HGiG (HDR) on PC - Is it working?

[@DasAntiNaziBroetchen]

At 1:05 that wasn't a demonstration of "Look how much better HGiG" is. The intent is to demonstrate that the game must be in charge of tone mapping, to be able to display game-critical information within the "Primary HDR range".

[@LJ-uy9ru]

First off thanks for making this video! Right after I suggested this video I spent 2hrs messing with settings and also found that the windows HDR slider has no effect on games, just on video content. That really sucks too because I want a way to calibrate my hdr games on pc. But for those of you who use the slider for HDR video I suggest moving the slider to 30. It will give brigher highlights and at 30 you still maintain shadow quality and detail. Also, if anyone knows of a way to calibrate hdr gaming on PC please leave a comment and helps us out. ✌🏻

[@geiers6013]

The slider is not for hdr, but just for the sdr to hdr conversion. The whole desktop is only sdr, so in hdr it gets converted and the slider is for the brightness of these sdr conversion. If a game would react to this slider it is not actually outputing hdr. Nad yeah thats dumb, because the desktop looks a bit off in hdr.

[@JDSPonYT]

HGIG as you know just disables the TV's internal brightness tonemapping so in order to make use of it in games, you just have to set the peak white on a game by game basis (defeating the ease of use of HGIG in the first place, but retaining only having one tonemapping, that being the games internal one, not the games AND TVs) The issue is that some games don't give a nice number to dial in, but we are on the PC so you can take HDR screenshots (Win + Alt + PrintScreen) and analyse the image using HDR+WCG Image Viewer to get a max brightness value, you can then dial in the peak brightness of whatever game to what your TV's max brightness it can resolve without any tonemapping (For LG it's 800) For games such a MS FS2020, the game reads the displays EDID information which has max 10% and max 100% brightness values, MS FS just takes these values and puts it into the games internal tonemapper without any user input. The reason why Sony and MS haven't taken to reading the EDID is that it can become corrupted and report incorrect values as well as it has no ability to tell if those EDID vales are from a display that clips it's EOTF or rolls off. So MS and Sony ask the user to input the values themselves.

[@sherazdotnet]

Very informative. How'd you do that for game like Hell Blade. It only has HDR Intensity option that goes from 0 - 100 with an increment of 10. So 0 --> 10 --> 20 .... --> 100. Like how do you decide which scene to capture to be analyzed? Sorry new to this. I just downloaded HDR+WCG as well :-). Also, based on your comment, it seems like HGIG should be disabled for PC. Should the dynamic tone mapping be disabled all together for PC HDR and purely rely on the game controls for HDR settings?

[@DasAntiNaziBroetchen]

"The game needs to support HGiG" is a thing, because the game must be able to adaptively tone map to the specified peak brightness (regardless of whether it is configured in the game's settings, or the console's settings). Not every game can do that. Movies for example are fixed at like 4000 NITS. Think of it in that way. Supporting HGiG from the developer's side (Primary HDR range aside), requires the game to query the console settings, or to implement an HDR peak luminance configuration screen. This requires extra work from the developer, for obvious reasons. Another thing the game must be able to support is adjusting its tonemapping curve depending on the configured peak brightness.

[@mustangz3879]

I was really curious! thx!

[@yoshikagekira2132]

thank you this helped me a lot

[@Slay0lot]

You have very valid points with HDR for PC. I had noticed in PC games were colors don’t seem accurate or the brightness will often wash scenes out. The tone mapping of HDR coding for games is often unsupported and also effects the performance of games as well. Even games that support HDR Calibration the colors of games like Red Dead Redemption often look washed out. Great video, I appreciated] the information.

[@jocyt6356]

Just saw the video. Thanks @amok4all for the clarification on HGIG on Windows. When it comes to tone mapping (regardless if internal, via console or other) there is much more to consider. E.g. my CX OLED has a peak luminance of about 700 nits. But this is only the case for grayscale. From what I know, OLED displays from LGD do loose color information much earlier (400-500 nits). Perhaps the new EVO panel does provide better color representation though. What this basically means is, if you want the best picture quality on OLED (until the new panels prove differently), you would want to disable tone mapping completely and let the top end clip. From a gaming perspective, if you want to see more details in highlights, you will have to do tone mapping, but you will end up with a deteriorated color representation. Additionally, from what I know, you cannot disable tone mapping on LG OLED completely.

[@DasAntiNaziBroetchen]

Another comment: The Nvida control panel DOES have settings that are important for HDR. There is an "Override to reference mode" setting in the "Adjust Desktop Color Settings", which (IIRC) should override any color profiles, should any be applied.

[@GucciGamerTV]

Where do you recommend placing the HDR/SDR slider when using the LG CX? I’ve seen a lot of people say 10 is a good number but also heard people say 25-35 is best.

