Duh. I forgot to turn HDR on in Windows. It’s looks almost ok but the brightness is a bit off and like I see in the game there seems to be a sharpness enhancement or noise around the edges
Something I tried, which made things different but worse was to set, in NCP
Change Resolution/ Use default color settings.
That looked really terrible. Setting Use Nvidia color settings looks better but still bad
Here are the HDR NVIDIA filter settings recommended by a user a couple of months ago. Some of these parameters are in MSFS. Either use MSFS settings or the filter settings, for example, setting Sharpness. I adjusted several of the color parameters to make the colors better for me.
Details
Color
Brightness / Contrast
Sharpen
Where do you find these settings?
These are in the NVIDIA overlay accessed by pressing Alt+z. I think the filters are accessed either in settings or using Alt+f3. There is a list of the different filters and there should be a Custom filter to enter these parameters. There are other NVIDIA overlay features such as photo capture (Alt+f1) and video capture (Alt+f9 start/stop). I haven’t tried other features like broadcasting.
Broadcasting doesn’t work with HDR. It’ll show you a notification to turn off HDR when live broadcast.
I guess it may be possible to try and fix this with the game filter but the fact that in needs fixing indicates a problem. And even applying those effects doesn’t help much.
There’s no good way to post screenshots of this but to try and describe it, it’s just looks super horrible. The whites like in the menu text have a dithery edge enhancement and are too bright. All the colors are off. It looks like how your SDR windows desktop looks when you enable HDR and it all goes funny grey looking. The Xbox logo that comes up on the opening screen is a bright garish green and not it’s normal color. And all the blue in the menus with white text are dithered and almost unreadable. Like going to the General settings with the hanger in the background, the items are illegible.
None of my other HDR games look like this. I’m running on a 2080Ti with Ultra settings in 4K, with HDR turned off the game is unspeakably gorgeous.
I think there’s something definitely wrong between your MSFS HDR settings, your Nvidia driver, Windows HDR, and your HDR monitor itself. Something that doesn’t sync up correctly between all of them. A bleached and washed out colours indicate there’s something along those lines that the HDR doesn’t get supported or turned on.
You mentioned that you forgot to turn HDR on in Windows when I shared my HDR YouTube video for you to check, this got me thinking, did you have it off this whole time? Because I would expect if you were playing HDR games, you would have HDR turned on in Windows all the time whether you play games or not.
While I admit, the HDR in MSFS isn’t as vivid as HDR in Cyberpunk. It’s still more vivid than having HDR off. So if you’re having washed out colours, then there’s something definitely wrong along those lines.
I’m also using RTX 2080 Ti, and I hooked my PC to my Sony Bravia X90F 4K HDR TV. My Nvidia driver setting is completely set as default at everything. No custom colours or custom changes at all. My Windows HDR setting is Always On, My Nvidia setting is set to default at everything, MSFS HDR is set to on. And I connect my PC using HDMI 2.1 cable to my TV. The colours is vivid as you would expect from an HDR10 format. It’s more bright, deeper colours and more contrast compared to SDR off, but even though it’s not as vivid as Cyberpunk, which I think it’s a good thing because Cyberpunk HDR is overly saturated for my taste.
I’m not sure what’s going on with your case. And I don’t know if it is a genuine issue, or if it’s simply a difference between our subjective taste and preference on how we define “HDR”. So as long as I have these settings I’m good:
When I turn HDR on in Windows, my desktop and everything else looks horrible, I assume because it’s all in SDR
HDR games look great, most of them switch HDR on or off automatically.
MSFS, along with Forza and CoD WWII require you to manually enable HDR in Windows before launching the game. I can’t keep my Windows running HDR all the time because then everything looks horrible. It’s not subtle or subjective. It looks clearly bad.
Then that means your monitor is still displaying SDR mode while it’s receiving HDR signal from Windows. What monitor brand and model are you using? Maybe you need to turn on HDR manually in your monitor control, and what cable and connection are you using, are you on DP or HDMI?
