A single Monitor setting made SUCH a difference to visuals

[Scoob]

Hey all,

Thought I'd share something I discovered with my Monitor last night. It's a "10bit" HDR monitor, connected via Display Port, not HDMI FYI.

When I launch X4, the Monitor automatically switches to HDR mode (not emulated HDR, actual HDR) and X4 looks vastly better for it vs. my prior non-HDR display. I loaded my game last night and thought the screen looked a *little* dark when looking at my ship in the external view. This could simply be that it's a darker sector or some such reason, or it might be that Windows has turned off HDR again - it does this from time to time - causing the display to go into "HDR (Emulated)" mode, where things are darker. This was not the case, it was simply a darker sector. However, as I was there,I had a poke around in the Monitor's settings on a whim.

Now, as mentioned, my monitor has 10 bit colour (RGB: 0 to 1023, rather than RGB: 0 to 255 like a regular 8 bit monitor). The odd thing was, looking through the settings, the monitor - despite being in HDR mode - had set its self to RGB: 16 - 235. This means (basically) that anything under 16 is considered black, and anything over 235 is considered white. This can potentially lose the subtle colour / brightness differences in a ship model in X4. I changed to to the full 8 bit range RBG: 0 - 255. Upon doing this, my ship looks MASSIVELY better! Areas that were a bit too dark, suddenly had much more subtle details and areas that were washed-out bright also gained additional detail. Everything looks different. It's often subtle, but even menus (ship outfitting) look better, things are sharper in many instances and have better colour / brightness graduation.

Looking around at my ship and numerous other objects, including asteroids, they ALL looked significantly more real. I'm stunned by the difference.

Now, my monitor can also do RGB: 0 - 1023 in theory, but Windows 10 support for this seems to be a bit ropey. Regardless, just going from RGB: 16 - 235 to RGB: 0 - 255 made a massive visual difference. It's like the ship model and lighting suddenly became more complex and accurate. Of course, my Monitor should have been doing this by default, dunno why it wasn't or when that changed. Putting it back however has turned visuals up another notch.

I'm unsure whether Windows 10 will let me run the monitor in full 10 bit (RGB: 0 - 1023) mode, that allows for four times the colour palette of course. Or whether a game has to have proper HDR support natively for that to make a difference. I do plan to tinker a little more though.

Does anyone have experience of this? RGB ranges and 10 bit HDR modes? I only played for a very short time last night, will have another tinker later when I get some time.

All of this makes sense, I mean, with the wider range the Monitor is processing the colours / brightness more accurately, of course it's going to look better. I was just surprised how my Monitor defaulted to this limited range, when it support more. Of course it can do the full 8-bit range, but it can also do the full 10-bit range too. Better monitors than mine do 12 bit for an even greater range.

Just sharing my experience, perhaps others Monitors - despite being really good ones - have weirdly defaulted to using a limited range too? I don't know how much Windows influences what mode the Monitor thinks it should be in, I'm new to all this stuff for the most part...

Edit: I did some more digging and it looks like W10 is pretty bad when it comes to 10 bit support. It works well in a full-screen (or windowed) game, it's night and day visuals, so it's clear it's working there. However, on the desktop it gets confused, thinking the display is limited to 8-bit when it's not. As such, even NV Control panel won't let me set anything but 8-bit. This might be my reason to switch to W11...if I want to keep tinkering with this stuff.

Edit 2: Ok, I'm learning, albeit slowly. My monitor does 165hz as standard. However, it only supports 10-bit when running at 120hz or less. This is fine. Note that Windows still cannot do this, I'm doing this via the "Change Resolution" option in the NV Control Panel.

Edit 3: It seems after "fixing" thing in NV Control Panel, after reducing the refresh rate from 165 to 120hz, now Windows 10 sees the monitor correctly. Perhaps if I'd changed the refresh in regular Windows display settings it would have had the same result? Who knows. Anyway, I'm actually going to play computer games now, rather than tinker wit the monitor settings any more. Remember, all this is pretty new to me, and I just wanted to share something that improved X4's visuals a LOT for me. That setting should have been the default from what I can tell, but it wasn't for whatever reason.

