Resident Evil Village PC - Proper in game Brightness Calibration (SDR)

Greetings, everyone.

Here’s yet another Resident Evil Village video, for a problem that has been present in RE Engine games, at least the most recent ones like RE 2 and 3 Remakes, and that is the Brightness Calibration.

Here are some timestamps:

00:00 - Intro and Village Demo initial area calibration (sRGB color space)
04:25 - Village area Rec.709 space calibration settings
06:57 - Village area sRGB vs Rec.709 screenshots
07:39 - Why following the in game instructions is bad
08:42 - Castle demo initial room (sRGB color space)
10:03 - Castle demo initial room (Rec.709 color space)
10:51 - Castle demo room sRGB vs Rec.709 screenshots
11:24 - Castle "chandelier area" sRGB color space
12:31 - Castle "chandelier area" Rec.709 space
12:53 - Castle "chandelier area" sRGB vs Rec.709 screenshots

The instructions provided by the game are half right, and the other half wrong, more or less. By default the game will look very washed out if you don’t even touch these settings, that’s for sure, but then if you follow the instructions to the letter, the game won’t actually output proper black color, no matter what or how good you think your monitor or TV is, it’s the game, not your screen; a better screen will mask the issue a bit, but you would still be using the incorrect black color level, for sure.

For the white color calibration screen, the correct position is one notch from the right end, and for the black level, the one most problematic, it’s all the way to the left.

If you actually follow the instructions here, and your screen does not have any bad calibration issues, the gamma is fine, etc., you will stop at the second notch from the left side, not the darkest one, and that’s where the problem lies: by doing that, the next step, which is the actual Brightness adjustment, will also be wrong, the coin symbol won’t disappear (again, if your screen is set correctly) and therefore your game will look wrong.

This was the case in the two previous games (remakes), and RE VII actually had a simpler menu for this, no white or black color levels to adjust.

Then once you have your adjustments done correctly, you can tinker with the Brightness (third step of the process) to suit your needs, depending on the usual factors like how much light is in your gaming room / environment, and so on, you know what I mean.

The important stuff is those white and black calibration steps, if those are correctly done, as I show in the video for three different areas in the game, then you will be able to adjust the actual brightness of your game so it looks best in your current screen, and that’s it.

You may use sRGB or Rec.709 color spaces, I do think the latter looks a bit more vibrant, and the equivalence between the two, for the Brightness slider is +6 for Rec.709, maybe 5, I think it’s 6 more notches to the right, but that’s on my screen.

I’m still not sure why this is the third or fourth game where this is still happening but it’s still broken and I very much doubt it will be changed for release; if it is…I’ll mention it of course.

Hopefully this can be useful to any of you, and I’ll see you next time : )