The problem with HDR in gaming and how to solve it

Alexander Mejia, Product Manager for Dolby Vision Gaming

HDR has so much to offer in raising the quality bar to meet the insatiable need for better graphics. It belongs in the same breath as all of the other visual technologies that are becoming the holy grail of graphics, like ray-tracing and variable refresh rates — but here’s the problem with HDR in gaming: it’s a hassle that you might not have the time for.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is an imaging technology that allows for an expanded contrast range to produce visuals with brighter brights, darker darks, and many more shades of detail in between. Unlike older standards that haven’t kept up with modern TV and display technology capabilities, HDR allows you to create images with more depth and realism. It’s closer to how we see things in real life.

Just look at what HDR has done for blockbuster films and hit TV shows where it has become the norm. Many TV streaming services have made HDR content the default, along with 4K. And if you haven’t been shopping for a TV recently, you’ll find that TV manufacturers are supporting HDR on nearly all of their 4K TVs - mainstream models, too. When customers go to upgrade their TVs for this new generation of consoles, you can bet they will be HDR ready.

But anyone who has tried to make a game in HDR knows it’s a mess. Before I joined Dolby, I worked on several AAA games, and even managed to make my own indie game. I’ve worked on AAA games that released (or tried to release) in HDR — it was such a terrible experience because of the technical, business, and scheduling factors, that one of my projects decided to actively avoid HDR, even though we knew it was a valuable feature.

And we weren’t alone. If you talk to other developers in the industry, here’s what you’ll hear about the challenges of creating a game in HDR:

It’s unpredictable

There are more and more HDR TVs, monitors, and laptops on the market than ever, but if you grab a couple from your local big-box retailer, your game is going to look drastically different on each one. Some HDR TVs get up to 300 nits of brightness, while others can reach 3000 nits, and now you have the fun problem of figuring out a consistent way to represent your game across displays with different capabilities. How do you know that the look you set in your studio will be the same one the player sees?

It’s hard to match

Unfortunately, you still need to deliver a standard dynamic range (SDR) version of your game. Of course, you want all of your players to have an equal, consistent, and fair experience. A lot of game developers struggle to match their SDR and HDR looks and end up compromising both versions, or they focus on SDR, and then have a small shoe-string budget to slightly stretch the SDR version into HDR, leaving much of the dynamic range and wide color gamut capabilities out.

It takes more work

When you’re already on a tight timeline to meet your delivery date, extra work is a no go. You still need to deliver a standard dynamic range version of your game – and creating a separate version for HDR means twice as much mastering, testing, and QA. Good luck getting sign-off on that.

Making a game in HDR as it stands today is a headache, and it’s understandable that a lot of studios avoid it or see it as an afterthought. But imagine what HDR could bring to gaming? That’s why I came to Dolby — to help unlock everything that HDR has to offer to bring worlds to life and raise the quality bar for all studios.

Enter: Dolby Vision

When you think of Dolby, you probably think of sound, but we have been at the forefront of defining HDR technology for the past decade, both in the cinema and in the home. Dolby Vision has been adopted by major Hollywood studios, international theatrical exhibitors, global streaming services, and the top television and display manufacturers because it unlocks experiences that take full advantage of what HDR is capable of and ensures that audiences will experience the content the way it was meant to be seen.

And now, with the recent announcement for support on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, I’m excited that we can finally share Dolby Vision for gaming.

Introducing Dolby Vision for gaming

Dolby Vision allows you to create games with incredible brightness, contrast, and color for a more intense, immersive, and engaging experience. Not only does it give you the increased dynamic range of HDR, it also uses wide color gamut, giving you the ability to push brighter, more saturated colors with less clipping.

Introducing Dolby Vision for gaming

The result? A picture with more lifelike realism and never-before-seen color that pulls you deeper into the game.

Dolby Vision for gaming is more than just brightness and color

But Dolby Vision for gaming isn’t just about more brightness and color for Dolby Vision displays — our tools save you time, save you money, and improve the visual quality of your game on legacy technologies like HDR10 and SDR. We developed these time-saving tools by working directly with developers to address their HDR challenges so you can deliver the most stunning picture in one simple pipeline:

Automatically match outputs for Dolby Vision, HDR10, and SDR

Dolby Vision lets you take full advantage of its expanded brightness and color gamut without worrying about how to match your HDR10 and SDR experiences. Dolby Vision handles the complex math to automatically generate matching and consistent HDR10 and SDR outputs. How good is it? This is how many cinema and TV professionals are generating their HDR10 and SDR outputs as well, so it’s been battle tested for half a decade now.

Trust that your players will see what you see, on any display

When you master your game in Dolby Vision, you generate real-time dynamic metadata about how your game should look. The game uses this metadata to calibrate to any Dolby Vision display, so every color and detail can be seen on that display — and for HDR10 and SDR displays, your game will still look as good as it can without highlight clipping or color shifting, so every player gets a fair and consistent experience.

Save time and money in testing and QA

Because the HDR10 and SDR outputs from the game are made from the same Dolby Vision master, the same content appears in each output — making art bugs easy to catch on any display and saving you time and money on testing and QA.

Make Dolby your secret weapon

I know what it's like to integrate a new technology into your game. You’ve got a hundred things you need to build, and you want to do it right the first time to create the best game possible. We’ll equip you with a fully documented SIDK that makes Dolby Vision easy to integrate into your custom game engine, or you can use our Dolby Vision plug-in for Unreal Engine 4.24 and above.

If you're ready to get started or want to learn more about mastering your game in Dolby Vision, our Developer Relations team is here to help you through every step of the process. Shoot us an email today and propel your work to the forefront of next-generation experiences.

Alexander Mejia is an Emmy Award winning producer who has been developing games since 2008. He has advanced technology on the Saints Row and Red Faction franchises, and is the creative director on the award-winning VR game Starship Commander: Arcade — the first VR game to be completely driven by machine learning natural language processing. Alexander resides at Dolby to enable developers to ship Dolby Vision technology across multiple platforms.

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The problem with HDR in gaming and how to solve it

Alexander Mejia, Product Manager for Dolby Vision Gaming

It’s unpredictable

It’s hard to match

It takes more work

Enter: Dolby Vision

Introducing Dolby Vision for gaming

Introducing Dolby Vision for gaming

Dolby Vision for gaming is more than just brightness and color

Automatically match outputs for Dolby Vision, HDR10, and SDR

Trust that your players will see what you see, on any display

Save time and money in testing and QA

Make Dolby your secret weapon

Let's connect!

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