Gears of War E-Day - MP Beta (PC) HDR Analysis

[KoKlusz]

Technical Info:

• Unreal Engine 5.6.1
• HDR available in the windowed mode
• Ignores peak brightness from EDID/OS calibration
• No apparent sRGB/G2.2 EOTF mismatch in HDR

HDR Settings:

HDR Min Nits - values range from -6.00 to -1.00, default is -5.00

Controls the black point of the image, lower values make shadows darker, highier make them more washed out.

HDR Mid Point - possibly exposure, values range from 2.00 to 100.00, default is 7.00

Default is close to 120 nits screen brightness (SDR referece). The lowest value is 20 nits, the highiest is 2000 nits. Every notch on the slider is 20 nits.

No UI brightness controls, locked to 300 nits.

HDR Max Nits - peak brightness, values range from 100 nits to 5000 nits, default value (in beta) is 1400 nits.

Review:

Redemption arc? Redemption arc!

I had very low expectations after Gears Reloaded kept the cursed tonemapper from Gears 5/Tactics, I was fully expecting to be the case here. Surprise, surprise, the HDR implementation here is a massive improvement over their previous attempts, and it's by far one of the best ones I've seen this year so far.

It appears to be using some customized version of ACES 1.x that mostly avoids the typical pitfalls associated with it, the peak brightness doesn't affect the midtones, and the midtones don't affect the saturation (too much). The game looks consistent between SDR and HDR, defaults are close to the reference SDR image but with expanded highlights and color gamut, exactly what it should do. It Just Works.

The only major nitpick I have is the UI blending, which is very common in the UE games using the stock implementation (I believe it was finally fixed in 5.8), making the interface looking somewhat deepfried. But that's a fairly small issue in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, the implementation seems to take cues from the best ones in the market, like the recent Call of Duty titles, or the many UE RenoDX mods, and the results are very pleasing.

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 (120 nits, Gamma 2.2)
HDR Defaults

[TechsNova-SgrA]

Wow. Simply lovely.

[khoa971996]

yeah this is such a nice surprise, especially from how fondly the dev speaks about their Gears 5 tone mapper in presses, and iirc the AutoHDR is derived from this tone mapper. Although I'm tired to see these arbitrary number they use to label the mid-point/brightness slider, how are we supposed to know that 7.0 = 120nits?

[KoKlusz]

I'm of two minds about it because personally I like to set up the brightness to the value I prefer, but ultimately people should adjust it to their room conditions, and I've seen too many obsessing over the numbers as if there were some magic formula out there that would make HDR always look "good" or "correct" for every person in every situation.

I've already seen people bemoaning that HDR in this looks dull and dim, unlike Gears 5. You just can't please everyone.

[khoa971996]

I mean most people have a false fundamental understanding of what HDR is about, all the HDR TVs marketing materials has a huge share of blame in this, but also a lot of people might still have the older panels of LG OLED (2016-2018 models) that were famously known for under tracking the EOTF in game mode so that might contribute to why some people prefer the look of Gears 5, not to mention a lot of people might not even changing the white balance in game mode to the more accurate settings, because all the game mode are default to that cursed blue white point that you find in store display mode.

About the brightness slider, I'd love to see Alan Wake 2 approach in every game, a generic 0-100 slider but also provides what value it equals to in nits. For me at least when things looks weird, knowing the nits value of the image gives me a starting point of where to fix, but that's just me personality.

[HelveticaBold85]

This is good to hear! I think I had HDR too bright on my LG G3 1600 nits / 12 mid point but it looks punchy! As someone who didn't love Gears 5 this is much, much better so far.