Yesterday I was finding that the Paper White Luminance had a significant effect in both the Retroarch settings and the shader settings. Raising it in either place seemed to increase a kind of yellowish glow, but everything was still too brown/washed out, and it had to be very high to be very visible.
Today, after switching between drivers, I find that only the shader setting works.
In either case, Display Peak Luminance setting does nothing at all in either Retroarch HDR options OR shader parameters, which I find very strange – I would think my actual display’s peak luminance of 350 nits being so far off from the defauly of 100 would make a difference!
While I’ve been able to achieve much better results today, I’m wondering if this strange is what’s holding me back from getting the amazing looks I’m seeing in other’s pics in this thread.
I should expect the picture to significantly change in some way as I’m changing the Display Peak Luminance parameter, right?
Hmmmm…we have vastly different displays but are having a more or less similar experience especially when it comes to the colours.
After tweaking to the point of getting my best settings so far, My red is still either too orange, too brown or too pink and my blues could be a bit more saturated for my taste.
Switching HDR off in the Shader Parameters immediately results in the colours becoming much more saturated and realistic at the expense of brightness.
@townknave please post your settings as this might help to narrow down the cause of the problem if there is one or at least provide some users who are having similar issues with a better starting point instead of just being clueless and giving up.
I think the potential is definitely there but something somewhere might be slightly amiss on certain setups.
More data, for example settings could also help with coming up with some workarounds in the meantime.
Youre paper white nits value looks way too high - this is probably why it looks broken. Weirdly I have a monitor where setting it to the peak works but I think its an outlier. Also put your gamma in down at 2.2-2.4 level. Put brightness saturation down to zero whilst playing around. Also put it in colour accurate mode whist doing this. You can put it all back once you have the base settings correct.
Yeah I think youre fighting a losing battle with a 350nits display. In order to get the brightness up youd need to have odd masks (1000TVL) and because youve got low brightness you arent going to get the paper white and max nits right. Try something like 100 paper white and 400 max nits on the default or 2730qm hdr presets.
I’m not going to argue with you but this is certainly not where I started. I went through all sorts of combinations of lower, higher and in between values for the settings you have mentioned to arrive at this point but I don’t mind following your instructions and advice in order to attain the proper settings once and for all.
It might take some time between me trying your recommendations and bringing back results though but I think it would be worth it.
Here is what RTINGS has to say about my TV’s peak HDR Brightness. What setting should I be using for max nits?
Also, is there any particular preset you recommend I use as a starting point or can I continue from where I left off with the JVC D-Series preset and the changes you just recommended?
Update:
Following your recommendations things have improved considerably and seem to be heading in the right direction.
I started off with Paper White at 100 and I’m now at 110.
Colours seem much better now.
I think there’s some weirdness going on behind the scenes somewhere though.
After tweaking things for a little while, I saved my presets then made the mistake of attempting to take a screenshot - which soft crashed RetroArch. I quit RetroArch then reloaded the game and my just saved preset and the things looked really different from they way they were before I attempted to take the screenshot. Things seem a lot less vibrant than they were just a moment before.
The huge white elephant in the room is why is everything so dark in HDR Mode, much darker than in other Shaders but from the moment I flip the switch to SDR in the Shader Parameters things get like 5 times brighter and colours look much better all of a sudden and it seems much more effortless?
Honestly it feels like this is HDR Mode while the other mode is SDR mode.
I’m going to shut down and restart to see if there’s any change.
Check out the Brightness, Saturation, Gamma, and Contrast towards the bottom of the shader preferences. These made a huge difference for me and I’d say it is about 90% correct now using the JVC D-Series HDR profile. I also changed the layout to slot > TVL of 1000 and to OLED pixel substructure.
Display Settings:
SDR| HDR - 1.0
Mask Accurate Color - 1.00
HDR Display Peak Luminance - 1000.00 (doesn’t do a darn thing)
HDR Display Paper White Luminance - 900.00 (yes I know this is wrong, but it helps in combo with other settings)
HDR Original/Vivid - 1.0
Display Resolution - 1.0 (4k)
Display’s Subpixel Layout: 1.0 (RWBG (OLED))
Thanks but at the moment I’m following @MajorPainTheCactus’s instructions and advice as to how to properly set things up and trying to provide him with feedback based on his recommendations in order for him to “see” how things are from my point of view without having my TV to test himself.
