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Control - Ultimate Edition (PC Native HDR Mod) - HDR Optimized Settings
🕑 Added 2024-09-08 08:26:11 +0000 UTC
The game DOES USE/APPLY PC HDR Calibration app settings (after Mod)
Control is still one of the best and innovative games released in recent years but unfortunately from Day 1 to current, fully updated, "Ultimate Edition" was always Native SDR only + the color grading and "creator intent" decided by Remedy for the game included raised blacks, exacerbated by "AutoHDR" on both Xbox and PC (which will raise them even more), which is a shame considering the vast amount of contrast (e.g. dark corridors opposed to super bright neon lights) and very bright effects during combat,
RTX HDR improved it further on PC with NVIDIA RTX cards, but it was still an SDR-HDR reconstruction done by AI.
Now, I've finally discovered and wanted to share with you the real "Ultimate" PC mod for it:
CONTROL - HDR Ultrawide DLSS RT Patch
(it will work for any PC Store, including PC Game Pass / Microsoft Store version)
(left stock game with AutoHDR - right HDR Mod)
The author of the mod is an ex-Remedy employee which basically continued developing a Native HDR implementation for the game (so no AutoHD/RTX HDR or SpecialK, ReShade or other "external filters" stuff. See the image above: it's just Native, that's why I'm sharing!) along with many other improvements as:
System-Level HDR Calibration support!
DLAA support
New "Max" textures quality which will fix textures suddenly appearing (requires 10GB+ VRAM)
New "Ultra" Ray Tracing quality (which will fix reflections' "shimmering" but is VERY demanding)
Improved shadow quality
Full UltraWide support
Improved Borderless fullscreen optimizations
and many other fixes
Even Digital Foundry analyzed it with a special episode you can watch here and I highly recommend installing it if you have the PC version of the game.
If you installed it, set the new in-game HDR sliders as the above image in order to have a balanced Native HDR10 picture with fixed blacks and still with accurate colors.
Peak HDR Luminance and Paper White will be automatically determined from the values you've set in Windows 11 HDR calibration app.
BONUS:
Replace the old DLSS .dll located in the game folder (v3.1) with the latest one you can find/download here for a much better upscale quality
Disable Film Grain: in order to have a cleaner picture
Enjoy the real, "Ultimate" version of Control ;)
-P
Comments
William Z
Thanks for the link. I enabled HDR 2. Definitely an improvement vs the default, unfortunately it does seem as robust as the mod which included the deepen blacks setting.
P40L0
Yeah, it has fake HDR by default but with some tweaks can be converted to Native similar to what the mod was. More info here: https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-new-patch-for-remedys-control-just-dropped-adds-fake-hdr-despite-true-hdr-being-available-in-the-config-files-edit-not-fake-just-artistic-hdr.1129878/
William Z
Have you tried the new official patch?
P40L0
No, this was exclusively made for Control
Edvin
Hi, will the mod work on any non-HDR game like flintlock on gamepass because as you know, we cant use RTX HDR on gamepass games as microsoft locks the game. It only works with Reshade+AutoHDR addon by majorpainthecactus as far as I know.
P40L0
Did you increase the Deeper Blacks slider to max? That said, yeah, the original look doesn't have true blacks or very saturated colors so probably that's intended (by the ex Remedy dev) but still to me this mod is miles better than AutoHDR and even RTX HDR and SpecialK, as it's truly native HDR10.
William Z
Just tried the patch. Not sure what it is, but the game still looks a bit washed out to my eyes in HDR on a G4. Special k seems to offer better blacks and contrast but less highlights
P40L0
Yes I use that and there are noticeably improvements both in DLAA but especially in the upscale (even from lower resolution). The game after the patch/mod set to max fidelity (including the new Ultra Ray Tracing) at 4K/DLSS Quality hovers around 60-70fps on a 4080!
William Z
Are you using DLL 3.7.20? If so, do you notice a change with DLAA vs what the patch comes with?
