What is HDR?

[PCBliss]

What is HDR? I keep hearing it in reference to the 6800 series? Do i have this capability on my 6800nu? If so how do i enable it or is it enabled by default? I didnt see anything about it in the advanced display properties.

 

[BigTaf]

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/far_cry_1.3/

give it a read
looks pretty good if just a little over exaturated

 

[Terra]

HDR = high dynamic-range (lightning)
HDR is game dependent, eg FarCry uses OpenEXR HDR, while Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory uses a different type.

You can't set HDR in the display properties, but it must be set ingame, either via video settings in-gamme or editing a config file/console command.

[H]ardOCP did a review of FraCry 1.3 with HDR here

And yes, your 6800NU support HDR(OpenEXR and others formats), not just as good as the more powerfull NVIDIA cards.

Terra - Hoped that helped

 

[spine]

From what I know, HDR is a method used in games to emulate the high dynamic range of light you find in the real world. You take it for granted because your eyes adjust to massive variances in light 'automatically', but a computer monitor simply is not capable of reproducing this high range of differing light intensities.

HDR adds effects to emulate this, like blooming effects, increasing contrasts, glare, etc, so that your monitor can 'appear' to be doing what it blatantly can't otherwise do.

When done well, it can work wonders in making a game look just that much more realistic.


Personally, I'd say Far Cry is a bad example of HDR.

Good examples are the HDR Lighting demo;
http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/

and the HDR bloom mod for Half-life 2.
http://halflife2.filefront.com/file/HalfLife_2_R8_HDR_Bloom_MiniMod;38224

 

[PCBliss]

Ok yeah i use the rthdribl demo all the time, as i find its a good way to test out GPU temps. Thanks for all the info!

 

[DejaWiz]

Wow, interesting stuff. I just read that OpenEXR's HDR file format is identical to what nVidia originally created with their Cg graphics language. Cool stuff.