Real HDR in Quake Wars

(ParanoiD) #21

Hello Forum,

Can you answer my question?

Answer: No
A Forum is just a piece of stupid coded software and won’t answer your questions… Instead of “Hello Forum,” “Hello Comunity,” would be better. Altough the Community rather doesn’t greet at all :stuck_out_tongue:

(kamikazee) #22

It is certainly nice to greet your fellow forum visitors in case you start a new thread. (Look at a thread by mrfin, for example.)

However, doing this with every post is just too much. And as ParanoiD explained in a satirical manner, you could better direct your welcoming to the people in the forum instead of referring to the forum itself.

(General.Jung) #23

Hallo Forum,

ok any one can prefer what he want, but is it a reason to discuss here?

(NoControl) #24

I think this whole “Hello Forum” thing is gonna turn into some kind of inside joke soon, and prolly will be included soon in ET Comic too.

(madness) #25

maybe SD would change v54 greeting in QW into “Hello Forum”

(murka) #26

hello community

seems like this is getting really off-topic

(BondyBoy007) #27

a post on splashdamage going off topic? surely not ! :wink:

(nUllSkillZ) #28

If he enjoys writing “hello forum” it’s OK.
Why always try to change people that don’t behave like everyone else.
He doesn’t do any harm to someone.
I think he only wants to be nice and say “hello” if he joins discussions.

BTW this discussion is about bloom or HDR.

(Dangles91) #29

How much if a difference is there between HDR and bloom?
anyone have some comparison screenies?

(kamikazee) #30

HDR can do far more advanced things than bloom because it stores more information. However, if HDR is used only sparingly as to make colours bleed, you could as well fake it using bloom to simulate the same effect.

So it all depends on how the two are used and to which degree. You can’t really compare two different games applying different techniques. On the other hand, it could be interesting to compare bloom versus HDR in the same game. (Given the bloom effect is done right.)

(Zarkow) #31

Well, no, that would be the motion blur they have added. That you can turn off. (Bloom-shading doesn’t blur everything.)

And usage of HDR doesn’t automatically imply usage of Bloom. Nether does Bloom automatically mean usage of HDR, since there is [decent] LDR-solutions for it too.

(Sauron|EFG) #32

Other games may implement the effects slightly different though, and some games use tone mapping instead (works fairly well in DoD:S imho).

(Zarkow) #33

Other games may implement the effects slightly different though, and some games use tone mapping instead (works fairly well in DoD:S imho).[/quote]

Well, that page is misleading…

Since it is specifically about Oblivion, and they have an option to either ue HDR (with Bloom), Bloom (infact LDR-version) and nothing as a toggle.

There isn’t usually a ‘vs’-position between the two, since true Bloom requires HDR, but it can be faked in LDR [decently].

The above is therefor HDR-Bloom vs LDR-Bloom vs Nothing.

This topic is going to confuse a lot I fear…or has before and it will get better now?

(Sauron|EFG) #34

Isn’t that the same for all games with HDR, since most gamers don’t have HDR displays?

(Zarkow) #35

What? I have no clue what you mean by that.

Rendering in HDR has nothing to do with any screens/displays.

(obsidian) #36

HDR really has to do with colour ranges. Typically, we use 8-bit channels to display most computer graphic images on computers, which works fine with static photos. But with dynamically changing graphics like in games, when you change lighting environments, some of the colours in 8-bit source files will get clipped off due to lack of data. For example, going from a dark environment to a light environment, you only have 8-bits of data for each channel to work with for both environments. Very dark or very light colours will get clipped off due to the lack of colour ranges.

HDR allows the use of floating point colour information, which allows you to store a greater range of colour information as well as translate values without loss of definition.

For example, take a dark LDR texture and add a shadow do it, and it basically turns into jet black. Take a HDR texture and add a shadow to it, and you can still scale it so that you can still see different values of colour.

Other features like bloom and blur effects are really just secular effects that can be achieved more accurately with HDR. Same thing with exposure differences above, you can properly represent bloom and blur with little loss in the accuracy of colours.

(carnage) #37

i though bloom was an esential part of HDR as you need to display values that are brightest than the brightest possible display brightness because of HDR level

afaik if you tried to represent HDR without bloom you would just get large parts of the screen as plain white but would not look right without bloom to make the brighter parts of the screen bleed into nearby pixels. although you are right about HDR being mainly about storing a greater range of colours in a texture than can be displayed all at once on screen

(M8DNanite) #38

Yeah we are talking rendering but for curiosity there is also displays with HDR to improve contrast.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/03/brightside_hdr_edr/1.html

(Zarkow) #39

Yeah we are talking rendering but for curiosity there is also displays with HDR to improve contrast.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/03/brightside_hdr_edr/1.html[/quote]

From a programming standpoint a monitor/screen with higher contrast-resolution has nothing to do with the issue. That is what I was refering to. Btw, a plasma-tv of today have a light-contrast of 10 000:1, if of good quality.

i though bloom was an esential part of HDR as you need to display values that are brightest than the brightest possible display brightness because of HDR level

afaik if you tried to represent HDR without bloom you would just get large parts of the screen as plain white but would not look right without bloom to make the brighter parts of the screen bleed into nearby pixels. [/quote]

Bloom is very much not an essential part of HDR. It’s how ever commonly used together (or exclusively) with it. It’s the same relations as a Formula 1 car and a Formula 1 race-track.

Bleeding in LDR can and have been done. Even the prictures in the link above (Oblivion) shows it.

As stated, when a common rendering is done in 8bit (int) [0-255], HDR can be done in 16 (float) and 32bit (float), offering much higher resolution between the ‘steps’ of the light-levels in a picture (rendered frame).

(Sauron|EFG) #40


“In high dynamic range rendering (HDR) applications, it is used when the necessary brightness exceeds the contrast ratio that a computer monitor can display.”

I’m well aware that I don’t know what I’m talking about. :wink: