I believe the article is based on a wrong assumption. The author argues that everything could look more realistic and that VFX could pop more with stronger HDR, but in my opinion it makes a lot of sense to keep a stylized cartoon game also stylized in its brightness choices.
When you drive towards the sun, what is more fun? A realistic HDR brightness that blinds you, or a „wrong“ brightness level that helps the background stay in the background without interrupting your flow? Similarly, should eye candy like little sparks grab your attention by being the brightest object on screen? I’d say no.
The hardware can handle full HDR and more brightness, but one could argue that the game is more fun with incorrect brightness scaling…
MBCook 6 hours ago [-]
That’s not the problem.
The game should look like a normal Mario game at a minimum. It should use its additional color palette available in HDR to look better, and the additional brightness to make make effects pop as you describe.
The problem is that’s not what it’s doing. Some things pop better, but it’s not because they’re using extra colors. It may be a little brightness, but mostly it’s that everything else just got toned down so it looks kinda washed out.
If they did nothing but use the expanded color palette and did not use the additional brightness at all I would be a lot happier than with what we have right now.
I haven’t turned it back to SDR mode but I’m legitimately considering it. Because I suspect the game looks better that way.
BoorishBears 5 hours ago [-]
Mario Kart World generally looks more saturated than previous games if anything, so it definitely meets that minimum.
And the article is about they missed out on the optionality of using the additional gamut, but that additional gamut wouldn't intrinsically look better.
It's easy enough to edit a screenshot to show us what could have been, but even in that single screenshot there are things that look worse: like the flames gained saturation but lost the depth the smoke was adding, and some reasonable atmospheric haze vanished.
(similarly the game in the side-by-side has some downright awful looking elements, like the over-saturated red crystals that punch a hole through my HDR display...)
Given Nintendo's track record for stylization over raw image quality, I'm not sure why this isn't just as likely them intentionally prioritizing SDR quality and taking a modest-but-safe approach to HDR... especially when the built-in screen maxes out at 450 nits.
_carbyau_ 5 hours ago [-]
Every game I first start requires a trip to turn off music, in-game VoIP, HDR, bloom, lensflare, screenshake if possible.
It's like a keyword bingo for usually poor implementations. I grant that maybe the implementation is good for any specific game you care to mention - but history has shaped my habits.
Infernal 4 hours ago [-]
Don’t forget motion blur!
3eb7988a1663 1 hours ago [-]
Motion blur is my only instant disable. I paid a lot of money and self-justification for this expensive GPU, and you want to make things look a blurry mess?
jldugger 9 hours ago [-]
> But when Gamers in ESA surveys report that the quality of the graphics being the #2 factor in deciding when to purchase a game
Somehow I doubt this survey is representative of the typical Mario Kart player. And to those for whom it is a concern, I don't think SDR is high on the list relative to framerate, pop-in, and general "see where I'm going and need to go next" usability.
Loughla 7 hours ago [-]
You are exactly right. I don't care if it's all blocks and squares. As long as I can not lag and see enough to destroy my children at the game.
mcphage 1 hours ago [-]
> see enough to destroy my children at the game
That really is the joy of Mario Kart. You think you’re going to beat me, kid? You’re 12 and I’ve been playing Mario Kart for 30 years.
(And then they do… oof)
hombre_fatal 3 hours ago [-]
HDR video/images in the macOS/iOS browser have to be one of the most confusing UX in recent memory.
Why are people able to craft an image/video that bypasses my screen brightness and color shift settings?
If I wanted to see the media in full fidelity, I wouldn't have my screen dimmed with nightshift turned on in my dark bedroom.
It's not OP's fault. My mind is just blown every time I see this behavior.
braiamp 8 hours ago [-]
There's someone that did the job to actually figuring out how to make the HDR of the switch work, but it needs your display to support certain features to be correct https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X84e14oe6gs
MBCook 6 hours ago [-]
That only helps some. I have a display that supports that feature but I still can’t get it to look right.
