Windows 11 Is Going To Make Your Older Games Better

thegamer.com:

Windows is bringing two great new features to PC gaming. Windows 11 will soon receive the Xbox's HDR Calibration app to make HDR work better in windowed games and new game optimizations will reduce latency and improve framerates in older games played in windowed or borderless-windowed modes.

We'll start with the Windows HDR Calibration app, which will mimic the same app you can find on the Xbox Series X|S. This app will bring calibration settings to Windows 11's Auto HDR functionality, which allows older games that don't have HDR to display brighter colors on displays that support HDR. That was a feature that launched with the Xbox Series X|S and arrived on Windows 11 last October.

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The calibration app will come with three test patterns to confirm the darkest visible detail, the brightest visible detail, and your display's maximum brightness. It'll also improve color accuracy and consistency on HDR displays. Even though most certified HDR displays should work fine out of the box, hardcore PC gamers have a love for tinkering their display settings to be just right, and this app allows exactly that.

Next we have new optimizations for Windows games that will apply to older titles that use DirectX10 or DirectX11. Those games used to run best on fullscreen mode, but that'll be a thing of the past very soon.

"This new optimization specifically applies to windowed and borderless-windowed games because when you’re running in Fullscreen, a similar optimization already exists, and this new setting brings a consistent experience no matter which mode you are running in," writes Hannah Fisher, DirectX program manager at Microsoft.

DirectX 12 games already run