HDR vs Bloom Lighting

[ElderTrifnu]

I have heard that if someone has the Nvida card black screen bug they should switch their graphics settings to Bloom Lighting instead of using HDR. What exactly is HDR and what is the key differences and advantages of using eaither one?

[Pronam]

Bloom is a boost, HDR is much more. There are a few mods that (try to) fix that nvidea problem. Search for Black Screen at the search at tesnexus. Here is an elaboration of the difference. Link

[ElderTrifnu]

Bloom is a boost, HDR is much more. There are a few mods that (try to) fix that nvidea problem. Search for Black Screen at the search at tesnexus. Here is an elaboration of the difference. Link

 

Okay, but I kinda wanted more insight on the differences, what more does HDR do than bloom lighting?

[Pronam]

Check the link....The simple answer is that it offers a much enhanced presentation of lighting and a far more realistic one.

The effects of bloom are very dependent on how your graphics card and the game handles it. I generally use HDR or None as at my experiences it doesn't offer that much difference at Oblivion and wouldn't be worth the FPS loss. If I couldn't run HDR but Bloom fluently I would reconsider that. HDR intensifies the amount of lighting and its quality that gets reflected/shown differently on a large amount of surfaces. HDR generally means more realism and a more pleasant immersion when you walk around. The best way would be to create a few screens yourself so that you could compare it.

 

Here are the words if you still didn't look at it:

 

HDR Lighting: High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting is a form of lighting effect which dynamically alters based on the way it interacts with various objects and surfaces, as well as the environment in which the light source is portrayed. Look at the screenshots above for a comparison of the same scene using the default Oblivion lighting, then with Bloom only, then finally with HDR only. It is difficult to capture the true impact of these lighting effects in a compressed JPG screenshot as by definition HDR is dynamic, has a wide color range and is constantly altering. However essentially you can see that the HDR-enabled scene exhibits greater illumination of certain surfaces/light sources, and can be a (arguably) more realistic portrayal of how the human eye interprets light in certain situations (e.g. the added glare of light at the end of a dark tunnel, or when staring at the sun). While being more atmospheric, HDR lighting is more graphics card intensive, and furthermore can only be enabled on the GeForce 6600 series or above, or the ATI X1000 series or newer. HDR is also mutually exclusive with Bloom - one cannot be enabled at the same time as the other. Finally, you also can't enable HDR and Antialiasing at the same time unless you have an ATI X1000 series card or a GeForce 8 series card or newer, and recent Catalyst or Forceware drivers - in both cases you must first enable HDR in the game, and then force enable Antialiasing in your graphics card's control panel for it to work. See the Advanced Tweaking section for ways in which you can alter the visual parameters of HDR to alter its appearance.

 

Bloom Lighting: Bloom is a lighting effect which, similar to HDR, alters the appearance of lighting in an attempt to make it seem more realistic. However unlike HDR, bloom is less dynamic and some would say less realistic. Again, refer to the screenshot comparison further above. Bloom is a lot less graphically intensive than HDR lighting, and is also supported on a wider range of graphics cards, thus it is preferred by many people as a performance-enhancing substitute to HDR. Furthermore, unlike HDR, Bloom can be enabled along with Antialiasing on almost any card thus making it preferable for those who wish to use Antialiasing (see further below). See the Advanced Tweaking section for ways in which you can alter the visual parameters of Bloom, including ways of making it more 'HDR-like'.

[Illiad86]

I personally use Bloom over HDR as I have a 7950GT. I wouldn't use HDR anyways. I personally think it looks horrible in Oblivion, it's very very bright, looks kinda unrealistic. Bloom gives a gentle glow to everything, and when adding Real Lights and All Natural...mmm it's so beautiful. :biggrin:

[Pronam]

Bloom and Real Lights and All Natural...mmm it's so beautiful

Ah, Cheater :P. That's an option too indeed...

[Illiad86]

cheater? :P lol

 

I used HDR with no AA for a while but just couldn't get past how everything was so jagged. I liked the 10FPS gain though lol and I could play it at 1600x1200 (old 21" CRT monitor lol, it's huge!).

 

yes, it's a good idea to find a nice spot in the game and switch between Bloom and HDR. Everybody has a preference, I just don't prefer the radioactive glow of HDR in this game.

[Pronam]

Yeah, it's quite intense...I tend to keep it on at my main PC as it generally is good as my monitor is a bit dark and increasing the brightness looks ugly...:)

[simon445]

hey Illiad how do you like the 7950 GT? What kind of FPS do you get outside, and inside?

 

 

Thanks.

[Illiad86]

hehe...well very good FPS :) I have 128 (mostly immersion mods, lore, and clothing) mods installed, including QTP3 Redimized, .ini tweaks, and all that happy stuff and I get a solid 40FPS in most places outside...in heavily forested areas I get about 35FPS. Runs perfect 60FPS in town, dungeons, interiors. This is at 1280x1024 with Bloom, 4xAA, everything maxed, no self shadows, and no grass with an overclocked dual core at 3.2Ghz and 4GB of RAM :D The grass bogs it down 20FPS lol...never liked how it looked anyways...they did a horrible job on that...

 

I'm quite shocked by it myself, especially after installing QTP3 Redimized, I really thought my card was "too old" to handle it, but it does have 512MB RAM and it's 256-bit, so I guess that helps haha. It's like I didn't install it at all, it still runs just as it did without a texture pack. But the .ini tweaks are essential and of course your load order :)

 

 

Going from 2GB to 4GB and going from 2.6GHz to 3.2Ghz gave the game a significant boost :) If my motherboard could handle more than 125W of CPU juice, I could crank this thing up to 3.8Ghz easily ;). hehe I love it when people say my computer is old...but they whine when it plays Oblivion better than theirs lol. I always get "Why don't you upgrade?"...well for one thing...I don't have an ungodly amount of money to update constantly and my computer does what I want it to. This card still plays new games on high settings with reasonable frames, so what's the point of upgrading right now? And anyways, when my boyfriend upgrades his system early next year, I get his parts....so I'll have 8GB of RAM and a 3870 soon muahahahah :D It's like many things, buy last year's model, it's still good, but now it's cheap and will be good for awhile. I got incredibly lucky on this card though. My friend bought it when it came out for $350...and he sold it to us 2 years later for $60 haha not bad eh? ;) He's nuts though...buys the most expensive new graphics card the minute it comes out and then complains that he has no money lol.

 

 

lol sry for going on like this, but I'm pretty proud of my lil-godly lol.