What causes broken HDR output?

The game outputs HDR with wrong tone mapping, missing or incorrect metadata, or by treating HDR like SDR, so the image looks washed out, clipped, or dim on HDR displays.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Broken or Washed-Out HDR Output

Quick answer: Tone map to the display's HDR range, send correct HDR metadata, and offer calibration for peak brightness and paper white.

Broken HDR output is wrong tone mapping and metadata. Here is how to fix it.

How to fix it

1. Tone map to the HDR range

Tone map the rendered image to the display's actual HDR luminance range, not the SDR range. Treating HDR output like SDR, or tone mapping to the wrong peak, makes it washed out or clipped.

2. Send correct metadata

Provide the correct HDR metadata (peak brightness, color volume) so the display renders the signal properly. Missing or wrong metadata makes the display misinterpret the HDR image.

3. Offer HDR calibration

Let players calibrate peak brightness and paper-white level to their display, since HDR displays vary widely. A calibration screen ensures the HDR output looks right on the player's specific panel rather than guessing.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.