A ResetEra user has shared an analysis about Nier Automata: Become As Gods Edition, claiming that the game features a fake HDR. According to EvilBoris, the team at Platinum Games only used a technique which is rather similar to upscaling.
ResetEra user EvilBoris has shared a pretty in-depth analysis about Nier Automata: Become As Gods Edition, claiming that the game features a fake HDR on Xbox One which makes it even worse than the standard release.
According to EvilBoris, the team at Platinum Games only used a technique which is rather similar to upscaling, since the game is said to be rendering “entirely in SDR” and being “expanded” from the regular 8bit to the HDR 10bit.
“The game is entirely in SDR and is expanded from 8bit to 10bit and then adjusted to fit into the appropriate place within an HDR output. Nothing is gained, in fact things that would have previously been darker now become lighter than then should be, resulting in a lower contrast, washed out the image,” he says.
“This is the HDR equivalent of upscaling and claiming the game is a higher resolution than it actually is. But then actually up-scaling it incorrectly and reducing the resolution a bit.
It’s super disappointing that a developer has done this and we should expect better. HDR is already a total mess of a format with such varied support and capability. It’s clearly possible at this point in time with such a new technology for a developer to misunderstand and produce poor results, but this feels more like an effort to deceive.”
Evidently, the developer has saved a lot of time and resources by doing so. What’s weird is that HDR is still being offered as a plus, so why act like this when you know that your userbase won’t blame you (not too much, at least) in case you don’t include it?
Anyway, Nier Automata is a great game you should play no matter the HDR, and now you can even if you have an Xbox One at your home.
