Half-Life 2: Lost Coast Forum

Well, it seems like HDR is probably the most impressive aspect of Lost Coast. Has anyone managed to get it to work? I can't tell if I have HDR or just bloom (that's different, right?), but I think I don't have HDR. Does anybody know a way around this?

Bloom is a shader technique that is commonly used by HDR rendering. If you notice a dramatic drop in frame rates, and things looking shinier when you turn on HDR, then it is probably working. Ubercharged models in Team Fortress 2 for example show HDR very vividly.

I can't use HDR in Lost Coast. In the video settings the menu is grayed out and it says "none." Could this have to do with my dxlevel?
I beat it an hour or two ago and it worked well but the graphics didn't feel much different from your average Half Life 2 stuff (except the water and monastary).
Oh, they do? xD I really don't know what this HDR stuff is, do I...
But for some reason I think Half Life 2 and maybe some other Orange Box games let me turn on HDR. :|

If you launch the game in Direct X 8 it will not allow HDR rendering. If you launch it into Direct X 9 it will allow HDR rendering. To do this use the launch option -dxlevel 90 it will open in direct x 9, and allow you to use HDR. You only have to use the launch option the first time, afterwards remove it from your launch options.

Ok, thanks. I'm assuming I'm already at 9, but I'll double check it. (I have CxG 8.)

Wait a sec, I just realize my previous Lost Coast Launch options (I doubt I messed with them before) are set at "-novid +mat_hdr_level 0." Did the HDR level 0 thing turn off HDR or something?

+mat_hdr_level 0 sets the console command mat_hdr_level to 0, which is off. If you are using direct x 9 then this is what is causing HDR to not be on, if you are using direct x 8 then it is one of two things standing between you and full glorious HDR.

Hmm, I just figured out that the dxlevel wasn't at 9 for some weird reason. Now I can turn it on. Thanks a lot! ^_^
By the way, do you know the current default dxlevel for Steam stuff in CxG 8? I thought it was 9.

The default is 9, but if you installed crossover 8 over an older installation your applications may still be set to 8.

Ohhhhh wow. I didn't realize that all this time, I upgraded from 7. D:
Thanks.

No problem man.

We added +mat_hdr_level 0 in cxgames 7.x because the game tried to activate it, but it was broken(green quad poping up on the screen every now and then). Unfortunately during the upgrade process from 7 to 8 we cannot really tell options set by us from options set by the user, and we decided that not touching them was safer than trying to remove the old cut-down-the-features options. Thus +mat_hdr_level 0 was left in place.

Besides this, HL2 doesn't always change the dxlevel if it finds that the GPU is more capable suddenly. It changes it if the GPU changes, but not if the card stays the same, but the features change.

I tested HDR on my machines, and it worked in HL2:EP1 (same engine as HL2:Lost Coast), HL2:EP2 and TF2. I didn't test other HL2 based games, but I expect HDR to work there as well. Note that base HL2, CS:S and DoD:S don't support HDR even on Windows.

Hmmmm, ok, interesting, thanks. That's weird, I thought I remember an HDR setting in Half Life 2 (then again that's only for HDR maps, and it's possible that you can have it on but never actually use it for the entire game). HDR in TF2 is just the shiny stuff when you're ubered, right? And do all of HL2:EP1 and HL2:EP2 have HDR or just certain maps?

By the way, I still haven't gotten HDR to work. I turned it on and it said it was loading for some time. I was kinda impatient, though, it's possible it was just simply taking a while.

I've found that often a major change to video settings such as aspect ratio or turning HDR on will sometimes freeze the game. Try waiting a long time, and doing it a few times if it fails. You can also try using the +mat_hdr_level 2 launch option if all else fails.

Yeah, that's happened to me with screen settings, too. I'll try it out now.

Let me know how it turns out.

It works, but it seems like it took a while to load, it's laggy (my graphics settings are all on high, which for me is the recommended stuff but with water reflection on full), and it crashed and I got the Wine error "The program hl2.exe has encountered a serious problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." I'm gonna try it again with water reflection set to world only.

HDR takes huge amounts of resources to run, turning off reflections will probably make very little difference compared to the effect of toggling HDR. Does the application recommend enabling HDR?

Okay. :|
I'll just close stuff then, I'm replaying it.
Oh, great, it looked like it crashed again. :(
Do you think it's because of the resources used or it's just not stable?

And yes, it recommends it (with the asterisk), but it wasn't on when I switched up to dxlevel 9, which makes sense.

I've found that after I upgraded to Snow Leopard there have been alot of stability problems. What OS are you using?

Samuel, what graphics card do you have? It sounds like the crashing is something I should investigate. It's possible that the outcome is that it's a driver bug I can't fix, but it could be a bug in crossover.

