Anyone Else Find HDR Gaming Too Bright For Their Poor Eyes?

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Anyone else find HDR gaming too bright for their poor eyes?

• Thread starter lemmykoopah
• Start date Aug 18, 2021

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• Gaming Forum

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lemmykoopah

Banned Oct 29, 2017 740 And my tv (LG CX) isn't even a high nit monster. When I play in the evenings in a dark room I have to enable energy savings which dims the screen somewhat otherwise I feel like most HDR highlights scorch my eyes lol. Anyone else do the same?

PlayBee

One Winged Slayer

Member Nov 8, 2017 7,395 Mine is a C6 so no way lol

MisterAnderson

Member Oct 29, 2017 4,230 Helllllll no, turned off energy savings mode right away lol.

Edge

A King's Landing

Banned Oct 25, 2017 21,012 Celle, Germany No, it's mostly not bright enough for me. I love Auto HDR games so much because the whites are full nits and it looks beautiful.

raketenrolf

Member Oct 28, 2017 6,479 Germany

lemmykoopah said: And my tv (LG CX) isn't even a high nit monster. When I play in the evenings in a dark room I have to enable energy savings which dims the screen somewhat otherwise I feel like most HDR highlights scorch my eyes lol. Anyone else do the same? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

First time I turned it on I was blinded, yes. And I only have a C9.

Silvergun-Blue

Member Oct 26, 2017 11,614 Sounds like more of an issue with a very bright light source in a dark room. Maybe get some mood lighting or something.

Bitterman

Banned Nov 25, 2017 2,930 When you first saw HDR, were you blinded by its majesty ?

Zephy

Member Oct 27, 2017 7,745 Never used HDR on my TV. Tried it once, it just looked like I had cranked the backlight to 300%. Is that the deal ?

Duffking

Member Oct 27, 2017 7,410

Zephy said: Never used HDR on my TV. Tried it once, it just looked like I had cranked the backlight to 300%. Is that the deal ? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Depends if you have one with local dimming. I've not really seen the point on non local dimming screens since it has to brighten/darken the whole screen at once. With local dimming it can just brighten the regions that should be bright.

ghostcrew

The Shrouded Ghost

Administrator Oct 27, 2017 32,538 When devs include a full-screen white loading screen or similar, then yeah. In general gameplay, rarely.

Vimto

Member Oct 29, 2017 3,898 I have the pg32uqx which is a 1400 nits monster sitting 2ft from my eyes and I love it. The initial screen for Doom though? I literally have to cover my eyes lol

ara

Member Oct 26, 2017 14,424 Sometimes, yeah. Been a bigger issue with films and subtitles, though, and particularly for the migraine-riddled GF. HDR stuff of any kind is really pretty damn frustrating right now and I wish the B7 had like a global Turn HDR The Fuck Off toggle.

PeakPointMatrix

Member Oct 25, 2017 22,815 I want to say it's not bright enough. Dark scenes especially. LGCX here. Although I have my brightness at conservative levels for the health of the TV.

snausages

Member Feb 12, 2018 13,164 I have a CX and find myself not using hdr at all cause it mostly just seems to be about bright lights I'm sure it does other stuff too but even after following lots of boring calibration guides it's the only difference that I notice. I play repetitive content on it too so I just leave the HDR stuff off cause it would burn in faster I guess

Zip Stick

Member Oct 30, 2017 573

Vimto said: The initial screen for Doom though? I literally have to cover my eyes lol Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Yeah the Doom Eternal title screen lights up my livingroom like a napalm. Using a LGCX.

pswii60

Member Oct 27, 2017 29,860 The Milky Way Sounds like you have Dynamic Tone Mapping enabled - disable it!

Volkama

Member Oct 30, 2017 1,095 In games? Never. In movies, sometimes yes, if I'm watching in a completely dark room and there are some bright flashes on the screen. C9.

