Red Dead Redemption 2's HDR Isn't Really HDR
 

While Red Dead Redemption 2 is a technical achievement by many measures, Eurogamer found that the game's "HDR support" appears to be little more than an upscaled SDR image. That might not sound so bad, but SDR streams lack the information needed to properly display HDR content. For example, white is white on an 8-bit SDR display. The brightest parts of snow, the sun, and white text in the game's UI would all be displayed using the same color: white. And that looks fine on SDR displays, which are supposed to top out at about 100 nits of brightness. But white is not white on an HDR display. The sun should shine significantly brighter than the snow or in game text, even if all those objects have a similar hue and appear "white" to human eyes. In Red Dead Redemption 2, there is no such distinction. Depending on your display and the in-game brightness sliders, and you would either get a blindingly bright UI, or get an image that looks exactly like an SDR display. But that's just one specific example. There are many issues with such an HDR implementation, and I'm not sure why Rockstar chose to include it. You've got nothing to lose by turning on HDR in Red Dead Redemption 2 but nothing to gain either and this begs the question - what's the point in it being there? It all comes as somewhat of a disappointment within a game that is a technical tour-de-force. This is compounded by the fact that various other titles in the last few weeks have delivered absolutely phenomenal results from their HDR implementations. And what's really disappointing here is that the potential for a stunning HDR implementation is there - in this game world with its stunning lighting and physically-based materials, Red Dead Redemption 2 should be up there with the best - it's just a shame it has fallen short. And by extension, as the highest profile title to deliver an underwhelming or non-existent HDR implementation, Red Dead Redemption 2 is somewhat of a mystery.
http://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/10/...r_isnt_really/