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CONTROL - HDR+Ultrawide+DLSS+RT Patch


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About This File

Do not ask for DLSS 3.5 or FSR 3 please.

 

Version 1.5.1 is up. It fixes the hiss/smoke effect on enemies being too bright in HDR.
Version 1.5 is up. It improves the DLSS implementation, improves the quality of shadow and fixes the buggy/noisy ray tracing reflections that are also present in the vanilla game.
Version 1.4 is up. It improves the UI look in HDR and implements the HDR mode that retains the original game look. It improves texture LODs with DLSS. It restores film grain with DLSS and makes it more pronounced. And many other relevant changes.
Version 1.3 is up. It adds a new HDR mode to retain the original hazy look more, keeping it closer to the original artistic vision. It also slightly improves a few other things with the HDR.
Version 1.2.1 is up. It improves the game to screen tonemapping (the highlights were a bit more compressed than they should have been). If you already had the mod installed, make sure to open the "renderer.ini" and change "m_fHDRWhitePaperNits" to 200. Performance is also improved.
Version 1.2 is up. The game is now built with the DLSS 3.1.1 SDK, and uses the new DLSS presets to further increase the quality (and reduce ghosting) (this is NOT frame generation). There are also some minor tonemapping and menus improvements.

This patch adds native HDR and lot more to Control, making it a little bit of a technical remaster. It was achieved by rebuilding the game with modified code and shaders.
This is built on top of my previous Ultrawide fix patch.

Compared to the latest official release version (0.0.344.1879), these are the improvements:

  • Native HDR (gets rid of color banding, greater contrast and brighter highlights, more natural colors).
  • Improved quality of SDR output (10bit->no more color banding, slightly better dynamic range).
  • Upgraded DLSS to 3.1.30 and improved its implementation (it's also now compatible with FSR 2.X injection).
  • Added DLAA support (DLSS at native resolution).
  • Added a new "Max" texture setting to improve the slow texture streaming (min 8GB+ VRAM, 10GB+ are recommended).
  • Added a new setting to use 3x as samples for ray tracing and volumetrics, increasing the quality and reducing noise (this is VERY expensive).
  • Fixed broken ray tracing reflections.
  • Fixed low shadow quality when ray tracing was on.
  • Full UltraWide support: unlock any resolution and aspect ratio, including 32:9+.
  • Some FOV and LOD fixes for UW. Fixed UI issues at non 16:9 aspect ratios (e.g. enemies health bars were displaced).
  • Added a FOV Multiplier config setting `m_fFOVMultiplier` (the game and UI are designed for the default FOV, so only use for accessibility reasons).
  • Add a config to skip the intro video `m_bSkipIntroVideos`.
  • Improved window+borderless+fullscreen management.
  • Fixed the game not launching correctly on non Nvidia non AMD GPUs (e.g. Intel Arc).
  • Restored film grain with DLSS. Tweaked the film grain implementation.
  • Minor crash fixes, bug fixes and features.

How does it work:

  1. Download your version of the patch (Steam, Epic Store, No DRM/GOG).
  2. Copy (with replace) all the files inside the Control install folder.
  3. Open the DX12 version of the game.
  4. You can turn on HDR either from Windows or from the game (on by default).
  5. The game will read the Windows 11 HDR calibration profile (app) and match its tonemapping to your screen capabilities.
    Otherwise see the guide below to calibrate HDR.
  6. Using HGiG is suggested if your TV supports it (monitors usually default to HGiG).
  7. In the game settings, there are multiple HDR settings to tailor the image to your liking, though know that the HDR is already pre-calibrated to roughly match the SDR brightness.

Further details:

