In September, a patch was introduced for Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 that adds support for HDR technology.
Developer Philipp Storch said that the Warhorse team reworked many effects to unlock the potential of HDR:
«Most game engines were not originally designed with HDR in mind, including CryEngine. All the color and lighting logic of KCD was focused around standard 8-bit screens. Some features only work well with SDR. LUT color grading, sun shafts, and more.
You can remap the SDR output to 10-bit (many games do this), but you can never fully unlock the potential of HDR this way. That's where our programmers stepped in, trying to extract enough math from the game engine for more accurate calculations.
Many effects had to be reworked with new settings. Even global illumination and weather».
Philipp admits that not everyone will appreciate HDR:
«Of course, not everyone has an HDR screen. And even when you are the proud owner of one. There are big differences between different screens. HDR pushes the physical boundaries of screen technologies, and sometimes you may even prefer SDR mode, as it may seem more uniform».