Onimusha Way of the Sword DEMO (PC) HDR Analysis

[KoKlusz]

Technical Info:

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

HDR Settings:

Maximum Brightness - Peak brightness. Values from 0 to 100, default is 50

As it stands in the demo, even with the slider maxed out, the game seem to be outputting about 680 nits of peak brightness at most. Lowering the slider from the max value will reduce peak brightness even more

Overall Brightness - Screen brightness, values range from 0 to 20, default is 5. See the below table for the exact brightness.

As mentioned above, the actual peak brightness never goes beyond around 680 nits. Increasing this slider will boost the average brightness level of the image still

Click for the exact values

Value	Output
0	10 nits
1	30 nits
2	80 nits
3	140 nits
4	180 nits
5 (Default)	250 nits
6	300 nits
7	380 nits
8	450 nits
9	520 nits
10	600 nits
11	700 nits
12	800 nits
13	900 nits
14	1000 nits
15	1100 nits
16	1210 nits
17	1320 nits
18	1450 nits
19	1580 nits
20	1700 nits

Saturation - values range from 0 to 50, default is 30.

Value 21 roughly matches the SDR saturation

UI Brightness - values range from 0 to 50, default is 25. See the below table for the exact brightness.

Click for the exact values

Value	Output
0	100
1	108
2	116
3	124
4	132
5	140
6	148
7	156
8	164
9	172
10	180
11	188
12	196
13	204
14	212
15	220
16	228
17	236
18	244
19	252
20	260
21	278
22	296
23	314
24	332
25 (Default)	350
26	368
27	386
28	404
29	422
30	440
31	468
32	496
33	524
34	552
35	580
36	608
37	636
38	664
39	692
40	720
41	748
42	776
43	804
44	832
45	860
46	888
47	916
48	944
49	972
50	1000

Review:

Capcom's HDR presentations are like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get.

First of all, the overall color grading in this game is somewhat an acquired taste (it reminds me a lot of Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess) - the highlights are dull and the shadows are murky, no matter if SDR or HDR.

The good news(?) is that HDR presentation, while it appears similar to Resident Evil Requiem and Pragmata, seems to have a pretty aggressive contrast boost applied, making the image more crunchy and saturated. No idea if this is an attempt to emulate the Gamma 2.2 or someone just reused the contrast code from Resident Evil Village, but considering how washed out the game is to begin with, I don't think most will complain.

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 (sRGB option in game, 250 nits, sRGB EOTF)
SDR Defaults (sRGB option in game, 250 nits, Gamma 2.2 EOTF)
SDR Defaults (Rec. 709 option in game, 250 nits, Gamma 2.4 EOTF)
HDR Defaults