Player
In OpenGL render device, try increasing GammaOffset in ut.ini in the [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice] section, if that doesn't help, you can also set OneXBlending to False in the same section.
As for fps, you heard wrong that 300fps is the standard or people don't know what they're talking about, because if the server is full and you play on an open map, you'll experience fps drops and it'll be the same when the map has higher quality textures. Generally, you can rock 60fps, but I prefer around 150fps. Referring to Time Demo Statistics - the upper value is the average fps value at a given moment of displaying one frame and that's why it changes so quickly, because assuming you have it set to 125fps, it means that one frame is displayed every 8 milliseconds (1 second = 1000 milliseconds). This lower number is given to round this rate of change to a more rational time that a human can see and analyze, and here the current fps is shown, but every one second.
Check if you don't have frame limits set in [OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice] in ut.ini - FrameRateLimit or/and in the [WinDrv.WindowsClient] section also under the name FrameRateLimit.
