Hi all, I installed B494 yesterday, and the Auto HDR is beautiful, consistent across multiple tracks from different modders, and generally just works. That's the good part. The not so good part is that to my eye - and I've been a photographer for ten years now - it looks underexposed. So I made some small test/comparison today, using unedited screens from the screenshot thread here, and public available AC screens for comparison. The histogram in each shot doesn't lie... it's not dependent on screen calibration. What you can see is that RF2 shots are all a bit heavy on the left side of the histogram, and that there are almost zero white tones. Of course AC and RF scenes here are not directly comparable, it depends on amount of sky, color of tarmac and so on, but for example the flying Brabham in a midday/early afternoon sun (by the shadows) against sky just shouldn't be so dark in the graph. That screen even includes a white house wall which usually throws the balance to the right. In fact it seems that the rightmost 5% or so of the histogram are almost "off limits" to the RF2 auto exposure. AC always has some percent of tones in that range. Visually, this shows in the fact that besides extreme sun angles, you will get in RF2 always a nice blue, even dark blue sky. Problem is that properly exposing something for the sky you usually end up underexposing for darker objects. To my feel what would be needed is 1.2 Gamma across all. Or an option in a config file to set an overal gamma preference ourself. Or someone to tell me how to hack this with ENBSeries... I believe RF2 will be VERY beautiful once this is sorted, it already looks tons better now with the Auto option, but wrong exposure just "shows" if you know where to look. View attachment 11835 View attachment 11836 View attachment 11835 View attachment 11837 View attachment 11839 View attachment 11838
I am also a photographer and use a pro calibrated monitor (flat and natural at 6500K) therefore RF2 doesn't not always look the best for me. In game tuning adjustments would be excellent so I don't have to keep adjusting my monitor settings and windows profiles before and after running RF2.
Mingmong, what are you using to adjust? I find a lot of tools that supposedly don't work, and for sure my Catalyst doesn't offer game specific gamma settings. I wouldn't mind a small bit of freeware to just increase brightness for RF2. Of course if Tim or someone else from ISI is reading... it would be nice if the parameters used for the Auto HDR calcs are somewhere in a config file so we could just experiment ourself. That's maybe easier and quicker than adding an UI Gamma Slider
None of the picture you posted is technically under exposed. The NO signal on the last segment (high key) in the histogram is good and mean the frame is not showing a dominance of highlights; aka no burned areas and low to none details lost. Talking in photography terms, if you add half to a full +1 stop to those images you'll get a over exposure frame.
Have you tried radeonpro? It may have game specific gamma adjustments but I cant remember. I do remember it was much better than CCC for other options. Nvidia are the same, no game specific options for these types of adjustments. I'm currently just using X-Rite software that came with my calibrator and my monitor is calibrated to 2.2 for gamma. For RF2 I generally just make the adjustments on my monitor. It is a tedious and lazy approach but it kinda does the job for now. I don't race that much these days as my cockpit & wheel are in storage.
We introduced the Automation to avoid messing with configs/profiles. If you want to change the gamma and/or tweaking the main light output you are still able to create or modify a static .hdp profile, as before.
Thanks Tuttle, but I beg to disagree a little. There is always a compromise in limited digital range (as per your example above). In the second left shot, "normal" exposure, it is really hard to make out the detail of the trees. Histogram is leaning on the left side. But yes, the white front is "saved". The problem I see is that in reality, our eyes adjust. I can look at a bright sunny sky and it will not be whitish, and look down at my motorbike cockpit and it will not be dark - within the same scene. But in the game on screen, you only get one overal value for exposure, and right now that value tries to preserve the whites (i.e. avoid burn out). Which results in dark cockpits, and dark car skins. The Corvette for example just doesn't shine yellow anymore, the white Skippys are off-white. Also in reality, a bright white paint under direct summer sunlight WILL burn out my eyes. Look at the white Howstons or LolaT280, they are grey now. This is not what I see on the racetrack in a summer day. Here's a capture from my GoPro on a trackday: This feels accurate, in that I "see" the same in reality as I see here in screen. It's at least +0.5 exposure to the ISI settings...
I think it would be really useful to be able to have a gamma modifier that is applied on top of the automated profile. Just because we want everything a little bit brighter shouldn't mean we have to completely lose the automated functionality.
Sorry but that's not really the point, is it? The automation works wonderfully for very different tracks and times of day, using static profiles would again require a multitude of them. What people have been asking for (also in some old topics) is one "over all" gamma/brightness control but to keep the automation benefits. I guess it could be done right now with third party tools... In the end, I just disagree that "proper "neutralgrey matched" exposure of every part of the screen" should be the goal of the new Auto. White Cars, Roadmarks, Yellow Corvettes need to "pop" on a bright sunny day, that's what people percieve in real life. Cockpits are not fully dark in real life either. Lots of this has to do with the way our eyes adjust dynamically, so a "flat neutral grey full scene exposure" on the screen isn't really doing the job... and a histogram that is clearly balanced on the left while never going right can't be the answer even if it's "technically correct..."
Actually, that's not even a bad idea. It would fit nicely in the graphics settings to correct for various monitors or people who use tv's
I guess it's the same as the ATI Tray Tools in that it will be unsigned drivers/Win7 hack needed to install? I'll look around, thanks for the suggestion!
That's a good post, Tuttle. I was confused why someone would say it's underexposed when the general feeling is that the +1 stop example there is more relateable to the actual rF2 experience.
^ By "relateable" do you mean that for you generally RF2 looks more like +1 in the chart above? With the new Auto HDR? I would have said it looked like that before...
Before it was horrendous, now the automated HDR tries to do a good job but I still find the colors to be off. I think Tosch or another "image" guy posted something about the system still being off and needing some attention on a very specific parameter. Anyway I still would love to see it look good without HDR but that's a foolish dream .
Yes I also think rF2 has a problem with the HDR function. But it is not a missing gamma slider, it is a too high contrast setting. I made a screen with HDR (standard set up) without any changes and a second one with 30 % less contrast. It´s amazing how great the interior can look in rF2. It´s just too much contrast in the standard HDR set. original: View attachment 11843 30 % less contrast: View attachment 11844 PS: Update your nvidia driver to the 334.XX! This brings a better color. But not a better contrast...
Isn't softening the contrast kind of going against what HDR is supposed to do? But I agree the second screen looks more detailed. However if you try 30% less contrast on external view it gets flat... Has someone had success using ENBSeries DX9 or similar DX9 injector to adjust contrast and gamma? This might be worth a try to test things...