It’s a little better than I had it set. But it’s still a problem. As this article shows, it just wasn’t designed right.
twoodfin 6 hours ago [-]
The intrinsic research and analysis behind this article are great. I’m having a hard time, though, not tripping over the obvious (tell me I’m wrong!) ChatGPT “polish”. Multilevel tutorial outlines, bolded key points, “X is Y—not Z”, …
I can’t articulate why it bothers me. Except maybe the implied assumption that the author’s real voice & style benefit more than they are harmed from being submerged in what is ultimately mathematically derived mush.
jlarcombe 6 minutes ago [-]
yes it's hard to understand why people feel the need to do this and I worry it's just going to become ubiquitous and ruin everything
numpad0 6 hours ago [-]
> HDR is mainstream – From just a quick browsing of BestBuy, nearly all TVs over 42” are 4K and support HDR. 9th gen consoles are shipping with HDR on by default. The majority of your audience is HDR-equipped.
"Mainstream" or "majority" in context of Nintendo is a $20-40k/yr white collar household with 2 kids. The REAL mainstream. Some would have real ashtrays on a dining table. ~None of them had bought any of TVs over 42" with 4K resolution and HDR support in past 10 years.
Though, I do wonder how globally mainstream is such a household buying Nintendo hardware. Admittedly it could be somewhat of a local phenomenon.
thinkingtoilet 5 hours ago [-]
I don't know how out of touch you have to be to think a family with two kids making $20k a year is affording a switch 2 on release.
numpad0 3 hours ago [-]
Japanese average income is $32k, the JP special of Switch 2 is $350, Switch 1 sold 37m, and Japanese working age population under is ~74m(out of 120m).
Either six-figure Nintendo gamers are hoarding boxes full of Switch 1 in the attic and completely destroying the statistics, or everyone at that income bracket is sophisticated enough to desire one.
Frankly, this is why I'm wondering how normal it is globally, because I believe Japan is not supposed to be a village of broke Vulcans. Maybe the nerds are in fact hoarding tons of Switches.
5 hours ago [-]
epcoa 4 hours ago [-]
Not sure why you would associate “white collar” with poverty. While technically there are poor office workers, this is not the typical association.
rohansood15 1 hours ago [-]
I have never owned a gaming console, and I was actually considering getting the Switch 2 as a casual gamer to play with friends/family.
My first reaction when I saw the launch/gameplay video was why does this look so washed out? Now I kinda know why - thank you!
mortenjorck 8 hours ago [-]
The most unpleasant effect from cut-rate HDR is when graphics with bright backgrounds get lazy-mapped to HDR.
Perhaps the worst offender I've ever seen was the Mafia remake by Hangar 17, which loads every time with a sequence of studio logos with white backgrounds that cut from black. The RGB(255,255,255) backgrounds get stretched to maximum HDR nits, and the jump from RGB(0,0,0) (especially on an OLED) is absolutely eye-searing.
I literally had to close my eyes whenever I'd load the game.
xnx 7 hours ago [-]
Even worse when you're in a dark room. The white flash when loading many otherwise dark mode websites and apps is the worst.
baobun 1 hours ago [-]
At least for Firefox, having the browser chrome set to dark (typically by having it picked up from GTK theme preferences) should make the default page background dark too. And I think userchrome.css to override default bgcolor should still work.
Of course there are individual wonky sites which will still flash but if applicable, those two things should reduce the occurrences significantly.
theshackleford 7 hours ago [-]
> (especially on an OLED)
Why would it be any more impactful on OLED than any given FALD display capable of putting out >1000 nits sustained?
6 hours ago [-]
noname120 6 hours ago [-]
Contrast ratio
theshackleford 3 hours ago [-]
> Contrast ratio
Perceived intensity in HDR is dominated by luminance, not just contrast ratios on paper.
OLEDs do have effectively infinite contrast (since black pixels are off) and it's why I love them, but that doesn’t inherently make white flashes more intense on them via any other display type unless the peak brightness is also there to support it.
Or in other words, a 800 nit flash on OLED is going to be less intense than a 1600 nit one on a FALD LCD. Brightness is the bigger factor in how harsh or impactful that flash will feel, not just the contrast ratio.
