I had similar issues with my 2070 Super and ASUS VG27WQ1B monitor.
I have to use the Nvidia control panel adjustments to get it to look right. Without that, it looked terrible. But once I made the adjustments, it looks really really good.
I’m talking about the Nvidia control panel screen that has the Gamma, Brightness and Contrast sliders. Also has the Digital Vibrance adjustment towards the bottom.
Adjusting those controls completely fix the problem for me. If I toggle the setting back to default, it gets over blown and looks horrible. Check the box to put those adjustments in play again, and it immediately looks wonderful.
So after reading this thread I’m wondering if MSFS is forcing HDR on my monitor that doesn’t have the capabilities. My game has been looking very bright, grainy, and oversaturated on 2k ultra settings since SU3 and nothing I’ve done has fixed it. Basically it looks like what was described above by Neo4316 where its bleached and overexposed with Windows HDR off and MSFS on. I can’t turn on HDR in windows because my monitor doesn’t have it and I can’t change the setting in MSFS because its greyed out. But, when I change the HDR setting in usercfg it will show on or off in the sim based on what I set the file to but is still greyed out. Is there another way to check and ensure MSFS isn’t trying to use HDR?
My experience with flying in HDR in MSFS2020 is wonderful. I much prefer the look of HDR than SDR. When I switch back to SDR the colors are over saturated and cartoony looking. The HDR picture quality really has a “true to life” look to it. I’m now using a LG CX OLED coming from G7/AW-2721D/LG-GN950B monitors before settling on the OLED.
I tried HDR on those 3 monitors since they were all rated HDR600, and they can’t hold a candle to a TV/Monitor that has the proper contrast/nit brightness required to project a full HDR experience.
As I understand it, some monitors and TVs, likely all TVs can display SDR and HDR simultaneously. My monitor will only display either HDR or SDR. MFS has an HDR signal which contains some SDR elements like menus and likely the splash or GUI screens are not in HDR. So that’s what I’m seeing on my screen. In addition some of the HDR content just doesn’t look very good.
When the display is in HDR mode, each pixel contains a brightness value for red, green, and blue that can be either between the 0…1 range (like in regular SDR mode) or a larger value which represents brighter colors than can be represented in SDR – this is HDR.
The Windows desktop compositor (the thing that renders all your windows together into a single screen surface) knows how to convert SDR surfaces into the proper mapping to store them into an HDR surface for output.
Note that the relative brightness of SDR content is configurable from Display Settings. If you find that SDR content is unexpectedly dark, you should adjust this! It’s a couple levels deep, under the color settings link next to the HDR switch.
Whatever Windows does, this particular monitor will only display either. Setting windows to enable HDR makes the desktop and any SDR content look horrible. But HDR games look great. They switch entirely over to HDR either automatically or manually. Some run SDR menus and switch to HDR during gameplay. There’s something funny about the signal from FS as if it’s not entirely HDR. It’s the only game I have trouble with.
Don’t want to hijack the thread but just a quick question, I have a q70t and it only has 550 nits so I’m better with SDR right? I tried HDR and it looks beautiful during sunrise and sunset but between that it looks washed out and over saturated colors.
That seems to be the case here… I’m using 4K HDR TV for my gaming PC including for MSFS, and I set my Windows HDR to ON at all times. It doesn’t show the bleaching effect at all under any circumstances. Playing HDR games will look HDR, but outside of that, the SDR conversion to HDR is mapped correctly by my TV so it looks like a regular SDR content, even if the Windows HDR is always ON.
I think most HDR monitor, doesn’t have this same auto-adjustment behaviour like it does on HDR TVs. Which is why a lot of people using HDR monitor needs to manually switch on Windows HDR before they play HDR games, and switch it off manually to bring it back to SDR afterwards. Otherwise, the monitor can’t deal with the SDR content being pushed as HDR signal, and they display the bleaching effect incorrectly.
I do recommend you check the calibration settings on your monitor (brightness, contrast, sharpness, color temperature, any kind of tint or saturation control). I’ve found that both my HDR monitor and my HDR 4K TV disable most of the settings in HDR mode, so they’re always at the standard values in HDR but may have very different values in SDR.
It’s entirely possible that the SDR mode display is different from standard calibration (brighter, or with greater contrast or an increased saturation) that isn’t reflected by SDR content displayed in HDR mode.
In this case, you’ll need to do some checking to see whether it’s your HDR or your SDR calibration that is incorrect.
HDR in MSFS isn’t flashy – it’s not neon tubes floating in dark space. It’s just that bright things are brighter than they could be with HDR off. It’s a pretty subtle effect, but I like it.
Sounds like either your monitor doesn’t correctly handle HDR mode at all, or Windows is configured to make SDR surfaces (like most other app windows) the wrong brightness (too dark or too light).
Since HDR content mostly consists of colors in the SDR range, with some brighter areas here and there, those darker colors in the SDR range need to work too – otherwise HDR is broken and no HDR content will look right.
Ah, so both SDR and HDR do work on your monitor, and the problem is that MSFS specifically shows wrong? Or does the Windows desktop also show wrong, in which case there’s something wrong with your Windows configuration?
(The reason I ask is that if HDR works, then SDR colors mapped into HDR output should work because HDR includes all SDR colors. And that means the Windows desktop should work.)
One thing that comes to mind – the monitor should be reporting back to the system its maximum peak brightness level, which the system can use to tone-map output to fit the monitor instead of blowing out the brights on a lowend or midrange monitor.
It’s possible your monitor is reporting a bad peak brightness back to Windows and Windows doesn’t handle it right.
MSFS specifically on my system uses a tone-mapping filter for this purpose (but for some reason it only gets applied in full screen when there’s nothing else on screen – if a notification pops up or you open the start menu, the filter disappears and the brightest parts of the sky can start blowing out and modifying their colors from blue to cyan, etc).
Perhaps something has gone horribly wrong on your system with this?
got an HDR600 (Tested reached 670 nits) display here with local dimming, not as many zones as i like but it gets the job done.
But HDR is really off in MSFS.
We really need some sliders for peak brightness and other variables.