S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - HDR Settings

This game does not seem to use the Xbox HDR system calibration settings. Try to find data about the peak brightness of your TV on the site RTINGS.COM (value HDR peak brightness 10%) or see FAQ. Before adjusting, make sure you have set the TV settings correctly.

The main problem you will encounter when setting up HDR is a crushed black level, which does not show details in dark areas. The reason for this is an excessively high Contrast and too low a Gamma value at default settings. It is recommended to set all three sliders Contrast, Brightness, Gamma to 50% or adjust according to your preference. But remember that these are not the options that should adjust the HDR parameters. Use the HDR Black Point and HDR Brightness sliders primarily to adjust the image.

HDR Black Point slider adjusts the black level. Set the value from -10 to 0 depending on your preferences. In this case, -10 corresponds to the deepest black and 0 - less deep black (do not set the value from 1 to 10 because this causes distortion of the image gamma).

HDR White Point adjusts the peak brightness of HDR. Set the value according to the peak brightness of your TV in TV tone mapping off mode or leave the value at 1000 and use TV tone mapping mode.

HDR Brightness adjusts the exposure level of the entire image. Set to 40 or adjust to your preference.

Set HDR interface brightness as well according to your preference.

Please note that the image sometimes looks different in different scenes. Having found the correct values, you may, for example, come across rooms with too dark shadows in which details are not visible at any settings. And at these same settings you may encounter scenes with too low contrast and washed-out colors.alert-info

About SDR

The SDR mode can also cause problems. Firstly, the default settings Contrast, Brightness, Gamma are also not 50/50/50, which raises questions. Secondly, the presence of the Image Encoding parameter, which also causes problems. Of course, when switching between the sRGB(LDR) and Rec709(LDR) options, you should also change the corresponding video mode of your TV/monitor. However, the Rec709(LDR) mode raises questions, so it is highly likely that you will be comfortable with the sRGB(LDR) value.

About PC

On PC, some users may encounter issues where HDR is not available or is available but the image is too low contrast and has washed out colors. Here are some recommendations:

• Enable Fullscreen(exclusive) mode in the game settings
• Enable HDR in Windows settings
• Check updates for game, GPU driver and Windows 11
• Try disabling frame generation in the game settings
• Set the correct monitor settings in the control panel of your GPU

In addition, if you want to further reduce the HDR brightness of the user interface, you can edit the file "AppliedSettings.cfg" in the folder "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Stalker2\Saved\GameSettings\".

Find the parameter "HDRUI = 1.0" and reduce the value as you wish, for example to 0.3