Zephy

Member Oct 27, 2017 7,745

Duffking said: Depends if you have one with local dimming. I've not really seen the point on non local dimming screens since it has to brighten/darken the whole screen at once. With local dimming it can just brighten the regions that should be bright. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

I have the Philips 65PUS8545, I don't think it has this feature.

Ravelle

Member Oct 31, 2017 21,942 I have a C9 and I never have this issue both in games and in movies, it's never really that bright nor does brightness stands out. The only thing that burns my eyes is when I leave the subtitles on at night, it kinda overtakes affects the rest of the screen. I have to switch OLED brightness to 80 percent if I want to have subs on.

jwhit28

Member Oct 25, 2017 5,878 It might as well not be on if the highlights don't cause me pain.

Adamska

Banned Oct 27, 2017 7,042 I believe this can be fixed by adjusting the maximum brightness. In any case, I don't have issues with HDR content and, in fact, think it enhances the image quality a lot.

TAJ

Banned Oct 28, 2017 12,446

Silvergun-Blue said: Sounds like more of an issue with a very bright light source in a dark room. Maybe get some mood lighting or something. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

You can't even really appreciate the shadow detail of regular Blu-ray on an SDR TV without a dark room.

Whitemex

Member Oct 27, 2017 18,011 Chicago The bright red and white from that one gun that shoots red stakes in Returnal is the only thing that hurts my eyes and I have a Vizio from 5 years ago

bes.gen

Member Nov 24, 2017 4,526 no, if anything my stupid qled gets weirdly dim on game mode compared to other modes.

Euler007

Member Jan 10, 2018 5,159 Nope. I play in a perfectly dark room and even full white transition screens (like in Ratchet) are not an issue. I never thought it was too bright, or inversely that it should be brighter.

Thorn

Banned Oct 25, 2017 24,446 I can't even tell the difference of HDR on my TV...

shaneo632

Weekend Planner

Member Oct 29, 2017 32,795 Wrexham, Wales No I'd say I often find HDR too dark if anything.

MayorSquirtle

Member May 17, 2018 11,973 The few times I've turned on HDR while gaming, it essentially just looked the same but with the brightness turned down.

Deleted member 4976

Banned Oct 25, 2017 13,246 Only in a few auto-HDR games on SX where the UI elements are tuned to maximum brightness. Otherwise, no real issues on the brightness side in most scenes.

matrix-cat

Member Oct 27, 2017 10,903 I find it OK for the most part, but pure white screens in HDR will absolutely sear my eyeballs out of my skull. Playing Jedi Fallen Order I had to squeeze my eyes shut every time I opened one of the menus. Luckily it seems like devs aren't doing this so often now that they've got a handle on designing around HDR, but you still get it in Auto-HDR games where the algorithm decides certain random HUD elements are going to be absolutely scorching, surface-of-the-sun bright.

Deleted member 20831

Banned Oct 28, 2017 1,951

ghostcrew said: When devs include a full-screen white loading screen or similar, then yeah. In general gameplay, rarely. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Like Assassins Creed 2's transition screens, eye blinding even without HDR.

RF Switch

Banned Oct 31, 2017 4,118 Using energy savings mode should be illegal. The fact we are talking about an LGCX has me thinking something is setup wrong

sirap

Member Oct 25, 2017 8,444 South East Asia On the CX? Not really, peak brightness isn't it's strong point. I have played games on Asus's PG32UQX and that thing is capable of some ridiculous highlights.

fourfourfun

Member Oct 27, 2017 9,870 England I have a £299 "HDR" TV, so it is actually pretty FADED.

Pargon

Member Oct 27, 2017 15,443

Silvergun-Blue said: Sounds like more of an issue with a very bright light source in a dark room. Maybe get some mood lighting or something. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

HDR is intended to be viewed in a dark environment. But it seems that the way some developers are implementing HDR makes it uncomfortable to watch in those conditions. I've definitely had to switch on a (dim) light behind my C1 OLED to make some HDR games more comfortable to play.

RF Switch said: Using energy savings mode should be illegal. The fact we are talking about an LGCX has me thinking something is setup wrong Click to expand... Click to shrink...

