Steam game UI suddenly looks psychedelic

[Caanen]

Describe the bug

Everything was fine yesterday. I come back today and wake from sleep and the UI looked like it had a bad drug binge. See photo.

What did you expect to happen?

Expected game UI to look like normal.

Output of rpm-ostree status

State: idle
Deployments:
● ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-deck:stable
Digest: sha256:a1efbabfe42e9612b3cc79053a01de892a0dfd9892a3c8f2162e44449c4c98b8
Version: 40.20240822.0 (2024-08-23T04:11:09Z)

ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-deck:stable
Digest: sha256:4b6720ea6c3c7c3436af0dda75858ca87982abd528b1667bdfbe4a28ebdac9b1
Version: v3.6-40.20240815.0 (2024-08-15T15:51:01Z)

Hardware

Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT

Extra information or context

No response

[KyleGospo]

Ensure HDR is enabled in both game mode and on your monitor

[Caanen]

I'll give it a try. Though I'm not entirely sure HDR is supported on my television.

[Caanen]

I will say leaving gamepad ui and going to desktop returns thing to normal. Also entering gamepad ui from desktop also seems to fix the issue. Rebooting the system or waking from sleep while in gamepad ui causes the weird color issue again.

[Caanen]

Steam game mode says that my display does not support HDR. It is an old panel after all.

[Caanen]

Confirmed that this happens 100% when the system wakes on sleep in gamepad ui. Not sure if this is helpful or not but thought I'd report on it anyways.

[Thermionix]

I've managed to fix this on my system (AMD Ryzen 5600, AMD RX 7600) which was also getting corrupted vibrant colors on boot

I created a config file to force HDR:

$ cat .config/environment.d/gamescope-session-plus.conf
GAMESCOPECMD="gamescope -e -f --xwayland-count 2 --hdr-enabled --hdr-itm-enable --adaptive-sync"

new and old launch args:

$ cat .gamescope-cmd.log
gamescope -e -f --xwayland-count 2 --hdr-enabled --hdr-itm-enable --adaptive-sync -R /run/user/1000/gamescope.4T8iu4f/startup.socket -T /run/user/1000/gamescope.4T8iu4f/stats.pipe
$ cat .gamescope-cmd.log.old
/usr/bin/gamescope --bypass-steam-resolution --prefer-output *,eDP-1 --xwayland-count 2 --default-touch-mode 4 --hide-cursor-delay 3000 --fade-out-duration 200 --steam -R /run/user/1000/gamescope.XWryusq/startup.socket -T /run/user/1000/gamescope.XWryusq/stats.pipe

[JakWolf]

I'm having the exact same problem on a AMD PC build (ryzen 5500 & radeon 6700).

Sadly, adding the flags in gamescope-session-plus.conf results in a black screen when booting. Had to boot in safe mode to delete the config.

Any ideas how to make this work? Maybe i should remove some flags in the config...

[davetansley]

Same issue here with an AMD 7600M XT GPU. Reboot doesn't solve it, but unplugging and plugging the HDMI cures it every time. It happens maybe 50% of boots or wakes from sleep.

[jlnr]

Deleted my previous comments after too many edits, reposting:

I'm getting the psychedelic experience on the AtomMan G7 PT on every wake and boot (reboots excluded). It goes away when I start a game, or unplug the HDMI cable and plug it back in, or enter desktop mode, etc.

Ensure HDR is enabled in both game mode and on your monitor

That did not work for me, the psychedelic effect still appears. (Also, everything looks worse with HDR enabled, but this might be an unrelated gamescope issue. This workaround also wouldn't help on displays that don't have HDR support.)

The question is, why does the game mode session output different colors on startup, but only then, and only on AMD dGPUs?

Things I've tried:

• Nobara 41 handheld edition does not seem to exhibit this behavior.
• Using a DisplayPort-to-HDMI cable does not help.
• Downgrading to the 2024-08-15 build mentioned in the original issue text is not possible anymore, bazzite-rollback-helper only has builds starting from September. -> I cannot verify if that build still worked or not.

I don't think this issue is as old as HDR support itself, because I can find reports of working HDR going back to June.

Looking at the commit log before 2024-08-22, I see several system updates: kernel 6.9.12-205, gamescope 3.15.x, mesa 24.1.6. I guess the next best thing is to fork Bazzite and try to narrow it down to a specific update?

Coincidentally, I also want to use my TV for audio (over HDMI), and I have to set my audio output device back and forth after a reboot, otherwise it won't work. It's as if the HDMI connection is badly initialized, if that makes sense?

[jlnr]

TIL that this is a documented quirk in the Bazzite docs: https://docs.bazzite.gg/Handheld_and_HTPC_edition/quirks/#rainbow-display

Will try the documented workaround of Force Composite. But it would still be interesting to know where exactly this bug originates from (GameScope, AMD drivers, Fedora, ...).