Ask HN: [Gaming/Hardware] Need help to align gamma in fullscreen and borderless

Windows games run either "real fullscreen" (no compositing), or as a borderless window. Real fullscreen typically performs a tad better, but adds a bit of mode switch flickering at startup. To me, both are fine, I don't care.

What I do care about is that, on my machine, all games running "real fullscreen" appear significantly brighter than games running windowed/borderless, causing constant display brightness/gamma fiddling. I'd like to know if it is possible to align both modes.

- Say I'm happy with my brightness settings in the Windows desktop (thus, in the Windows native mode used by games running windowed/borderless). "Happy" means that, on a test image: black looks black, and whites aren't compressed. My display is at brightness=50 and gamma=2.2

- Then when I run a game running in "real fullscreen" mode, blacks are invariably gray-ish, and I have to set my display brightness to 47 (instead of 50 in borderless) for black to appear black.

Googling [1] yields many similar complaints of gamers reporting "higher gamma in fullscreen", but I couldn't find anything satisfying:

a. Many answers simply suggest tweaking game settings :-/ , which sucks...

b. Especially given this gap is constant: ALL fullscreen apps are too bright, and I always have to do the same adjustment for them (50 -> 47).

c. Finally, "just run all games in the same mode" is not a satisfying answer, as many games do not offer a fullscreen / borderless choice.

So my questions are: why does this gap exist, and how can I calibrate/configure my display to have both modes (approximately!) aligned, so that I no longer need per-game tweaks or per-launch adjustments?

Finally, am I right to talk about "gamma", or is it "brightness"?!

Thanks :)

OS: Windows 10. GPU: NVIDIA GTX 960 using the latest drivers (currently 391.35) with all settings to default. Feel free to ask for more debug information.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=gamma%20fullscreen%20windowed