HL2: Lost Coast video
See HDR in action before it's included in all Valve games.
Valve's latest Steam news update bangs on once again about Half-Life 2: The Lost Coast, which aims to showcase the sort of high-end graphical techniques that we can expect from future Valve titles - including High Dynamic Range lighting.
This time, however, it also features an interesting little video, which you can download by clicking on a thumbnail on the news update page, that allows you to see how regular high-end Half-Life 2 lighting compares to a build using HDR - splitting the image down the middle and showing vanilla on the left and HDR on the right.
Which is useful for those of us who find terms like "High Dynamic Range" rather boring. Valve has already cited real world examples - like the way your eyes take a few moments to adjust to the change between a very dark and a very bright area - and claims that using HDR "we can accurately simulate a range of brightness that is beyond what a computer monitor is physically capable of displaying".
HL2: The Lost Coast will be made available via Steam to gamers with kit that can actually run it, and will be made available soon. Valve says all its future products will support HDR, including Day of Defeat: Source, the Source Engine remake of the popular World War II-based Half-Life mod.