Over-exposure in screenshots and recordings with HDR in Windows 11

I clearly have some learning to do on HDR, no matter MS can't fic their ****. I'm very happy with the graphics I get in Edge with my settings even if its not setting the Asus to HDR, I currently do not have any of the issues that irritated me for months.

Now, my COD, when I start the game (it enables the Windows HDR automatically and I get the Asus screen message popup saying HDR enabled and its changing some other stuff). When I alt-tab to the desktop everything in Windows look **** as before. When I exit the game, it automatically disables Windows HDR and my desktop is looking good again. So basically what it looks like is the games will enable the Windows HDR and disable it again so you don't need to.

So for me I think I found my sweet spot until we eventually get a fix. I'm sad this is not working for you mate, I really tried my best to find that for you.

My COD is "Modern Warfare III"

I'm curious if you have you run MS's Windows HDR Calibration tool? There's a link to it below the HDR On/Off Display/HDR option.

Follow that guide I linked to enable HDR in Edge mate, you need to enable DRM and HDR10 and you need those codecs!

The HDR format is enabled automatically by the browser, when the display supports it, if HDR is enabled properly in Windows. Same for DRM, it's enabled when needed, you don't need to do anything. Same for hardware acceleration, it's enabled by default. And yes, I have the required codecs. That's why when I enable HDR in windows it works for videos just fine. But if I disable HDR in window then, surprise-surprise, HDR doesn't work anymore in the browser, since Windows will communicate with the display in an SDR format, regardless of what the browser is configured to do. Even if the browser would incorrectly use HDR, it would get converted to SDR before being sent to the monitor.

And what you are actually doing, if you used that guide and configured the forced browser color profile to HDR10, is to force your browser to use an HDR format incorrectly even if when the display is set to SDR and can no longer display HDR content natively. If you do that, while YouTube will indeed stream content in an HDR format to your computer, because the browser will incorrectly report to YouTube that HDR is supported, Windows and the display driver will just convert the browser output back to SDR, so you are not actually getting HDR content on your display, regardless of what "stats for nerds" is telling you. Yes, the colors may look subjectively better if you do that, depending on the video and your settings, but you are NOT getting the automatic dynamic range adjustments from the video metadata you would get with real HDR supported end to end, with no conversions.

The proof you are not actually getting HDR from the browser is that you are talking about the Asus Game Visual setting. That setting is a SDR setting, and can't even be used when HDR is enabled for the monitor. Even if you play the HDR video in full screen in the browser, you will see that Game Visual still affects the colors in the video, so clearly HDR doesn't work. If it was real HDR, it wouldn't do that, the colors would be fully controlled by the video metadata, which is why Game Visual is disabled when HDR is enabled.

And yes, I followed your guide, and I can confirm that the browser can NOT enable HDR for the monitor, even when it's forced use the incorrect HDR color format that doesn't match the configured display settings. This is how it looks like with the OSD and stats for nerds open, video playing in full screen, after following the guide:

As you can see, despite the color format coming from YouTube being HDR because I used your guide to force it to use an incorrect format, the monitor still has HDR turned off, if you look at the monitor OSD:

It's Windows and the display driver doing the conversion back to SDR, since the actual video link between the computer and the display is SDR.

Now, about games, while in theory there might be some games that also allow you to incorrectly render to an HDR format, even when HDR is not enabled in Windows, the same thing will happen, and you will not actually get the driver to communicate with the monitor in an HDR format when you play that game.

Cyberpunk 2077 is not one of the games that would allow you to incorrectly enable HDR, if it's not enabled in Windows for the display. The game settings will look like this after you disabled HDR in Windows:

As you see, the HDR Mode is disabled in Cyberpunk 2077 when HDR is turned off for the display in Windows. Yes, you can trick it by starting the game, enabling HDR in game, then disabling the HDR setting in Windows, since the game only checks for HDR availability in Windows at game startup, but then you will end up with the same problem as with the browser. Windows and the display driver will convert the incorrectly HDR rendered content back to SDR while HDR is disabled in Windows.

Microsoft Flight Simulator also doesn't allow you to use incorrect settings when you disable HDR in Windows:

And, again, since it also checks the Windows HDR status for the display only at startup, you can trick it by disabling HDR in Windows after starting it. But Windows and the driver will just convert the incorrectly HDR rendered output to SDR if you do that.

In any case, even if you trick these games to use the incorrect format, they will revert back to SDR when you re-open them, as they will check the Windows settings and disable HDR at the next start. That's a feature, not a bug.

Now, I'm downloading Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War to see if it can actually change the monitor display mode while playing, not just the rendering format. Being able to do that from the game would be strange, but in theory it's possible.

... 2 hours later, after COD has installed:

No, it behaves the same as Cyberpunk and MSFS. The options for HDR do not show at all in CoD if it's not enabled in Windows. And if you enable HDR in Windows you can then enable or disable HDR rendering in CoD. That doesn't have any effect on the Windows settings however, the video card still uses HDR for that display if it's enabled in Windows, even if HDR rendering is disabled in the game.

Your version of CoD might behave differently. But if it does, it's probably an outlier, most games are not doing what you were describing. In my case 3 out of 3 don't do that.

I'll test a bit more after the Formula 1 race in case I missed something.

I use a single 43" Asus...

Here is another YouTube video (Using Edge) in 4K HDR and Desktop HDR disabled:

Follow that guide I linked to enable HDR in Edge mate, you need to enable DRM and HDR10 and you need those codecs!

Also I advise to set the Asus Monitor Game Visual to sGRB because most of the others make Edge to Brights, well def for me. But when you start a HDR game that you can enable HDR in the game, the monitor will take what the game gives it, not windows. Once you close/exit the game it returns to what you set before.... So basically what I'm saying is that each app/game manages HDR for itself and you do not use the Windows/Desktop HDR because it sucks balls for normal day to day desktop stuff!!!

I think you might still be confused reding you response, the desktop HDR is just another app that send the HDR signal, forget about desktop HDR because its f@cking useless. Then you bring the HDR signal a level up and each app that can do HDR, you enable it and it will send the HDR signal. If you did not enable DRM and HDR10 in Edge and you did not buy (free with some motherboards) those codecs then it will not work! DESKTOP HDR IS USELESS, move HDR to the apps/games.

I promise you that I do not have desktop HDR enabled and I use a single screen (once again this should not matter because the game should allow you to pick the screen and HDR settings), forget about those settings in Windows HDR. Use that shortcut to enable/disable HDR just before you start Flight Simulator (That's what I do) and I can't see Microsoft to actually fix the desktop HDR (its been a year) and not sure they can be asked to enable HDR in FS like most other game companies do. I'm so disgusted that I have to spend so much time on here typing this **** because Microsoft can't be asked to step up and give us users the best experience using their apps. I'm actually so pissed off now that I might have to escalate this up in Microsoft, I do have some weight to do so, this forum complaining and making MS aware of issues is clearly being ignored! Just like I fixed their OneDrive Intune polices for Windows 10 Pro and just like I fixed their issue with registering workgroup servers into Entra ID and Intune for Defender policies! Really getting pissed off that I have to use my weight to get them to do what they should be doing because we as customers should matter to them!