Devlog 38: HDR Support

Above video best viewed on a HDR screen (1000 nits). Or on iPhone 12 and above.

Added native HDR support. It was not just a matter of simply enabling HDR, because the colours, lighting and exposure all need to be retuned otherwise it may look washed out in certain conditions. Some shaders needed to modified to unclamp colour values so that they can achieve HDR ranges. UI needed some rework too to achieve a suitable brightness.

HDR is not just simply increasing brightness. If that were the case then dark areas would also brighten up. Proper HDR increases dynamic range, so that dark areas can remain dark alongside bright highlights. Like sitting in a dark room and looking at a bright spotlight. In non-HDR, the blacks or highlights would get clamped and lose detail. Achieving HDR requires screens that can achieve high brightness, usually 500-1000 nits.

The game now looks truly brilliant under high contrast lighting conditions. However, not many people have a HDR-capable monitor as it is still rather niche and expensive. But the game still supports normal monitors and still looks the same as before!