Arch Linux

schmiggolas

Member

Registered: 2025-07-01

Posts: 3

HDR not working/not detected in games

Hey yall,

I'm having trouble getting HDR to work on my machine. I followed the Arch wiki page for help, but I tried everything and just can't get it to work.

HDR is enabled for my primary monitor in KDE settings and seems to work normally. My monitor displays that it's running in HDR mode. Once I run a game it will not work for some reason.
In Cyberpunk or STALKER 2 I can enable HDR, but it looks way off and is either completely unsaturated or blown way out, depending on the HDR mode I select in-game. In Helldivers 2 I can't even enable HDR since the option for it is greyed out.

I am running a Nvidia RTX 4070Ti Super and a HDR capable Samsung Odyssey G6 OLED as my main display and a generic non-HDR 1080p monitor as my second screen.
I am on the latest nvidia-open drivers and have vk-hdr-layer-kwin6 installed via pacman. I installed proton using ProtonPlus.
The following command is what I use to try running games via steam and Proton-GE 10.8:

ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=50 %command%

I've been pulling my hair out over this for weeks now. I would highly appreciate anyone helping me troubleshoot this or any pointers where to look next.

Cheers

//Edit: I'm running kde under wayland, ofc

Last edited by schmiggolas (2025-07-02 16:44:25)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 24,648

Re: HDR not working/not detected in games

Release notes of Proton-Ge 10.2

Removes setting ENABLE_HDR_WSI -- this option is only specific for the vk_hdr_layer (https://github.com/Zamundaaa/VK_hdr_layer) hack, which is -not- needed as of mesa 25.1 and can cause washed out colors. If you previously used this, it's advised to remove it, and update mesa to 25.1 if you want HDR.

So if you're forced to still use this due to nvidia drivers you might need to stick to older proton? Might want to opt for gamescope or so and check whether you get better results?

Last edited by V1del (2025-07-02 17:00:53)

schmiggolas

Member

Registered: 2025-07-01

Posts: 3

Re: HDR not working/not detected in games

Hey thanks for your reply.

I tried getting this to work on/off since last year, so I was using older proton version before. Those didn't work either.
I also tried gamescope, which produces the same results.

Nevertheless, thanks for the pointers. I'll re-run some tests using gamescope and/or older proton versions. Maybe I missed something.

At this point I'm thinking my monitor is at fault here. I have read online that other people got HDR working, even with notoriously stubborn Nvidia cards. So I know it is possible.

Just for completeness sake and as an example of what my issue is, this is what Stalker looks like.
Ignore the green mist, that's 'radiation fog' or something, not a visual artifact.

schmiggolas

Member

Registered: 2025-07-01

Posts: 3

Re: HDR not working/not detected in games

I got something to work and I figured I'll document my findings here.
I tried troubleshooting with ChatGPTs help and found out, that my second non-HDR monitor seems to be the culprit. When I disable the monitor in KDE and restart Kwin I can sucessfully start quake2rtx in HDR. With Proton games it's still inconsistent.

I found out that I definitely still need the vk-hdr-layer package to make this work with Nvidia.
I then disabled my non-HDR monitor in KDE and restarted kwin with

kwin_wayland --replace & disown

Then I was able to start quake2rtx with

ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland quake2rtx +set r_hdr 1

Running the following confirmed that I was in fact running in HDR mode. For non fish shell replace &| with |&

ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland quake2rtx +set r_hdr 1 \
          &| grep -i -e "colorspace" -e "hdr"

I will do some more testing the next few days with some more games.