Twist on 6/12/2023 at 21:54
It works and wasn't that hard to setup?! :eek: That's big news! Thief 1 and 2 in real HDR?! Holy crap. So you can dive into The Black Parade with HDR... potent is my envy. :grr: :thumb:
What monitor are you using, morgan? And what QD-OLED are you using, Kerrle?
I have my eyes on the Alienware AW3423DW. Originally it was to be for xmas, but maybe my better half will let Santa come early this year. (She won't.)
Kerrle on 6/12/2023 at 22:00
The Gsync version of the Alienware - I got it at launch. It's been fantastic - I can honestly say it's the best display I've ever seen. Pure blacks, damn near painfully bright HDR highlights in games like Ori.
morgan on 6/12/2023 at 22:12
Hi Twist i'm using a Samsung LC32G7xT
Twist on 6/12/2023 at 22:30
Ha! I've been eyeing both those monitors.
morgan: I bet Thief looks amazing on the Samsung LC32G7xT -- a VA monitor with excellent black levels and well-regarded HDR. Does the more aggressive curve bother you at all outside of gaming?
I've been going back and forth on trying an ultra wide or sticking with 16:9.
Kerrle: that might be the Alienware AW3423DW. Is it a 34 inch 21:9 monitor with Gsync Ultimate?
If so, one question: What do you think of its text rendering?
My understanding is that its less common sub-pixel layout can cause text fringing, or at least it did at release. I've found some fixes for this (like (
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/w9qm0y/actual_fix_for_the_aw3423dw_subpixel_layouttext/) here), but I'd be curious to hear your real world experience with it (*if* we're talking about the same monitor). Thanks!
Even
without HDR I bet Thief looks fantastic on both those monitors... can't wait. :sweat: :cheeky:
morgan on 6/12/2023 at 22:45
You get used to the more aggressive curve of the Samsung LC32G7xT and it does not bother me when doing other things outside of gaming :D
ZylonBane on 7/12/2023 at 00:15
Quote Posted by Twist
It works and wasn't that hard to setup?! :eek: That's big news! Thief 1 and 2 in real HDR?! Holy crap. So you can dive into The Black Parade with HDR... potent is my envy. :grr: :thumb:
Calm down there emotiboy. It's
not HDR. All you can do in NewDark is enable rendering to a high bit depth frame buffer, which helps with things like adjusting the gamma without inducing banding.
True HDR requires end-to-end integration into the rendering pipeline, and some way to indicate light sources brighter than #FFFFFF. NewDark has none of those things.
Twist on 7/12/2023 at 00:24
Have you actually looked at how Special K works?
morgan on 7/12/2023 at 11:26
I would say you are wrong ZylonBane it is true HDR with Special K. Once you understand how Special K works and see it working on a HDR Monitor with Thief Gold and Thief 2 and fan missions you will be amazed.
Kerrle on 7/12/2023 at 15:38
Yeah, SpecialK does allow for HDR, though it isn't a tailored experience the same way a native implementation would be.
Remember you can use the "gamma_ui" option in cam_ext.cfg to tone down menus and readables if they're too bright with the mod. There's a similar "gamma_movie" option for cutscenes.
The only thing that might be hard to tweak is the brightness of the HUD and on-screen text if that's too bright.
I'm in Linux at the moment and HDR is only recently supported here thanks to Valve's work. It still doesn't work on the desktop and won't until KDE 6 ships in a couple months, so this is hard for me to test right now.
Edit:
If the HUD/screen text is a problem, you could get a practical reduction in brightness by making it slightly transparent via "d3d_disp_2d_overlay_alpha 0.7", also in cam_ext.cfg. Of course that will introduce transparency, too, but it might still help.
Kerrle on 7/12/2023 at 15:58
Quote Posted by Twist
Kerrle: that might be the Alienware AW3423DW. Is it a 34 inch 21:9 monitor with Gsync Ultimate?
If so, one question: What do you think of its text rendering?
That's the one. So, the simple fact is MS has left Cleartype to rot on the vine and it no longer really supports tweaking at all - it sucks at subpixel rendering for basically any non-RGB subpixel layout, including things like monitors in portrait mode.
But in practice, it isn't something I even notice, even knowing what to look for. And I do a lot of graphics stuff - I actually made the alpha-masked Thief and System Shock icons a bunch of people here use over a decade ago.
I actually use another (non-HDR) RGB OLED as a side monitor, both are color calibrated and so beside the brightness difference when doing HDR stuff produce very similar results. And between the two text looks very similar. Here's a pic I took while discussing this months ago, of the two side by side: (
https://imgur.com/3NszMCH)
And that's in Windows. In linux you can take more control of the font rendering and I can mitigate it further.
It's possible you'd be more sensitive to it than I am, but I personally think it's overblown.