It's not down to your panel technology in this case, but the limitation of any given panels peak and sustained brightness capabilities.
tempaway43563 8 hours ago [-]
Literally only makes a difference to the clouds. Nintendo know what they're doing and made the right call
MBCook 6 hours ago [-]
It looks more washed out than it should. I’m not talking about “doesn’t have blowout colors and brightness“. I’m talking about looks bland.
How is that the right call?
jldugger 5 hours ago [-]
1) They have a screen built into the console. It would be kinda derpy to treat portable gaming as a second class citizen. So "SDR first" it is.
2) More than past Mario Karts, World needs to visibly delineate the track into multiple sections: the track itself, the "rough" off track, the border between those two, and the copious number of rails you can ride and trick on. Rails in particular are commonly bright primary colors in order to better stand out, often more primary color coded and saturated than the track itself. Green Pipes, yellow electrical wire tie downs, red bridge rail guards, etc.
3) Bonus gamut for particle effects is kinda not required and probably distracting when drifting around a curve avoiding attacks.
4) It feels pretty good to me, but maybe I need to adjust some settings on my LG C1 to get the full bland experience?
MBCook 4 hours ago [-]
The screen on it is supposed to be HDR, though I don’t know how good it is at that.
danbolt 3 hours ago [-]
> You might look at the HDR representations of this game and think “Wait, the game appears more colorful” and this is because of the Hunt Effect. The Hunt Effect describes how we think a brighter color is more saturated, but in reality, it’s just an optical illusion.
Sounds like an incredibly cost-effective optical illusion!
jm20 8 hours ago [-]
Nintendo has never competed on graphics. They compete on having the most fun, accessible, entertaining games as possible. And say what you will about their business practices, they’ve probably done a better job of that than any other gaming company in history. As more devs bundle ever higher quality graphics with ever higher in-app purchases and pay to win schemes, Mario remains…Mario.
I seriously doubt many Switch users would bail on the system because of “fake” HDR. They probably don’t care about HDR at all. As long as Mario remains Mario, they’re happy.
jonhohle 13 minutes ago [-]
I don't think it's fair to say they _never_ competed on graphics. The Super Nintendo was comparable and surpassed the Genesis in some graphics areas. The Nintendo 64 was a 3D monster compared to other consoles at the time. On paper, the GameCube out performs the PS2. It wasn't more powerful than the Xbox, but not a generation behind.
It wasn't until the Wii that Nintendo stepped out of the hardware race. Somehow this has been retconned into Nintendo never focusing on hardware.
If they thought it would sell more systems, they'd compete. The Switch 2 is evidence that it doesn't matter.
Retr0id 8 hours ago [-]
Nintendo graphics are rarely technically impressive, but their games do tend to look good. I'd expect their games not to have washed-out colours.
echelon 6 hours ago [-]
The author's changes look more washed out to me than the original screenshots.
bitwize 6 hours ago [-]
Nintendo has ABSOLUTELY competed on graphics. The NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube were graphical powerhouses upon release, at or near the top of their generations in graphical performance. It was only with the Wii, when they chose to iterate on the Gamecube design rather than pair a powerful multicore processor with a powerful shader-capable CPU like the PS3 and Xbox 360 did, that Nintendo started going all "but muh lateral thinking with withered technology" and claimed they never intended to compete in that space.
zimpenfish 12 minutes ago [-]
> the Wii [.vs.] a powerful shader-capable CPU like the PS3 and Xbox 360
Outsold both the PS3 and XBOX360 by 15M units though. Given the lower hardware costs of the Wii (I've seen estimates of ~$160 compared to $840 for the PS3 and $525 for the Xbox 360 - both higher than launch price btw!), I'd suggest Nintendo made the right choice.
Taek 2 hours ago [-]
The GameCube was released 24 years ago. Its hardly fair to hold Nintendo accountable to a direction they haven't moved in for two and a half decades.
