3/27/25 Updated: added new V400 Dark Mode for VoltKrakken5555. 3/24/25 Updated: added new V400 and V1000 options. V600 untouched. 3/17/25 Updated: Screenshots are up for Default vs Mod thanks to exosuit photomode information provided by Interstellar Interloper heoltelwen.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one with this problem, but when I enable HDR, my game looks like it got nuked, whether it is vanilla HDR or the mod itself. I enabled HDR in windows settings and now there is a yellow/sepia tint to my screen. Anyone with know-how on HDR , I would appreciate your help.
What's your monitor? Vanilla HDR is definitely messed up but this mod works well. Where did you place this? It needs to go in the root no man's sky folder, not in the gamedata/mods folder
1. First problem: Sounds like you're having hardware incompatibility issues even without the use of mods. 2. Verify your display is HDR capable not just HD. 3. If your display is HDR (not just HD) capable/ready then : 4. Either the HDMI cable youre using is bad or the display doesn't support HDR. 5. Try another HDMI 2.0 or 2.1 cable that supports HDR colors.
Looking at the screenshots you uploaded, HDR 1000 looks better than vanilla, but it's hard to see a difference vs vanilla with the hdr 400 and 600 screenshots, at least in the anomaly, maybe due to lighting or the ambient fog, not sure.
nah I just eyeball it and tweak it til it looks nice. I know I have a nice tv. I know a lot of people have nice tvs. it's not always about the nits. it's about meeting a target audiences needs. I was betting many hdr capable machines were seeing burnt saturation and overly bright whites. I am used to creating LDR for my OLED to look nice without my live streams turning into garbage on capture card. I mess with a lot of reshade and special k too so I've seen a lot of different outputs. TheGordinho had a video on youtube that taught me how to crush shaders into a neutral 512 lut layer by layer many LUT file changes squashed down into 1 file. I have a lot of LUT files I've created which allow me to achieve beautiful looking graphics for little to no cost on FPS. LeDoge created a great program for applying LUTs called DWM LUT. With so many custom made LUTs over the years it's kinda like having a bunch of different brushes for games videos pictures etc. I like to believe I fly pretty close to the sun but I never really know because I'm just having fun :)
since the ingame HDR increase only seemed to be affecting the colors and not the textures I had a hunch that I could use my files but I never would've guessed without looking that HelloGames left their HDR files in raw cube format <3
Huge thanks to Hello Games allowing us to swap out files, hopefully the loose leaf file format isnt going away anytime soon because to be honest I'm not a real mod author I am just a video game fan I have no idea how to unpack and repack files I have no idea how to write LUA and code. I'm just a guy that wants games to look a little better and I've been doing it for years. I've gotten better with practice but I'm not claiming to be perfect at anything. I was just having fun and I wanted to share the joy with everyone for free.
Lot of those tvs to me are gimmicks because fake HDR has come so far it's feels like Logic Cells are nothing more than advanced LUT files that could eventually have lite versions for older technolgies to still come out looking good like their more expensive high tech brethren.
this isnt really an upgrade to HDR itself
because Hello Games didnt really have HDR to begin with
these are just LUT files that look pretty. feel free to grade them and shoot me some numbers.
I bit the other guys head off because he was crushing his levels and blaming my mod :(
I was hoping to be critiqued because as I've mentioned above I'm a novice not a pro. That said don't blame my mod for color grading issues if you're combining it with other mods like sk lol. sk is awesome. but to work with this mod we would have to bring magenta, sat orange, sat red, and sat green down and probably increase exposure on green itself. but it all needs to be tested and I got my game looking great without SK.
I'm aiming for graphics and performance. SK is nice but unfortunately models tend to load in slower than vanilla vulkan 3d video. :( that and once I found out this game was online multiplayer I quit using SK. ;/
Sorry, I didn't mean to offend. I do like the 1000 cube. It looks great. Since I have an OLED monitor sometimes I like to use true black 400 instead of peak 1000 mode. Less ABL. I have not tried your 400 cube yet but I did try the 1000 cube. I'm not using special K with this. Maybe it is because of the ambient fog or the lighting in the anomaly but it was just hard to notice the difference in the screenshots you uploaded for 400 and 600, not saying there isn't any difference.
edit- I tried the 400 cube. There is a bigger difference outside the anomaly during daytime. Better than vanilla but I think 400 cube is still too bright in average brightness, highlights won't pop if everything is bright.
