Red Dead Redemption
HDR analysis Red Dead Redemption 1 on PC and PS5 Pro.
HDR is the same on PC and PS5 Pro.
The only settings we have is HDR ON or OFF and a brightness slider.
The in-game brightness slider increases the whole brightness spectrum from shadows, midtones to peak brightness when you move it right.
One click to the right is roughly 100 nits peak brightness. 1000 nits peak is 11 clicks and 2000 nits is 17 clicks.
Picture 1: Brightness slider 11 clicks.
Picture 2: Brightness slider 17 clicks.
Picture 3: Brightness slider 11 clicks, RenoDX 2000 nits, Lilliums Black level floor Fix (SDR black floor emulation and 0.05 nits black floor lowering - massively lowers shadows on PC).
Shadows:
We do get 100% black level floor in some scenes, but shadows are lifted way too much making the game look too bright in the shadow area, losing a lot of contrast. We can from picture 1 to 2 see how shadows are increased as we move the brightness slider to the right. I massively lower shadows on PC using Lilliums Black floor fix in picture 3.
High-lights:
The game lacks detail and color in bright highlights. RenoDX on PC also improves that. It makes the whole sky box look much better and that's pretty important in a game like this.
Over-exposure:
In picture 4 we can see that large areas of the screen are way too bright. It happens during day time. 1000 nits TVs will have a difficult time showing so high brightness on such a large area of the screen (look at average picture brightness😳). Over-exposure increases as we move the brightness slider to the right.
To combat the issue with over-exposure and lifted blacks, I recommend not increasing to over 1000 nits peak on any TV. On a 1000 nits TV I would use around 800 nits peak to decrease the effect of over-exposure.
The over-exposure is not effected by the RenoDX mod, so here we can use the peak brightness our TVs can handle (my TV can handle 2000 nits).
Paper White:
With the over-exposure issue, I will not even consider looking to optimise paper white.
It's not great HDR. But it's an old game and it's still much better than SDR. And on PC we can improve it a lot.
