Games Look Bad: HDR and Tone Mapping (2017)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

HDR Hardware, OS Support, and Everyday Use

  • Many commenters disable HDR on PCs and consoles because desktops and games look worse or “duller,” especially on mid-brightness LCDs (250–400 nits).
  • Several argue you need very bright displays (up to ~1000 nits) plus high contrast (often mini‑LED or OLED) for HDR to shine; others say even 300–500 nits can help mainly via wider color gamut and higher bit depth.
  • Windows’ HDR desktop handling is widely criticized as “still awful”; macOS is described as smoother, with HDR content popping against a more subdued UI.
  • Some report better HDR experiences after careful calibration: matching console HDR sliders to TV capabilities, using HGiG, etc.

Tone Mapping Quality and Technical Complexity

  • Agreement that many games have poor tone mapping and HDR pipelines, leading to crushed blacks, blown highlights, or unreadable dark areas.
  • A VFX practitioner notes that proper tone mapping requires the entire pipeline—textures, lighting, exposure, curves—to be physically grounded and consistent; games rarely achieve this across all content and camera angles.
  • Others counter that the article confuses tone mapping, color grading, and HDR as separate issues, and that modern engines can already run film‑style LUTs; the problems are mostly aesthetic choices, not technical limits.

Realism vs Stylization

  • Strong split on whether games should look like films/photos at all:
    • Some want photorealism for immersion (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077, flight sims).
    • Others explicitly prefer “video gamey,” stylized, or painterly looks (Zelda, many Nintendo titles, indie games), arguing realism often hurts readability and fun.
  • Multiple comments emphasize that display limitations and bad viewing environments force compromises; highly “correct” photorealism can become unplayable on mediocre screens.

Judging Examples: Zelda, Horizon, RE7, etc.

  • The article’s “ugly” vs “beautiful” examples spark disagreement:
    • Some find Horizon‑style high contrast and saturation garish and physically implausible; others see it as deliberate art that looks great.
    • Several think the praised Zelda screenshot is washed out and bland; others see it as intentionally painterly.
    • Resident Evil 7’s lighting is often praised as the most photographically convincing, though some call it “overexposed home‑video‑style.”
  • Commenters wish for more direct A/B comparisons of the same scene with different tone maps to make the critique clearer.

Broader Aesthetic and Industry Trends

  • Observations that HDR, specular highlights, “wet/shiny” surfaces, bloom, SSAO, lens flare, and color filters often get overused as new tech fads, then dialed back later.
  • Debate over the industry’s push for photorealism: it sells and is easy to market, but raises costs, hurts modding, and can clash with limited interaction (e.g., invisible walls, stiff animation).
  • Some argue immersion depends more on worldbuilding, interaction, and clear goals than on raw graphical realism.