Hi all,
I have an HDR capable monitor, HDR enabled in KDE plasma, but I still can’t get some games to let me switch on the HDR toggle. Every time I turn it on in the game, it says something along the lines of “your hardware must support HDR” or some shit like that. After some online searching, I was able to enable it on ONE game in the heroic games launcher with (I think) a launch command? Where I threw there a “–HDR” and some other strings in there after enabling gamescope (this is where shit starts to confuse the hell out of me), then the game let me actually toggle HDR on. I can never do that on Steam. I am trying to play Indiana Jones and the great circle and it says the same. Same with Resident evil 4.
How do you do it? Is there a guide or something to follow? Is it like per game? Like some games allow it and others don’t? Also, and most importantly, how the hell does gamescope work? On heroic, there are things like “Game width, game height, upscale width and upscale height”. On Lutris, there is a cleaner way with dropdown menus where you choose a “Output resolution” and a “Game resolution” resolutions. What are those? Which is which?
Sorry for the very long post, and I appreciate any help
Thank you
You can use Gamescope to get HDR working. On Steam games I use this template as the launch option for games (2160x3840 is the resolution, 240 is the refresh rate):
Nevermind, I just tried it with proton-em and remembered what happened last time. It can be turned on but it looks like a grayscale filter on the screen so it’s better left off.
Also tried control with proton-em but the hdr looks super wrong on that game now but not sure if it is because proton em or if the new built in hdr setting is not as good as the hdr mod that I used to use
Edit: just tried with witcher 3 too, never tried it before but it is also desaturated, maybe a bit less than crysis tho. Also with hdr enabled framegen started artifacting like crazy
Edit 2: Oh shame on me, should’ve rtfm. It requires enabling hdr wsi on nvidia drivers. Everything works now
I got similar results in ratchet and clank rift apart. Turned hdr off the picture was amazing. On resident evil 4 I now have hdr. Same with uncharted 4. Indiana Jones straight up crashes with toggle HDR. I guess it is per game
It adds hdr support to vulkan drivers that don’t have hdr support I think, it used to be a thing for all gpus but I assume nvidia’s implementation is faulty somehow
Using Proton-EM in steam and heroic, I have been able to get native HDR (outside gamescope) working with DISPLAY=0 DXVK_HDR=1. Other wine/proton versions may work too as long as they support wayland. RDR2 crashes GNOME, Shadow Warrior 2 only allowed HDR with an NVIDIA GPU, but most of my other catalogue works :)
Thank you so much. This is what I needed. Does this enable HDR on the game in general, or does it enable the toggle for HDR in the game? Also, do I need the Wayland parameter if I’m already on Wayland?
The wayland parameter is needed yes. This runs proton natively in wayland and not in xwayland which is the default. This feature is not available in the regular proton versions at the moment but it is in Glorious Eggrolls
I have HDR enabled on my monitor but still have to enable HDR in each game where it’s supported.
From what I’ve heard the colour management is still a bit hit and miss between OS and window managers but my experience has been good so far.
It will just make sure Proton tells the game your display supports HDR, you’ll probably still need to enable it in game, unless the game uses it by default.
The Wayland flag tells Proton to use Wayland natively instead of xwayland, so you do still need it.
Not the original, but from my experience, I believe this enabled the toggle which tells the game that you support HDR, proton then picks up the HDR signal and displays it, the rest is on your display.
Awesome. Appreciate the reply. I’ve found that there is a toggle for HDR on lutris that gets enabled when I flip the gamescope switch. And it stays active even after disabling gamescope. Now heroic needs to do the same.
The middlware that stream uses to run Windows games doesn’t yet (fully) support HDR normally.
Valve has a bodge that works for the steam deck using gamescope, and while (iirc) it’s possible to get that to work in regular desktop kde, it’s a bit of a pain.
You can use Gamescope to get HDR working. On Steam games I use this template as the launch option for games (2160x3840 is the resolution, 240 is the refresh rate):
DXVK_HDR=1 gamescope -f -H 2160 -W 3840 -r 240 --hdr-enabled -- %command%You can read more about it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDR_monitor_support
What game is it? Wanted to know because I’m having the same iszue with crysis 1 remaster
two games so far, inidian jones and the great circle and Resident evil4 so far
Nevermind, I just tried it with proton-em and remembered what happened last time. It can be turned on but it looks like a grayscale filter on the screen so it’s better left off.
Also tried control with proton-em but the hdr looks super wrong on that game now but not sure if it is because proton em or if the new built in hdr setting is not as good as the hdr mod that I used to use
Edit: just tried with witcher 3 too, never tried it before but it is also desaturated, maybe a bit less than crysis tho. Also with hdr enabled framegen started artifacting like crazy
Edit 2: Oh shame on me, should’ve rtfm. It requires enabling hdr wsi on nvidia drivers. Everything works now
I got similar results in ratchet and clank rift apart. Turned hdr off the picture was amazing. On resident evil 4 I now have hdr. Same with uncharted 4. Indiana Jones straight up crashes with toggle HDR. I guess it is per game
Apparently hdr wsi is still required on nvidia, my problems went away once I enabled that
Never had an Nvidia GPU, so I have no idea what that is. lol
It adds hdr support to vulkan drivers that don’t have hdr support I think, it used to be a thing for all gpus but I assume nvidia’s implementation is faulty somehow
Using Proton-EM in steam and heroic, I have been able to get native HDR (outside gamescope) working with DISPLAY=0 DXVK_HDR=1. Other wine/proton versions may work too as long as they support wayland. RDR2 crashes GNOME, Shadow Warrior 2 only allowed HDR with an NVIDIA GPU, but most of my other catalogue works :)
I’ve never heard of proton-em. Probably have, but didn’t know what it was. Is it on protonplus app? I’m going to try it. Thank you.
I got HDR working nicely in Steam under Fedora 42 and Hyprland
Get protonplus https://github.com/Vysp3r/protonplus
Use protonplus to install proton-ge-4 and restart steam
In compatibility options use proton-ge-4
In the game launch options set
PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 %command%
This works really nicely in Hunt Showdown
Thank you so much. This is what I needed. Does this enable HDR on the game in general, or does it enable the toggle for HDR in the game? Also, do I need the Wayland parameter if I’m already on Wayland?
The wayland parameter is needed yes. This runs proton natively in wayland and not in xwayland which is the default. This feature is not available in the regular proton versions at the moment but it is in Glorious Eggrolls
I have HDR enabled on my monitor but still have to enable HDR in each game where it’s supported.
From what I’ve heard the colour management is still a bit hit and miss between OS and window managers but my experience has been good so far.
Thank you. I’ve saved your original comment for future reference
It will just make sure Proton tells the game your display supports HDR, you’ll probably still need to enable it in game, unless the game uses it by default.
The Wayland flag tells Proton to use Wayland natively instead of xwayland, so you do still need it.
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Not the original, but from my experience, I believe this enabled the toggle which tells the game that you support HDR, proton then picks up the HDR signal and displays it, the rest is on your display.
Awesome. Appreciate the reply. I’ve found that there is a toggle for HDR on lutris that gets enabled when I flip the gamescope switch. And it stays active even after disabling gamescope. Now heroic needs to do the same.
The middlware that stream uses to run Windows games doesn’t yet (fully) support HDR normally.
Valve has a bodge that works for the steam deck using gamescope, and while (iirc) it’s possible to get that to work in regular desktop kde, it’s a bit of a pain.
Broader support is coming though
Good to know it’s not just a skill issue. lol