Matrix Games Forums

Platform: Steam
Build version: v1.1.6.7
Severity: Medium
Annoyance factor: High
DXDiag file:
I don’t remember exactly where I started having these display problems, but it’s been a while. I have 2 monitors, and DW is only on one of them (don’t know if it’s possible to use both screens with DW2, didn’t even try). The 2 monitors have a slightly different resolution: 1900x1080 for one, 1900x1200 for the other. I’ve attached a dxdiag file for other infos about my setup.

The first problem is that, like it seems to also be the case for others, if I use DirectX 11 and High Dynamic Range, I get a very dark screen. To the point of being unusable / unplayable. I’d like to include a screenshot of that, but I can’t. Because whether I take a screenshot with the Windows utility, or the Nvidia one, the screenshot looks normal (ie: normal luminosity, not at all dark as it is in-game).

In fact, and that might be obvious to programmers (or not; it certainly wasn’t to me), when I press alt-tab to invoke the Windows function to switch to another app / window, the game screen (still visible) instantly gets back to a normal luminosity (ie: nor dark anymore). But if I go back to the game, it gets dark again.

So, no screenshots of the darkness, nor any photos of the screen (can’t take a picture that reflects how the screen is: the photos are much brighter than the screen actually is).

To get around that darkness problem, I switched to Vulkan DXVK v2.10 with Standard Range rendering, and adjusted the settings in “Color Format” to get an acceptable display while in DW2. Which means losing the smooth gradients, which is a bit annoying in 2023. But I could live with it if it’s really not fixable.

But there are two problems with that “solution”.

The first one is that with that setup, as soon as I go into “Settings”, the screen luminosity get screwed up big time (everything becomes too bright; see screenshot below). Requiring quitting the game and relaunching it to get back to a normal luminosity. Every time I go into Settings! So if I want to change a key binding, or what is shown / not shown on the galaxy map, I have to save the game, quit, and relaunch. Every time! Super annoying!

Also tried the v1.10.3 of the Vulkan rendering mode, with the same results.

The other problem is less critical than the first one. And since, at this point, it’s necessary to restart the game to apply the changes made, it might not be possible to do anything about that second problem. But hoping that it is, or might be in the future, here it is: it’s very hard to adjust the luminosity with the “Color Format” settings when there is no reliable visual feedback of what the result will be. It’s a trial and error process: you try some settings and relaunch the game. If not right, try other adjustments, and relaunch.

Rinse and repeat.

It would be a much more efficient process if an immediate reliable visual feedback was given to the player of what the result will be. But as I wrote earlier, maybe it’s not doable, and I could live with that too.

But the luminosity getting screwed up every time I go into settings is really annoying.


Now, here are the screenshots:

How the screen looks with Vulkan DCVK v2.10 / Standard Range rendering and color format adjustments:
Now, here’s what happens as soon as I then go into “Settings”:
From there, the luminosity is screwed up until I relaunch the game. Even if I click on Cancel to return to it:

Thanks for the report! We'll investigate.

Hey, would you be willing to help out with one of our devs investigate the HDR issues you're experiencing? Are you on the DW2 Official Discord Server at all?

Yes, I'd be willing to help. But no, I don't think I've ever been on Discord, or at least never created a Discount Accord. Would I need to create one (presume that I would)? And from there, how would I proceed?

Don't know if that would be a problem or not, but I don't have a cell. So if I'm not home and I receive emails or other communications, I won't be able to respond quickly.

Great to hear, thanks! Discord is one of the platforms we use to reach out to users, but it's not critical if there are other options. Do you happen to use Skype at all? If yes, feel free to PM it to me.

Just to let everybody know that I just had a support session on Discord about the problems mentioned in the first post, and now everything is OK. The darkness in DirectX / HDR magically disappeared somehow before the session even started. Don't know why exactly, it hadn't worked properly for months, but now it does. There was a Windows update recently, so that might be it.

As for the screen becoming way too bright each time I went into settings (and stayed that way until I restarted the game), we adjusted all the sliders in the settings "Color Format" section to 1.00, and as of now, the screen luminosity stays correct even when I get out and back into settings.

So it's all good right now. If any of these two problems come back, we'll reconnect through Discord, and I'll update here to let everybody know what happened.

The darkness problem did come back. Went back on Discord, and we adjusted the Gamma settings (was told that it's preferable to adjust the Gamma rather than the Brightness slider, the latter being very "sensitive"). There's a problem with the sliders: from what I understand, their settings are not being applied until one goes into "Settings". So it means that, until it's fixed, I have to go into settings each time I launch the game to get a "normal" brightness level (not so bad once you know that's what you have to do).

It's a know problem to the team, and it will hopefully be fixed in the next update.