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[Wispborne]

What is this?
Nvidia came out with a GPU driver that adds HDR to SDR videos, most notably on YouTube.
Modders quickly found out it can be used to add HDR to (almost) any game, not just videos.

Paired with a good HDR screen, especially an OLED, this brings combat to life. Explosions pop, lasers shine, missiles blaze, and engines burn bright. It's not worth going out and buying a whole new monitor to experience, but if you already have one, it's 100% worth spending a few minutes setting this up.

Compatible with GraphicsLib. I had trouble using Special K with GraphicsLib last time I tried getting HDR.

Requirements
- HDR monitor
- NVidia RTX GPU
- Windows 11+

Example
With the regular Nvidia RTX HDR for videos on, just watch any YouTube video with Starsector gameplay; your game will look like that.
https://youtu.be/pLb-5SEHgsQ?t=427

Instructions

0. Make sure your drivers are updated and you have the Nvidia HDR thing on (Nvidia Control Panel - Adjust video image settings - RTX Video Enhancement - High Dynamic Range). You don't need Super Resolution on, personally I think it uses GPU power to make videos look worse.

1. Save and extract this: https://www.nexusmods.com/site/mods/781?tab=files
2. Run it, then drag and drop the java.exe file at`<starsector>/jre/bin/java.exe` into the cmd window.
3. Hit enter and then type in your graphics option, I just did "low".
4. Open Nvidia Control Panel, select Starsector's java.exe, scroll to the bottom and change `Vulkan/OpenGL present method` to `Prefer layered on DXGI Swapchain`.

Then run Starsector.exe as normal.


credit to this YouTube video for the tip about the DXGI Swapchain, which is what gets OpenGL games to work with this:

Spoiler

[close]

Caveats
- Using the xbox game bar to take a jxr screenshot does not properly capture the HDR, unlike when you use it on games with native HDR or Windows Auto-HDR. The jxr and png look rather lifeless compared to what you saw ingame. That's why I haven't included any screenshots here.
- It does slightly blow out highlights. You can see that the inner part of some engine glows lose a bit of color. imo this is easily worth it, but it's worth mentioning.
- This is not native HDR. It maps lighter pixels to more brightness. Text and HUD elements don't have any special treatment - that'd require built-in HDR, which will never happen.


edit: Nvidia App
The Nvidia App beta came out right after publishing this guide, and it adds official game HDR support. Read about and download it here.
However. It doesn't support multiple monitors at all. I use two monitors and the HDR option in the Nvidia App is disabled, whereas RTX HDR is working fine for me with two monitors using the "hack" in the walkthrough above.
tldr; Nvidia is working on a less hacky way of doing this but for now, follow this guide for better compatibility.

[Siffrin]

Oh my god the Reapers explode beautifully.

[Zsar]

Mmh. This should probably be moved (or linked from) somewhere more permanent. Maybe here?

[Wispborne]

What percent - no, what actual number - of players have monitors that this guide is useful for?
My guess is less than 1%, and I didn't want to clutter up spaces that are useful for 100% of (non-vanilla) players. Hopefully, this will at some point show up on Google when people search for "starsector hdr".

[Shadowedcross]

Many thanks, indeed the page did show up when I searched for "Starsector HDR". I really hope it doesn't take long for Nvidia to fix the issue with multi-monitor support for RTX HDR, since I'm always interested in more games having HDR support, even at the cost of performance.

[SCC]

What percent - no, what actual number - of players have monitors that this guide is useful for?
My guess is less than 1%, and I didn't want to clutter up spaces that are useful for 100% of (non-vanilla) players. Hopefully, this will at some point show up on Google when people search for "starsector hdr".

I think the closest proxy would be 4k displays. Steam hardware survey says only about 3,6% of users have a 4k display. 1440p is better at 19%, but I don't know how often do 1440p displays come with HDR.

[Shadowedcross]

It's basically only 4K or ultrawide if you want good HDR. I went with ultrawide (3440x1440) since I feel it's a nice balance between performance, quality and space.

[Wispborne]

I realized that it's easy to show what it'll look like after setting this up; just watch any Starsector video on YouTube with the regular RTX HDR video enhancement enabled.
This is a good one: https://youtu.be/pLb-5SEHgsQ?t=427

[soylent]

For those of us with single monitors, how do you set it up with Nvidia RTX HDR? I enabled it for starsector.exe with the default settings, but I'm not really seeing anything different.