The visual difference between the N64 and GC was enough that it made sense to focus on upgraded graphics. When you play an N64 game, there's always the initial shock of "wow these graphics are a bit dated".
But you don't get that feeling when playing Melee, or Wind Waker, or many of the other artfully done GC games.
Essentially, somewhere around the GameCube era, graphics became good enough that the right artist direction could leap a game into the "timeless graphics" category.
And so it makes sense that Nintendo said "let's stop chasing better graphics, and instead focus on art direction and gameplay".
MBCook 8 hours ago [-]
I’m heavily disappointed. I’ve always been a HUGE Nintendo fan.
If the system was SDR only I would be disappointed but fine.
But they made it HDR. They made a big deal about it. And it doesn’t work well. It’s impossible to calibrate and ends up just looking washed out.
It’s broken.
And I don’t appreciate the insinuation that Nintendo fans will buy any piece of junk they put out. See: Wii U.
badc0ffee 7 hours ago [-]
The Wii U had terrible wifi, but I can't really say I hated it. There were some real classics on that console - Mario Kart 8 and Super Mario 3D World (although those were both eventually ported to the Switch). It played Wii games and supported all the original controllers, but output HDMI and had real power management. I still use mine to play Wii games.
MBCook 6 hours ago [-]
I loved mine. It had real problems but great games.
It was just an easy at-hand example.
I also liked the VirtualBoy. But I bought it and a bunch of game from Blockbuster for $50 total when they gave up on it. So my value calibration was very different from those who paid retail.
HeyMeco 8 hours ago [-]
Agree, with the HDR marketing for the Switch 2 I expected a proper implementation. Sad that they cheaped out on it but at least we got this great article out of it
I read the above post, and honestly thought it was satire.
theshackleford 7 hours ago [-]
I'm a Nintendo purchaser. I absolutely care about HDR. Given they specifically advertised HDR, I suspect they expect me to care, otherwise why make noise about it?
WhereIsTheTruth 51 minutes ago [-]
This is a game on a handheld
You want low latency and long battery life, HDR has an impact on the two
Have people forgotten what a handheld is supposed to be? portable device on a battery
ge96 8 hours ago [-]
Interesting how the images pop on that site, everything else has like lower opacity/faded, worked great, maybe more noticable on retina monitors
badc0ffee 8 hours ago [-]
On macOS 15.5, Firefox 139 shows super dark images for me. Safari seems to work fine, though.
ziml77 8 hours ago [-]
I'm curious if someone knows what's going on. It feels to me like Firefox is showing the image in HDR but with the wrong gamma curve applied.
GRiMe2D 7 hours ago [-]
MacBook Pro can “display” HDR content on SDR displays.
macOS puts a slightly higher brightness than it required and artificially (in software) changes absolute white (0xFFFFFF) to greyish color (0xEEEEEE). So when a HDR content is required it will remove mask around that content. Safari ideally, probably that’s on Firefox why tone mapping doesn’t work well
badc0ffee 7 hours ago [-]
There's a HDR video on that page, and on my built-in MBP display, it's much brighter/has noticeably more range than the rest of the UI. Moving the window to my non-HDR external 4k monitor, it looks like a regular YouTube video.
The video looks the same in both Safari and Firefox, whereas the images are dim in Firefox on both my MBP display and external monitor.
jekwoooooe 6 hours ago [-]
Nintendo cheaped out just so they can resell the same thing to the people obsessed with their branding
Anything that isn’t an oled simply cannot do HDR. it’s just physically impossible to get the real contrast.
colechristensen 4 hours ago [-]
It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, color was new and being done poorly. Now Oz is nostalgic so it gets a pass because of its uniqueness, but new films that look like that would be a little absurd.
I like some of the choices on Mario Kart World with HDR, but a lot of it just needs to be toned down so the things which do blow out the colors are impressive but also fit instead of just everything being turned up to 11.
MBCook 8 hours ago [-]
I’m glad to see this getting attention in the last day or two. HDRVTest did a video too.
I’m having a blast with MarioKart but the track usually looks washed out. Some of the UI and other things have great color on them but most of the picture just looks like the saturation was turned down a bit.
