Enabling HDR for Steam games
I have been pulling my hair out for several days now trying to figure out how the heck to enable HDR in games (specifically Helldivers 2 and Ghost of Tsushima). I read through the release notes for Bazzite 42, and it make it sound as simple as either switching to a Proton version with Wine Wayland or enabling vk_hdr_layer. I have tried both of these, but nothing ever launches with the ability to enable HDR. I have tried Proton 9.0-4 as well as the latest version of Proton GE (9-27). Neither of these Proton versions let me enable HDR in game. I then tried the settings for vk_hdr_layer. I set the registry key in Wine using Protontricks, then I set the launch options "DISPLAY= DXVK_HDR=1 ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 %command%". When I do this, Steam says the game is running, but it never actually launches.
18 Replies
Why the DISPLAY= ?
That's likely your issue
You don't need any registry changes either
https://discord.com/channels/1072614816579063828/1187140365115998291/1350582225573515347
i did this for autoswitching, it’s nice
I got that from here: https://github.com/Zamundaaa/VK_hdr_layer?tab=readme-ov-file#testing-with-wine-wayland
Specifically where it said the DISPLAY variable needed to be unset.
This did get the game to launch with the option to enable HDR, but when I enable HDR, the colors are muted.
GitHub
GitHub - Zamundaaa/VK_hdr_layer: Hacks. Don't use for serious color...
Hacks. Don't use for serious color work. Contribute to Zamundaaa/VK_hdr_layer development by creating an account on GitHub.
okay, but did you switch your actual monitor to HDR?
And also remove display and the registry entry
Then reread that section and question why you did that
Yes, HDR is enabled in Settings for my display
Sorry, I wasn't clear with my last message. I removed the "DISPLAY=" launch option, and that got the game to actually launch with the HDR option but with muted colors. I checked for Ghost of Tsushima, and it looks like I already removed the reg key for this game. So this is my current launch option that has the HDR option available in game, but the colors are muted: "env DXVK_HDR=1 ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 %command%"
I noticed that this also works: "env DXVK_HDR=1 %command%", but the colors are still muted
The last command will just take away the Vulkan layer required for HDR to actually make it to your display
If your colors are muted you need to adjust them, there's numerous launch options for that
HDR is complicated and lots of displays are shitty and lie about their HDR capability
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but could you point me in the right direction for some of those options? I know for sure that my monitor supports HDR properly. It worked fine when I was previously on Windows, and it still works for me in macOS. I've seen similar behavior before (muted colors) when force enabling HDR on a non-HDR display. Or in Discord, if someone streams a game in HDR, the colors look muted for everyone watching the stream
I've also been experimenting with HDR. It used to work well in the first version of 42 with gamescope and washed out colours without it.
Then, after the first two updates, gamescope started crashing right away.
In any case, I'd love to be able to ditch it.
I remember washed out colours being a problem in some older Nvidia driver that was fixed in the end.
Also, mpv has excellent colours OOB when playing an HDR video. It's not washed out at all.
I'm also having my mind blown by the fact that my Vulkan application doesn't find any HDR-enabled surface to render into even though mpv and Steam games do...
From my very limited knowledge of HDR, it seems to me what is going on is the launch options trick the game into thinking the display supports HDR (regardless of if it actually does or not), but Wine is clamping the HDR back to SDR, hence the washed out colors
This could be entirely incorrect. My knowledge of HDR is just a few minutes of googling and a lot of guessing
That would make sense. It doesn't seem like the HDR actually works, but it's hard to tell from washed out colours.
Since you're here, have you had any luck with gamescope? I'd like to at least debut mine and see why it is the working anymore, but I'm not sure where I can read the logs.
Are you using the gamescope build of Bazzite or launching games via setting the gamescope launch option?
I'm using scope buddy that's provided by Bazzite.
I just tried using scope buddy, and I don't have the option to enable HDR at all when using gamescope for some reason
Did you launch the game in full screen?
I've been having sort of the same issue as WASTECH and dragostis. Gamescope (via the game launch option; should I use something else?) keeps crashing for me at 4K KDR. Gamescope does work for me personally; HDR works beautifully, but the game always crashes after a couple minutes; I notice that gamescope doesn't seem to save the shaders or anything. And maybe I'm just bad at following directions or wasn't looking in the proper places, but I can't seem to figure out how to actually utilize the VK HDR layer.
For me, launching in fullscreen was essential.
It's muted because of the DXVK_HDR command, because of the previous thing you mentioned; HDR isn't making it to the display.
Interestingly, I can run gamescope separately with vkcube but with a Steam game at 4K it just crashes.
I don't have problems with my Gamescope crashing. I can't even get Gamescope to work with HDR, regardless of if I use fullscreen or not
Sorry, I thought both of you said that. My mistake.