HDR seems to be the buzzword everyone is excited about lately, what with the announcement of the HDR update for Half-Life 2 the demo video plus the rather sexy renders people have been producing of Half-Life 2 models.

The question most people have been asking though is “Will my graphics hardware actually run it?!”. Well from what I can gather, you’ll need a GPU with support for Vertex and Pixel Shaders version 2.0 or greater plus DirectX 9.

So what does it actually look like? Well if you want to find out and test if your video card can handle it, download and try the Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting demo and give it a go!

I was pleasantly suprised by the demo and glad my nVidia GT6600 AGP card ran it fine, although the frame rates in the demo dont represent what you will get in a game. Still, its worth it if you just want to try-it-and-see.

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