Soulstice™ - 4kHDR - RGB 8-bit to scRGB 16-bit (HDR) conversion using Special K. Fine witchcraft!
DETAILS HERE: View this with HDR enabled as this little demo is intended for mature, HDR-capable viewers only lol. So set your OS display settings to HDR and use an HDR-capable monitor/panel if you want to actually see the results of this test.
I recently started digging into the lovely rabbit hole that is the Special K injection tools suite and specifically its neat trick of actually being able to force a non-HDR coded game to follow a proper scRGB 16-bit "swap chain" and thereby allow scRGB HDR (and HDR10) output in an otherwise 8 bit SDR color space limited title. See bottom of this essay for links/info on Special K...
Turns out it worked amazingly well.
I used Soulstice for the test cause it already kind of "pops" even with SDR and with its native color palette and SDR output. I'd always thought while playing this endearing (if not vexing at times) little title that it would look amazing if it supported HDR (and it does but you kind of have to force it, but in a sweet-forced kinda way!).
Having recently discovered Special K and its ability to present SDR games in true HDR output, Soulstice is what first came to mind for a test subject. It was also one of the easiest to find that I knew didn't already support native HDR and/or AutoHDR in Windoze 11 (I think AutoHDR follows the same "forced scRGB 16-bit swap chain" spell casting path that Special K uses but not 100% sure on that).
Some of the semi-technical banter from the Special K wiki puts it this way:
--) Special K’s HDR Retrofit feature works on Windows 10/11 and can retrofit HDR support in most DirectX 11-12 games by forcing an scRGB 16-bit swapchain buffer and undoing the SDR compression of the internal tone mapper of the game with its own user-configurable tone mapper.
--) For native DirectX 11 games, Special K even supports remastering 8-bit, 10-bit, and 11-bit render passes as well as compute passes to further enhance the end result of the HDR retrofit process, plus an Adaptive Tone Mapping option is available.
--) HDR retrofit support in DirectX 12 and OpenGL is more limited. In DirectX 12 and OpenGL, Special K can undo the SDR compression of the internal tone mapper of the game with its own user-configurable tone mapper, but Adaptive Tone Mapping and remastering options may not work or may not be available.
--) In the case of OpenGL, Special K promotes the game to OpenGL-IK (uses an interop system where DirectX 11 is used for final presentation), which brings enhancements such as flip model presentation and HDR Retrofit.
--) Various HDR presets are available along with an HDR Visualization feature that visualizes the brightness output of the game in various ways."
Anyway. I have to say I was rather astonished at how well it worked on both a middling HDR400 AW38DW21 ultrawide monitor as well as on a proper LG C1 OLED HDR tv.
I had my doubts but after some study, I somewhat understood what the Special K suite was doing and so it made sense. The process is finicky from title to title and depending on what the OG devs did at the code level; color spaces and what not get tricky real fast. So you might have to tweak certain SDR games and certain settings within Special K to get any given SDR-only title to look right in HDR but the effort is worth it.
Soulstice was easy. Other titles like the recently released "Witchfire" have been more difficult to dial in and I'm not to the solution yet on that one. But "everything goes somewhere and I go everywhere" and so there is always a solution (this witch thing is getting out of hand but it's the Harvest moon tonight and so appropriate I suppose).
For more info on Special K and SDR to HDR conversion: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/HDR/Re...
And for Special K in general: https://wiki.special-k.info/
I recently started digging into the lovely rabbit hole that is the Special K injection tools suite and specifically its neat trick of actually being able to force a non-HDR coded game to follow a proper scRGB 16-bit "swap chain" and thereby allow scRGB HDR (and HDR10) output in an otherwise 8 bit SDR color space limited title. See bottom of this essay for links/info on Special K...
Turns out it worked amazingly well.
I used Soulstice for the test cause it already kind of "pops" even with SDR and with its native color palette and SDR output. I'd always thought while playing this endearing (if not vexing at times) little title that it would look amazing if it supported HDR (and it does but you kind of have to force it, but in a sweet-forced kinda way!).
Having recently discovered Special K and its ability to present SDR games in true HDR output, Soulstice is what first came to mind for a test subject. It was also one of the easiest to find that I knew didn't already support native HDR and/or AutoHDR in Windoze 11 (I think AutoHDR follows the same "forced scRGB 16-bit swap chain" spell casting path that Special K uses but not 100% sure on that).
Some of the semi-technical banter from the Special K wiki puts it this way:
--) Special K’s HDR Retrofit feature works on Windows 10/11 and can retrofit HDR support in most DirectX 11-12 games by forcing an scRGB 16-bit swapchain buffer and undoing the SDR compression of the internal tone mapper of the game with its own user-configurable tone mapper.
--) For native DirectX 11 games, Special K even supports remastering 8-bit, 10-bit, and 11-bit render passes as well as compute passes to further enhance the end result of the HDR retrofit process, plus an Adaptive Tone Mapping option is available.
--) HDR retrofit support in DirectX 12 and OpenGL is more limited. In DirectX 12 and OpenGL, Special K can undo the SDR compression of the internal tone mapper of the game with its own user-configurable tone mapper, but Adaptive Tone Mapping and remastering options may not work or may not be available.
--) In the case of OpenGL, Special K promotes the game to OpenGL-IK (uses an interop system where DirectX 11 is used for final presentation), which brings enhancements such as flip model presentation and HDR Retrofit.
--) Various HDR presets are available along with an HDR Visualization feature that visualizes the brightness output of the game in various ways."
Anyway. I have to say I was rather astonished at how well it worked on both a middling HDR400 AW38DW21 ultrawide monitor as well as on a proper LG C1 OLED HDR tv.
I had my doubts but after some study, I somewhat understood what the Special K suite was doing and so it made sense. The process is finicky from title to title and depending on what the OG devs did at the code level; color spaces and what not get tricky real fast. So you might have to tweak certain SDR games and certain settings within Special K to get any given SDR-only title to look right in HDR but the effort is worth it.
Soulstice was easy. Other titles like the recently released "Witchfire" have been more difficult to dial in and I'm not to the solution yet on that one. But "everything goes somewhere and I go everywhere" and so there is always a solution (this witch thing is getting out of hand but it's the Harvest moon tonight and so appropriate I suppose).
For more info on Special K and SDR to HDR conversion: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/HDR/Re...
And for Special K in general: https://wiki.special-k.info/
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