Nvidia TrueHDR and Elite

[de_richleau]

In case anyone's not aware, the Nvidia TrueHDR mod works on Elite Dangerous to convert the game to HDR. Well worth having a look if you have an RTX card and a HDR monitor or OLED screen etc.

It's similar to Windows AutoHDR in concept, but works far better, and does not raise the black levels in the way autohdr does.

It's a nice wee graphical boost to the game. The mod is here:

https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/781

If you plan on using it I would suggest also downloading the TrueHDRTweaks settings file, which is linked further down the mod page, which allows some of the settings to be adjusted to avoid colour shift (I've only used the mod with these tweaks so I don't know if colour shift actually is an issue for Elite, but it's a simple matter to add the tweaks so you may as well.)

 

[Morbad]

How does RTX HDR compare to what can be done with SpecialK's HDR retrofit? I haven't been able to find any good comparisons and can't do one myself as I only have one Windows 11 system, which isn't a gaming setup.

 

[rootsrat]

In case anyone's not aware, the Nvidia TrueHDR mod works on Elite Dangerous to convert the game to HDR. Well worth having a look if you have an RTX card and a HDR monitor or OLED screen etc.

It's similar to Windows AutoHDR in concept, but works far better, and does not raise the black levels in the way autohdr does.

It's a nice wee graphical boost to the game. The mod is here:

https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/781

If you plan on using it I would suggest also downloading the TrueHDRTweaks settings file, which is linked further down the mod page, which allows some of the settings to be adjusted to avoid colour shift (I've only used the mod with these tweaks so I don't know if colour shift actually is an issue for Elite, but it's a simple matter to add the tweaks so you may as well.)

Nice! I just bought a HDR screen and was looking forward to seeing how it will play with elite!

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Unless I'm reading it wrong, RTX HDR appears to be part of the nVidia app and is currently in beta. Sounds interesting, but I'm loathe to do beta stuff on me rig

Overly cautious? Moi?

 

[Morbad]

I just bought a HDR screen and was looking forward to seeing how it will play with elite!

This is an example of what I was able to achieve with SpecialK:

Source: https://youtu.be/Q1jnK_m8xWw?t=870

Settings are rather conservative as I wanted to enhance the image, not mangle it or sear my eyeballs too much. Still not sure how it compares with RTX HDR.

Note that YouTube's HDR streams are only viewable with HDR enabled in Windows on a Chromium based browser.

Overly cautious?

Yes.

Anyway, the new control panel and RTX HDR support are in the latest production driver that was released today.

 

[GroG79]

I had to drop the windows HDR on EDO.. It was just horrible. For instance in the FSS.

 

[GroG79]

oh noes....

Do I have to sign up

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I had to drop the windows HDR on EDO.. It was just horrible. For instance in the FSS.

I have Windows HDR on... the only thing it seems to do is make colours less vibrant.

Yes.

Anyway, the new control panel and RTX HDR support are in the latest production driver that was released today.

Hmm, OK.

I realise things are better these days but new drivers trashed my PC once - quite a few years ago though

I wonder if my RTX3080 will benefit...

 

[de_richleau]

Wasn't aware it had become officially supported (albeit as part of a beta program), so that was good timing.

I haven't used the SpecialK HDR, so I don't know how it compares to that. Overclockers forums say its less hassle to set up than SpecialK, but haven't commented on whether the end result is better or worse.

I've tried it compared to Windows autohd though, and to my mind it's much better than that. autohd made my blacks grey unless I fiddled with the gamma, which made some of the other colours look worse. The nvidia version (at least with the additional tweaks file) kept the blacks properly OLED black and worked with the same gamma settings for me as SDR.

One thing it doesn't allow is use of the RTX HDR along with DSR, which is a pity as DSR worked well to limit Elite's aliasing for me. I wondered if the newer more official version will allow both to run together, but from the notes it still says DSR has to be disabled.

 

[Morbad]

I have Windows HDR on... the only thing it seems to do is make colours less vibrant.

SDR content rarely looks better with HDR enabled in Windows. A good display with proper support can look good enough to just leave it on, but for most HDR setups HDR should only be enabled when actually viewing HDR content.

A lot of nominally HDR displays can't do justice to HDR content either. In general, you want a wide gamut IPS or VA panel with local dimming that can do at least 600 nits peak brightness for HDR to be worthwhile. An OLED or 1000+ nit FALD LCD is much better.

Windows 11 auto HDR tries to adapt SDR content to HDR and is pretty hit or miss. I tried it once and felt 3rd party HDR injectors were superior, so never bothered to move to Windows 11 on most of my systems.