Very disappointing as a Mario game and its colorful aesthetic is the kind of thing that should be able to look great in HDR.
When you drive towards the sun, what is more fun? A realistic HDR brightness that blinds you, or a „wrong“ brightness level that helps the background stay in the background without interrupting your flow? Similarly, should eye candy like little sparks grab your attention by being the brightest object on screen? I’d say no.
The hardware can handle full HDR and more brightness, but one could argue that the game is more fun with incorrect brightness scaling…
The game should look like a normal Mario game at a minimum. It should use its additional color palette available in HDR to look better, and the additional brightness to make make effects pop as you describe.
The problem is that’s not what it’s doing. Some things pop better, but it’s not because they’re using extra colors. It may be a little brightness, but mostly it’s that everything else just got toned down so it looks kinda washed out.
If they did nothing but use the expanded color palette and did not use the additional brightness at all I would be a lot happier than with what we have right now.
I haven’t turned it back to SDR mode but I’m legitimately considering it. Because I suspect the game looks better that way.
And the article is about they missed out on the optionality of using the additional gamut, but that additional gamut wouldn't intrinsically look better.
It's easy enough to edit a screenshot to show us what could have been, but even in that single screenshot there are things that look worse: like the flames gained saturation but lost the depth the smoke was adding, and some reasonable atmospheric haze vanished.
(similarly the game in the side-by-side has some downright awful looking elements, like the over-saturated red crystals that punch a hole through my HDR display...)
Given Nintendo's track record for stylization over raw image quality, I'm not sure why this isn't just as likely them intentionally prioritizing SDR quality and taking a modest-but-safe approach to HDR... especially when the built-in screen maxes out at 450 nits.
It's like a keyword bingo for usually poor implementations. I grant that maybe the implementation is good for any specific game you care to mention - but history has shaped my habits.
Somehow I doubt this survey is representative of the typical Mario Kart player. And to those for whom it is a concern, I don't think SDR is high on the list relative to framerate, pop-in, and general "see where I'm going and need to go next" usability.
That really is the joy of Mario Kart. You think you’re going to beat me, kid? You’re 12 and I’ve been playing Mario Kart for 30 years.
(And then they do… oof)
Why are people able to craft an image/video that bypasses my screen brightness and color shift settings?
If I wanted to see the media in full fidelity, I wouldn't have my screen dimmed with nightshift turned on in my dark bedroom.
It's not OP's fault. My mind is just blown every time I see this behavior.
It’s a little better than I had it set. But it’s still a problem. As this article shows, it just wasn’t designed right.
I can’t articulate why it bothers me. Except maybe the implied assumption that the author’s real voice & style benefit more than they are harmed from being submerged in what is ultimately mathematically derived mush.
"Mainstream" or "majority" in context of Nintendo is a $20-40k/yr white collar household with 2 kids. The REAL mainstream. Some would have real ashtrays on a dining table. ~None of them had bought any of TVs over 42" with 4K resolution and HDR support in past 10 years.
Though, I do wonder how globally mainstream is such a household buying Nintendo hardware. Admittedly it could be somewhat of a local phenomenon.
Either six-figure Nintendo gamers are hoarding boxes full of Switch 1 in the attic and completely destroying the statistics, or everyone at that income bracket is sophisticated enough to desire one.
Frankly, this is why I'm wondering how normal it is globally, because I believe Japan is not supposed to be a village of broke Vulcans. Maybe the nerds are in fact hoarding tons of Switches.
My first reaction when I saw the launch/gameplay video was why does this look so washed out? Now I kinda know why - thank you!
Perhaps the worst offender I've ever seen was the Mafia remake by Hangar 17, which loads every time with a sequence of studio logos with white backgrounds that cut from black. The RGB(255,255,255) backgrounds get stretched to maximum HDR nits, and the jump from RGB(0,0,0) (especially on an OLED) is absolutely eye-searing.
I literally had to close my eyes whenever I'd load the game.
Of course there are individual wonky sites which will still flash but if applicable, those two things should reduce the occurrences significantly.
