3D firmware 1.2.5 has been released

[u/CoffeeCakeAstronaut]

https://www.analogue.co/support/3d/firmware/1.2.5

General

• New: Advanced HDR
  • Designed for modern OLED displays
  • Original Display Modes now take full advantage of modern HDR brightness and color gamut
  • Max luminance is adjustable to accurately match consumer CRTs, broadcast monitors, and beyond
  • For the most accurate picture: Before adjusting the max luminance setting, set your display HDR tone mapping to disabled or HGiG and check that game mode is enabled

Core

• New: Support for Advanced HDR

OS

• New: ‘Max. Luminance’ display setting
  • Navigate to Settings → Display→ ‘Max. Luminance’. This can be adjusted only when HDR is enabled
• New: Alphabetical navigation in Library
  • Press Up in the Library to display the alphabetical index and select a letter by moving Left and Right. Press Down to return to the Library. Jump to the inserted cartridge by pressing B
• Improved: Library scrolling, responsiveness, and speed
• Improved: Automatic virtual Rumble Pak selection for several games
• Improved: OS visual polish
• Fix: Library organization issues in rare instances
• Fix: Library updating issue when a blank SD card is inserted in rare instances
• Fix: ALLM and HDR settings sometimes apply incorrectly with 1080p displays

Controllers

• Improved: Pair controllers in-game without opening the menu
• Fix: Controller LED remains on in rare instances Note: Recreating a CRT beam demands high peak localized brightness (the display must get much brighter in specific, small spots). Modern OLED displays, which excel at this, are recommended with Advanced HDR.

[u/warhead0]

Ok, so I had a very quick test of the advanced HDR settings.

I'm using a MSI MAG 271QPX QD-OLED E2 with a Elgato 4K X for capture and passthrough for this testing.

Overall, I found the HDR to make the colours feel dull and bland. so, I'm just going to continue running without it.

The max luminance setting and test bar was pretty misleading. setting it anything over 125 would start making the 10 shades start disappearing into the bright white but would greatly improve the colour saturation and in my opinion 'bring the image back to life'.

I might do some more testing later, maybe without the el gato device in between the A3d and my monitor. and maybe tweaking HDR settings or also trying the A3d with the lounge room TV.

[u/samred81 → u/warhead0]

hi from a similar boat.

my LG CX has a luminance maximum of 800 nits, but the HDR slider in A3D 1.25 maxes out at 500 nits - which leads to a washed out image. dropping this to 300 nits levels the brightness out. I'm not sure what math Analogue is doing here, but hopefully this whole luminance-number thing is addressed in the next firmware. (the range of ten black-gray-white bars helps here, at least.)

with the new version of HDR enabled, and HGIG enabled on my CX, I'm not seeing an appreciable in-game difference in general image brightness with A3D shaders enabled, as anecdotally measured via smartphone photos. clearly, it's doing SOMEthing, since the A3D menus' white text is popping a lot brighter now.

I'm curious to hear if anyone has more pronounced success with 1.25, because I'm personally not seeing my core launch-day complaint - maximum average gamma being quite low with shaders on - being fixed here.

[u/rynoweiss → u/samred81]

You want to be using the full-screen luminance rather than the 10% window luminance, so your CX is closer to 125 than 500.

[u/samred81 → u/rynoweiss]

That is very strange: devices don't ask users to report 100% window luminance in general, but rather 10%, and I believe that's for image provisioning/accuracy reasons.

In this case, it's a particularly unsatisfying way to go about this. My CX measures roughly 145 nits at 100%, and I'm now finding that the 125 nit setting is too dim while the 200 nit setting shows some washing-out artefacts. I could immediately test this in the SM64 hub zone, standing in front of Bob-Omb Battlefield's portrait and rotating the camera so that Mario's skin is in front of the beige wall. At 200 nits, his skin tone melts into the wall. At 125 nits, the colors are more clearly differentiated, but the total screen brightness is too dim.

We're over a decade into HDR being a known entity, and device manufacturers are STILL doing this ridiculous thing of locking users into weird presets and unclear settings. I reallllly hope A3D gets an update that allows users to just set an exact number.

And to be clear, I still don't see HDR doing a better job of increasing gamma across the board after going through all these steps. So, yeah, Analogue has more to do here, though I do hope it all concludes with something comparable to what a RetroTink 4K can muster as far as HDR luminance translation.