Assassin's Creed Mirage
HDR analysis Assassin’s Creed Mirage on PC and PS5 Pro.
It makes me sad to see how bad HDR looks on PS5, compared to how good it could have looked if it looked like on PC using RenoDX.
The biggest issue is that black level floor and shadows are massively lifted. And shadow area is compressed.
There is an exposure slider that lowers the overall brightness of the game. It simply lowers everything from max luminance to black levels. But there must also be an issue with how the game does its tone mapping, because the exposure slider does not really fix the issue.
PC:
Use the RenoDX HDR mod on PC. It looks stunning.
It does a lot behind the scenes, that you can read about on Nexus mods. It fixes the in-game max luminance slider and exposure slider. The game now outputs what you set the max brightness slider to and the exposure slider becomes a paper white slider, that actually does what it must (see my article about paper white).
For a 1000 nits TV, I would set the exposure slider to zero. It looks to be around 203 nits paper white to me. A 2000 nits TV needs at least 0.5 in exposure to get to around 343 nits paper white.
Picture 1 is with RenoDX with 2000 nits and 0.5 exposure. Great black levels floor. But also look at the size of the shadow area on the graph compared to picture 3 on PS5.
Picture 2 is RenoDX during day time in the shadows with 1000 nits max luminance and zero exposure. Look how good it looks with great shadows, contrast and color, even in an area only lit up by indirect lighting.
PS5:
I would lower exposure to -0.2 from 2 for all displays to massively lower black levels and shadows. But it still looks washed out, even though black level floor can go below 0.05 nits. That’s why the whole tone mapping must be wrong ??? Don’t go lower or the overall brightness will be too low I think.
When lowering exposure max luminance also decreases. For a 1000 nits TV I would set max luminance to 1250 nits and 4000 nits for a 2000 nits TV.
Picture 3 and 4 are PS5 with exposure -0.2 and 1250 nits max luminance. Lifted black levels and compressed shadows / brightness at night time, even when lowering exposure from 1 to -0.2.
Try it out.
