Mafia: The Old Country (PC) HDR Analysis

[KoKlusz]

Technical Info:

• Unreal Engine 5.4
• HDR available in the windowed mode
• Ignores peak brightness from EDID/OS calibration
• No apparent sRGB/G2.2 EOTF mismatch in HDR

HDR Settings:

PEAK BRIGHTNESS - values range from 400 nits to 10,000 nits, defaults to 700 nits

BRIGHNTESS - screen brightness (paper white), values range from 50 nits to 400 nits, defaults to 100 nits

HUD BRIGHNTESS - values range from 20 nits to 200 nits, defaults to 100 nits

BLACK POINT - contrast of the near black parts of the image, values range from --1.0 to 1.0, defaults to 0.0

Review:

Color me very impressed. The HDR presentation is excellent, either the game was finalized in HDR or Hangar 13 has someone very competent on their team. Either way, it's very natural and cinematic without feeling muted (at least not when viewed in a dark room).

Shadows are dark, closer to Gamma 2.4 in SDR than 2.2, but never look crushed, the exposure is set just right, peak brightness seems to undertrack a bit, but it's not a big issue unless you care about the numbers more than the actual result, wide color gamut is used but doesn't look oversaturated.

Just good stuff all around, and apparently it's all archived with stock UE HDR, which goes to show that a bit of care goes a long way. Hell, even the calibration screen is representative of how it actually looks.

If the game looks too "cinematic" for you, increasing the brightness and decreasing the black point will give you more "pop" (ugh).

Comparisons

Warning

In order to view them correctly on Windows, you must use a Chromium browser with Windows HDR enabled and the brightness slider set to the value of 31

SDR Defaults (100 nits, Gamma 2.2)
HDR Defaults

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SDR Defaults (100 nits, Gamma 2.2)
HDR Defaults

[mirokrastev]

Built-in HDR has really impressed me as well. The game lacks so much in technical aspect, like broken FG, upscalers looking really bad (even DLSS 4.5 at DLAA below 4k), really weird mouse controls. It's genuinely impressive how they pulled off this HDR.

[AndrewKeYanzhe]

Yup, the game looks pretty good in HDR. There is no banding in the sky (I think KoKlusz's screenshots have a bit of banding in the sky, maybe from the conversion process?)

Here is a PQ HDR PNG (non gain map) screenshot, we can see that the sky is smooth and has no banding artefacts.

The screenshot is mastered to look identical in luminance to the original game when viewed in Chrome at SDR=100 nits (5% SDR on Windows, Macbook Pro between 7 and 8 in brightness clicks [out of 16])

[KoKlusz]

Yup, the game looks pretty good in HDR. There is no banding in the sky (I think KoKlusz's screenshots have a bit of banding in the sky, maybe from the conversion process?)

Yeah, those screenshots with gainmap come out pretty big, and Github only supports images up to 10MB, so I convert them to JPEGs, trying to keep the original quality as much as I can, but something gotta give.

[qqaazz112]

Huh, I thought the consensus on Reno/HDR discord was that native HDR wasn't great and it's better to use RenoDX. Would you recommend using native over reno?

[KoKlusz]

Haven't tried Reno, but I see no reason to use it over native in this one.

[JohNnimOn]

“What HDR settings should I use on an 800-nit OLED TV?”

[Aampet]

Are you sure hdr defaults 100 paper white? Looking at the picures hdr defaults look brighter in mid tones compared to sdr 100 nits.

[KoKlusz]

It's what the game says. They probably have slightly higher exposure in HDR, but it's not a big deal as long as shadows aren't washed out.

[Viruskiller94]

Do you know if something changed since you created this thread? I started the game today and the gamma is clearly mismatched. I had to use RenoDX with 2.2 EOTF emulation to get the same gamma as the default SDR presentation...

EDIT: I checked again later in the game and the gamma is exactly the same in SDR and HDR... it seems to be a problem only in the first scene or maybe I did something wrong. Sorry 😅