Certain maps like emp_dustorm after the update are just overbright with HDR turned on. I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this as there have been many complaints with jokes about needing sunglasses to play the game on these levels. Gamma setting doesn't seem to do anything the only solution currently that works is to disable HDR which is a shame because HDR does make all the other levels look prettier.
HDR is a complete waste of FPS. so is bloom. HDR is meant to mimic the human eye when it looks at bright lights, then going back to looking at normal lights, think of it like this, you spend 1 hour in the dark. eventually your eyes are going to adjust to it and you will be able to barely see in the dark. you open up the door to this room that you spent a dark hour in, and you look at the sun. its going to be extremely bright because your eyes are adjusted for dark environments and have been exposed to a bright environment. This is HDR, if valve would ever notice that gamers have eyes, this would never be in any of there games.
Spooky: LDR leads to completely nonphysical results. Your eye also doesn't have linear sensitivity to light but logarithmic.
You know what I mean.... well, if you stare at the sun for a couple days then look at a pitch black room, can you see inside it? (remove the fact that you wont be able to see at all if you do this)
Yes that's true but also HDR takes samples of light levels in the environment valve gives more specifics about how they do it in the Lost Coast tech demo. I agree it's suppose to attempt to mimic what your eyes see but if done correctly it is very impressive. And let's be honest your LCD only refreshes at 60FPS so any FPS above that is just skipped or not rendered to screen. Yes yes I know more FPS = more times the game loop is computed + executed and some argue that leads to more lag free key input but again it's input that doesn't have a visual frame associated with it. With a 7900GS or above you can easily run HDR at full 60FPS+ I see no point not to. It would be like owning a F1 car and never taking it to the track. Those cars don't make sense speed limited on normal roads. Now as for the differences in the engine I'd imagine HDR was tweaked for Left4Dead in order to make darker areas more dramatic. Since the new engine focuses so much on dark rooms it's understandable how projects like empires now suffer from over bright. Now the Hard Core Gamer argument: Unless you run everything on low to get max FPS I don't see this argument holding water. Yes hardcore gamers will lower all settings in order to do things like not have the tree obstruct their view of other players. And in certain games they will reduce all visual settings in order to get things like grass to disappear giving them an advantage. If that's your definition of a hardcore gamer then that's not me I like my visual candy I don't mind that it gives my opponents visual clutter to hide behind. I don't mind that HDR gives my opponents a 0.5 sec advantage when transitioning from inside to outside environments my life as a gamer isn't evaluated by what my rank was on the scoreboard. It's more important that the entire experience is enjoyable and fun. Yes I do mute players that blare their music, yes I quit the server if the commander is an ass, yes I might even refuse to join a team in which I know the commander is an ass. Because at the end of the day winning for me is how much fun I had not that I made x number of kills.
I personally like to think of no HDR as hax in Insurgency. HDR is usually the only think keeping you from seeing long distances. Usually the sunlight comes in waves, and I wait for the sunlight to die down before I can get a shot. But in most maps it makes everything look awesome :D
I just hate the fact that bloom and HDR are too bright for there own good. I don't want to have sore eyes after glycen then go to playing something like slaughtered or canyon. Im not sure if empires uses FP2S, but thats what Valve uses. so really having 120 FP2S is having 60FPS. 30 is 15, 60 is 30 and so on. Unfortunately im running an ATI 2600 which doesen't get me very far at all in the line of video cards. I can still run everything on high except for Aniostropic and 8xMSA, with a free 60 FPS to spare and throw at other less fortunate people like bumgravy.