  • You can swap between HDR and SDR from the game or Windows at any time. The game automatically changes.
  • Further HDR settings are avaiable in the "renderer.ini" file (after running the game once).
  • config "m_fHDRMaxNitsOverride": If you are incapable of creating an HDR calibration profile (e.g. Windows 10), set this to the nits max nits your screen supports (e.g. ~750 for LG CX).
    The game supports any value there, though if your screen maxes out at only 400 nits, you might want to compare HDR and SDR and play whichever looks best.
  • config "m_fHDRRaisedBlacksCorrection" (also exposed to settings menu): This makes the color correction LUT output black as black (instead of grey, depending on where you are).
  • config "m_fHDRSaturation" (also exposed to settings menu): This artificially generates colors in the Rec.2020 space from the game internal Rec.709 image. Anything that is bright and saturated will shift to colors that don't exist in SDR. This makes the game look more saturated, though it could also make it feel more "HDR". Unreal Engine uses a similar technique.
  • The HDR implementation skips the Reinhard tonemapper the game used in SDR. In my opinion it made the image look overly flat, which was a choice dictated by the limitations of SDR. Removing it allows to take full advantage of HDR, by outputting an image with a much greater level of contrast, and without disadvantages to visibility.
  • If you prefer the original look, enable "HDR Original Look" in the settings menu, which is somewhere in between the SDR tonemapper and my HDR one.
    Disabling the tonemapper in SDR is not the intent of this mod, so it will not be done.
    You can further customize the og look mode by changing the "m_fHDRArtDirectorWhitePoint" config. Set it to a value of 8 to have it as strong as it was in SDR.
  • Note that a very tiny amount of scenes (e.g. the game opening and the furnace), can look a little unbalanced in HDR due to overly strong lights or strong color correction. Use the "HDR Original Look" if this a problem for you.
  • You can set "m_fSDRCustomGamma" to any value > 0 to set a specific gamma, for example if you use a TV instead of a monitor, 2.2 would likely be the best choice.
  • The performance impact from the new code should be within the 1-4% range when running in HDR, and lower running in SDR.
  • HDR is only supported on the DX12 executable.
  • There is no patch for the Microsoft Store version of the game.
  • If for some reasons you need to swap save files between game versions from different stores, you can find the directories here. You might also have to rename the internal save directory, e.g. from `Default-Generic-User` to `Default-Epic-User`.
  • This should work both on the Ultimate Edition and the older standard version that had separate DLCs. The DLC ownership might not be mutually compatible.
  • The save game files are mutually compatible with the official last version fo the game (v0.0.344.1879).
  • PS4 exclusive content is still locked and I will not unlock it. Do not ask please.
  • You can generally change graphics settings at runtime, but don't report problems unless you restart the game.
  • The new UI options miss localization, so they will always show in English.
  • My "Max" texture setting might not be as aggressive as the "Blurry textures fix" mod that was already out there, though it's more safe and stable, performance wise.
    All textures now load immediately, the only exception being a couple of small paintings around the game.
  • I got report that mods like the "Plugin Loader" do not play well with this one. I have contacted the author to hopefully fix the issue.
  • There is no plan to implement DLSS 3 Frame Generation at this time. Please do not ask.

Rare game bug likely not related to this patch:

  • Very rarely, the videos in the background of loading screens seem to get stuck. I haven't been able to reproduce this reliably, but it probably also happens in the the vanilla game.
  • Rarely, after long sessions, if ray tracing GI is enabled, the game renders in black until restarted. This also happens in the vanilla game.
  • Occasionally non ray traced reflections can shimmer. This also happens in the the vanilla game. Doing a fast travel fixes it.
  • 8k resolutuon might not work right (untested).
  • If pre-rendered videos show tearing on RTX 4090 GPUs, disable re-bar.

How to report any potential issues:

  1. Do not start with the assumption that the mod broken, it's been tested a lot. Verify all potential issues from your end first.
  2. Do a fresh install of the latest vanilla game version.
  3. Delete your renderer.ini settings file.
  4. Make sure the issue does NOT happen on the vanilla game. This patch does not aim to fix the bugs of the original game (nor to optimize it), so do not report them please.
  5. Re-apply the latest version of the patch, from the matching store, and override all the files.
  6. If all the above fail, leave a comment on this page.

How does this compare to AutoHDR: AutoHDR is just a post process so it doesn't add any detail. Specifically in Control it makes bright lights and the UI too bright.
How does this compare to SpecialK HDR: SpecialK can increase the rendering buffers depth, thus increasing the amount of color shades the game can output (less banding), but it can't extract any brightness beyond what the SDR tonemapper clamped the game to, so it's mostly still a SDR image with more precision.

Given HDR screenshots can't be seen in browsers, I've uploaded a collection of them. There are SDR .png alongside their HDR .jxr counterpart.
Use the "HDR Image Viewer" app to see them (use this code branch if the app crashes).