I tried out the 400 cube. It's definitely better than vanilla but I think it is still too bright. The whole scene is bright so highlights don't stand out at all.
1000 is my preference right now. 400 is meant to be subtle change not really noticed on all planets but does get noticed in the daytime outside you are right. 600 was a happy accident. middle ground. 1000 is a step up from 600. 1000 uses 97 lines instead of 33. should be more suitable/noticeable on larger resolutions (2k and 4k)
Performance: Expect Zero impact on FPS/performance.
HDR Screenshots: I am more than happy to oblige to this request however at present~ I am very sorry but I do not know how to take 1:1 HDR screenshots. :( When I try to take screenshots the capture always comes out washed out, too dark, too bright, and/or overly saturated.
HDR screenshots are hard to do as the relevant image file type for HDR is not widely supported and most computers can't capture it correctly. I guess you could take a pic of the screen with a phone, but that presents its own issues.
Regarding HDR screenshots, if I'm not mistaken NMS Photo Mode captures 2 screenshots when In-game HDR is active, one file is a .jxr file which should capture HDR Meta Information. Take a screenshot with Photo Mode, look which folder (should be shown ingame) it is saved in and look if there is a .jxr file and compare it. If it looks like your modified HDR Settings, then maybe you can show comparison screenshots here. :)
I will try this. I am familiar with .jxr thanks to Special K community (Kal's undying devotion for .jxr *eye roll.*) but I did not know NMS produced those files via photo mode :)
Thank you for the information traveler!
Edit: Screenshots added for Default 1000 vs my V2 1000.
special k supports HDR PNGs. check hotkeys but i think it is f9 for screenshot without overlay. They get saved in program files/specialK/profiles/game/hdr or something like that.
The latest version of reshade also supports HDR PNGs, even without any effects or presets.
HelloGames built photomode into the ingame exosuit tools. we can take .jxr and .png at the same time and pictures come out 1:1 as opposed to SK which tends to crush levels or over brighten them. even Kal will admit his screenshots are not 1:1. people taking screenshots with SK have to overbrighten ingame because they know SK tends to crush levels on captured saves of HDR .jxr / and LDR .png. if they want their screenshots to come out looking closer to a 1:1 of what they actually see when they play they overbrighten before taking screenshots.
HelloGames built in PhotoMode only works with HDR ingame turned on but the captures and exports to HDR .jxr and LDR .png are 1:1 without tweaking anything <3
My Mod is not SK compatible and doesnt include SK instructions. If you're using Special K tool you will need to disable native ingame HDR in favor of using SK's HDR10 or scRGB mode. If you don't disable native HDR in favor of using SK's HDR you are literally stacking SK HDR ontop of native HDR which yeah that results in crushed black levels because you are stacking too much HDR.
SK's HDR does not work with default Hello Games HDR cube files and therefore does not work with my HDR cube files.
I am working on making a new LUT for LeDoge DWM to have SK running with Hello Games HDR disabled without using SK's scRGB or HDR10 but it's tricky.
Short summary: SK is only partially compatible with vulkan bridge. (unstable) SK HDR does not work without disabling native NMS HDR. (incompatible) NMS by default fakes HDR with LUT cube files so of course, you're not going to reach 2000 nits.
Edit: Kal/CatGPT says you can change the luminance slider in SK to 400 and get 2000 nits. but it's weird because the math says it should not work.
I manually calculate all of my HDR video monitor / timing settings. Windows 11 has better automatic hdr support but Windows 11 sucks. I am a windows 10 user :) I modify my HDR manually by setting my own custom EDID values via CRU tool. You can probably find some of my files on SK discord. ☺
1. No Man's Sky HDR turned off with SK local injection (SK HDR is off.)
2. No Man's Sky HDR turned on with SK local injection (SK HDR10 on)
3. No Man's Sky HDR turned off with SK local injection (SK HDR10 on)
So as you can see. If you have both NMS and SK HDR running you get burnt saturation and crushed blacks. If you have NMS HDR turned off with SK HDR turned on you get a more feasible HDR output.