[@xanderforce]

As you demonstrated the PC has no system level calibration option like consoles so HGIG should be used on PC exclusively with in game HDR calibration. This can be confusing to some due to labelling mostly, as some are just brightness, exposure or gamma settings rather than actual black / white point settings that are the correct settings to adjust to properly tone map to the display (looking at you Forza Horizon 5). Another thing to consider is the way the standards are implemented. PC games now using the Windows HDR defaults are automatically calibrated based on the detected monitor. For example my Acer X27 will correctly display max nits as 1015 in Windows 11 which is marketed as VESA Display 1000 Certified. As you would expect HDR looks perfect on newer games that have no in game calibration (again here’s looking at you Forza Horizon 5) so in essence this is the HGIG equivalent of the PC world. The reason you are seeing blown out whites on Outriders is because the PC sees LG TV’s as a 1400 nits (tested on my C9) capable display as there are no OS drivers because it is a TV, not a monitor. This is clearly wrong and as such needs to be compensated for by the game where possible. My guess is not for much longer as more games will remove the option altogether. Given that LG has GSync and such a gaming focus it surprises me that this is how things stand. VESA has Display HDR standards for OLED too now so I wonder if future models may go that route instead being more Windows friendly. In the meantime I believe it is possible to use CRU utility to override this behaviour but it’s not ideal.

[@PlayerOne101.]

Can you do a video on the new windows hdr calibration app. It’s works on the latest windows 11 update and you can get it from the windows store.

[@HDRGamingHub]

HGIG is working on PC mate.... I am playing RDR2 on PC with LG CX and HGIG on and is working as intended !

[@JoaoRelego]

Calibration on PC is made IN game, not in windows. HGIG works. Try resident evil 2 remake for instance.

[@Saturn2888]

I've been thinking this same topic myself, but I think games or the OS itself supports it and the difference might be other issues on your computer such as RGB vs Limited and Full vs an improper calibration on the console. HDTVTest says that the Sony configuration is slightly off. Also, I think HGIG turns off dynamic tone mapping.

[@Justin-ym5ce]

Only thing I know is HGIG looks better on PC, I mean just keep it enable and if the game supports it, it will enable it. Fenyx Rising is the best example of this, makes the game look way better

[@allansolano5587]

Thats a weird thing for me fenyx rising with hgig literally no matter the slider on pc it crushes all the white details while with dynamic tone mapping it feels like it does respect the sliders and it preserves the white details and looks better to me i feel hgig only worked on shadow of the tomb raider for me on every other game it just blows every white detail no matter the setting

[@VincentMahot]

Personally I only use HGIG on the PS5, except for some PS4 games where DTM ON is the best option. But you can take the in-game test directly to see which is the best option.

[@campos3452]

I’m actually surprised as to how games and some movies are really not implementing HDR incorrectly. To me it seems easy to understand, but for example OUTRIDERS game just came out and you say HDR looks fine but to me I see no real advantage taken of it or lack there of. I guess it’s just hard for them to implement because everyone’s setup is different or they just don’t get it. HDR is an effect not something to just improve an image.

[@GamingTech-YouTube]

To be honest Outriders is not the best example to demonstrate HDR.

[@campos3452]

@@GamingTech-KZbin It was a good example they just didn’t implement it well especially with the adjustment setting. I mean there’s no details as to what the numbers stand for. That’s another thing. They add HDR settings but are poorly explained as to how it’s supposed to be set.

[@DasAntiNaziBroetchen]

To my understanding, to verify your hypothesis on the outeriders' (shitty) HDR implementation, you may be able to alter your TV's static HDR metadata using CRU. You should also use the ReShade HDR analysis tools to see what the game actually outputs. My assumption is that it just outputs brightness values limited to 1000 or 4000 NITS or something, regardless of display. Also: HGiG works fine on PC. In this case the game is the issue. I was able to confirm this with a game as old as 2019 (DMC 5), as well as my own Vulkan applications. Windows does not mess with the image (as long as you are able to successfully transition into HDR mode).

[@HDRGamingHub]

Is a bummer that oled monitors don't have HGIG . HGIG should be on every hdr tv or monitor !

[@Pandemonium088]

I've tried 3 games (Hogwarts, FF7 remake and AC Valhalla) on the PC with HGiG and I there is no difference between it and off. Everything is extremely DIM outside of dynamic tonemapping on an LG C2

[@HiCZoK]

So I wonder if it's better to use tone mapping On or off on pc... In games and movies. And on console, if someone don't want to use hgig, then how to calibrate? With dtm on or off. This is so weird

[@GamingTech-YouTube]

Always calibrate with the mode what you like to use

[@daverhodus]

Have you tried the Auto HDR Intensity Slider that was added to Windows 11 in April?

[@MacikHU]

ye, now we have a calibration in Windows 11, that is really similar to the Xbox one so I guess it is working now... @GamingTech could you check?

[@vitorteixeira9805]

Nice video, you no recommend hgig in pc? Dtm on?

