HDR Support

I'm not sure if ReShade even supports HDR output (don't have a display to test it).

But assuming it does, would "upscaling" old games to HDR be possible? Seems like you could just dither everything to 10-bits, apply a contrast filter, and get a significant image quality improvement.


EDIT: And I realize the shader have to process everything in 8 bits without new code, but ReShade could still dither the final output.

ReShade supports 10bit HDR, yes (except that you can't create screenshots, they'll turn out empty). This is true for its shader pipeline as well. There are very few games who make use of that though (one of the Dirt games is the only one I remember).

I don't see how you want to create more detail out of nothing though.

So let's say you have an SDR game and an HDR-capable display. No, you can't grab the extra HDR information out if thin air, and the display will dither the 8-bit input to 10 bits anyway.

But from what I understand, HDR displays won't pump up the backlight without a HDR signal.


I'm just wondering if ReShade can output the 8-bit game in 10 bits, and give us more dynamic range to play with from the display itself. That would also give the shaders 10 bits to play with instead of 8, which could have some small advantages.

You could try getting the data by reversing the tonemapping of the game. (which requires some decompilation to get the original tonemap shader from the game itself, if I'm not mistaken.)

NoMansReshade wrote: You could try getting the data by reversing the tonemapping of the game. (which requires some decompilation to get the original tonemap shader from the game itself, if I'm not mistaken.)

Could ReShade keep a database of tonemapping shaders used in common games, like the one we have for presets already?

NoMansReshade wrote: You could try getting the data by reversing the tonemapping of the game. (which requires some decompilation to get the original tonemap shader from the game itself, if I'm not mistaken.)

That doesn't give you more data. Saving in 8 bit is a lossy compression. All additionals details are lost and there is no way to bring them back. Reversing the tonemapping only increases the range again, but won't bring you back the details / colors.
EDIT: More detailed explanation of what I said: reshade.me/forum/shader-discussion/2888-...se-tonemapping#20437

brucethemoose wrote: I'm just wondering if ReShade can output the 8-bit game in 10 bits, and give us more dynamic range to play with from the display itself. That would also give the shaders 10 bits to play with instead of 8, which could have some small advantages.

Theoretically it could, yes.

Thanks for the link. I didn't know whites were compressed that much, interesting.

there are way more games that you think, Alien Isolation, RE5 ( I think DX10 version had it, but it was called FP16, somehow there was no any banding at all), even GTAV has command line -hdr to enable things like this. But this only works on displays that support that.

I use Panasonic TV and my Nvidia Driver panel allows me to set 12 bit color output.

Also we can dither, and do other smooth color upscaling in shader and we will have forced 10-12 bit output, we will have better results, than downscaling everything back to 8 bit and getting color banding. So its good idea to give us 10-12 bit output options.

v00d00m4n wrote: there are way more games that you think, Alien Isolation, RE5 ( I think DX10 version had it, but it was called FP16, somehow there was no any banding at all), even GTAV has command line -hdr to enable things like this. But this only works on displays that support that.

I use Panasonic TV and my Nvidia Driver panel allows me to set 12 bit color output.

Also we can dither, and do other smooth color upscaling in shader and we will have forced 10-12 bit output, we will have better results, than downscaling everything back to 8 bit and getting color banding. So its good idea to give us 10-12 bit output options.

I'd guess that your Panasonic TV already dithers the the output if it will take a 12-bit input, and it probably looks better than what ReShade can do with 60hz input.

That said, many monitors don't do a good job.

My previous Nec display from 2009 supported 10 bit output and feature was not even advertised or mentioned in manual. Most of modern displays support 10-12 bit output and don't mention that. Main problem here is NVidia which locks 10-12 output for entire desktop as Quadro monopoly but they allow 10 + bits in exclusive fullscreen mode on GeForce, but most of game devs not aware they can do it so they dont care.

FYI, I have done extensive testing with a custom dummy game I made in unity that forces HDR output, and the current bloom solution included in the "Reshade-Shaders" pack looks phenomenal (set the threshold to 1.1 and be amazed ).