Comment by wirybeige
2 days ago
I use HDR for general usage, Windows ruins non-HDR content when HDR is enabled due to their choice of sRGB tf. Luckily every Linux DE has chosen to use the gamma 2.2 tf, and looks fine for general usage.
I use a mini-led monitor, and its quite decent, except for starfields, & makes it very usable even in bright conditions, and HDR video still is better in bright conditions than the equivalent SDR video.
Windows HDR implementation is janky as hell. For months after I got my monitor I couldn't take screenshots because they'd all appear completely blown out, like you cranked the brightness to 300%.
Eventually I did some digging and found there's a setting in Snipping Tool that just... makes screenshots work on HDR displays.
It also seems to add another layer of Your Desktop Trying To Sort Its Shit Out when launching a game that's full screen. Sometimes it's fine, but some games like Balatro will appear fine at first, but then when you quit back to the desktop everything is washed out. Sleeping my PC and waking it back up seems to resolve this.
I recently played through Armored Core VI, and it supports HDR, but whenever I adjust my volume the screen becomes washed out to display the volume slider. Screenshots and recordings also appear washed out in the resulting file.
Agree. Wide gamut and HDR is janky as hell on Windows. I have multi-mon with one SDR and one HDR and that plays havoc with things. But even Microsoft apps aren't updated. I'm pretty certain even Explorer still doesn't support HDR or wide gamut for thumbnails so everything looks either under or oversaturated in the previews. If you open stuff in the default Photos app there is a "flash of content" where it displays it in the wrong profile before it maps it to the correct one, too.
I always thought the "Your Desktop Trying To Sort Its Shit Out" part was a necessary evil, but other platforms don't suffer from this (at least from what I can tell); the state of HDR on Windows is very disappointing, even just adjusting the TF to gamma 2.2 would make it substantially better. Watching all your non hdr content's blacks become gray is terrible. I assume the washed out appearance comes from it giving up on doing SDR->HDR for the desktop.
My brother got an OLED monitor & was telling me how bad his experience was on Windows, & he recently switched to Linux & does not have the issues he was complaining about before. Ofc, downsides to hdr on Linux (no hdr on chromium, hdr on Firefox is unfinished) atm, but the foundation seems better set for it.