HDR and anti-cheats are the main reasons I can't fully switch over. I am niche and particular about things so I do think I'd enjoy Linux if it weren't for the games I play. I have an OLED display and too many hours in Valorant. It's like I accidentally upgraded out of Linux.
It's useless if you don't play games. 10-bit color depth. Most monitors and graphics cards support only 8-bit (per color). But high end ones, yeah, they do support 10-bit (HDR monitors).
The meme is not mine, stole it, but I did find it funny, even though I don't play games.
EDIT: Whenever you see a meme from me, just presume it was stolen, lol. I rarely make my own.
Most monitors and graphics cards support only 8-bit (per color).
Plenty of monitors support 10 bit colour. You need higher than 8 bit for any colour spaces larger than sRGB, such as DCI-P3 or Adobe RGB, and most good monitors support higher than 100% sRGB coverage.
Out of all the colours that humans can perceive, sRGB covers around 35% of them, DCI-P3 covers around 52%, and Rec 2020 (which is 11 or 12 bit) covers around 75%. Colours look more vibrant when using DCI-P3 or Rec 2020 because there's literally more colours available.
Imagine a gradient bar of red, green, or blue on a display. The latest displays show so many colors that the 256 shades in an 8-bits channel will show banding.
Banding is horrible for photo/video editing hence 10 bit displays that can show 1024 shades in a single channel which is more shades than our eyes can see.
HDR in gaming also uses 10-bit per channel, but it's often a gimmick with current cheap gaming displays and might show banding even if there are technically 10-bits. OLED gaming monitors should be able to display 10-bit accurately though.
Isn't HDR support on linux just a nightmare in general? I guess Steam is just waiting for linux to get its act together on this decades old feature rather than join in the madness it currently is.
I recently asked questions about HDR & automatic refreshrate switching for a linux HTPC, and the advice in the end was just to find whatever distro already has it all precofigured (and conflcting advice whether i'd need Wayland or X)... i was kind of amazed how poorly supported it appeared to be.
So yeah, if steam is like "yeah, we won't try to venture into that swamp", can't say i blame them after having dared to ask how to get it to work myself.
I've now got a 13th gen nuc as htpc using libreelec. There is an intel graphics driver issue with 4K HDR & 23.97fps playback (frequent audio dropouts...), but someone on the forum created a patch that does seem to work, and really happy with it so far. Also Libreelec allows you to install docker, so i can use the nuc (which is way overpowered for just htpc usage) also as a server :).
I do hate that the maintainers of libreelec are like 'yeah, it's an intel bug, so we won't put the workaround in our official release, nor do anything to make potential users aware of it while we can detect that they will probably need it"... Open source developers don't really like their users it seems....
Can you link the fix for me? I’m looking to replace my shield but looking for something that does hdr/dv and can do audio pass through. While a nuc is over powered that doesn’t bother me. I’m more concerned about having a dedicated device that does one thing well (hopefully after set up it’s hand off).
That’s. I’ll take a look at this…never heard of it before. Looks like the Linux Plex htpc app has some of its own issues as well. Trying to find something that works well.
the basic goal of libreelec is to just run kodi and nothing else. So it's really good for a htpc, it's always running kodi :).
But since you can add docker to it, i'm also running it as a small server, using portainer to manage the containers, and it's doing great double duty :). If however you want a real desktop environment, this is not the solution for you :).
Last time I tried it, it was a nightmare on Windows as well.
I have an HDR monitor and I turned that off because it looked awful. Nex Machina was completely unplayable even then, as it detected it anyway and shows a completely washed out picture.
Only consoles and set top boxes seem to support it properly. It looks really good when it works.
Nah, it looked shit on my TV as well, and that's an LG OLED. Everything just a lot darker than normal, and only the actual HDR content looks right. The settings for SDR were next to useless.
It looked OK in a full screen game I did get working (one of the recent Tomb Raiders), but such a mess outside it, and it even corrupted the screen when trying to play full screen videos, leading to full system crashes.