Hmm, OK.

I realise things are better these days but new drivers trashed my PC once - quite a few years ago though

I wonder if my RTX3080 will benefit...

It's pretty unusual for drivers to harm anything that cannot be fixed by rolling back the driver. About the only driver I can think of that could cause actual damage was an old NVIDIA driver that forced the fan speed on certain cards too low, which caused issues for some even older, but still supported, GPUs that couldn't thermally throttle. This was more than a decade ago and the driver in question wasn't even a beta.

Most other reports are extremely sketchy and the damage they report is almost certainly coincidental.

I haven't used the SpecialK HDR, so I don't know how it compares to that. Overclockers forums say its less hassle to set up than SpecialK, but haven't commented on whether the end result is better or worse.

SpecialK has a learning curve, and most other custom HDR injectors are even more complex, but that's where I'm coming from and I have no issues with hand-tuning things in config files, so the optimally achiveable end result is all that really concerns me. I'm sure others will appreciate a more simplified process though.

One thing it doesn't allow is use of the RTX HDR along with DSR, which is a pity as DSR worked well to limit Elite's aliasing for me. I wondered if the newer more official version will allow both to run together, but from the notes it still says DSR has to be disabled.

Certain features like (DL)DSR and DLSSG don't support 16-bit render targets, but some HDR injectors have options to use 10-bit render targets with a mild quality trade off.

For example, this is Starfield with DLDSR, DLSS frame generation, and a custom auto HDR inverse tone map injector mod using 10-bit render targets, running two weeks after launch on Windows Server 2022 (which is based on Windows 10 and has no OS-level AutoHDR):

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsrG44B_wrA

 

[rootsrat]

This is an example of what I was able to achieve with SpecialK:

Source: https://youtu.be/Q1jnK_m8xWw?t=870

Settings are rather conservative as I wanted to enhance the image, not mangle it or sear my eyeballs too much. Still not sure how it compares with RTX HDR.

Thanks, it looks very nice! I'm a fan of conservative settings, I prefer small improvements rather than over the top saturation, blinding whites or weird colour filters or LUT's that change the whole scene tone.

I think I'll make looking into this my little weekend project I never owned or seen HDR monitor before, so I'll need to learn how to record videos in that mode, but I'll try to test and record both solutions and make a comparison video. Not sure if I'll have the time, but we'll see.

I have Windows HDR on... the only thing it seems to do is make colours less vibrant.

Did you use this tool in the first place to calibrate your screen? https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n7f2sm5d1lr?rtc=1&hl=en-gb&gl=GB

And secondly, if you go into HDR settings in Windows 11 (not sure if it's present in earlier versions), you get this slider:

This will make it look much better. I have it set between 45-55% and (after calibration) I found this was the best compromise for me eyes and good looking scenes in HDR, while keeping SDR content actually OK to look at

 

[de_richleau]

There's a video from digital foundry on the RTX HDR, which has a few examples / comparisons etc. Obviously you need to watch the video itself in HDR to get the proper effect.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BditFs3VR9c

 

[Esteban]

And secondly, if you go into HDR settings in Windows 11 (not sure if it's present in earlier versions), you get this slider:

Yup; Windows 10* has the settings for HDR. They're located in: Windows HD Color Settings.
There you can find a slider entitled: HDR/SDR brightness balance. It's not exactly straighforward to judge the actual brightness balance because the colors are markedly different in the two comparison images.



* currently I'm running:
Ver 22H2
OS Build 19045.4046

 

[Morbad]

And secondly, if you go into HDR settings in Windows 11 (not sure if it's present in earlier versions), you get this slider:
View attachment 384355

This will make it look much better. I have it set between 45-55% and (after calibration) I found this was the best compromise for me eyes and good looking scenes in HDR, while keeping SDR content actually OK to look at

There you can find a slider entitled: HDR/SDR brightness balance. It's not exactly straighforward to judge the actual brightness balance because the colors are markedly different in the two comparison images.

If Windows has correct luminance values, either from the monitor EDID data, manual registry settings, or the Windows HDR calibration stuff, then this slider corresponds to a white point of 80 nits (which is the default sRGB target) at zero and adds four nits per percent. Most SDR content will usually look best if it's white point is around 200 nits, depending on how bright one's environment is. 45-55% will be a bit bright on most correctly calibrated dislays, especially in a darker room, but is probably fine for normal lighting.

