First and foremost, I know there is a "increase windowed gamma" checkbox. I use it, and it's very undesirable. Facts: I play in windowed mode because I three box three accounts with three mercenaries. If I am in full screen mode, it gives a small pause of a black screen every time I alt-tab between the three accounts. So... I play windowed mode to avoid the pause when using alt-tab. Issue: In windowed mode, the gamma slider has no effect at all Selecting the "increase windowed gamma" makes the screen completely washed out to the extent that it's almost unplayable If "increase windowed gamma" is selected, the gamma slider is not usable, so the amount of gamma is not adjustable This leaves you with two options if you play in windowed mode: everything super dark OR everything super over exposed. Please help.
When you say desktop gamma, are you referring to a setting in Windows 10 or the monitor itself? I'm hoping this isn't the monitor because I have no desire to wash out the rest of my OS by adjusting the gamma on my monitor just for EverQuest.
I also play in windowed mode, and the gamma slider definitely does make a difference for me - although it affects all of the Windows desktop, only resetting when I camp out of EQ (and if I've camped just one of the toons I box, I have to go back to the options page, and nudge the slider one up then one down to get it back to the previous level). Sounds like it might be related more to the OS / video card / driver than to EQ, if we're getting different behaviours =/
Did you try enable windowed gamma? Ive never had a problem adjusting gamma, except for the fact that adjusting eq gamma increases the desktop gamma making excel a bit hard to read.
So, I had some interesting results last night. The night before, when I logged out of Everquest, I had unselected all of the gamma options in display before logging out for the night. I didn't do it on purpose mind you. It just so happened that for that one particular time, after messing with the gamma settings, I said screw it and just unchecked everything. Well when I logged in yesterday, the gamma was not as much of an issue. Instead of everything being insanely dark, it was decently lit up. What I can conclude from this is that you need to log completely out and close Everquest after checking/unchecking the gamma settings in display for it to take full effect. I'm not sure which combination in the advanced display is making it work or not, but I am thinking it is a combination of having dynamic lighting turned on and windowed gamma turned off that makes the lighting actually work properly when you load up Everquest the next time. I'm going to play with the settings some more this evening after work to see if I can nail down exactly what combination makes it look the best. Sucks that I have to make a change, close EQ, and reload EQ to see if the changes worked or not, but if I can figure it out and be able to play Everquest with out it being either insanely dark or insanely bright as my only two options, then it is worth the effort.
This has been an issue since sometime this summer. There was another thread about it, that appears missing now. If I recall, something changed within Windows 10 (only OS I'm running EQ on) sometime over summer that changed the way gamma works. Running two machines, one has the issue, the other doesn't. The NVIDIA based GPU system has gamma working fine. The AMD GPU based system has the gamma issue. I have to open up my graphic's settings to adjust the brightness to compensate, but it washes out whites in a way different than just adjusting the gamma within EQ. It's VERY annoying. For devs to look into this, here are my systems specs: System 1 (gamma issue) AMD Ryzen 5 1600 (latest BIOS & system drivers) AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 (latest drivers) WIN 10 Pro 64-bit, Version 1903, OS Build 18362.418 System 2 (gamma works fine) AMD A10-7800 APU (latest BIOS & system drivers) NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 (older drivers: Version 26.21.14.3200, Date 2019-07-23) WIN 10 Home 64-bit, Version 1909, OS Build 18363.476
You're mistaken, because many people have this issue, where the enabled windowed gamma button no longer works. Additionally, it is not an nvidia or amd thing. For example, Laurana posted that they have an nvidia machine where it works just fine, and an amd graphics card where it doesn't. I have an nvidia graphics card (1080gtx if you must know) that as mentioned previously, worked just fine with the windowed gamma slider in EQ, until a windows update caused it to no longer function. I don't believe this is something that will ever be fixed. It's not directly an EQ problem. It's not even a windows problem...it's a side effect of it being a really old graphics engine, it's just how things are. It's incredibly frustrating, but I don't see it being something that will be able to be addressed by daybreak.
I can confirm, I'm one of the people where it worked just fine for the longest time, now no longer works and I'm stuck playing with very dark windows. I've turned monitor brightness and contrast up as high as I can, and EQ is still dark now.
Throwing this out as a possibility - in nvidia control panel there is also a place where you can choose to use other applications control color settings or use nvidia settings. This seems to sometimes toggle on me for unknown reason and when it does it affects gamma control. Easy way to find nvidia control panel is right click desktop.
The problem is using nvidia to brighten EQ makes everything outside of EQ too bright. SO I'm left turning the nvidia gamma on and off depending on if I'm in EQ or not. Didn't have this issue until the last patch. The gamma slider does NOTHING now. It's already set to allow the application to control the color/gamma settings.
Update to my last post. I've temporarily solved the issue for myself. My main system is a multi-monitor setup. My other boxes are single monitor setups. I simply unplugged all but 1 display for my main system and I can now use the in-game gamma adjustment. As soon as I reconnect an additional monitor, the gamma functions ceases to work. I'm okay running a single display while in EQ since I use multiple 4k monitors, but this is not fun for those running 1080p or 1440p displays.
My 8 year old video card (AMD 7870) died Friday night. I bought a new video card (AMD Radeon RX 5700). I swear the old card that died, the eq gamma slider worked as intended, but the new card does not work. The only work-around is to adjust the system brightness (using AMD control panel) so EQ looks reasonable. The obvious side effect is that everything else (Browser, Excel, Calculator...) is very washed out looking.
i havent even considered trying that. great catch. this gamma issue is getting annoying (i just came back a few months ago). ive been swapping between 2 profiles with my amd driver. but its still annoying. turning 1 monitor on / off (can just make a profile button that does that, not unplug it with amd at least) will stink a bit, but at least gameplay will be back to normal, ill just be stuck to 1 monitor.
I know there are a few others threads started in 2021 about gamma, but I'm replying to this one as I had a few other comments related in this thread. My main machine just did some Win updates this weekend and now the gamma curse is back. I've made no hardware changes or driver changes and am still only running the problem machine with a single, 4K display. The update that broke it was Feature update to Windows 10, version 21H1. Installed on 2021-07-18. The gamma slider does not work. Enabling the Increase Windowed Gamma button and camping out/in does not work. I'm sure Microsoft changed something, but now I'm back to squinting to find things as most zones in EQ are dreadfully dark (except icy zones and that one PoR zone that is blinding, hah!).
It's August of 2022 and I'm still having this problem. I see others have posted about having upgraded to another graphics card and they still had the issue. You mentioned about disconnecting your secondary displays, and the gamma slider worked, and then it would stop working when you reconnected those displays. Did the gamma brightness level in the game remain the same when you reconnected the displays, or did it go back to being way too dark?