Discord community: https://discord.gg/R2Bt3uptw6

Virus Scan

you can Buy me a coffee or PayPal
Thanks: `KoKlusz` `Lilium` `PennyFortnite player420yolo` `Darktalon` `Aemony` `mrtnptrs` and `Alex Battaglia` for the help with testing and feedback.

HDR videos:

more HDR videos here (4K) and here (low bit rate, potentially slightly wrong colors due to the capture).

Control 2022-12-05 19_45_28.png

Control HDR Screenshots.7z

Control_DX12_AQFd0vjSW9.png

DLSS improvements between patch 1.3 and 1.4 with Ultra Performance mode:
image.thumb.png.ed7fe1276377025c7af3cd1c5f3499ce.png


What's New in Version 1.5.1   See changelog

Released

  • Fixes hiss (smoke) effect around enemies being too bright in HDR (it was broken in 1.3).




User Feedback

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I think the mod by default enables HDR on the first use, so perhaps when it tried to enable it to test if you have HDR, Windows enabled a wrong profile.

Personally I don't even have that option in my Windows 11 desktop, so I don't know what it does and what is the default value.

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Looks like that. (currently off) On was default and worked fine so far, but now if I turn it back on everything gets weird as described.
Also turning it on changes the bit depth (marked) to "8-bit dithered" or something like that. Pretty sure that wasn't the case before.

I mean I can live with the option being off, but considering it was this mod which in someway fucked it up I'd prefer to unfuck it again but I have no idea what it actually did and thus how and where to change it back to how it was before.

I was writing here because it was this mod which did it. But if no one knows (not your fault ofc) guess I will need to post in Win11 subreddit or something.
The reason I was trying this mod in the first place was DLSS which is so much better with it, at least that's working great!
modified.png.cffeb0294a7fe5531ad1a352dded219f.png

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My 4090 can't run DLAA (in 4K) and "Ray Tracing Increase Samples Count" at the same time without dropping down to about 40fps. What's the clearly better choice in terms of quality?

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3 hours ago, murdochi said:

My 4090 can't run DLAA (in 4K) and "Ray Tracing Increase Samples Count" at the same time without dropping down to about 40fps. What's the clearly better choice in terms of quality?

Just use DLSS Quality

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On 11/20/2023 at 9:33 AM, postingwithoutaccountdoesntwork said:

Looks like that. (currently off) On was default and worked fine so far, but now if I turn it back on everything gets weird as described.
Also turning it on changes the bit depth (marked) to "8-bit dithered" or something like that. Pretty sure that wasn't the case before.

I mean I can live with the option being off, but considering it was this mod which in someway fucked it up I'd prefer to unfuck it again but I have no idea what it actually did and thus how and where to change it back to how it was before.

I was writing here because it was this mod which did it. But if no one knows (not your fault ofc) guess I will need to post in Win11 subreddit or something.
The reason I was trying this mod in the first place was DLSS which is so much better with it, at least that's working great!
modified.png.cffeb0294a7fe5531ad1a352dded219f.png

What GPU do you have? If Nvidia, for myself to get my Win HDR enabled correctly I had to go into my Nvidia Control Panel and set a custom resolution up as a 10bpc (10-bit) color 4k resolution. (Whatever resolution you choose.) Maybe try this, I'll attach a screenshot to show you. This way now you may be able to go into HDR settings and try enabling and disabling to see if it changes anything or if you see 10 bit as long as your display is capable of it. Nice little shortcut is also WinKey+Alt+B you can quickly enable / disable HDR. Just figured I'd let you know about this, I had this specific issue not with Control but with RDR2. Something to do with Win 11 AutoHDR bug that they haven't fixed for years... Like my game will look fine, but when I exit RDR2 my colors are just gone and some programs flicker bright and dim quickly, seizure inducing or close to it. Quick disable and enable fixes this tho, only game I've had this specific issue with too lol. Haven't played this game for a minute, might have to hop on tonight. Really loved this game, kinda my favorite genre. ❤️

Untitled7.png

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A little hint for people wanting to use this great Unofficial Patch alongside the hex edit that allows you to unlock PS4 exclusive content. I own the ultimate version on steam and I edited the DX12 Version of the patched .exe using HxD and applied the method for the Epic Game Store Version of the game. See below.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Control#Unlock_PlayStation_4_DLC

 

So far it worked flawlessly.

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11 hours ago, molsenalan said:

Can you please make this work with the Steam Deck? It's one of the games I most want to play with my new OLED model.

