http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1745058,00.asp



David Kirk: I think that High Dynamic Range Lighting is going 
to be the single most significant change in the visual quality 
over the next couple of years. It's almost as big as shading. 

The reason for this is that games without HDR look flat. They 
should, since they are only using a range of 256:1 in 
brightness—a small fraction of what our eyes can see. 
Consequently, low-dynamic-range imagery looks flat and 
featureless, no highs, and no detail in the shadows, the lows. 
If you game using a DFP (LCD display), you probably can't tell 
the difference anyway, since most LCD displays only have 5 or 
6 bits of brightness resolution—an even narrower 32:1 or 64:1 
range of brightness. On a CRT, you can see a lot more detail, 
and on the newer high-resolution displays, you can see not only 
the full 8 bits, but even more. There are new HDR displays that 
can display a full 16-bit dynamic range, and I can tell you that 
the difference is stunning. When these displays become more 
affordable in the next year or two, I don't know how we'll ever 
go back to the old way.