Few aspects of modern game development generate as much confusion as HDR. Players often blame HDR itself when games appear washed out, overly dark, or lacking contrast, but those issues frequently stem from the challenge of delivering a consistent image across thousands of displays with different capabilities. For developers, that can mean years of work on lighting, color, atmosphere, and composition appearing differently than intended once a game reaches players.

HDR10+ GAMING aims to address that challenge through display-aware rendering. Rather than relying on players to manually calibrate HDR settings, compatible games can understand the capabilities of certified displays and automatically optimize HDR presentation to better preserve artistic intent. The goal isn't to replace existing HDR workflows, but to help ensure the creative decisions made during development survive the journey from the studio to the player's screen.

We spoke with Bill Mandel, Co-Manager of HDR10+ Technologies, about common HDR misconceptions, integrating HDR10+ GAMING into Unreal Engine pipelines, supporting environment and lighting teams, and how display-aware rendering could reshape HDR production in the years ahead.

A lot of players blame “HDR” broadly when a game looks washed out, too dark, overly bright, or inconsistent. What are the most common misconceptions about HDR that HDR10+ is designed to address?

Bill Mandel: One of the biggest misconceptions is that HDR itself is the problem when visual issues occur. In reality, many complaints about HDR being washed out, too dark, overly bright, or lacking contrast stem from configuration issues rather than the technology itself. Players may unknowingly use incorrect settings or assume HDR automatically produces the best image regardless of display capabilities. When something looks wrong, they rarely blame calibration or display settings—instead, they blame HDR itself or assume the game has poor image quality.

Another common misconception is that every HDR display performs the same. In reality, displays can vary significantly in brightness and overall HDR performance. Two displays with the same advertised specifications can end up behaving very differently due to a variety of factors.
HDR10+ GAMING helps address these issues by allowing supported games to understand the capabilities of the connected display and render accordingly, automatically optimizing HDR settings for each compatible display out of the box, delivering a premium visual experience without requiring players to manually adjust settings.

For environment artists and lighting teams, where can HDR10+ GAMING make the biggest difference: bright outdoor scenes, dark interiors, high-contrast transitions, atmospheric effects, stylized color palettes, or something else entirely?

Bill Mandel: The greatest benefits often appear through consistent HDR presentation across all compatible displays, ensuring the game looks as the creators intended regardless of the certified HDR10+ GAMING display being used. Dark interiors illuminated by torches, caves with bright openings, nighttime environments with intense visual effects, and scenes that combine deep shadows with bright highlights can all benefit from HDR10+ GAMING’s ability to automatically optimize HDR rendering based on the capabilities of the connected display.

For lighting teams, the highest-value test cases are usually transition-heavy content, exiting a cave into daylight, muzzle flashes in dark interiors, neon signs in rain, bloom-heavy VFX, or gameplay-critical silhouettes against bright backgrounds. Those are the shots where bad HDR often shows up as clipping, crushed blacks, or unreadable composition. HDR10+ GAMING helps address these issues by combining HDR10+ GAMING-certified devices with HDR10+ GAMING-compatible games. The certification program requires display, GPUs, and other supported source devices to meet specific HDR10+ GAMING performance requirements, providing confidence in their capabilities and quality. At the same time, communication between the compatible game and the certified display enables automatic HDR setup optimized for that display, helping preserve visual consistency and creative intent.

A lot of players blame “HDR” broadly when a game looks washed out, too dark, overly bright, or inconsistent. What are the most common misconceptions about HDR that HDR10+ is designed to address?

Bill Mandel: One of the biggest misconceptions is that HDR itself is the problem when visual issues occur. In reality, many complaints about HDR being washed out, too dark, overly bright, or lacking contrast stem from configuration issues rather than the technology itself. Players may unknowingly use incorrect settings or assume HDR automatically produces the best image regardless of display capabilities. When something looks wrong, they rarely blame calibration or display settings—instead, they blame HDR itself or assume the game has poor image quality.

Another common misconception is that every HDR display performs the same. In reality, displays can vary significantly in brightness and overall HDR performance. Two displays with the same advertised specifications can end up behaving very differently due to a variety of factors.
HDR10+ GAMING helps address these issues by allowing supported games to understand the capabilities of the connected display and render accordingly, automatically optimizing HDR settings for each compatible display out of the box, delivering a premium visual experience without requiring players to manually adjust settings.

For environment artists and lighting teams, where can HDR10+ GAMING make the biggest difference: bright outdoor scenes, dark interiors, high-contrast transitions, atmospheric effects, stylized color palettes, or something else entirely?

Bill Mandel: The greatest benefits often appear through consistent HDR presentation across all compatible displays, ensuring the game looks as the creators intended regardless of the certified HDR10+ GAMING display being used. Dark interiors illuminated by torches, caves with bright openings, nighttime environments with intense visual effects, and scenes that combine deep shadows with bright highlights can all benefit from HDR10+ GAMING’s ability to automatically optimize HDR rendering based on the capabilities of the connected display.

For lighting teams, the highest-value test cases are usually transition-heavy content, exiting a cave into daylight, muzzle flashes in dark interiors, neon signs in rain, bloom-heavy VFX, or gameplay-critical silhouettes against bright backgrounds. Those are the shots where bad HDR often shows up as clipping, crushed blacks, or unreadable composition. HDR10+ GAMING helps address these issues by combining HDR10+ GAMING-certified devices with HDR10+ GAMING-compatible games. The certification program requires display, GPUs, and other supported source devices to meet specific HDR10+ GAMING performance requirements, providing confidence in their capabilities and quality. At the same time, communication between the compatible game and the certified display enables automatic HDR setup optimized for that display, helping preserve visual consistency and creative intent.