It does, I heard. 

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On 11/29/2023 at 12:33 AM, murdochi said:

There isn't a Quality option in Control.

for 4k dlss quality you have to tick the nvidia dlss box, set the resolution to 3840x2160 and the renderresolution to 2560x1440.

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Any recommended settings to help with texture loading on a 3070 8gb? I'm playing at 1440p DLSS Balanced, Max RT, Ultra textures (not max) and after playing for a few hours textures just stopped loading in their high quality version. Only had discord open. 

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45 minutes ago, gummo said:

Any recommended settings to help with texture loading on a 3070 8gb? I'm playing at 1440p DLSS Balanced, Max RT, Ultra textures (not max) and after playing for a few hours textures just stopped loading in their high quality version. Only had discord open. 

I got the same issue with RX6700XT 12gb vram. Any fix for a better vram management?

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On 11/20/2023 at 2:33 PM, postingwithoutaccountdoesntwork said:

Looks like that. (currently off) On was default and worked fine so far, but now if I turn it back on everything gets weird as described.
Also turning it on changes the bit depth (marked) to "8-bit dithered" or something like that. Pretty sure that wasn't the case before.

I mean I can live with the option being off, but considering it was this mod which in someway fucked it up I'd prefer to unfuck it again but I have no idea what it actually did and thus how and where to change it back to how it was before.

I was writing here because it was this mod which did it. But if no one knows (not your fault ofc) guess I will need to post in Win11 subreddit or something.
The reason I was trying this mod in the first place was DLSS which is so much better with it, at least that's working great!
modified.png.cffeb0294a7fe5531ad1a352dded219f.png

That's really bizarre. I've never seen that happen ever nor have I seen this option at all. I do play on an LG Oled with HDR, so not sure if that's related at all though! But I'd be hard pressed to believe the mod did that. Something was off on your Windows looks like

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I do have a question to anyone here. 

Do I need to set the value for m_fSDRCustomGamma or is that by default 2.2? (playing on a TV). 

Also, I'm really liking what Saturation at 35 does to the visuals without compromising much of the original vision! Looks amazing! 

I did notice there's still quite a lot of RT noise though? Example: Bridge to the hotline room. The bridge floor where the light from the room hits it, shows a ton of noise. Just standing there the bridge floor is just "moving". 

Is this expected with current dlss versions? 

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On 6/8/2023 at 2:49 AM, Befuddled said:

I've run into an odd issue using HDR this mod that I can't seem to find reference to elsewhere and can't resolve short of disabling HDR.  Basically the blurry effect that comes off the Hiss becomes virtually opaque which is fairly distracting in normal fights and becomes downright blinding in boss fights.  I've uploaded a screenshot to https://imgur.com/a/QGawRpC (Spoilers for a boss although not much is visible through the weird fog)

I've tried changing a whole bunch of settings, going from max to minimum on the HDR tweaks in the settings menu and all other graphics settings (including the original look option) but the only thing that changes it is turning HDR off entirely. I've also tried a clean driver install to no avail.  If anyone else has any ideas to resolve this that would be amazing because I'm a bit stumped at this point (system is Windows 10 with an R5 3600 and a RTX 4080).

 

I think I have the same issue. It looks way brighter / opaque than playthroughs on YouTube for example. 

It's as if most of the "transparency" isn't working properly? So it's just opaque and super bright / beige. It's a bit annoying because it doesn't look great and makes it difficult to see anything... 

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Regarding the Resizable BAR texture loading issue - if your motherboard supports the option for setting the "Above 4G MMIO Limit" (exact name will vary), increase it.  I think mine defaulted to 512 (30-something bits).  I tried setting it to the max of 8TB (43 bits) and the texture loading problem evaporated.

Using an RTX3070ti on an Asus x570-Pro WiFi mobo.  
 - This may help with "If pre-rendered videos show tearing on RTX 4090 GPUs, disable re-bar.", but I can't test that. 


I had seen comments indicating that the texture loading issue was due to Re-BAR.  Not wanting to have to do all the rebooting needed to change that setting back and forth, I decided to futz with some other related settings.  Still trying to figure out what exactly that setting is or what exactly it does, but if that stands for Memory Mapped I/O then I'm guessing it's for this, "Memory-mapped I/O limits the I/O address space as I/O devices share the same address space as the memory. This means that there may not be enough address space available to address all I/O devices." (Memory mapped I/O and Isolated I/O - GeeksforGeeks disadvantages of MMIO).  

