Death Stranding 2 – PS5
HDR analysis Death Stranding 2 on PS5 Pro.
Max luminance:
It uses PS5's system level HDR calibration to set peak brightness, but it outputs 20% too high. The 20% too high brightness is only in small highlights, so you really don’t lose detail. So I would not lower the brightness with 20%.
In-game HDR adjustments:
We only have an On/Off toggle and a brightness slider. The brightness slider changes the black level floor, shadows and midtones. See picture 1.
Black levels:
The black level floor and shadows are massively lifted at standard brightness setting of 5. In picture 2 they are over 0.25 nits at night. That's way too much and it makes the game look washed out with poor contrast. I game with brightness setting of 2, and here black level floor is only lifted by around 0.05 nits. See picture 3. It's still a significant raise that makes black look grey, but it looks much better than brightness setting 2. Black levels can be a bit less raised in cutscenes, in smaller scenes and indoors.
Over-exposure:
The sky has very little detail. Look at picture 4 where the sky is too bright for such a small area of the screen. That's a too high exposure. But I also think some of it is a design choice from the developer. No matter what, the skybox look washed out with very little detail and color variation.
Paper white:
Paper white is around 203 nits. And we have no way of adjusting in-game unless you want crazy high black levels, from increasing the brightness slider above 2-3. In the next post I will show 4 pictures where I measure paper white at 1000 nits and 2000 nits peak. I think paper white is good for a 1000 nits TV. But those who have more capable displays will need a lot higher paper white brightness (343 nits for 2000 nits peak).
PC:
I very much look forward to it releasing on PC, because there is so much to improve on the HDR. Further decreasing black levels and shadows, increasing paper white (overall brightness) and much more detail and color in the skybox.
Paper white 1
Paper white 2
Paper white 3
Paper white 4
