What are your LG OLED TV gaming settings?

So after hearing so much about the awesome 4K LG OLED I bought the B8 model as it was on a great sale. Now I’m wondering how to best tune it for gaming purposes. I’ve watched a video on Ratings that is recommended as a good baseline but found the results to be a bit weird. I’m using this TV in conjunction with the XBOX one X for reference.

Do you guys use Gaming mode or ISF with the input labeled as PC? Do you keep the OLED light high or low? Warm 2 for color seems a bit yellowish in my opinion but apparently it’s recommended?

Lastly - I feel kinda silly asking but how can I best see HDR in action? Everyone talked about it like it’s something that blows you away when you see it and I fired up Sekiro with HDR on and..I don’t think I see it? I then turned on Forza Horizon 4 and while it looks real nice I also can’t spot where the HDR is “working” I guess? Feels silly but I’m just not seeing the wow factor.

I use pretty much what rtings recommended with the exception that I use Warm 1 instead of Warm 2 and it looks great to me.

Start with what’s on rtings.com, and adjust as needed. I normally wouldn’t suggest such a thing, but it worked pretty well for my set.

Also, keep in mind that HDR10 and DolbyVision of their own static OLED brightness recommendations.

Oled light has to be 100 to get the most out of HDR. Its hard to explain but well implemented HDR really makes certain things pop. Atmospheric lighting and light sources primarily but for the nost part its more subtle and realistic looking range of colours. Pop on GLOW with netflix and look at the end of a cigarette and light sources in a dark room, thats HDR.

Also, turn off all motion blur. I have my de-jutter at something like 3 or 4. I hate any kind of post-processing, but I feel like these OLEDs need at least a little de-juttering.

Look at a scene where the camera pans past some vertical railings to see what I mean.

@humanity: The HDR implementation in Sekrio is notoriously crappy. But, as an aside, I think HDR looks a bit naff on the LG OLEDs in most games, to the point where I've started turning it off generally. It might be because it's an OLED - I just find the intense blacks far more impressive than any HDR I've seen on it.

@humanity: Yep, as mentioned, just use RTINGS, however, there is some variance for what they use that you can change. I only change the backlight though on my TV (TCL 6 series). Read it carefully because they will probably mention not to mess with your 10-point. Unless you know how to calibrate, that's left for professionals. If the settings look awkward, it's probably because you're just not used to it. For instance, it took me quite some time to get used to 'warm' color temperatures. Also, know that games that have HDR are sometimes hard to calibrate properly even when it has an image and slider to go by, so seek out EvilBoris HDR (AKA Adam Fairclough). He doesn't and can't cover everything, but so far he's been pretty helpful when it comes to HDR in games.

I hope you enjoy that TV; there's only one other one on the market that's arguably better, which is the Vizio P Series Quantum. I am unsure about the LG B8 due to burn in, no matter how unlikely it is to happen. I'm not sure about the B8, but I assume your TV indicates when HDR turns on? I think the best game to do HDR to me so far is Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4 Pro. You can also turn it on and off and notice how much of a difference there is. HDR is great, but it doesn't necessarily blow me away honestly. That said, I'd rather not do without it now. It's a big enough change that I hope every game starts implementing it properly. Oh, and finally, if you use Facebook, you can always send a message to the RTINGS page and they often post back a day after, if not that day. I always find it pretty useful when I have a question about TV's.

If you have Prime try watching The Grand Tour. They have two separate listings: one is 4K HDR and the other is plain ol' 1080p. If you watch the same sequence back-to-back you should notice a difference.

Anthem: take a look at how the ammo and health drops pop off the screen, how bright the sun is, or light reflecting off of water.

Metro: Exodus: take a look at the fluorescent light bulbs on the Aurora.

The Elder Scrolls Online: go into a dungeon and take a look at how the bioluminescence pops, or the contrast between a light source and a dark corner.

@bollard: @humanity: You guys can be the judge, but if you haven't tried it, I recommend turning the saturation and brightness (not HDR brightness mind you) up all the way in Sekiro. It makes things pop more, and while I wouldn't usually do it for most games, I find it hard to turn back after doing it.

@ntm: I’ve actually been wanting to turn HDR off and the option is greyed out for me so I guess I have to turn off HDR on my tv, launch the game and then turn the option off or something.

@humanity: Ahh, don't do that. It's not a faked HDR. It is a bit overbright, but it's not terrible. Are you talking about in general for everything or just Sekiro? If you want to turn it off, you can do it from the console side; or is that what you're referring to in which you can't turn it off? That'd be weird unless there's some option on your TV that's overriding it. Did you try what I recommended with Sekiro and it didn't help? What games have you tried, and anything stick out as impressive at all? Again, from my previous comment, it helps to see it on and off when a game allows you to switch it. Horizon Zero Dawn does it well. Some games just do it better than others. HDR makes light sources brighter and dark areas darker as well as the color gamut wider for a more realistic picture. If you step away from what others say in how it is the most amazing thing ever, you might like it more; a small improvement, but an improvement (in most cases) nonetheless. Also, as you might know already, games like RDR2, unfortunately, does have fake HDR, so it's okay to turn it off in that game. If you're on the PS4 you can turn it off from the game, but if you're on the Xbox One you cannot and it has to be turned off from the console side.

@ntm: I’m in the best-thing-since-sliced-bread camp, but I think people need to look at HDR content before buying and decide how important color, smooth blacks, and blinding whites are to them.

I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, so it’s my favorite A/V tech since 720p/1080i.

If you didn’t understand the love for plasma televisons, HDR probably isn’t your thing. Incidentally, my Panasonic Viera from 2008 is still running upstair (with zero burn-in, despite my wife’s best efforts).

