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High Dynamic Range (HDR)
The human eye is more sensitive to low intensities of light, and sees darker shades better and with more detail than with high intensity or bright light. Because of this, NVIDIA has introduced OpenEXR to support HDR effects.
HDR processes light in relation to the surroundings and adjusts the brightness of a lightsource, or effect of a lightsource, to create a more accurate scene.
HDR is a different form of processing the light values of pixels, as it is calculated across the GPU and takes into account light that reflects off of adjacent surfaces rather than simply calculating the brightness at a given point.
HDR helps in mimicking the effects of a human eye quite well, but altering the color values based on the user perspective. A good example is this: Stand outside on a bright day and look into a dark room through an open door. Most of the inside will appear to be so dark that it can't be distinguished. If you walk in however, your eyes quickly adapt to the dark room and everything looks relatively bright again. Using standard lighting techniques this cannot be done.
HDR is one more powerful step on the road to true, realistic 3D images.