The monitor isn't super bright for HDR content, but the issues go well beyond just that.
I had the exact same infuriating experience the first half hour of using my OLED panel but it turns out it was simply because Firefox doesn't support hdr. You have to use edge or chrome for hdr content online. So now I use edge purely for YouTube and Firefox for everything else.
I've been able to play cyberpunk and the witcher in HDR, also elite dangerous. I have to use a separate tty where I launch gamescope, and have to boot with a patched kernel on a separate bootloader entry. It's not ideal, certainly, but it does work and the experience is good once I did get it working.
Well yes... I was responding to your question about why a launcher would need HDR support.
It needs HDR support because "steam" is more than just a launcher. It includes proton, which needs HDR support so that games that have HDR support can use HDR.
Not really. Steam doesn't include Proton by default. It's downloaded on demand. It's a separate product with its own code base (derived from WINE), bug tracker, and since recently even its own logo.
Just because it's an optional component, doesn't mean that it isn't part of an overarching product. KDE contains many different parts that may or may not be installed, that doesn't mean they aren't part of KDE. "Steam" is a larger product composed of separate models such as the GUI and compatibility layer.
That’s just the client itself. It’s also not entirely their fault, since they use CEF, and CEF is a colossal pain in the ass. The issues and the pull requests are all there, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is actively working on them at this point
Last I saw it was about merging in the upstream CEF wayland support
but yes, the client could be x11 and somehow still launch games in wayland, which could also be a solution - not too dissimilar to gamescope I suppose. I ain't got no clue on how that works tho ¯\(ツ)/¯
Well considering pretty much every modern game engine supports HDR and HDR has been a standard feature in AAA games for at least a decade I seriously doubt they're going to drop it 10 years from now. The only way it gets removed is if something better comes along and makes HDR obsolete.
The trend still goes towards HDR, since it’s not just an effect in games. Nearly any modern TV can decode HDR metadata and most streaming services support HDR. Of course, entry level TVs and monitors cannot take advantage of HDR as much but as better TVs get cheaper that’ll spread even more. My TV isn’t particularly amazing but the difference between HDR content and SDR content is clear. If I have a choice, I never watch the SDR version.
HDR isn’t just an effect like bloom. It’s a way of using the capabilities of modern TVs in a way SDR can’t. HDR is made for taking advantage of OLED, quantum dots, high contrast, local dimming, higher colour gamuts and/or the high brightness consumer screens reach nowadays.
So if you wanna bet, I‘d personally bet on HDR being more like the standard in 10 years because screen tech usually only gets better and HDR is the software/firmware implementation to take advantage of those hardware improvements.
Exactly. Even though there'll absolutely still be displays that won't really do HDR, they'll soon enough be able to handle that as input signal and then just map it down to their gamuts. Just like 6bit displays still take 8bit input etc. "HDR" will just become the standard colour format and displays will map it with varying degrees of accuracy. (Many already do this.)
When I first saw HDR on an OLED monitor, it wasn’t everything I thought people were making it out to be but over time it really grew on me. DOOM Eternal, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Cyberpunk 2077 have so much color, and the way the light pops makes it all just pure eye candy.
Whelp, gnome doesn't even support hdr yet, but kde added preliminary support just recently. Also, nvidia added supports for hdr just recently with their v550 driver, released just last month. You probably can run hdr games today if you're willing to put some elbow grease. I'm lazy though, so I'll just wait.
Got it working with Armoured Core VI on KDE, you just have to run the game in gamescope with some flags to enable HDR, and then KDE will pick that up as long as your monitor is HDR and it's enabled.
Forbidden West crashes when I enable HDR in the game settings, and Helldivers HDR is just so bad it's not worth using.
You know, the room inside your monitor full of little hamsters with tiny paintbrushes that speed paint everything onto the screen from the inside. They used to have a lot more room, but we had to breed the hamsters way smaller.