You can also directly edit the registry value for much finer granularity, should you need to more precisely calibrate the display. For example, some content authorities explicitly suggest 203 nits for the SDR white point on HDR displays; the closest you can get is by setting SDRWhiteLevel , under "HKLM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers\MonitorDataStore\'monitornamehere'", to a decimal value of "2538".

DISPLAYCONFIG_SDR_WHITE_LEVEL - Win32 apps

The DISPLAYCONFIG_SDR_WHITE_LEVEL structure (wingdi.h) contains information about a display's current SDR white level.

learn.microsoft.com

Unfortunately for me, my current main display doesn't map SDR content very well and has local dimming issues if I go past 120 nits (10%) on the slider, so I usually only enable HDR on it when I'm actually looking at HDR content.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

SDR content rarely looks better with HDR enabled in Windows. A good display with proper support can look good enough to just leave it on, but for most HDR setups HDR should only be enabled when actually viewing HDR content.

A lot of nominally HDR displays can't do justice to HDR content either. In general, you want a wide gamut IPS or VA panel with local dimming that can do at least 600 nits peak brightness for HDR to be worthwhile. An OLED or 1000+ nit FALD LCD is much better.

Windows 11 auto HDR tries to adapt SDR content to HDR and is pretty hit or miss. I tried it once and felt 3rd party HDR injectors were superior, so never bothered to move to Windows 11 on most of my systems.



It's pretty unusual for drivers to harm anything that cannot be fixed by rolling back the driver. About the only driver I can think of that could cause actual damage was an old NVIDIA driver that forced the fan speed on certain cards too low, which caused issues for some even older, but still supported, GPUs that couldn't thermally throttle. This was more than a decade ago and the driver in question wasn't even a beta.

Most other reports are extremely sketchy and the damage they report is almost certainly coincidental.



SpecialK has a learning curve, and most other custom HDR injectors are even more complex, but that's where I'm coming from and I have no issues with hand-tuning things in config files, so the optimally achiveable end result is all that really concerns me. I'm sure others will appreciate a more simplified process though.



Certain features like (DL)DSR and DLSSG don't support 16-bit render targets, but some HDR injectors have options to use 10-bit render targets with a mild quality trade off.

For example, this is Starfield with DLDSR, DLSS frame generation, and a custom auto HDR inverse tone map injector mod using 10-bit render targets, running two weeks after launch on Windows Server 2022 (which is based on Windows 10 and has no OS-level AutoHDR):

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsrG44B_wrA

Thanks, it looks very nice! I'm a fan of conservative settings, I prefer small improvements rather than over the top saturation, blinding whites or weird colour filters or LUT's that change the whole scene tone.

I think I'll make looking into this my little weekend project I never owned or seen HDR monitor before, so I'll need to learn how to record videos in that mode, but I'll try to test and record both solutions and make a comparison video. Not sure if I'll have the time, but we'll see.


Did you use this tool in the first place to calibrate your screen? https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9n7f2sm5d1lr?rtc=1&hl=en-gb&gl=GB

And secondly, if you go into HDR settings in Windows 11 (not sure if it's present in earlier versions), you get this slider:
View attachment 384355

This will make it look much better. I have it set between 45-55% and (after calibration) I found this was the best compromise for me eyes and good looking scenes in HDR, while keeping SDR content actually OK to look at

This is really useful stuff. Thanks!

I need to do some tinkering, it seems.

 

[Dragsham]

Stupid question : does HDR work for VR?
I've got a 3090fe and a hdr 4k monitor but I just wanna know if it works in VR?

 

[jojon]

I am not aware of any (EDIT: retail...) headsets bright enough, or with enough effective colour depth at the near-black rage to make it really worthwhile -- PSVR2, I believe, does some sort of limited bit of it, OLED is slowly making a return, several LCD headsets have local dimming, and VR runtimes have had support for 10 bit formats added to them, so who knows what we may see in the future... Probably not too soon, though, given the current infatuation with pancake optics, which throws away almost all the light that goes into it.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I just installed the nVidia app to try out the HDR thing.

A point to note - and why I (sort of) can't use it:

I have two monitors. One is a 4K screen that is HDR capable but my second screen isn't. The app doesn't cater for this and requires the non-DHR screen to be disconnected. I could do that to try it out but... that's a faff.

 

[Morbad]

I just installed the nVidia app to try out the HDR thing.

A point to note - and why I (sort of) can't use it:

I have two monitors. One is a 4K screen that is HDR capable but my second screen isn't. The app doesn't cater for this and requires the non-DHR screen to be disconnected. I could do that to try it out but... that's a faff.

Is your HDR capable display the primary display?

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

Is your HDR capable display the primary display?

Yes, it is.