The Sinking City 2 Patch 1.1 adds HDR, with a custom Spectre tonemapper for Unreal
A developer who built the official HDR support for The Sinking City 2 has published a technical breakdown. It covers a new tonemapper meant to fix problems in Unreal's out-of-the-box HDR output.
Digital Developer Desk, 6h ago, 2 min read
The Sinking City 2 received official HDR support with Patch 1.1. The developer who handled the implementation, posting as u/filoppi on r/unrealengine, has published a technical breakdown of the work. Frogwares, the game's developer, allowed him to write it.
The centerpiece is a new tonemapper called Spectre. According to the author, it addresses two specific problems: fire that looks different between SDR and HDR output, and highlights that shift from blue to purple in Unreal Engine's filmic tonemapper.
The author also says he made DLSS improvements for the game and shows them in the breakdown. The Reddit post does not give details on what those changes are, so check the write-up itself.
His assessment of Unreal's HDR is blunt: he calls it very lackluster out of the box, with multiple deal-breaking issues. He says all of them were fixed for The Sinking City 2.
The source is a single, non-official Reddit post by the implementer, and the claims are his own. If you ship HDR in Unreal, the full breakdown is worth reading to see how Spectre handles the SDR/HDR match and highlight hue issues before comparing it with your own tonemapping setup.
Sources
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