I did not want to write instructions on how to use SK so I opted to replace the default NMS HDR cubes instead of SK.
However. SK is the greatest tool for HDR, latency input, and resource management. I would never try to detour anyone from using SK.
Yeah I do. But I got a malwritten book throne at me about SK so I focused on SK's input. I have used reshade too but I am a huge fan of SK. Preach on brother. ☺
29 comments
3/24/25 Updated: added new V400 and V1000 options. V600 untouched.
3/17/25 Updated: Screenshots are up for Default vs Mod thanks to exosuit photomode information provided by Interstellar Interloper heoltelwen.
Special notes:
This mod is not compatible with Special K's HDR options.
You must use either NMS HDR or
You must disable NMS HDR in favor of using Special K's HDR.
Favorite No Man's Sky Mods:
Exo's Grass Fix
IMonk Embossed Ships
Better Deposit Colors
Better Dihydrogen Crystals
Better Scanning Icons
Better Ship Seat
Black Carbon
Black Space + Nebulae
Camera Tweak No Zoom
Clean Ship Space Map
Clean Analysis Visor
Technology Icons
CreaturesCanSleep
Don't Panic
FF_AquaticBlaster
FF_ProcedurallyColouredRareCrystals
Fine_LOD_Classic
Fullscreen Warps
gGame Better Fishing Platform Exo Skiff
gGui No Storm Overlay
Gourmet Food Descriptions
Gray Ship Interior
HD Clouds 2K
Instant Text Display
Jetpack Enhanced V1
MinotaurHFCameraFix
No Black Bars
No DOF Blur
No Space Dust
No Suit Annoyances
No Trade Routes
Nuissance Blue Ship Map GUI
Red Damage Effect Remover
ReLight
Sentinel Cockpit No Red Circuitry View
Sentinel Cockpit No Red Glow
Silent Jetpack
Sound FX Items & Units
Winder_Interstellar Black Hole
Shaidak Generation
Argh Water
gShip Custom Ships
HOEK SHIP HUD NUI Blue Revival
DUD's Sky COLORS
DUD's Collection
DUD's Sky Terra Firma 2
Vanilla HDR is definitely messed up but this mod works well. Where did you place this? It needs to go in the root no man's sky folder, not in the gamedata/mods folder
2. Verify your display is HDR capable not just HD.
3. If your display is HDR (not just HD) capable/ready then :
4. Either the HDMI cable youre using is bad or the display doesn't support HDR.
5. Try another HDMI 2.0 or 2.1 cable that supports HDR colors.
since the ingame HDR increase only seemed to be affecting the colors and not the textures I had a hunch that I could use my files but I never would've guessed without looking that HelloGames left their HDR files in raw cube format <3
Huge thanks to Hello Games allowing us to swap out files, hopefully the loose leaf file format isnt going away anytime soon because to be honest I'm not a real mod author I am just a video game fan I have no idea how to unpack and repack files I have no idea how to write LUA and code. I'm just a guy that wants games to look a little better and I've been doing it for years. I've gotten better with practice but I'm not claiming to be perfect at anything. I was just having fun and I wanted to share the joy with everyone for free.
Lot of those tvs to me are gimmicks because fake HDR has come so far it's feels like Logic Cells are nothing more than advanced LUT files that could eventually have lite versions for older technolgies to still come out looking good like their more expensive high tech brethren.
this isnt really an upgrade to HDR itself
because Hello Games didnt really have HDR to begin with
these are just LUT files that look pretty. feel free to grade them and shoot me some numbers.
I bit the other guys head off because he was crushing his levels and blaming my mod :(
I was hoping to be critiqued because as I've mentioned above I'm a novice not a pro.
That said don't blame my mod for color grading issues if you're combining it with other mods like sk lol.
sk is awesome. but to work with this mod we would have to bring magenta, sat orange, sat red, and sat green down and probably increase exposure on green itself. but it all needs to be tested and I got my game looking great without SK.
