Am i reading this right 
There’s been multiple back and forth rumors around God of War and Bloodborne but no actual reveal yet the various users with some insider info keep hinting at it and now also Ghost of Tsushima.
I’d say there’s a very high chance of further PC ports but with the soon to be released Playstation 5 it’s just a matter of timing and when plus the feedback/criticism on Horizon and how that was handled which could also have made Sony push back further projects.
Wouldn’t be too surprising if a more positive reception and reviews for Horizon might have seen some hinting at future developments but now it’s being reviewed a bit and I am expecting the Sony and Microsoft console launches to be the main focus for now so Q1 2021 perhaps.
Or a surprise reveal and near immediate release but I don’t think that’s going to happen, QA and testing being done could still have the release pending to whichever launch time feels best for the publisher after all.
There’s also the oops with Demons Souls Remaster where someone made “Also for PC” on the splash screen had all that go through approval and OK and then after that entire process and the trailer was out then Sony backtracked a bit so there are things happening that’s pretty evident but time and now also the issues around Horizon.
Hmm wonder if BB, GoW and GoT are done by the same studio or outsourced to others or even moved internally after that backlash.
“Do everything.”
This one studio with limited manpower, resources and time schedule for said ports.
Yeah it feels like Sony will re-evaluate and delay launch a while for other planned PC port projects though if they are already at the end of QA then whatever is next out for release could also be fairly close.
Kinda weird that, would be additional testing and verification that it’s release ready yet apparently the info coming out is that some of these projects or all of them are going through the final QA process.
Hmm.
Hope they do arrive. I still haven’t played through Bloodborne just because of the frame-pacing issue. As for the PS4 itself, i have one sitting on my desk collecting dust, only there if i ever want to boot up Gow again.
The abbreviations are reminding me of a couple of good shows XD I really miss Game of Thrones, still.
Big news for Special K HDR
I have radically overhauled Special K’s HDR Tonemapping to allow independent control of luminance and color saturation, here’s a preview of 0.11.1.0:
SpecialK64.7z (7.7 MB)
This should dramatically improve HDR highlights in many games without requiring you to do much of anything.
Color saturation adjustments are experimental and not saved as part of HDR presets, just a bit of a distraction for you guys while I implement more advanced color grading functionality.
Expect to reset gamma in any presets you may already use to 1.0 for things to appear normal. I’m going to be swapping the gamma / non-std SDR luminance options and most use-cases will not involve gamma anymore, but rather selecting middle-gray luminance.
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Also, I’m changing up SK’s Luminance Heatmap…
Those profiles (HDR400, 500, 600, 1000, 1400) will be the visualization targets (and something more advanced will be used for OLED’s darker-than-SDR spectrum analysis – shadow detail’s an interesting topic that needs its own visualization)
This won’t be a drop-in replacement to perform comparisons against the heatmaps generated by other software, rather it’s for validating signal constraints vs. visualized display profile (shown here, pixels brighter than DisplayHDR 500 displays are capable of).
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Here are 32- and 64-bit builds of 0.11.1.0:
SpecialK32.7z (6.3 MB)
SpecialK64.7z (7.6 MB)
+ Saturation is now saved per-HDR preset
+ Middle-gray is a new calibration target for adjusting game UI-level luminance curves
+ Moved the gamma adjustment to advanced, it has little to no remaining use
The Tonemap mode options are currently not implemented, and all other colorspace options have been removed.
Here’s a sample video in HDR showing some very impressive HDR results. The new tonemapping framework is night and day when it comes to getting HDR highlights to contrast.
Remember to reset any HDR image presets you may have had prior to using this new version, the entire process of calibrating HDR is different and you need to do it from scratch for all games. Doesn’t take much time at all.
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This does amazing stuff for NieR: Automata’s HDR support too, BTW. This basically fixes a whole bunch of colorspace problems without requiring the user to do that complicated selection between Rec709/CIE XYZ and makes virtually every game I have tested look like it is HDR native.
Of course … when you look at games with official HDR support and they look worse than this automated solution does, automatic HDR has reached god-tier status. This should be an NVIDIA driver feature, I’ve proved it can be done.
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I couldn’t manage any decent results with the latest build, the best i managed was 1800 nits for middle gray, and 2000 for max luminance, just to be able to make out the image - though everything is still high in contrast. I had SDR gamma left at 1. I tested Rise of the Tomb Raider, which is my go to game for testing.
With previous versions, i could always max the luminance out at 800 and leave it there. My monitor is calibrated and i believe it tonemaps 1000 nits down to it’s level (350-450 nits) so i’m not sure what’s going on now. I’ll be testing more games.
