Hey everyone! I’m trying to get HDR to look right on KDE Plasma 6 with Wayland while playing games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Last Of Us Part I, but I’m having a tough time. I’ve turned on HDR in my display settings and set the following environment variables:
– DXVK_HDR=1
– ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1
– SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
Despite these changes, Cyberpunk ends up with colors that are way too intense, while TLOU looks overly washed out. Am I missing any steps or settings to make HDR look better? Thanks in advance!
2 Answers
You can definitely make HDR look great on KDE, but it requires some tweaking. Here’s what you should do:
1. In the KDE Plasma display settings, try setting the SDR Color Intensity to zero to avoid oversaturation.
2. Make sure the SDR Max brightness is set to your monitor’s capability in a 100% APL window, also known as ‘Paperwhite’. Don’t exceed your monitor’s specs or it will blow out the HDR.
3. Set your brightness to 100%; if your SDR Max brightness is 250 nits, that’s your ceiling.
If you’re using an AMD GPU, ensure you’re on Mesa 25.1 or higher, using the launch commands:
`PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 %command%`
For Nvidia, you’ll need the VK-HDR-LAYER installed and enable it with:
`PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 PROTON_ENABLE_HDR=1 ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 %command%`
Once in-game, adjust Peak, Paperwhite, and a midtone setting for better contrast. On my OLED, I found a midtone of 0.5 to 0.7 works well.
I’m not having much luck with HDR on KDE either, especially since I’m on Kubuntu. But I’ve heard that the latest Plasma and Mesa updates add more HDR features, so be sure to keep those updated.
The one time HDR worked for me with Cyberpunk was through gamescope; just a heads up, it was pretty but unplayable since it wouldn’t grab the cursor properly.
This is good info! Just a tip: try setting your SDR brightness to a level that suits your environment instead of just maxing it out. Sometimes lower levels can highlight peaks better.