It can look too dark though, might have to adjust the brightness.

Commented on 2018-10-28 15:23:14 In reply to Xion4360

Even on my Oled (LG C8) I have disabled it. It makes the colors look dull, among other things.

KORNdog

Commented on 2018-10-28 17:40:09

Is this a case of fake hdr like Nier Automata by any chance? The results people are getting sound the same.

Commented on 2018-10-28 17:47:20 In reply to BlimBlim

So it's just a bad implementation. Shame recent games like spider man and God of war look so good in hdr.

Loakum

Commented on 2018-10-29 05:50:16

But SOME folks attempted to tell me it has better graphics, lighting, and testures than Horizon Zero Dawn! Ha! *walks away with a wicked grin*

marker

Commented on 2018-10-29 17:07:22

I am 1080P user but HDR for me more important than 4K. So I hope devs give this more importance.

Commented on 2018-10-30 13:01:53

DF have done an analysis now and it seems it is in fact faked like Nier Automata. i don't understand why they'd bother putting it in if it's shit given the quality of the rest of the visuals? or more importantly, why they couldn't have proper HDR in there?