Veteran developer Filippo Tarpini has founded Gamma Studios to help game developers implement high dynamic range (HDR) properly. Tarpini, who created HDR mods for titles such as Control, Alan Wake II, and Starfield, says the state of HDR in gaming is poor. He estimates that half of the biggest games of 2025 do not support HDR, and most of those that do have major defects.
Tarpini highlights widespread HDR defects
Tarpini explains that HDR is often an afterthought in game development, with standard dynamic range (SDR) used as the reference. This leads to compromised artistic intent. He notes that HDR displays can achieve peaks of over 2000 nits, while SDR is stuck at 100 nits. He also advocates for wider color spaces like Rec. 2020, which can display a much wider color gamut than Rec. 709 or sRGB.
According to Tarpini, the situation on PCs is especially bad. He says half of monitors have fake HDR panels that look worse than SDR. Windows displays SDR content in HDR in a broken way, and its AutoHDR feature uses an improper formula. The two major game engines do not handle HDR properly out of the box.
Tarpini believes gamers are not aware of the value HDR adds to the experience. He says marketing pushes consumers to care about the hottest GPU, but nobody advertises HDR because there is no single producer behind it. Tarpini has not analyzed the Switch 2's HDR implementation himself, so he cannot judge whether it meets standards.
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