I have a C1 and didn't hate enabling the auto energy savings mode in SDR. It's the only option I've found which adapts the TV's brightness to the room conditions. But it's a global setting rather than only affecting SDR, and it kills the brightness for HDR - so I had to disable it.

Zephy said: Never used HDR on my TV. Tried it once, it just looked like I had cranked the backlight to 300%. Is that the deal ? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

The backlight is supposed to be maxed-out when HDR is used, since it's supposed to extend the range above the 100 nits of SDR. Here's a screenshot of Dead Space 2 running in SDR: Note that Isaac's left shoulder is a solid white area without any detail, since it's being hit by a bright light. And here's a photograph of that same location with the game modded to run in HDR: At the normal exposure, it looks similar to the SDR screenshot; but that detail is missing due to the camera's limited dynamic range - not because it isn't there. If I reduce the camera exposure by two stops, it reveals that there is actually detail in the bright highlights - which you can easily see by eye. But if I reduce the exposure of the SDR image by two stops, it shows that there was no detail to be recovered. It's outside of the range that SDR can represent, so it was clipped. That's what it means to have a "high dynamic range." You can see more detail in the shadows and highlights of the image. It also means that the TV can represent a larger difference between bright daylight scenes and dim scenes at night. But many games are just making the image brighter everywhere - which is not really extending the range. That's more akin to turning up the backlight when watching SDR - stretching out the existing range, rather than extending it (and Auto-HDR is halfway between the two). Look at how the lamp on this ship actually seems to be glowing when Outer Wilds is running in HDR, and how a daytime scene actually looks like daylight, rather than taking the same image but making it universally brighter. You can also extend the color gamut to make things more vivid and saturated. At times, SDR can look flat and washed-out compared to HDR. But it all depends how it's used, really. And in case it wasn't clear: a camera cannot capture the full range of an HDR display - and certainly not when you're then converting the photo to an SDR image. So these photographs only represent differences between SDR and HDR, not how an HDR image actually looks. There's a lot more shadow and highlight detail than my camera can capture.

Terbinator

Member Oct 29, 2017 15,609

waveking said: When you first saw HDR, were you blinded by its majesty ? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Paralyzed. Dumbstruck.

Zephy

Member Oct 27, 2017 7,745

Pargon said: HDR is intended to be viewed in a dark environment. But it seems that the way some developers are implementing HDR makes it uncomfortable to watch in those conditions. I've definitely had to switch on a (dim) light behind my C1 OLED to make some HDR games more comfortable to play. I have a C1 and didn't hate enabling the auto energy savings mode in SDR. It's the only option I've found which adapts the TV's brightness to the room conditions. But it's a global setting rather than only affecting SDR, and it kills the brightness for HDR - so I had to disable it. The backlight is supposed to be maxed-out when HDR is used, since it's supposed to extend the range above the 100 nits of SDR. Here's a screenshot of Dead Space 2 running in SDR: Note that Isaac's left shoulder is a solid white area without any detail, since it's being hit by a bright light. And here's a photograph of that same location with the game modded to run in HDR: At the normal exposure, it looks similar to the SDR screenshot; but that detail is missing due to the camera's limited dynamic range - not because it isn't there. If I reduce the camera exposure by two stops, it reveals that there is actually detail in the bright highlights - which you can easily see by eye. But if I reduce the exposure of the SDR image by two stops, it shows that there was no detail to be recovered. It's outside of the range that SDR can represent, so it was clipped. That's what it means to have a "high dynamic range." You can see more detail in the shadows and highlights of the image. It also means that the TV can represent a larger difference between bright daylight scenes and dim scenes at night. But many games are just making the image brighter everywhere - which is not really extending the range. That's more akin to turning up the backlight when watching SDR - stretching out the existing range, rather than extending it (and Auto-HDR is halfway between the two). Look at how the lamp on this ship actually seems to be glowing when Outer Wilds is running in HDR, and how a daytime scene actually looks like daylight, rather than taking the same image but making it universally brighter. You can also extend the color gamut to make things more vivid and saturated. At times, SDR can look flat and washed-out compared to HDR. But it all depends how it's used, really. And in case it wasn't clear: a camera cannot capture the full range of an HDR display - and certainly not when you're then converting the photo to an SDR image. So these photographs only represent differences between SDR and HDR, not how an HDR image actually looks. There's a lot more shadow and highlight detail than my camera can capture. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Thanks for the details. I'm aware of what HDR is in the world of photography, but my experience with it on TV has not been convincing. I usually keep the room rather dark and reduce the brightness, so something that forces extreme brightness will just make me disable it immediately. It feels like an assault on my eyes. As someone else pointed out, maybe local dimming would make it a useful feature, but as it stands, with my current TV (which I recently got and likely won't be changing for many years) I can live with minor details being lost in overexposed areas.

