!WARNING!

[Sinthoras_96]

So I just installed Crysis 2 and 3 Remastered and I was shocked about the complete joke of the HDR settings in both games. 

 

They both have a whitepoint and an additional HDR Brightness setting. The problem is: There is no calibration picture for both of them. So you have actually no idea how to set these correct. 

 

The default settings especially in Crysis 2 look like complete garbage. Way too bright and washed out. Don't ruin the experience by playing with these default settings! 

 

After a quick google search I found this page with recommended settings for both games:

 

https://www.hdrgamer.com/2022/01/crysis-remastered-trilogy-hdr-peak.html?m=1

 

The whitepoint needs to be adjusted to the peak brightness of your TV. Otherwise bright details will either be too dark or clip out and become invisible. 

 

For example I have an LGC9 with a HDR peak brightness of 730. So I've set the whitepoint in Crysis 2 to 40/100 and in Crysis 3 to 100/500.  Yeah they even managed to bring us two different setting ranges in the two games, which makes the confusion even worse. 

 

But even more important: 

 

The HDR Brightness in both games is set to 50/100 as default. 

 

For Crysis 3 this is fine, but Crysis 2 looks like complete shit with this setting. 

 

So like the site recommends: Crysis 2 HDR Brightness 0/100. 

 

The difference in picture quality is insane. And it's even more insane that the default settings are that bad. Most people probably have no idea about how to calibrate HDR settings and will just start playing the game. And it will look like shit and they will think that this is normal. A true shame. 

 

So please, if you happen to read this: Adjust your settings. Your visual experience will be on a different level. 

 

[DaivRules]

HDR as a thing has been implemented like complete garbage across all TV sets. People see “HDR” and think it’s either an on or off thing, but it’s absolutely not. Every TV set or monitor should be calibrated to the HDR content as the content/game has no way of knowing how that set has implemented HDR. 
 

Its definitely not just the two games mentioned here, even if other games look “okay” without calibration, they’ll look much better with proper settings. 
 

[Sinthoras_96]

1 hour ago, DaivRules said:

HDR as a thing has been implemented like complete garbage across all TV sets. People see “HDR” and think it’s either an on or off thing, but it’s absolutely not. Every TV set or monitor should be calibrated to the HDR content as the content/game has no way of knowing how that set has implemented HDR. 
 

Its definitely not just the two games mentioned here, even if other games look “okay” without calibration, they’ll look much better with proper settings. 
 

Yeah unfortunately. 

 

I'm definitely no calibration "pro" or something like that. But I always seek for the best picture quality I can get out of my LG Oled with my knowledge. I've set the TV settings as recommended on rtings.com website since day one of owning the TV. 

 

The website is very well recommended everywhere in the internet for settings references, so that's probably the best you can do as a "normal" person without some high tech calibration gear. One important thing is definitely to disable the TVs dynamic Tone mapping and set it to HGIG, so your TV doesn't mess around with the shown picture like crazy. 

 

Then I obviously also adjusted the HDR setting on my PS5, following a video of HDTVtest (Vincent). 

 

 

 

I highly recommend this video, since it shows that even Sonys own console calibration isn't exactly perfectly executed. 

 

 

Well and after setting TV and console up correctly, you still need to adjust each games settings to match with them. 

 

In most games you can only adjust the peak brightness from my experience, which is fine if it comes with a calibration picture or if the setting actually means what it means. For example in my case on a range of 100-1500 it would be correct to set it to 730, if the numbers of the setting correctly represent the peak brightness. 

 

 

But in the case of Crysis 2 and 3 we get a peak brightness setting of 0-100 and 100-500 without any explanation whatsoever. 

 

Am I supposed to calibrate the whitepoint purely with my eyes without any reference picture? This is a complete joke.

 

But yeah, even worse ist that HDR brightness setting in Crysis 2. This is what makes the whole game look completely washed out, flat and bland. 

 

I honestly almost feel like this is a bug. In this case the setting for both games is 0-100 and 50 is default for both. Pretty much just like SDR brightness settings in most games. 

 

And the fact that this is completely fine within Crysis 3 but looks absolutely bad in Crysis 2 makes it look like it's not supposed to be like that. 

 

I mean, why have a range from 0-100 if 0 is the best and most accurate looking? It doesn't make any sense at all. 

 

 

Here is another post of someone complaining about this. You will also find several users complaining about it on reddit. Just a little proof that I'm not making this up from my subjective impression or something. It's objectively completely wrong and just bad by default. 

https://www.trueachievements.com/forum/viewthread.aspx?tid=1325913&anchor=10183859

 

 

Follow the instructions on the site I've linked in my first post and you will be fine. The game doesn't deserve to look like this. It really amazes me how a company like Crytek can mess this up so bad. But at least it looks really nice, if it's set correct. So it's not like they completely fucked up the HDR in general. Just the settings are trash. 

 

Maybe some people will read this before playing and it will improve their experience. That's all I can hope for. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Sinthoras_96

[westersburg]

Still think it's kinda funny haha. The defaults in 2 are kinda messed up, no way near ruining the experience though. We are not talking about low resolution bugs, or inconsistent framerates with bad framepacing etc. It's more like a little issue, that you can fix for yourself. So don't worry if you played through the game on default settings and had a good time anyways. This difference is noticible, but only in a comparison I'd say. Definitely not worth an extra playthrough for example.

[Antiristus]

On 04/02/2022 at 5:15 AM, Sinthoras_96 said:

After a quick google search I found this page with recommended settings for both games:

 

https://www.hdrgamer.com/2022/01/crysis-remastered-trilogy-hdr-peak.html?m=1

 

 

I guess there's something different about my game, because the HDR option in Crysis 2 Remastered is greyed for me and I can't access it.

[Sinthoras_96]

On 18.2.2023 at 11:02 AM, Antiristus said:

I guess there's something different about my game, because the HDR option in Crysis 2 Remastered is greyed for me and I can't access it.

If HDR is greyed out, it sounds like you don't have a TV with HDR support? 

[Antiristus]

On 21/02/2023 at 8:51 AM, Sinthoras_96 said:

If HDR is greyed out, it sounds like you don't have a TV with HDR support? 

Ah, silly me. You're right. I checked the model and yup.