I'm aiming for graphics and performance. SK is nice but unfortunately models tend to load in slower than vanilla vulkan 3d video. :(
that and once I found out this game was online multiplayer I quit using SK. ;/
I'm not using special K with this.
Maybe it is because of the ambient fog or the lighting in the anomaly but it was just hard to notice the difference in the screenshots you uploaded for 400 and 600, not saying there isn't any difference.
edit- I tried the 400 cube. There is a bigger difference outside the anomaly during daytime. Better than vanilla but I think 400 cube is still too bright in average brightness, highlights won't pop if everything is bright.
Does this affect FPS?
Expect Zero impact on FPS/performance.
HDR Screenshots:
I am more than happy to oblige to this request however at present~
I am very sorry but I do not know how to take 1:1 HDR screenshots. :(
When I try to take screenshots the capture always comes out washed out, too dark, too bright, and/or overly saturated.
but I did not know NMS produced those files via photo mode :)
Thank you for the information traveler!
Edit: Screenshots added for Default 1000 vs my V2 1000.
The latest version of reshade also supports HDR PNGs, even without any effects or presets.
we can take .jxr and .png at the same time and pictures come out 1:1 as opposed to SK which tends to crush levels or over brighten them. even Kal will admit his screenshots are not 1:1. people taking screenshots with SK have to overbrighten ingame because they know SK tends to crush levels on captured saves of HDR .jxr / and LDR .png. if they want their screenshots to come out looking closer to a 1:1 of what they actually see when they play they overbrighten before taking screenshots.
HelloGames built in PhotoMode only works with HDR ingame turned on
but the captures and exports to HDR .jxr and LDR .png are 1:1 without tweaking anything <3
I had to use reshade to boost scRGB to 1000nits. Id Go 2000 if I could, monitor supports it just fine.
Install reshade and Lilium HDR shaders along with Pumbo AutoHDR.
Check AutoHDR and change the drop downs to scRGB HDR. I had to boost it to 115 to achieve 1000nits.
Then I had to lower the black level MASSIVELY.
If you open Liliums HDR Analysis tool you will see on the graph the limit of 400nits and the black floor is waaaaaay in the sky.
Also install this:
GitHub - dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm: Transform Windows 11's virtual SDR-in-HDR curve from piecewise sRGB to Gamma 2.2
or it will be grey as balls. Blacks look like total shit.
If you're using Special K tool you will need to disable native ingame HDR in favor of using SK's HDR10 or scRGB mode.
If you don't disable native HDR in favor of using SK's HDR you are literally stacking SK HDR ontop of native HDR which yeah that results in crushed black levels because you are stacking too much HDR.
SK's HDR does not work with default Hello Games HDR cube files and therefore does not work with my HDR cube files.
I am working on making a new LUT for LeDoge DWM
to have SK running with Hello Games HDR disabled without using SK's scRGB or HDR10 but it's tricky.
Short summary:
SK is only partially compatible with vulkan bridge. (unstable)
SK HDR does not work without disabling native NMS HDR. (incompatible)
NMS by default fakes HDR with LUT cube files so of course, you're not going to reach 2000 nits.
Edit:
Kal/CatGPT says you can change the luminance slider in SK to 400 and get 2000 nits.
but it's weird because the math says it should not work.
Windows 11 has better automatic hdr support but Windows 11 sucks.
I am a windows 10 user :) I modify my HDR manually by setting my own custom EDID values via CRU tool.
You can probably find some of my files on SK discord. ☺
2. No Man's Sky HDR turned on with SK local injection (SK HDR10 on)
3. No Man's Sky HDR turned off with SK local injection (SK HDR10 on)
So as you can see.
If you have both NMS and SK HDR running you get burnt saturation and crushed blacks.
If you have NMS HDR turned off with SK HDR turned on you get a more feasible HDR output.
I did not want to write instructions on how to use SK so
I opted to replace the default NMS HDR cubes instead of SK.
However. SK is the greatest tool for HDR, latency input, and resource management.
I would never try to detour anyone from using SK.
I have used reshade too but I am a huge fan of SK. Preach on brother. ☺
Thanks for the boost friend!