(I also added this to the comments on Nexus)

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Came back to this patch after a while and used it yesterday. My impressions:

-In HDR, near black seems a bit brighter than what I remember. Since the game's hdr is built on the sdr version, should I use the gamma fix here: https://github.com/dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm?tab=readme-ov-file

-There's still noise in the reflections

-The game is simply too demanding with all these 3x ray tracing options enabled (not complaining though). Getting ~50fps with DLAA and ~60fps with DLSS Quality + 1.78xDLDSR (which seems to give a similar if not better image quality compared to DLAA). It's a shame we don't have frame gen. Probably have to wait until 5090 or even 6090 to be able to play it in all its glory

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I'm really at a loss here and really frustrated with the game. I'm gaming on a laptop with a 3070Ti with 8 GB of VRAM.

Even with the mod installed and the Max texture setting textures just won't load. Sometimes the game will load the high quality textures, only to then default to the lowest quality version 3 seconds later. People in custscenes look like a muddy mess, everything looks like a muddy mess tbh.

I tried reinstallung, updating my drivers, further decreasing my graphics settings, but nothing seems to work. Any tips maybe? Thanks!
 

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On 1/27/2024 at 4:28 AM, kidcom said:

Came back to this patch after a while and used it yesterday. My impressions:

-In HDR, near black seems a bit brighter than what I remember. Since the game's hdr is built on the sdr version, should I use the gamma fix here: https://github.com/dylanraga/win11hdr-srgb-to-gamma2.2-icm?tab=readme-ov-file

-There's still noise in the reflections

-The game is simply too demanding with all these 3x ray tracing options enabled (not complaining though). Getting ~50fps with DLAA and ~60fps with DLSS Quality + 1.78xDLDSR (which seems to give a similar if not better image quality compared to DLAA). It's a shame we don't have frame gen. Probably have to wait until 5090 or even 6090 to be able to play it in all its glory

Do not use the sRGB/2.2 gamma mismatch color profile.

1 hour ago, nino95 said:

I'm really at a loss here and really frustrated with the game. I'm gaming on a laptop with a 3070Ti with 8 GB of VRAM.

Even with the mod installed and the Max texture setting textures just won't load. Sometimes the game will load the high quality textures, only to then default to the lowest quality version 3 seconds later. People in custscenes look like a muddy mess, everything looks like a muddy mess tbh.

I tried reinstallung, updating my drivers, further decreasing my graphics settings, but nothing seems to work. Any tips maybe? Thanks!
 

8GB are not enough to use Max or even High possibly. Use Medium textures.

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On 2/3/2023 at 2:48 AM, Terepin said:

Unfortunately, this force-enables HDR in Windows regardless if it is enabled in game or not.

On 2/3/2023 at 2:53 AM, filoppi said:

I will look into it. hough you can press Win+Alt+B to toggle HDR on Win 11, or just alt tab to the HDR settings menu and change it. The game supports live swapping of HDR and detects changes to the monitor.

Just wanted to chime in that I was having the same issue, but went into renderer.ini and set "m_eAllowHDR" to 0 and seems to have stopped the game from auto-enabling HDR and thus turning it on at the OS level for me.

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Hi, thank you for the mod, but, now that Control : Ultimate Edition is available on PC Game Pass, is there a way to use it with the Windows Store version of the game ? 

Thanks 🙂 

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Any luck with making your fantastic patch compatible with 'Plugin Loader' on nexus? I see in your release notes that you have attempted contact with the author, though they don't appear to be active for almost 4 years, so I imagine you may not have heard back from them. It would be so awesome to have your patch work with their mod! Thank you for all your work 🙂

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Xbox Game Pass version works flawlessly without issue. We don't need an update. Use the "no DRM" version in the OP and then start the Control_DX12.exe and everything should work fine. (simply create a shortcut for the DX12 executable for easy access) Don't start the game with your game pass shortcut as this will open the dx11 version without the modifications. Use the shortcut you created for the Control_DX12.exe instead! If the game doesn't start then you forgot to be logged in to your xbox app (it must be open / running in the background just like any other game pass game). You can see that it works by checking the settings. If "Max" is there as a setting for textures then the mod is working. 🙂

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