Samsung introduced a new HDR standard yesterday, designed for video games. There are doubts about its acceptance, but NVIDIA has already shown its support.
The HDR arrived late and badly to PC video games, with less acceptance than on console, and with a delay in the launch of monitors with HDR.
Early monitors were poorly bright enough for a quality HDR picture, and support for games was sparse and buggy.
Things have improved in the last two years, with the launch of the VESA DisplayHDR standard, and higher quality monitors. And now, Samsung announces a new one: HDR10 + Gaming. That contribute?
The high dynamic contrast or HDR is an image enhancement that offers truer colors, and more detail in dark scenes, among other optimizations.
The most widespread standard in HDR10 +, because it is free. Compete with Dolby Vision, which requires a license but is supported by many brands of televisions, streaming platforms, and Xbox.
HDR10 + Gaming is a variant of the format designed for video games. It brings three novelties: VRR, HDR Auto Calibration, and Low Latency Source Tone Mappings.
If the time has come to buy a gaming monitor and you don’t know what to take into account, in this buying guide we will indicate which are the most important parameters to make your choice right.
The VRR or variable refresh rate, allows the refresh rate of the TV or monitor to adjust to the game fps, which are usually variable.
That is, instead of using a fixed rate at 60 or 120 Hz, this value varies in real time to adjust to the fps of the game, when they do not reach those 60 or 120 fps. This maintains the smoothness of the movements.
It’s something that exists for years on PC, powered by NVIDIA’s G-Sync and AMD’s FreeSync technologies. Even some LG TVs already have it since last year. But Samsung integrates it into their monitors through HDR10 + Gaming.
Another novelty is HDR automatic calibration, which basically allows the monitor to adjust brightness values automatically, analyzing the game, instead of the player having to do it manually, as is now the case.
Finally, the Low latency source tone mapping means that HDR10 + Gaming guarantees that the HDR application will not add any latency to the game.
The objective is that the image enhancement does not provide a delay in the image, with respect to the movements of the gamepad or mouse.
Samsung confirms in the press release that the monitors and televisions that it commercializes in 2022 will have HDR10 + Gaming.
What’s more NVIDIA will also include this new standard in the drivers for your RTX and GTX 16 cards as long as those monitors are for sale.
It remains to be seen which games will support HDR10 + Gaming, and whether it will be extended to other platforms and other brands of TVs and monitors.
