What is wrong with HDR? It costs literally nothing fps wise and if you have a capable TV/monitor the difference in colors is impressive

This is not how HDR works. In fact HDR can look dimmer than SDR content, because not many people watch SDR on calibrated and dim screen (100nits). People use agressive backlight settings when they watch SDR, so entire picture is very bright at around 300-400nits, while on HDR average APL is around 250nits, and only certain details like for example lights will be brighter than this.

SDR can only display details between 0 and 100 nits, so SDR TV can display very limited shadow and highlight transitions compared to 1000 or even 4000 nits. You simply get much more details with HDR content, not to mention much wider color gamut.

HDR looks the best on TVs that can control brightness on the pixel level, because only such technology can display extremely bright details next to the dark ones and do it without blooming.

TVs with around 1000 nits and above will display extremely impactful HDR, but even 400 nits display makes a big difference, because you get 4x the amount of details in the highlights and shadows, but also much wider color gamut (SDR rec709 colors are very unsaturated next to BT2020).

But HDR results will depend on TV quality. I have seen two sony LCDs with 400 nits, one was much older (one of the first sony TVs with HDR implementation) and the 2’nd one was their latest model. HDR on this old sony TV looked flat, and games had this extremely oversaturated look. On new model however I was really impressed despite only 400nits. Older TVs have much worse tone mapping from higher nits and cheap monitors with 400 nits standard usually have huge details crush in bright areas like clouds.

Real puddles have very sharp reflections.

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/812037c2c6263d17e13cdb25590fbb38af0ced4cc3be6231f0d164dadf6f4c17.jpg

https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/5f84e084740176950855250a35024173ab04dfab48d3471660c2d21f2b7fbe64.jpg

I havent seen many comparisons where RT versiom would look worse. Even The Witcher implementation makes a big difference and looks much better. This YT channel has many comparisons like that, so tell me in which comparison RT version looks worse to you.

https://youtu.be/_o59iS_4SHY

yes, but those who enable ray tracing will have crappy performance without better visuals

yeah, they did a crazy job, when i played on my laptop 2070s ultra (about 40/50 fps with dlss balanced on 1440p gsync monitor) i was like crazy on every level. Level design art style is something astonishing, as lod on distant fields too, is probably the game graphics that amazed me more in the last 3 years after red dead redemption 2

I’m blessed with a Founder’s edition 4090 that I paid just the £1599 MSRP for.

It is more realistic, ultra sharp shadows don’t appear IRL unless they’re close to the light source or the object casting the shadow. Go outside, look at trees and see for yourself. What’s missing from SotTR is RTGI and RT Subsurface scattering. You’d expect the shadows cast by leaves to take on their colour somewhat and not just be black as light permeates through them, unlike say the tree trunks.