I deleted my previous Rise of the Tomb Raider profile as well before installing the latest. And interestingly, i took a screenshot but it’s a broken jxr
Are you insane? What kind of eye searing display device do you have that you want the middle-gray target @ 1800 nits? 
Boosting middle-gray that high is just going to erase all shadow detail, and give you a headache.
And 1800 nits is nearly twice that. Why are you setting luminance so high? The new luminance HDR visualization vs either EDID MaxLocalY or EDID MaxAvgY should show most of your signal being clipped into oblivion.
The shadows were completely crushed, i kept pushing it till i could at least see some shadow detail. I’m doing more tests, VLC seems to be working okayish-ly, but it seems like the previous version managed superior HDR with VLC. As for N:A, idk what’s going on with that game because it seems convinced it’s running at 900p, and keeps scaling out of desktop space 
Trying to fix it
VLC needs a complete passthrough on this, there are a few other games that need that as well.
Basically, if software needed the ‘Unaltered’ colorspace for in/out in prior versions of SK, they are not eligible for the tonemapping pipeline being used here. There are not many games that require that, the only two programs that come to immediate mind are VLC and The Witness.
Yeah N:A is weirdly broken for me, without even enabling HDR. I’ve verified my settings are set to 4k in-game, but the game or SK keeps thinking it’s 900p - i’ve messed around with the different scaling options but nothing seems to do it. Can you send me your N:A config so i can try it?
As for me setting luminance, i know my eyes are fine since the video you uploaded recently looks the way it should.
Just make sure the engine is not trying to run in fullscreen exclusive mode and most of its resolution bugs won’t reach the HDR code in SK. Because SK now supports Fullscreen Flip, games don’t get forced down to Borderless Window mode just by enabling HDR anymore. NieR: Automata is incompatible with Fullscreen Exclusive, it needs a windowed mode force-override or bad stuff like this is going to happen.
Doesn’t fix it for me, i replicated your settings and even messed around with nvidia’s scaling settings from the control panel.
The game settings are definitely at 4k, so i’m confused XD
Works now, had to change the nvidia scaling settings to something different from what i tried 
It’s actually not.
The game stupidly creates a SwapChain during startup at 1600x900 resolution that it turns around and orphans and creates a second SwapChain a few seconds later.
DXGI FlipModel doesn’t support 2 SwapChain’s on a single window, so stuff gets weird very quickly in this game. Add to that the fact that you’ve forced a Latency Waitiable SwapChain on, and you’re going to need a resolution override to fix this problem.
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N:A HDR works fine So i’m not sure what’s going on with Rise of the Tomb Raider. I’ll need to download other games to test more. I have 8tb of storage, but it’s mostly used up for work.
Rise has NVIDIA HDR doesn’t it, unsure if Shadows is the same or has Windows 10 HDR implemented.
EDIT: There’s that article.
EDIT: Think the (few?) games that use FreeSync2 HDR like Far Cry 5 give you a choice but for NVIDIA HDR this predates Win10 HDR support and err DXGI 1.5 D3D11 and D3D12 support I think and then DXGI 1.6 later on improving it further? I don’t remember the specifics too well here.
Would assume Mass Effect Andromeda with Dolby HDR also being a bit non-standard if you SpecialK HDR that but I’m not 100% on what overrides you’d need and what results you would get for these other modes of HDR on PC.
EDIT: That game also has both modes so it shouldn’t be a problem.
EDIT: Which is to say if HDR10’s a choice using that and the SpecialK overrides and HDR settings and widget should be fairly effective at configuring it as intended.
Whereas other implements particularly some earlier games before HDR10/Windows 10 HDR was a more standard choice could have some differences in how this works and what the results would be if attempted to calibrate / configure these modes through SpecialK.
Nothing surprising here and I don’t have the technical knowledge for how some of these modes are implemented but yeah I would imagine that’s a very possible source of some issues here.
Rise doesn’t have HDR, or at least the Steam version doesn’t. PCGW confirms, and there’s various forums out there wondering why it wasn’t brought to PC despite the blog you linked. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Tomb_Raider
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That’s interesting, for all the updates with D3D12 and the CPU/AMD optimizations that would have made perfect sense for Nixxes to implement all the features and parity between versions like Steam or UWP.
Curious. Tomb Raider 2013 had a console exclusive update / definitive edition type of thing but the patches and continued work on Rise even after the DLC were out I would have expected this to be supported as well during that process.
EDIT:
So weird, blog article and all and this isn’t like the Assassin’s Creed Unity NVIDIA tessellation where they backtracked and focused on patching the game leading to this feature ultimately getting cut after a few early preview images.
(Forgot what NVIDIA called their mode for this, also seen in Batman Arkham City and Origins though other than being branded a Game Works effect it’s standard D3D11 stuff here.)