> I have heard that it's received wisdom that gamers complain that HDR modes are "too dark", so perhaps that's part of why they ruined their game's renderer.
A lot of people have cheap panels that claim HDR support (read: can display an HDR signal) but have garbage color space coverage, no local dimming, etc. and to them, HDR ends up looking muted.
For what it's worth, I have a monitor with VA panel that has no local dimming. It has a maximum brightness of a bit shy of 380 nits, and a real contrast ratio of ~3000:1, so HDR stuff ends up looking fine in dim rooms.
I would much rather have this monitor than one the "zoned" backlights that I've seen. They inevitably put nasty, nasty halos around medium-to-high-contrast parts of the picture. IME, any local dimming scheme that's less fine-grained than per-pixel dimming is simply not good enough.
A lot of people have cheap panels that claim HDR support (read: can display an HDR signal) but have garbage color space coverage, no local dimming, etc. and to them, HDR ends up looking muted.