Valve's High Dynamic Range Explored
by Josh Venning on September 30, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Test Setup
While Call of Duty and the impressive-looking Call of Duty 2 are our current WW2 games of choice, Day of Defeat is a great Half life 2 mod, and with the recent release of Day of Defeat: Source by Valve, it's looking even better. Just in case you didn't already know, Day of Defeat is a multiplayer-only mod of the original Half life game, which has been out for quite a while. As with Counter Strike, Valve updated the mod to run on the Half life 2 engine, keeping the gameplay intact, but adding new physics and graphical elements, resulting in a much higher quality game.
The gameplay of Day of Defeat is much like counterstrike; fast-paced, first-person shooter action, only set in WW2 instead of present day. There are currently only four maps available and they are generally all close-quarter and set in urban areas. With the maximum limit of 16 players on each team combined with the small maps, the action can get very intense, and because of the realism factor (as with Counterstrike), you'll find yourself dying very quickly after just a couple of hits if you aren't careful. Fortunately though, unlike Counterstrike, you won't have to wait until the end of the round to respawn, which keeps the action going.
After we managed to record a demo of the game, we ran some benchmarks to see of the achieved framerates between different cards with different HDR settings. There are basically 3 different HDR settings: all HDR effects enabled, bloom only enabled (when available), and none. We tested all three of these settings on a total of six cards: 3 ATI and 3 NVIDIA cards. For ATI's, we chose the X850 XT, the X800 XT, and the X800. The NVIDIA parts that we used were the 7800 GTX, 7800 GT, and the 6600 GT. All of the tests were run at a resolution of 1600x1200 with no AA or AF.
Now, let's take a look at the performance tests.
While Call of Duty and the impressive-looking Call of Duty 2 are our current WW2 games of choice, Day of Defeat is a great Half life 2 mod, and with the recent release of Day of Defeat: Source by Valve, it's looking even better. Just in case you didn't already know, Day of Defeat is a multiplayer-only mod of the original Half life game, which has been out for quite a while. As with Counter Strike, Valve updated the mod to run on the Half life 2 engine, keeping the gameplay intact, but adding new physics and graphical elements, resulting in a much higher quality game.
The gameplay of Day of Defeat is much like counterstrike; fast-paced, first-person shooter action, only set in WW2 instead of present day. There are currently only four maps available and they are generally all close-quarter and set in urban areas. With the maximum limit of 16 players on each team combined with the small maps, the action can get very intense, and because of the realism factor (as with Counterstrike), you'll find yourself dying very quickly after just a couple of hits if you aren't careful. Fortunately though, unlike Counterstrike, you won't have to wait until the end of the round to respawn, which keeps the action going.
After we managed to record a demo of the game, we ran some benchmarks to see of the achieved framerates between different cards with different HDR settings. There are basically 3 different HDR settings: all HDR effects enabled, bloom only enabled (when available), and none. We tested all three of these settings on a total of six cards: 3 ATI and 3 NVIDIA cards. For ATI's, we chose the X850 XT, the X800 XT, and the X800. The NVIDIA parts that we used were the 7800 GTX, 7800 GT, and the 6600 GT. All of the tests were run at a resolution of 1600x1200 with no AA or AF.
Now, let's take a look at the performance tests.
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8NP4iN - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
Yeah... where´s the shadows of those objects?ballero - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
Seems to me it's Low-DR not High-DR. After playing Farcry and SC:CT the Valve' hdr looks like a step backwards...Questar - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/lostcoast....">http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/lostcoast....Leper Messiah - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
I think it looks a lot more realistic, while actually playing. The screenies don't do it justice.Just think though. Flashbangs with HDR. *cackle*
Phantronius - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
Thank god BF2 doesnt' have HDR or I woulda given up on itbob661 - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
I would've just turned it off.yacoub - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
Yet when the goal is to win, the last thing I'd do is add something optional that impinges MY ability without equally affecting everyone else's. =
So maybe in a singleplayer game or maybe if it was something in a couple years that is defaulted to ON and doesn't easily turn off, it would be useful. But really, graphical settings should never be optional if they directly impact the player's ability like that.
That would be like returning to the days when people figured out you could turn off the FogOfWar or smoke effects so you could see the full draw distance and totally snipe people before they could even see you coming.
DerekWilson - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
valve says hdr gives an advantage because the contrast differences make it easier to spot players moving through the environment -- or something like that. Like a player who steps in front of a dark tunnel occludes the light outside and will really stand out.Personally, I don't think it's that useful or detrimental ... I do think it adds some pretty nice realizm to the scene in many places. This HDR implimentation is not perfect, but its better than many others out there.
The balance is good in my opinion.
route66 - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
Overrated.Developers need to find better usage of my CPU and GPU load than subtle lighting effects.
segagenesis - Friday, September 30, 2005 - link
More like too bad they didnt do this from the beginning with Half-Life 2 and it didnt look any better to me from the start. I wonder when people will ever get it in thier heads that graphics != gameplay. A game could have all these fancy smancy effects but if it still plays badly the graphics do NOT make up for it. Read: Doom 3.Concentrate on the game first, not the graphics.