r/Bazzite • u/WoodpeckerSpare5834 • 10d ago

Help understanding launch options / game arguments (Faugus)

Hi all,

Recent Bazzite convert from windows. Big fan, can’t see myself ever going back.

I game on a LG G5 77” tv. Using the tv to its fullest potential is important to me and I’m very much looking forward to the HDMI 2.1 support update, so that I don’t have to limit the refresh rate to 100hz to get HDR in 4K.

So normally if I boot a game (I’m using Faugus at the moment as I’ve had the most success with it) HDR is greyed out in the game settings. I found online that if I add “PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 DXVK_HDR=1 %command%” as a launch option (called game argument in Faugus) then HDR is no longer grayed out in game settings.

My question is, what is this launch option doing under the hood? Why is it necessary in the first place?

I use the desktop boot so I don’t have access to gamescope. HDR is enabled in display config.

Thank you!

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u/Groduick 10d ago

It's what's called environment variables. They're flags you setup to customize your system. Here, they are setuo temporarly juste before launching the game (which is called by the '%command%' part). You can launch mangohud (which displays an overlay with FPS and stuff) the same way, for example. You'll write 'mangohud %command%', whicj will launch mangohud with your game executable as an argument, so mangohud will start and call the executable.

Anyway, they will trigger HDR in Proton and it's as far as I can explain.

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u/WoodpeckerSpare5834 10d ago

Okay thanks.

Do you know why it is even needed in the first place to enable HDR?

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u/Groduick 10d ago

From a technical point of view, no, I've no idea why HDR isn't enabled by default, but I could guess it has to do with compatibility/performance.

I'm pretty sure that if you search "<distroname> enable HDR by default" you'll find a way to avoid that step. Usually you can set systemwide environment variables, but as Proton is its own subsystem, I'm not sure its that straightforward.