At first I wanted to make a thread dedicated to RDR2, but then I realised it’s probably much better to just have one thread for gaming in HDR in general . HDR can be such a big addition to gaming, but at the same time it can be headache inducing too. So bad sometimes that I just wish it wasn’t a thing. Especially so when developers just for some reason don’t put a HDR on/off toggle in games. For some reason it seems to happen more often for PS, meaning they do get such a toggle.
But these days we have YouTube channels dedicated to posting the correct settings for a game. Often for both OLED, QLED etc. Some games are just great out of the box, others really need tinkering with the settings and this can be incredibly frustrating. RDR2 is such an example. It elevates the black levels and it makes the night time overly bright. You do get some great sun light on water effects though, it is a big difference compared to SDR.
Today I found great settings for the game. It was posted in the OLED subreddit, so it’s for OLED televisions but I would suggest to give them a try even if you don’t have an OLED.
I have to take back what I said about HDR in RDR2. It initially looked great during the day and night time with HDR but that was just briefly. After a hour of playing I noticed how the colors seemed off during the daytime, something with the saturation and I believe EvilBoris said this too in the DF video about the HDR fix update. When I play the same parts in SDR the colors just look natural, fine and not this weird saturation.
Same with the nights, in SDR it truly is just dark as hell, if there’s no light source you don’t see shit, like in real life, lol. It isn’t nearly like that in HDR. I’m just keeping it off. It seems the peak brightness setting is fine, but the paper white is whore is where it goes wrong. At default it’s just too dim. If I increase it I get the saturation thing.
Ah well, SDR looks damn good anyway, just not the pretty lighting effects.
That’s actually a great idea. I wanted to make that same thread for months now…and kinda forgot about it, although I had took screenshots of some of my ingame settings in advance. So here we go, my settings for HDR in Red Dead Redemption 2. I found it is the best settings for that game in particular as it is pretty dark by default.
I really like that people not just post the numbers but the actual screenshot of the menu. It’s hard to find what settings people actually are using ingame.
Having the best default settings without touching the TV settings is essential. I was tinkering myself with the TV settings when I first got it and it’s best to have it set first and then go to the console HDR settings, setting that up following the instructions, then only touching the ingame settings, as you don’t want to change your TV/Console settings for every game.
I’ve personally settled on brightness at 47 for all my other games. When I got the C9 OLED I went for 49 as I found some games lacking inky black levels. Then when VRR became a thing and it raised the black levels a bit I went with 47. But you’re very right about how you don’t want to change settings for every game.
Do you have OLED as well, and if so, what are your settings? Do you use HGIG or dynamic tone mapping?
This was the video I meant where EvilBoris talks about the saturation issues.
Rockstar improved the HDR, it’s a step in the right direction but sadly still far from ideal. If I could get the colors, the look of SDR in HDR…i would be so happy. For now I’ll stick with SDR I think.
My only wish for HDR gaming us that devs just use Microsofts AutoHDR solution for all games. As it would free up time in development on the Xbox/PC side and allow for an already good solution to become better as it gets more data to work with.