HDR10+ uses dynamic metadata to help optimize HDR presentation. Can you explain, in practical terms, how that differs from a static HDR implementation and why that matters for games?

Bill Mandel: It is helpful to first clarify an important distinction: HDR10+ and HDR10+ GAMING are related, but they are not the same thing.

HDR10+ is primarily used for linear content. In that case, the tone map metadata  information is created in post production as part of the video workflow and embedded  with the video stream so the display can do the tone mapping based on that dynamic metadata for frame by frame.
HDR10+ GAMING works differently because games are interactive and rendered in real time. Instead of relying on dynamic tone map metadata, HDR10+ GAMING allows the game engine to understand the capabilities of the connected display, such as its brightness range, and then the game engine will render the images for that specific screen.

That distinction matters because a game is not a fixed sequence of shots like a movie or TV show. A player can move from a dark corridor into bright sunlight, look directly at an explosion, or turn back into a shadowed room in a single moment. With HDR10+ GAMING, the game has direct knowledge of the display's capabilities and can render the image accordingly.

Unlike a static HDR implementation — which requires creators to commit to a fixed tone map for the entire video or game — HDR10+ GAMING gives the game the information it needs to make optimized rendering decisions, frame by frame, for the screen it is actually connected to.

How does HDR10+ GAMING  fit into an existing game development pipeline? At what stage should developers start thinking about HDR presentation: art direction, lighting, post-processing, QA, certification, or all of the above?

Bill Mandel: HDR should be considered from the earliest stages of development. Art direction establishes the visual goals, lighting teams build the foundation for HDR presentation, technical artists and engineers implement the rendering pipeline, and QA validates the experience across multiple displays and hardware configurations. HDR is not something that can be treated as a final-stage feature, as creative and technical decisions made throughout development directly affect the final image.

HDR10+ GAMING fits into that process differently. It is not a replacement for HDR workflows that developers already use. Rather, it helps ensure that the HDR experience developers create is accurately reproduced on compatible displays once the game leaves the studio.

After a team has spent years crafting the look, lighting, contrast, and atmosphere of a game, HDR10+ GAMING helps preserve that creative vision across HDR10+ GAMING-certified displays, providing developers with greater confidence that players will see a consistent visual experience regardless of the certified display they use. By allowing the game to understand the capabilities of a HDR10+ GAMING-certified display and optimize HDR presentation accordingly, it reduces the need for manual calibration and helps ensure players experience the game as intended. The HDR10+ GAMING certification program is the foundation for that confidence: because certified displays must meet their declared performance standards, developers can target those capabilities with assurance rather than designing around the full spectrum of unknown hardware configurations.

What advice would you give to studios that want HDR to enhance their art direction without accidentally compromising visibility, readability, or competitive clarity?

Bill Mandel: My core advice: build the best HDR experience possible for your game, then use HDR10+ GAMING to help preserve that vision across certified displays. HDR should enhance atmosphere, depth, and immersion — not require players to become display-calibration experts. The less your players have to adjust or "fix" the image themselves, the more likely they are to experience the game exactly as you intended.

That perspective is echoed by game development partners we work with closely. One studio described HDR as one of the most powerful visual tools available — but also one of the most misunderstood, by developers and players alike.

Their view aligns with mine: HDR10+ GAMING is most valuable when it closes the gap between what you created in the studio and what the player sees at home — without adding friction for either side.

Unreal Engine 5 support has been discussed as part of HDR10+ Gaming’s developer-facing push. What does engine-level support or plugin support change for studios trying to implement HDR10+ GAMING? What about Epic's upcoming UE6?

Bill Mandel: Engine-level or plugin support matters because it lowers the barrier to adoption. Instead of building custom integrations from scratch, developers can incorporate HDR10+ GAMING into existing workflows using familiar tools and pipelines. That makes it easier for teams to evaluate HDR behavior throughout development rather than treating it as a late-stage platform feature. It also creates long-term scalability benefits: once HDR10+ GAMING is implemented at the engine level, all games built on that implementation can more easily become HDR10+ GAMING-compatible, reducing the need for individual teams to repeatedly integrate the technology on a title-by-title basis.

No announcements have been made regarding UE6 at this time. In the meantime, HDR10+ GAMING continues to update its Unreal Engine plugin alongside new Unreal Engine releases, helping developers maintain compatibility and take advantage of the latest engine capabilities as they become available. 

Looking ahead, how do you see HDR10+ GAMING and display-aware rendering changing the way artists and technical teams approach game visuals over the next few years?

Bill Mandel: In my view, one of the biggest long-term benefits of HDR10+ GAMING is the potential to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with HDR validation, calibration workflows, and display-specific troubleshooting. As displays continue to diversify, developers will increasingly need ways to deliver consistent HDR experiences without manually accounting for every possible hardware configuration.

Today, many studios rely on manual calibration tools and conservative HDR targets to accommodate a wide range of displays. HDR10+ GAMING helps reduce those compromises by allowing compatible games to understand the capabilities of the connected display and render accordingly.
Looking ahead, that could allow developers to spend less time worrying about calibration screens and display-specific edge cases, while giving them greater confidence that players are seeing the experience as intended. It may also allow studios to take fuller advantage of modern HDR displays without having to design around a one-size-fits-all HDR target.
Ultimately, the goal is a future where developers spend less time managing display differences, calibration screens, and HDR troubleshooting, and more time creating great experiences for players. That is the future HDR10+ GAMING is working to build — and why this work matters to us.

Bill Mandel, Co-Manager of HDR10+ Technologies