Why would it be any more impactful on OLED than any given FALD display capable of putting out >1000 nits sustained?
Perceived intensity in HDR is dominated by luminance, not just contrast ratios on paper.
OLEDs do have effectively infinite contrast (since black pixels are off) and it's why I love them, but that doesn’t inherently make white flashes more intense on them via any other display type unless the peak brightness is also there to support it.
Or in other words, a 800 nit flash on OLED is going to be less intense than a 1600 nit one on a FALD LCD. Brightness is the bigger factor in how harsh or impactful that flash will feel, not just the contrast ratio.
It's not down to your panel technology in this case, but the limitation of any given panels peak and sustained brightness capabilities.
How is that the right call?
2) More than past Mario Karts, World needs to visibly delineate the track into multiple sections: the track itself, the "rough" off track, the border between those two, and the copious number of rails you can ride and trick on. Rails in particular are commonly bright primary colors in order to better stand out, often more primary color coded and saturated than the track itself. Green Pipes, yellow electrical wire tie downs, red bridge rail guards, etc.
3) Bonus gamut for particle effects is kinda not required and probably distracting when drifting around a curve avoiding attacks.
4) It feels pretty good to me, but maybe I need to adjust some settings on my LG C1 to get the full bland experience?
Sounds like an incredibly cost-effective optical illusion!
I seriously doubt many Switch users would bail on the system because of “fake” HDR. They probably don’t care about HDR at all. As long as Mario remains Mario, they’re happy.
It wasn't until the Wii that Nintendo stepped out of the hardware race. Somehow this has been retconned into Nintendo never focusing on hardware.
If they thought it would sell more systems, they'd compete. The Switch 2 is evidence that it doesn't matter.
Outsold both the PS3 and XBOX360 by 15M units though. Given the lower hardware costs of the Wii (I've seen estimates of ~$160 compared to $840 for the PS3 and $525 for the Xbox 360 - both higher than launch price btw!), I'd suggest Nintendo made the right choice.
The visual difference between the N64 and GC was enough that it made sense to focus on upgraded graphics. When you play an N64 game, there's always the initial shock of "wow these graphics are a bit dated".
But you don't get that feeling when playing Melee, or Wind Waker, or many of the other artfully done GC games.
Essentially, somewhere around the GameCube era, graphics became good enough that the right artist direction could leap a game into the "timeless graphics" category.
And so it makes sense that Nintendo said "let's stop chasing better graphics, and instead focus on art direction and gameplay".
If the system was SDR only I would be disappointed but fine.
But they made it HDR. They made a big deal about it. And it doesn’t work well. It’s impossible to calibrate and ends up just looking washed out.
It’s broken.
And I don’t appreciate the insinuation that Nintendo fans will buy any piece of junk they put out. See: Wii U.
It was just an easy at-hand example.
I also liked the VirtualBoy. But I bought it and a bunch of game from Blockbuster for $50 total when they gave up on it. So my value calibration was very different from those who paid retail.
You want low latency and long battery life, HDR has an impact on the two
Have people forgotten what a handheld is supposed to be? portable device on a battery
macOS puts a slightly higher brightness than it required and artificially (in software) changes absolute white (0xFFFFFF) to greyish color (0xEEEEEE). So when a HDR content is required it will remove mask around that content. Safari ideally, probably that’s on Firefox why tone mapping doesn’t work well
The video looks the same in both Safari and Firefox, whereas the images are dim in Firefox on both my MBP display and external monitor.
Anything that isn’t an oled simply cannot do HDR. it’s just physically impossible to get the real contrast.
I like some of the choices on Mario Kart World with HDR, but a lot of it just needs to be toned down so the things which do blow out the colors are impressive but also fit instead of just everything being turned up to 11.
I’m having a blast with MarioKart but the track usually looks washed out. Some of the UI and other things have great color on them but most of the picture just looks like the saturation was turned down a bit.
Very disappointing as a Mario game and its colorful aesthetic is the kind of thing that should be able to look great in HDR.