For me, when I enable HDR On or Off in Windows. It makes no difference. It still looks the same on my TV. The only difference is that in my TV menu, it’s either receiving HDR signal, or it’s not. But the display looks exactly the same. This is because my TV receives the HDR signal, and automatically adjust it for a PC monitor input. It’s not showing an SDR image, it’s showing a scaled down HDR image.
The monitor is an LG 32UD99, I have it connected with the DP cable that came with it. When I launch an HDR game or switch Windows to HDR mode, the monitor changes its picture mode to a HDR preset and an HDR logo appears on the screen. But the Windows desktop and any non-HDR content will look bad. HDR games except MSFS look good. I’ll have to investigate this with LG to see if this behavior is normal.
Interesting… I found this article from Dell Colors are faded and washed out when High Dynamic Range is enabled in Windows 10 | Dell Australia But it’s actually saying that:
Solution
In both these situations, the HDR capabilities are functioning within the design specification.
When HDR is enabled in Windows 10 Display Properties, non-HDR content, including the system background, desktop and menus will appear dull and flat. Only actual HDR content will appear normally.
It is recommended that you only enable the HDR capability in the Display Settings when you are going to watch HDR content. When done viewing content, simply return the HDR toggle to the off position and the system will return to normal appearance.
If you encounter streaming HDR content that does not appear to look like HDR content should appear (see images above) then it is recommended to download the HDR content to the system locally. When played from the local system the HDR streaming issue does not appear to occur.
I guess my TV is the exception… maybe my display actually readjust itself when receiving HDR/SDR signals accordingly. Like it downscales and upscales the content on the fly. Which probably explains why whether I turn Windows HDR on or off. When I play my HDR movies, they both look the almost similar to me. Which isn’t usually the case when I play the same HDR movie in my Laptop that doesn’t have HDR display at all.
I’m sure TVs are much less wonky with this. The average consumer isn’t sophisticated about this and the picture would make them nuts.
Works ok on my Gigabyte Aorus monitor.
I have 2 screens, one is an older non HD screen and the Aorus is HD10 compliant monitor.
I have no problems with the windows desktop being washed out on either screen with HD enable on the Aurous.
In the sim it looks superb with HD although I have made some adjustments with the Nvidia Freestyle filters.
Not sure if this windows setting will be any help for you but it lets me adjust the balance between my HD and non HD monitor
Also in here I have used the Nvidia colour settings and made sure that the output colour depth is 10bpc and full dynamic range
Yes I’ve tried adjusting those Windows settings but without much success. I have 10-bit color selected in NCP
PS I see a white and gold dress here 
I can only see HDR in windowed mode, windowless mode shows standard no matter what combination of settings.
And in windowless I only get HDR when MSFS is running in the background, like if I press the Windows key. Any idea why?
I get the same results in Windowed and Full Screen. Both look bad.
How do you even get windowless? My options only shows Full Screen or Windowed… Which I assumed the Full Screen is practically windowless anyway.
do you guys think you need to fiddle with the monitor setting to make it work?
My monitor says I’m getting an HDR signal but the game looks otherwise.
What about monitor presets? Is there something you need to fiddle with to get the HDR tone right on the monitor side? And you’re sure both HDR10 in MSFS is On as well as the Windows HDR switch.
Try to watch this video. I did this livestream in HDR format the other day. This is basically the kind of HDR that I’m seeing on my display, whether when I fly it and when I review the video. It looks identical. You may need a compatible browser that can show you YouTube HDR video. I’m using the Edge Chromium.
If the HDR video here looks good (make sure the YouTube video setting is showing 2160p60 HDR), then there’s something definitely wrong with the MSFS HDR10 on your side. But if this video looks bleached or oversaturated, then there’s probably an issue with the monitor or the HDR profile that was set.