Leopard (10.5.8). And yeah, upgrading to Snow Leopard does seem dicey, that's the main thing making me wait. :(

I have an NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. As I mentioned on a post I made on another thread I lost 30 fps on the CSS graphics test after upgrading to Snow Leopard, that was also when the crashes began.

Nick McCurdy wrote:

I can't tell if I have HDR or just bloom (that's different, right?)

Yeap, it is.

Bloom is the blur effect applied to just some parts of the screen, for example to the sky dome so that you can't see jagged (aliased) polygon edges at the horizon. Or it may be applied to very shiny or very lit object faces to suggest the light reflected into your eyes is blinding.

HDR (high definition rendering I presume) is a continuous adjustment of the brightness of the whole screen (perhaps it's even more advanced, like stretching the histogram but that's just guessing) depending on what's on the screen. I imagine this tries to simulate the pupil dilation according to incoming light. In H-L Lost Coast you can notice this when going in a really dark corner, soon the brightness goes up by itself and you can start seeing in the dark, so to speak.

Oh, wow, interesting. Thanks for the info. And it's high dynamic range.

HDR Rendering is designed to express degrees of brightness that are out of range of what traditional rendering is able to express. It has a larger difference between the upper and lower values of brightness, and therefore a high(er) dynamic range.

Interesting, ok, thanks.

Nick McCurdy wrote:

And it's high dynamic range.

Oh right, dooh :) I felt something was not making sense in there.

Ok, I finally got around to finishing replaying it with HDR!

I had everything on defaults and HDR on full. I have a Macbook Pro running Leopard. The HDR worked great after I lowered the resolution a little, but it still had laggy spots (with no other programs open) and it crashed around 5 times throughout just one playthrough of the game. (Sometimes it would simply close and other times it would give me the "hl2.exe needs to close" Wine error after closing.)

I also took the video stress test with the same settings. I got 48.58 fps.

I played the game through on all settings low, except for the resolution which was 1900 by 1200, without any crashes. When I set all the settings high the game crashed fairly shortly in. If you want to avoid crashes I would lower your settings, especially HDR.

Hmm, ok. But in my opinion HDR is the main point of the game, so I really wanted to keep it on. And it looked pretty awesome.

Whatever works for you, I personally value stability over appearance. Nonetheless I would like this crashing error to stop, if I can see the same problem in TF2 I'll submit it there, as it is likely to get more attention, and benefit more players.

In either case I'll put a suggestion about lowering quality into the tips and tricks.

Ok, cool. But again, the main point of this game is HDR, so I suggest people avoid turning DHR off if their systems can handle it.

EDIT:
Have you tried all settings on low except with HDR on full?

Nick McCurdy wrote:

But again, the main point of this game is HDR

Totally agreed it should be tested like this, since this is a tech demo not a game. I'll try this too and report back.

With full HDR, 1900 x 1200 resolution, and all other settings on low I experienced no crashes. I did however have very low frame rates.

Oh, cool, interesting. I might try this.
Now the video test also tests hdr, right?

The video test tests everything that playing through the game does. I recommend using the net_graph 3 console command if you haven't already so that you can see your framerate.

Oh snap, didn't know about that, cool. But when I used the video test it seemed more stable and efficient, though, it's weird. And I got like 40-50 fps, and that's pretty good, right?

The graphics test is on a predetermined track, and generally has better frames and stability than actually playing the game. With HDR on thats a pretty good frame rate for crossover, its about what I get. 60 fps is generally considered to be the bare minimum for smooth game play.

Oh, ok, cool. Yeah, it is pretty good.
But for TV and stuff isn't 24 fps the standard? 60 fps sounds high.
Sorry if I'm asking too many questions. xD

The average human eye perceives 60 frames per second. 24 fps works well for interlaced television because it creates the illusion of motion blur by taking the odd lines of one frame and the even lines from another frame and mixing them into one field. Newer TVs are moving to much higher rates, with 120 and 240 HZ being the newest fads. 24 fps is sufficient for applications where you are just passively watching from a distance, but it feels flickery and weird while video gaming, especially while up close, and if you look closely you can see certain problems with it. Enter fps_max 24 in your console and play the game, you will probably notice that it feels unnatural, or unresponsive.

I don't think its possible to ask too many questions, especially when I get 10 points for each forum post. xD

Oh, ok, cool
Lolll, true! xD

Samuel Bell wrote:

60 fps is generally considered to be the bare minimum for smooth
game play.

That actually is something that varies wildly from person to person. When you have 60 fps you will have crowds that are pleased so that's a matter of opinion. The latest FPS-s on consoles are locked at 30 FPS and I mean blockbusters that sell in millions.

I agree that 30 is a bit low, but once you hit 40-50 you can generally say it's smooth. Except if you're running Quake 1-2-3 where current hardware should produce above 100 :P