@ntm: Are those in-game settings or do you mean on my TV? The thing that puts me off trying to get HDR working the most is the idea of having to change TV settings for every game because I just don't have the time for that.

@bollard: I’ll throw in here that I used to mess with my TV settings all the time as stuff was either washed out or pitch black.

Once I got my TV settings right (a lot of which was the right HDR brightness setting for the HDR10 and DolbyVision standards), I stopped having this issue. I do adjust game settings in the early going, still. I feel like maybe HDR standardized calibration in games still has a ways to go. This is a gut feeling, not something backed-up by special insight.

@nutter: I’m still very much in the phase of constantly tweaking. No matter what I do Sekiro looks washed out in the black areas - shadows are generally shades of grey without the deep blacks in books and crannies. What’s interesting is that on the XB1X when viewing screenshots you can flick between HDR on and off so I can compare and, ahem, contrast. Certain photos look better but usually things are just darker - more realistic i guess, but less pleasant to look at. I should finally fire up Gears 4 and see how things look there as it’s an exclusive so they should have that stuff nailed down.

One thing I’ve done is switched from Game to Normal on the HDR mode and that seems to look better without noticeable input lag difference (I already have the input labeled as PC).

@humanity: I’m going...it’s been a while, but I want to say Expert Dark as a base setting. I tweaked to rtings.com and adjusted for my room and taste. I’m not using any game modes or a PC labeled input. When I tried that, everything looked washed out.

I actually use three seperate image modes depending on the brightness in the room. They’re all configured nearly identically, they just account for very low light, bright light, and something in-between.

I’m usually playing/watching TV at night, so I only really switch over when the sun is super bright (we’re on a hill with windows facing the sun all day).

@bollard: Hey, sorry I haven't been getting replies from time to time for some reason. I had to come back to this page myself to see what others have posted and that's the reason I realized you replied. Anyways, I mean in the game. The game will look bright (so the 'inky blacks' won't really be a thing in Sekiro), but the colors will pop and the brightness will be... bright. You don't need to mess with the HDR setting in the game unless you find that it's changing when you move the slider. Simply put the slider up until you can't see any difference in brightness. If you don't notice any change no matter what, just keep it at default. When it comes to HDR and TV settings, or TV settings in general, you shouldn't have to (heck, shouldn't at all) change TV settings after you've optimized it. Ideally, the rest just comes down to in-game brightness settings.

I say ideally because games are sometimes not great at either giving you good HDR, or have confusing sliders, and on top of that, sliders that tell you to do one thing and yet don't actually give you the correct image. This is why I sometimes check out EvilBoris HDR since he knows how the HDR is working in games. There are on very rare occasion times when changing the TV settings will make the game experience more immersive, for me, that's RE2 Remake where I have to turn the brightness down from 50 to 43. But really, you should check RTING's, and then don't change it from what they recommend unless you think there's a better setting that works for you. And again, you be the judge, but in the Sekiro options menu, put the vibrancy/saturation and brightness (not HDR brightness though) all the way up. I find it more appealing; otherwise it's much too dim, and the colors are lifeless.

@humanity: Yes, you're just not going to get the blacks in Sekiro unfortunately. You can turn the brightness all the way down and you'll get some of that, but everything else is much too dim as if you turned the contrast and backlight all the way down. This isn't the TV's issue, it's the games issue. I settled with brightness all the way up and saturation up because it at least makes the light sources look pretty good.

@ntm: Thank you for the tips, they are appreciated. Additionally - don't worry, I only replied today so I don't think you took that long to reply at all!

@bollard: If you're playing Sekiro, and that doesn't make it look better to you, then maybe just turn HDR off for this game. I am unsure as to whether it's badly implemented HDR, or fake HDR (like RD2/Fallout 76). As I said in the comment just prior, you aren't going to get deep blacks in the majority of places in Sekiro. I haven't personally tested out SDR in Sekiro, so it could be the way to go, but I'm satisfied with the options I have set. I don't want to make it seem like Sekiro is perfect with what I set it at because it's not. I wish it got darker in areas that would realistically be dark, that's all. All you have to know though, just to reiterate, is that generally, you don't have to change TV settings after you optimize it unless you're fighting sunlight or lights. I put up blackout curtains so I play in a dark room all the time and I don't have to mess with the backlight (that said, I keep backlight all the way up because I much prefer a brighter image than a dim one, so if the sun reflected off my screen it'd still be okay).

@ntm: I should have mentioned I am also playing on PC, and I'm never quite sure how to correctly handle HDR in Windows. I think I'm meant to turn on "Windows HD Colour" in Display Settings, but I have to turn it off after I finish gaming or my TV looks washed out.

FWIW I've enjoyed the SDR of Sekiro so far. The colours look fairly fantastic and the dungeon section is pretty darn dark. It obviously doesn't have the bright-brights you've described though. That's good to hear about the TV settings though, maybe I'll give them one more pass with the RTings recommended stuff and then try in-game controls in the future. Cheers again.

@bollard: I know I've already said it (or I guess it was another thread), but if you have Facebook (and I'm assuming, but don't actually know if Twitter would work), you can always ask RTINGs for help on there and they'll reply back within a day. I mean, how to set the HDR up with your PC, etc. I've always found it helpful.

@ntm: I've used your previous suggestion and actually cranked up the colors all the way up and it does look pretty vibrant that way. I mean it's definitely not meant to look the way it does, all the torches and magical effects look great but then clothes and faces are pretty blown out. I rocked it for a while but then got back to fiddling with more "realistic" settings as far as realism goes in games like these.

What I did that actually helped me see how great the screen can actually look is basically searched "4k HDR videos" on YouTube and got this promo reel with HDR on and in 4K of these truly stunning vistas - deep forests, bright deserts etc. It really makes you see how great things can look when they are shot right.