Control
HDR in Control on PC, Series X and PS5 is very bad 👎👎👎
The game got an update in March 2025 on PC and October 2025 on consoles, that added HDR10.
GamePass PC:
First there is no HDR at all on the GamePass / Windows Store version. You can use a mod from Nexus Mods, but that mod doesn't support the DLC content and it's no longer supported, as I understand it, so it's not fully recommendable to use.
Consoles:
On Series X and PS5 there is HDR support in name only. The game only outputs a peak brightness of around 275 nits at 203 nits paper white. That's not real HDR. The only reason the game got HDR10 was to give us less color banding, apparently.
What makes it even worse, in my opinion, is that the game in SX's and PS5s in-game menu shows the peak brightness we have setup in the system settings, implying the game actually can output that peak brightness. Because why else would the information be there ??? It shows 2010 nits for my TV and the game outputs 275 nits. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea 😂😂😂
Steam PC:
PCs Steam version has the same ugly HDR as on consoles. But here there is a great hidden HDR implementation. We have to go into the games renderer.ini file and enable it manually. Set m_eHDRPreset to 2 to get the good modern HDR.
Most gamers will get to experience the ugly HDR or simply no HDR, unfortunately.
I will take my negative view on this back, if I somehow have missed a hidden HDR setting on consoles or something else, but I have tested this on two different HDR test setups. I have tested it on GamePass PC, on Steam PC and on SX and PS5 Pro, with the same result.
Picture 1: PCs hidden HDR version 2 - I have seen it output up to my TVs 2000 nits peak.
Picture 2: HDR on PS5 Pro. It's the same on SX. Shows 275 nits peak brightness at 203 paper white.
Picture 3: It's the in-game menu on PS5 Pro showing 2010 nits peak brightness.
Picture 4: In-game menu in PC GamePass version showing no HDR support.
