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High Dynamic Range (HDR) Technology Analysis

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the taking-the-scary-out-of-games dept.

THG writes "CoolTechZone.com has published an analysis of Valve's High Dynamic Range, or HDR, technology that enhances graphics in video games. This new video/gaming graphics technology is expected to debut soon with Valve's Half-Life 2: Lost Coast title. According to the article, 'HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is a lighting process that's been designed to emulate in-game or artificially generated lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world. In simpler terms, HDR allows you to make the objects brighter by allowing them to use the full brightness capabilities of the monitor and not just the brightness level at which they have been shot with (or rendered with) in the scene.'"

3 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More than what was intended? by OblongPlatypus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You've missed the point - though I can't blame you, judging by the blurb the article was less than pedagogical when trying to explain HDR.

    This isn't about altering what any "author" intended. On the contrary, HDR is a new tool which lets the "author" do what's intended more easily, assuming what's intended is to achieve realistic lighting in the rendered scenes. Try Anandtech's recent article on the topic, they explain it very well.

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  2. Re:More than what was intended? by yoyhed · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's not adding more than the author intended. HDR levels in Source have to be made for HDR; Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source don't just work with HDR now that Source supports it, the levels still have to be made for it.

    It's a lot more than just a bass boost, since it's not just a brightness increase, but an increase in the range of brightness, allowing for very high contrast. If you go back and look at a Source game without HDR after seeing HDR for awhile, it looks like it has a dark film over it, similar to a digital camera picture looks before being run through auto-contrast in Photoshop.

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  3. Not Valve's HDR... by Jerry+Talton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think, if you want to be precise, what Valve did in Lost Coast should be called Paul Debevec's High Dynamic Range.