Following his advice I’ve gotten things to the point where the colours look accurate. I’m not sure exactly what took place after I attempted a screenshot and things crashed then the reloaded preset didn’t look as good as I thought but I’m investigating.
This is not my experience. When I adjust the Peak Luminance it affects the brightness of the brightest elements on the screen.
Update:
I’ve gotten things to look really bright and beautiful now.
I’ve experimented with switching between the Vulkan and D3D12 Drivers.
I’ve tweaked a new preset using the aeg-CTV-4800-VT-hdr base preset. After I saved it I switched games for further testing and I got the same dull appearance I reported earlier. I eventually looked around and realized that my HDR was set to Off in RetroArch after switching the game.
I turned it back on and everything is bright and beautiful again.
The only caveat to this preset is that my TV was in HDR Bright Mode and not HDR Game mode because I forgot to switch it back after watching a movie.
So I don’t know how input lag will be affected compared to HDR Game Mode.
When I switched it to HDR Game Mode it didn’t look as spectacular so I guess I’ll have to rework this preset based on that TV Mode but at least I can finally say I got things working and looking great and it’s somewhat documented.
I’ll try to share my steps, settings and some screenshots so that other users like @c9f5fdda06 will finally be able to experience the full power of the Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor on their LG OLED TVs!
Strange thing is that things still get really bright when I switch from HDR to SDR sometimes.
@MajorPainTheCactus I strongly suspect that there’s a bug somewhere that is preventing the pipeline from switching to HDR mode sometimes or rather under certain circumstances.
It seems to be affecting Vulkan more so than D3D12 but I’ve just seen it happen in D3D12 where I changed games, loaded my impressive preset and it looked as if HDR wasn’t enabled.
I toggled HDR Off then back on again within RetroArch and this time HDR mode kicked in and the preset looked as it should.
I switched my driver back to Vulkan, loaded the same preset and guess what? It looked liked HDR Mode wasn’t enabled. In this state switching to SDR in Shader Parameters causes things to look more correct.
When HDR is working correctly however, switching to SDR causes things to look really oversaturated and clipped.
I tried the same toggle HDR Off/On while in Vulkan but this time it resulted in a soft crash. Similar to what happened when I tried to take the screenshot.
So there’s definitely something going on there that is throwing a wrench into things and leading to some users having a less than stellar experience no matter what they try.
It doesn’t help that they need to get their settings correct before things would look properly and this on top of that could lead to some never understsnding why they could never get things to look the way they should.
In the interest of full disclosure, I would add that I have HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader installed as a Core and sometimes Game Preset. So that always loads first when I load my game.
I tried temporarily disabling that only to be greeted by it starting up because it probably is also a Global Preset.
Maybe if my setup was pure Megatron or Stock, I might not be encountering similar issues with the Shader switch.
That’s excellent, can’t wait to see/hear about your settings! I checked my settings after loading a shader and the HDR logo comes up on my LG so it is definitely on and confirmed on in retroarch.
Yes but if the colours look washed out or sepia toned (after setting your correct Peak Brightness and Paperwhite settings) that’s a telltale signs that HDR isn’t working properly regardless of the HDR notification.
In that case you can try switching drivers to D3D12 and toggling HDR Off and On again in RetroArch. If it works you should immediately see the difference in the colours as well as the actual brightness of the game.
I didn’t realize you’re using an LG OLED TV. I mixed you up with @townknave earlier.
HDR Bright might make it easier to get things up and running because it’s the brightest mode of the TV.
It would be nice to see some progress from some of the other LG OLED users around. I know there are more than 3 of us.
All of my testing this last round was done with HDR On within Windows but I don’t think that makes much of a difference. I normally have this Off.
Edit - I am blown away dude, this worked! I loaded up retroarch, picked my usual MegaMan X on SNES and while the game was loaded I switched from Video > Driver > Vulkin to Dx12. I then went to HDR and turned it OFF. Loaded up the JVC D-series HDR shader and it was washed out completely like normal, went into HDR and flicked it on. Success! I am literally in shock that it is working, I didn’t mess with any other settings and using the default preset. 100% agree that the pipeline is not engaging HDR correctly!
Edit 2 - Changing any of the HDR settings now has the image dark, but the colors are not washed out. I tried changing the peak luminance and paper white values to the correct ones and now it is much darker than before. Very weird behavior.