DanielG123

Member Jul 14, 2020 2,496

waveking said: When you first saw HDR, were you blinded by its majesty ? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Blinded?

KamenRiderEra

Member Oct 25, 2017 2,705

lemmykoopah said: And my tv (LG CX) isn't even a high nit monster. When I play in the evenings in a dark room I have to enable energy savings which dims the screen somewhat otherwise I feel like most HDR highlights scorch my eyes lol. Anyone else do the same? [/QUO

lemmykoopah said: And my tv (LG CX) isn't even a high nit monster. When I play in the evenings in a dark room I have to enable energy savings which dims the screen somewhat otherwise I feel like most HDR highlights scorch my eyes lol. Anyone else do the same? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

It was the same for me till I find that the calibration was totally wrong. Search for the right way to set up the HDR. Theres a Vincent video amazing for this.

LG CX/ C9 Recommended Best Settings for Xbox Series X (4K@120Hz, VRR, HDR)

We go through our recommended best settings on a 48-inch LG CX OLED TV to obtain the highest picture quality (4k@120fps, VRR, HDR & 4:4:4 chroma) while maint... youtu.be Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Iori Fuyusaka

Banned Oct 26, 2017 2,901 It makes subtitles too bright, but I love it for everything else.

Juryvicious

Member Oct 28, 2017 9,132

Edge said: No, it's mostly not bright enough for me. I love Auto HDR games so much because the whites are full nits and it looks beautiful. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

This is me.

WonderingRogue

Banned Jul 7, 2021 3,272 My monitor 550 nits. I think 600 is great for monitors at monitor viewing distances, A bit higher even is ok, and yeah over that for a monitor at least it starts to get uncomfortably bright sometimes. Like 1000 nits is too bright. But around 1000 nits is kind of the bottom floor for a good TV at TV viewing distances to really get the full effect of HDR, IMHO.

Deleted member 35840

Dec 10, 2017 5,740 In some games - Cyberpunk and Sea of Thieves come to mind - it looks amazing. In others, not so much, so instead of having to deal with turning it on and off in software and in the monitor's controls, not to mention the extensive changing of other display controls I have to do each time, I just left it off.

C.Mongler

The Fallen Oct 27, 2017 4,552 Nope, love HDR on my CX.

Flandy

Community Resettler

Member Oct 25, 2017 3,680

Devil

Member Oct 25, 2017 3,737 Turn down oled brightness to your liking instead of using energy savings mode.

Deleted member 36054

Banned Dec 12, 2017 4,652 My tv can get up to 1800 nits, so I have a custom "Night" setting where the backlight is wayy down.

DixieDean82

Banned Oct 27, 2017 11,837 No.

Deleted member 17092

User requested account closure

Banned Oct 27, 2017 20,360 Yeah at night I generally turn the oled brightness down to like 20 or lower on my B7. Daytime or if I have a lamp on its at 100.

DredPirateStorm

Member Oct 27, 2017 689 Newnan, GA I think it depends on the game I am playing. I have an LG C9 and it gets really bright when I'm playing games like Forza or Dirt.

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