HDR... What?

[USMC2Hard4U]

Help me out here. HDR on video cards... what does this do? Is it a res? Will it work with any monitor? Whats the deal? How does it perform in compareson to it off?

I am not into all this new school generation stuff I still <3 my trusty 9700 Pro! But will be getting a 7800GTX...

 

[Aldoria]

Answers here.. maybe.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=919853

Ald

 

[CrimandEvil]

The simplist way to describe HDR is that it's a light bloom effect, very much like how if you move from a very dark room to an lighted room theres a second or two where your eyes have to adjust to the new enviroment (or like turning the lights on at night after fumbling around in the dark).

 

[Skrying]

Also, its a performance killer and you cant use it with normal AA, only SS AA and its pretty much completely unplayable with SS AA on except at maybe 800x600 or 640x480, heh.

For a person spending $6000 on a PC I figured you know what it is...

 

[FanATIc]

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2005/06/14/hl2_hdr_overview/1.html

15/06/2005 Update: as mentioned in the original story, the net is rife with speculation that ATI specifically asked Valve to hold back Lost Coast until the launch of their next-gen GPU, R520, reported to be on the 26th of July. We can now firmly dispell that theory, thanks to an email follow-up from Doug Lombardi:

On the release date, right now we're looking at some time in July. The only reason for the change in date was internal development - no external factors.

Meanwhile, this will run on the X800 as well as the 6800 line of cards, as well as the coming highest-end products from both ATI & NVIDIA - it was shown on dual 6800s at E3.

 

[tranCendenZ]

Help me out here. HDR on video cards... what does this do? Is it a res? Will it work with any monitor? Whats the deal? How does it perform in compareson to it off?

I am not into all this new school generation stuff I still <3 my trusty 9700 Pro! But will be getting a 7800GTX...

HDR = High Dynamic Range Lighting

Here are some examples of FP16 HDR

http://www.reflectonreality.com/images/hdr/FarCry0005.jpg
FarCry No HDR

http://www.reflectonreality.com/images/hdr/FarCry0006.jpg
FarCry FP16 HDR
***

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory no HDR

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory FP16 HDR

****

There are several forms of HDR, the best and most popular version currently available being FP16 HDR (floating point precision w/ framebuffer blending). This form of HDR is shown in the two screenshots above, and is the same level of HDR that is used by professional movie studios. The 7800 series can run FP16 HDR with good performance from 1280x1024-1600x1200 depending on the game, while the 6800 series can run FP16 HDR with good performance from 1024x768-1280x1024 depending on the game. It is supported by:
7800GTX
6800U
6800GT
6800
6600GT
6600

There is also FX16 HDR (fixed/integer precision) which is of a much lower quality and has less software support, this is supported by:
7800GTX
6800U
6800GT
6800
6600GT
6600
6200
5950
5900
5800
5700
5600
5500
5200
X850
X800
X700
X600
X300
9800
9700
9600
9500
9200

In terms of games support, it falls like this:

FP16 HDR
--
Age of Empires 3
FarCry
Half Life 2: The Lost Coast
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

FX16 HDR
--
Half Life 2: The Lost Coast
Serious Sam 2

 

[trinibwoy]

The simplist way to describe HDR is that it's a light bloom effect, very much like how if you move from a very dark room to an lighted room theres a second or two where your eyes have to adjust to the new enviroment (or like turning the lights on at night after fumbling around in the dark).

Not quite. Bloom is simply one use of HDR. HDR simply provides for a greater range of light intensities in the same scene (frame). That way you can have both very bright and very dark objects in the same scene. In conventional rendering, if you have a very bright object, the rest of the frame, including dark areas become washed out. It went the other way too, if you had a very dark area in the game, any bright objects in the scene would be dulled down. HDR lets you have both.

 

[BullseyeBob]

You must REALLY like HDR lol

 

[USMC2Hard4U]

For a person spending $6000 on a PC I figured you know what it is...

I am not a big gamer, maybe 20 or 30 minutes a day.. and only like 1 or 2 games I like anyway.

 

[USMC2Hard4U]

Oh I see... I figured it was like HD, like HDTV and stuff. Like a higher res or something. Im not so worried about it then

 

[Brent_Justice]

This is from a photography standpoint, but it's valid, a very very good read: http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/

Also, this guy has done a lot of research and work in this field: http://www.debevec.org/

 

[JSquid]

i just tried it on Far Cry. gives the game a nice lifelike feel.

 

[darkhorse]

so it's like a more correct exposure that the human eye would see if the situation is real life?

 

[m0unds]

there was this thread on HL2.net that was really informative. a man took a bunch of the characters from HL2 and did some HDR renders with..maya, i think. he used a light sphere to get the lighting accurate and the renders were fabulous. i'll look for it and post a link if i can find it.

 

[USMC2Hard4U]

Yeah this is totally different than I thought this was. I figured HDR was "High Deffination Resolution"... and ran at insane res' or something. Im glad its not Thats why I originally asked if I needed a new monitor