[@GamingTech-YouTube]

Still depends also on the game

[@joseandresjulienbarriere8786]

I would say no

[@BassPunk]

If you had a PC game with a HDR calibration menu, to control the HDR the same as the console calibration settings to set peak brightness etc, HGIG should work as I would expect the game wont tone map against the display. Do you know any?

[@GamingTech-YouTube]

Any game? There are tons out there. Like RE series or Immortal fenyx rising. Same for Red Dead Redemption 2. They all have in build settings.

[@BassPunk]

@@GamingTech-KZbin I watched your Destiny 2 video again and that had its own calibration settings so that should work well with HGIG mode. Did you try Gears 5 on PC with HGIG mode? I saw its HDR calibration has a 4000 nit peak brightness value which should also work with HGIG mode on PC.

[@yaroslavchernyshov3725]

HGIG is just SDR with brighter highlights. I prefer tone maping because it makes the picture brighter. I dont care about acuracy as long as the picture looks good. When using HGIG i see no difference at all when compared to SDR. I used HGIG on ps5 as well but again the image looks the same as SDR, even when i calibrate it. Can someone explain to me why would I use HGIG at all?

[@santiagoortega4101]

It is very important the part you say "i dont care about accuracyy as long the picture looks good." I played ghost of tsushina with both HGiG and DTM, and even tho yes HGiG is darker, and DTM brigter, ghost of tsushima is meant to be darker, the weather is a gray sky, with rain and the game with HGiG makes the game darker, and the fire super pop, like it supossed to be, but then DTM, just bright everything up, first messing with the ambientation "the DTM ignores that there is literally no sun on the sky, and just bright up everything, missing that ambien,night rainy stuff. and also the pop of the fire is not popping anymore since everything is just bright.

[@HDRGamingHub]

@@santiagoortega4101 They have been brain washed by this youtuber....

[@TheEdmaster87]

This the reason why my games are brighter on PC. I knew that hdr on Windows is pretty much Hit and miss. Windows on hdr is pretty much a New thing still. Hopefully when hdmi 2.1 and hgig becomes more compatible we can then find out how it should look. MS should add hdr calibration on their next windows 10 build as soon as we see more standards being approved for those Os-hdr enabled games. Os-hdr = hdr turned on Windows settings. Windows decides how a game should look. Results in bright image or dark. Especially if there is no slider in game. Non-os hdr = game autostart in hdr and depends on the developers profile. No control on hdr settings unless there is sliders in game. Games look ok, or too dark. So there is ups and downs on both methods when playing hdr supported games on PC. But it will some Day be better. Still pc games rock due to horsepower and full rgb 4 4 4 sub sampling. I like playing on pc hdr games. But hdr is now slightly better on consoles due to the calibration settings.

[@FilippoTarpini]

That's a stretch and you can't know for sure. A full screen HDR game might override windows settings anyway, or it might not. Some games only work in HDR if HDR was enabled in Windows. Unreal Engine games can be calibrated through ini settings.

[@geiers6013]

@@FilippoTarpini All games only work in hdr if hdr is enabled from Windows. Otherwise the game thinks the display is not hdr capable.

[@FilippoTarpini]

@@geiers6013 false. Some games check the HDR capability of the monitor themselves, for example Battlefield V or Resident Evil 2.

[@geiers6013]

@@FilippoTarpini Oh wow didnt know that.

[@sherazdotnet]

Please watch HDTVTest video on calibrating HDR for console where he explains how to properly calibrate. He's deliberately clipping each pattering assuming you know that your monitor/TV supports higher nits that what pattern assumes.

[@malazan6004]

Apparently windows 10 got auto HDR but I still cant find a toggle to this day....

[@UnrealNeal]

When In a game hit windows key + G to open game bar. Then hit the cog ⚙️ wheel to go into settings. Then gaming features and you will see hdr settings and auto hdr toggle. 😎

[@geiers6013]

I just leave hgig on, because it has almost no difference vs off. But I think some games look a bit better with hgig still. So there is something happening, but nobody knows what haha. We really need a hgig calibration screen for Windows for the games that support hgig and then we also do not need sliders for every game anymore. That is my dream, but I think it will never happen :(

[@clericstorm2009]

Which Xbox are you using? If it is the Series X, then I think your settings are off. Series X will give you 120hz VRR 10 bit 4L10. The brightness difference you are seeing is likely a dynamic range difference caused by your xbox set at 4:2:2 8bit vs Full 10 bit on your PC.

[@sprintingsnail9492]

The outriders on Xbox looks better and more natural and voluminous. The PC version is too bright and is blowing out the whites.

[@1Rot]

alter das ist wieder mal so typisch fur mich, statt das spiel zu spielen geh ich um 3 uhr morgens in den full autismus modus nur weil ich das gefuhl hab das die fenster in hogwarts legacy zu hell sind

[@BBoyVD]

bruder, ich verstehe dich komplett. bei sowas kommt auch mein innerer autist raus, der gibt nen f*** auf die uhrzeit

[@1Rot]

@@BBoyVD lol

[@BBoyVD]

@@1Rot lul