Edit 3 - I now notice that when HDR is properly working in retroarch that the F1 menu goes from a mint green to a very NEON bright green. This is a tale-tail sign that HDR is engaged and working properly.
Paper White is very sensitive. Peak Luminance is based on the RTINGS or tested capabilities of the TV while Paper White should be what looks best to you after playing around with it.
Also, what Picture Mode is your TV set to? I’ve noticed that HDR Game Mode and HDR Vivid are considerably dimmer/darker than HDR Bright Mode. It’s still early in testing though.
HDR Standard picture mode on my OLED with RGB Full enabled in Nvidia panel. My HDR standard mode is just as bright as the vivid mode, I did a pro calibration with a meter not too long ago.
This is also going to be considerably darker than HDR Bright. Why not try HDR Game Mode for lowest Input Lag or HDR Bright to get peak brightness which is demanded by this shader?
On my TV, I have an HDR Bright Mode and my eyes tell me that it’s the brightest of all so far. Definitely brighter than HDR Standard. I also have an HDR Vivid Mode which is less bright than HDR Bright Mode but more saturated.
I have an OLED 77" I’ll check there, the 48" isn’t as bright as the other OLED models. Vivid and standard are nearly identical for me. Either way, your method does engage HDR properly now (check my screenshots), those are the default presets with no tweaking at all.
Looks like you’re worse off than me – your results look just like what I was having the other day, before I shuffled the video drivers around. At that time, no combination of settings seemed to alleviate that dark, miscolored look. After changing to D3D and back, I seem to be having better results for reasons I don’t understand. Here are my settings with the Megatron default shader:
As I’ve noted previously, the hcrt_max_nits setting seems to have no effect whatsoever for me, but I set it to my display’s max nits anyway. Paper White Luminance is at the default 200.
I understand my display isn’t very bright, but shouldn’t the max nits setting do something?
As I said earlier, it has no effect whatsoever either in the Retroarch HDR settings or the Shader Parameters. That makes me wonder if there’s something that isn’t configured right.
I should be able to see some noticeable change as I increase it between 0 and 10,000, right?
This makes me think rancid/cyber are on to something in their suspicion that under some circumstances, HDR isn’t getting properly recognized or activated! Will do more testing tonight as it seems like doing things in a certain order makes a difference, even when settings are the same.
I just tried loading up Super Mario World with the default megatron shader at default settings, then disabling HDR in Retroarch, then re-enabling it. Results are night and day!
No longer is there any of that sepia stuff – the colors pop right away where it looked like pea soup at default settings before, and the Display Peak Luminance setting actually works! The image now looks fabulous at 600 TVL instead of 1000, and it’s pretty clear my humble Q2721S CAN do a nice looking HDR image!
I won’t say that I’m worse off than you because I’ve gotten it to work.
There seems to be some strange interaction taking place between the Mega Bezel Reflection Shader (which last time I checked does not support HDR, at least when using Vulkan) and trying to switch to Vulkan with HDR to run Sony Megatron Shaders.
It appears as if Mega Bezel Reflection Shader isn’t fully unloading before Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor is trying to load.
I’ve been observing carefully and in Vulkan Mode, even after I load a Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor preset, when I switch HDR On, I’ve seen it switch to HDR On in RetroArch briefly and can see the Mega Bezel and onscreen graphics get Bright and Vivid and the HDR notification comes up on my TV but then I can see the Graphics Immediately get back dull when the Bezel disappears and I guess the Megatron Shader loads or reloads. So it appears as if HDR is being switched on but immediately turns itself off on my particular configuration.
So when loading a Sony Megatron Preset using Vulkan and HDR is switched On, it almost always comes off by the time the preset is finished reloading.
Using D3D12, things aren’t so bad. Possibly because Mega Bezel supports HDR using that driver? Also, the D3D12 HDR mode only seem to work when HDR is turned on in Windows.
@rancid, I’ve since tested and made a preset using HDR Game Mode and what I had to do was raise the Paper White Luminance and the Saturation a bit higher than I had to when using the HDR Bright Mode but it works and looks great!
I have a feeling that if I decouple my RetroArch configuration from Mega Bezel Reflection Shader, I might get some improvement in my Sony Megatron Color Video Monitor experience using Vulkan and HDR.
