Red Dead Redemption 2 | HDR is fake on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, suggests Digital Foundry

According to SamaGame’s Digital Foundry, there’s something wrong with the implementation of Red Dead Redemption 2 on both consoles, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

After the game was released last week, players reported visual problems with the HDR option enabled. Several players seem to suffer from faded and blurry graphics on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and from according to Digital Foundry, the game currently does not offer True High Dynamic Range, since the output is said to be derived from the SDR image.

“Based on the Xbox One X video output, the output is clearly derived from the SDR image and is not actually rendered with any kind of high dynamic range,” writes Digital Foundry. “Yes, we can reach a maximum of 500 nits, but this is with the HDR calibration increased to the maximum, artificially increasing the peak brightness from what is probably a 100 nits source image. The 100 recommended configurations for LCD screens would be all of our comparison photos on this page present in a completely monochromatic way, meaning an image that is effectively an SDR image. “

Digital Foundry continues: “This is not the first game to introduce us to what you might call ‘fake’ HDR – earlier this year, the Xbox One version of Nier Automata also did a similar trick, effectively transplanting the image of the standard dynamic range in ‘HDR container’. Once active, your screen registers an HDR output from the console, but it only contains the SDR image inside it. All of our tests suggest that the same thing is happening in Red Dead 2 on Xbox and PlayStation systems. “

Digital Foundry asked developer Rockstar to comment on the implementation of the ‘fake’ HDR but nothing has been said so far.