SDR Brightness slider shown as Hardware Brightness and no possibility of control with brightness keys except in combined mode

[VonbatenBach]

Hi, I'm using BetterDisplay Pro Version 3.4.1 Build 38167, with an external monitor in HDR mode.
The problem/inconvenience is as in the title - assuming that "Allow DDC hardware brightness control in HDR mode" and "Combined brightness" under video control settings are both disabled, the macos Sequoia SDR brightness slider is described as Brightness (Hardware) in BetterDisplay sliders. It would probably be more appropriate and unambiguous to call it for what it is (like SDR peak brightness). It is misleading since the real hardware brightness does not change with this selection of options, but the BD slider says it's hardware - just like it would if I allowed to control hardware brightness.
Another inconvenience is that in this configuration the brightness keyboard keys have no effect on this external display, they change the brightness level of the built-in display. Only when I enable Combined brightness toggle, these keys change this brightness - but then I need to compromise on having rescaled the percentage brightness scale because extra software dimming steps are included (which I do not need or want for this monitor).
Best regards!

[waydabber]

Hi there - right, the naming might be updated, it's a matter of perspective - in HDR the Mac tells the display exactly what brightness level is expected of all pixels and the display will figure out what to do based on that - most displays do not support DDC brightness control in HDR or if they do, they do not do a very good job with it (some do however).

If you want the display to only have the native Sequoia controls, you simply need to disable combined brightness control for the display. Then the keyboard control will be equivalent to what the range the Control Center slider does and will use the native protocol to control the peak SDR brightness.

[VonbatenBach]

When I disable combined brightness control, the keyboard controls change brightness only of my built-in display. They do not affect the external monitor at all. When I toggle "Allow DDC hardware brightness control in HDR mode" on, then it really changes DDC brightness in HDR mode of my display, since it allows it (I have Aorus PO27Q2). But I would prefer to keep this monitor brightness at 100% and let the native sequoia controls do the job.

I also have a side-question. When this SDR peak brightness approaches 100% (actually, the problems start at ~70%), HDR videos often get overblown content (anywhere I stream it from) - something that would never happen in macos native display. There it simply does some dynamic tone mapping to compress these otherwise blown out parts of the image (just guessing, don't really know how it works under the hood).
With my external display, however, it clips this highlights at some point and it doesn't matter what native monitor brightness is set - the clipped region just gets brighter or duller then but the detail is lost.
I thought that maybe I need to set SDR brightness slider to match 100 nits of sRGB standard so that then everything matches correctly in HDR videos, but it is far too conservative. On tests of 1000 nit peaks I can extend this slider up to ~70% (100 nits SDR is around 34% in my monitor) so that these details are not crushed and at the same time these 1000 nit peaks really get brighter. So in short, I don't understand it much and thought maybe you would know. As far as I know, my monitor has one of the best eotf tracking of modern oled monitors so I wouldn't expect such behavior.