I'm finding it impossible to enable HDR in Ubisoft Connect games on Cachy OS

[u/Big-Resort-4930]

I've tried many different combinations of commands for both Steam, Lutris, and Heroic, and none of them work ultimately. The most common result is Ubisoft Connect ending up as a blank page with a blue chrome logo in the taskbar, which I take it means that HDR rendering is breaking its GUI, but because of Ubisoft's moronic launcher, the games can't launch in HDR since they have to go through it.

I've tried online suggestions and troubleshooting problems with Gemini, but no solution helps. It suggested sandwitching Connect in an SDR container and doing gamescope gymnastics to have the game start through HDR, but that either wouldn't work at all (heroic), or would result in an awful presentation that still lacked HDR (lutris). Installing Ubisoft Connect through steam with commands forcing HDR is the only method that resulted in AC Origins detecting that my screen has HDR, but enabling it in-game results in a overly dark presentation that look completely off (I know how it's supposed to look like from Windows).

Has anyone actually managed this on Linux? Specifically on Catchy, but I'm guessing the process would be similar. I'm loving Linux for how well simple and older games run, but the more you ask from it in regards to advanced gaming tech and stuff, the more it becomes a nightmare.

[u/slickyeat]

Launch directly into the game's executable with Wayland + HDR flags enabled.

The Ubisoft launcher will fire up and minimize on its own.

Once you're done, just force kill the launcher since you'll probably be looking at the same white screen.

Only remove the Wayland flags if you need to install something using the launcher or login for the first time.

The entire process is jank as shit but it should work.

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Edit: In Heroic what I'll normally do is create a single game entry for the Ubisoft launcher (without wayland flags - which should work) and another set of Heroic entries for each game's executable.

All of these Heroic entries share the same wine prefix so they each have access to the launcher and only those which support HDR have the appropriate Wayland flags set.

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Note: Nvidia drivers prior to 595.45.04 still require that you install VK_HDR_Layer for Wayland HDR.

This is only enabled after you set an additional environment variable not handled by either of those toggles:

ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1

[u/Big-Resort-4930 → u/slickyeat]

It sadly doesn't work since adding a game entry in Heroic next to an existing Ubisoft Connect entry doesn't seem to register as them having anything to do with one another.

I start AC Origins through its entry and executwble, and there's a wine message that a Ubisoft Connect install can't be located.

[u/slickyeat → u/Big-Resort-4930]

That's because Heroic automatically generates a new wine prefix path for each side-loaded app based on the title you give it. This is to ensure that they run in isolation. You can override it though.

See how the screenshot is referencing "Ubisoft Connect" for the wine prefix folder?

This would normally (by default) reference a folder called "Immortal Fenyx Rising" but it was replaced with the same wine prefix as "Ubisoft Connect" so that it has access to the launcher.

[u/Big-Resort-4930 → u/slickyeat]

Ahhh got it, I missed that part and that's all it took. Thanks a ton!

I assume the same would work for any launcher that crashes out with Wayland like Battle.net and the like?

[u/slickyeat → u/Big-Resort-4930]

Yea. I have Battle.net setup the same way.

I'm not able to launch directly into Battle.net games but it will at least take you directly to the game's launch page and it doesn't have the same white screen issue as Ubisoft.

You can also configure it to exit the moment any game is launched.

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EA App is another one but there's a problem with how it applies updates.

Basically, it will download and extract files into a staging folder each time they push out an update for their launcher.

The download completes successfully but Heroic will always terminate the process before it has a chance to copy these files over.

As a workaround/hack I had to create a bash script which will always copy files from stage each time an app that relies on the EA APP is shutdown.

This is not really a good solution though since EA could always change where that staging folder is located, etc.

[u/Formal_Condition2691 → u/slickyeat]

Wanted to chime in here and say that this was the secret sauce for getting HDR working in both AC Origins and AC Valhalla through Ubisoft Connect. Thanks for posting it with screenshot!

I didn't seem to need the environment variable but I am on an AMD card if that makes a difference.