[Pesanur]

You are missing another one setting that you need to change, instead of decreasing the refresh rate, what you need to make is to go to the G-SYNC tab, enable it, set it to both, windowed and full screen, check the enable for the selected display checkbox, then apply.

[Scoob]

You are missing another one setting that you need to change, instead of decreasing the refresh rate, what you need to make is to go to the G-SYNC tab, enable it, set it to both, windowed and full screen, check the enable for the selected display checkbox, then apply.

The refresh rate I changed was the maximum rate it'll not go beyond. G-Sync is enabled for both windowed and full screen - I set that when I first got the monitor, as well as enabling HDR in windows too. It was after enabling HDR that I thought everything was working as it should, as colours and light/dark contrast were just SO much better in every game I tried, with far less colour stepping. It's that monitor setting switching to limited mode that got me. I just don't know why the monitor would do that. Sure, I was just enabling full-range within 8 bits - so not proper HDR of course, but it makes a massive difference none the less. I surprised the monitor still said it was running in HDR mode, when it wasn't even running in full SDR mode.

Here's the thing, I never expected an HDR monitor to make such a difference when the thing I was running wasn't even proper HDR - i.e. the game or media is only 8 bit. I then find out that the monitor has switched its self to a limited version of 8 bit to boot. So, the monitor looked a lot better in limited 8 bit mode vs. my older (but still really good) monitors. Enabling full 8 bit mode makes X4 look substantially better. I can only imagine how good X4 would look if it was actually written to be an HDR (10+ bit) game.

Not sure why Windows won't allow 10 bit mode to be set unless the refresh rate is 120 or less - actually, I didn't try 144hz, so I might do that - but when running at the native 165hz, Windows doesn't see the monitor for what it is. I thought it might be some obscure bandwidth issue, but someone told me that 10 bit at 2560x1440 should be good for well over 200hz using Display Port 1.4a as I am.

Note: when my monitor wasn't properly running in 10 bit mode, it reported in windows as being "8 bit, with dithering", which you'd imagine would be the "HDR Emulated" mode. However, in most games, monitor reported as running in proper HDR mode. It would sometimes show "HDR Emulated" but that was accompanied by an overall darker display with a poor light/dark balance. Aka WORSE than regular not HDR and not Emulated.

There seems to be a lot of, well, in many cases conflicting information given by Windows and the Monitor its self. For the monitor to say it's running in full HDR mode, when it KNOWS it set to a limited version of SDR in its own settings, well, that's a bit misleading.

[Pesanur]

Not sure why Windows won't allow 10 bit mode to be set unless the refresh rate is 120 or less - actually, I didn't try 144hz, so I might do that - but when running at the native 165hz, Windows doesn't see the monitor for what it is. I thought it might be some obscure bandwidth issue, but someone told me that 10 bit at 2560x1440 should be good for well over 200hz using Display Port 1.4a as I am.

I'm using 10bit color at 165 Hz without problems, and my display isn't precisely top end, is an Acer KG272 S, with a resolution of 1920x1080 (but have decent speakers).

I know about QHD displays that don't allow to use together the max refresh rate and the max resolution, but I never heard about limiting the color deep depending of the refresh rate. This is new for me.

[Scoob]

I'm using 10bit color at 165 Hz without problems, and my display isn't precisely top end, is an Acer KG272 S, with a resolution of 1920x1080 (but have decent speakers).

I know about QHD displays that don't allow to use together the max refresh rate and the max resolution, but I never heard about limiting the color deep depending of the refresh rate. This is new for me.

I'll try to dig a bit deeper when I have a moment, all I know is going from 165hz (the panel limit) to a limited 120hz, got Windows to actually see my monitor's actual capabilities. It had no impact on the whole full/limited 8-bit stuff though.