HDR suddenly broken?

Thanks, but unfortunately, none of that works.

Something has happened to the game. I doubt it’s the TV, or the Xbox, because those work fine. Should I have anything incorrectly set up, other games supporting HDR10 should display the same problems. It’s not the case. That alone is pretty telling I think.

Why the screenshots look fine however, is something that truly throws me off. That just doesn’t make sense, because it should mean the game is indeed being rendered with the correct colors and exposure except when I’m playing it. That can’t be right.

I have tried:

• Checking the TV firmware and settings (all up to date).
• Turning Game Mode on and off.
• Disconnecting the HDMI cable and reconnecting it.
• Turning HDR10 on and off (Xbox menu settings).
• Turning YCC 4:2:2 on and off (Xbox menu settings).
• Turning Auto HDR on and off (Xbox menu settings).
• Restarting the console with a complete shut down.
• Doing a power cycle.
• Uninstalling and reinstalling the game.

Nothing worked.

Just did, although I find it odd that nobody else is mentioning this?

Then again, stuff like HDR and modern video specs seem to be an esoteric thing for most people, and I wouldn't be surprised if most folks out there are playing the game with completely nuts color and exposure settings without even realizing it.

Sea of Thieves is absolutely gorgeous in HDR, one of the prettiest games out there, so it's been very disappointing to see this happen.

@liberance I actually turned it off...it wasn't really good for me even before that...maybe I should try it out now, maybe it looks better now

@Schwammlgott Yeah, the problem with turning it off is that I wouldn't want to be turning it on and off each time I'm switching games because there's one that I play quite a bit but also happens to be one for which HDR doesn't work right anymore.

In any case, to add more information to this mystery:

• I have noticed there's a "refresh" the TV does when switching between content with and without HDR. Like, coming from an HDR game back to the Xbox dashboard, but it also happens when looking at screenshots. For a brief second, the picture looks off, and then it adjusts to the correct values.

I imagine this is simply either the TV or the Xbox turning HDR on and an off automatically, but it's quite weird that the screenshots show the correct HDR look after the refresh, but look as wrong as the game for a brief instant before that refresh happens and they are still being shown under the HDR settings the game running in the background was at. It's as if HDR was being added on top of more HDR if that makes any sense, and that's what gives the overexposed/oversaturated look to everything.

• Also, looking at the HDR settings bar in-game, before whatever this problem is happened, I'd be able to push that all the way up to 8000 and not have overexposure problems. Shadows would be lighter, but the bright areas wouldn't get overblown. Right now, I need to bring it down to 2000 to avoid most overexposure, but then the shadows become way too dark.

@liberance sagte in HDR suddenly broken?:

@Schwammlgott Yeah, the problem with turning it off is that I wouldn't want to be turning it on and off each time I'm switching games because there's one that I play quite a bit but also happens to be one for which HDR doesn't work right anymore.

I know...that's pretty annoying, but I prefer that way now...
In my case, I had to turn the ingame HDR setting 600, so the daytime, especially the horizon, doesn't look that bright, but then nighttime is almost unplayable...had it on 1100 for a long time then...
I miss the colours from HDR a bit, but it still looks great...

@schwammlgott said in HDR suddenly broken?:

In my case, I had to turn the ingame HDR setting 600, so the daytime, especially the horizon, doesn't look that bright, but then nighttime is almost unplayable...had it on 1100 for a long time then...

That's exactly the problem now. In order to make daytime playable, nighttime would become too dark, and viceversa. And in any case, neither look as good as they did before, because the colors are wrong and highlights are still overexposed.

This was absolutely not an issue just one week ago for me, and I really want an explanation cause it's driving me nuts. I'm going to take my Xbox to a friend's apartment and try the game with his TV, as well as check it running on his Xbox, to see if that clears up the source of the issue. But if it were my TV, or my Xbox, I still wouldn't understand why it affects only Sea of Thieves.

@liberance sagte in HDR suddenly broken?:

@schwammlgott said in HDR suddenly broken?:

In my case, I had to turn the ingame HDR setting 600, so the daytime, especially the horizon, doesn't look that bright, but then nighttime is almost unplayable...had it on 1100 for a long time then...

That's exactly the problem now. In order to make daytime playable, nighttime would become too dark, and viceversa. And in any case, neither look as good as they did before, because the colors are wrong and highlights are still overexposed.

This was absolutely not an issue just one week ago for me, and I really want an explanation cause it's driving me nuts. I'm going to take my Xbox to a friend's apartment and try the game with his TV, as well as check it running on his Xbox, to see if that clears up the source of the issue. But if it were my TV, or my Xbox, I still wouldn't understand why it affects only Sea of Thieves.

This was ALWAYS the issue I had...I write you a pm

Okay, so I managed to make the game look good again by messing around with the TV settings plus the in-game HDR menu. For whatever reason, now it works best for me disabling Game Mode on the TV, to counter the over-saturation and over-exposure. Under these settings, I now have to move the in-game HDR bar all the way up to the 9000s for optimal brightness. But at least it's back to the way it was.

Overall, all this was still very strange and I never quite figured out what changed.

I did test the game on a high-end OLED TV in the process, and if anyone is interested, personally I think it looks best with Dolby Vision. But if your TV does not have that feature, it's still possible to make it look pretty great with HDR10 by messing with the settings until it all works. For me, that just happened without having to touch anything the first time I tried it on my QLED, but after this episode who knows. In any case, it should be possible to re-adjust everything like I eventually did.

I noticed this also. The wife and me hadn't played in a couple months and I had bought a new monitor which I assumed was the culprit. But after us playing together with her on the sony oled which it always looked amazing on I realized something has been changed in the game. Hdr looks horrid now. But only on sot.. everything else looks fine.