Willy

@Kypetzl

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Willy @Kypetzl3/1/2023, 7:09 AM

Jessica @ticky

Jessica @ticky3/1/2023, 5:17 AM

I've been curious for a while why redditors swear by a plugin for the Steam Deck which boosts the gain on all the colours, seemingly with the goal of "simulating an OLED"¹

not prepared to actually install the entire plugin framework² it uses along with the plugin itself, I set about reading some source code

it's just doing some number conversions to set the GAMESCOPE_COLOR_MATRIX X11 property on the display, which SteamOS' compositor will interpret and dutifully adjust the colours

if you use the plugin ultimately it would end up running a command something like this:

xprop -display :1 -root \
  -f GAMESCOPE_COLOR_MATRIX 32c \
  -set GAMESCOPE_COLOR_MATRIX \
  "1067869798, 0, 0, 0, 1067869798, 0, 0, 0, 1067869798"

this sets all colour channels to approximately 130%, which is an oft-recommended value on the subreddit

if you ran the thing above and it looks like shit, either reboot your Steam Deck, or run the following command to reset the saturation:

xprop -display :1 -root \
  -remove GAMESCOPE_COLOR_MATRIX

so what are the effects of this? well, here's a sample screenshot of the Xbox Cloud Gaming site in a browser on the Steam Deck. Note that it has a fair mix of light and dark colours:

a sample screenshot of the Xbox Cloud Gaming site, showing Fortnite, Hitman, GoldenEye, and Halo Infinite

looks normal, right? do not adjust your set. now let's simulate the 130% with some equivalent CSS:

a sample screenshot of the Xbox Cloud Gaming site, showing Fortnite, Hitman, GoldenEye, and Halo Infinite, adjusted to 130% brightness

note how the sky in the Fortnite icon is blown out, much of the detail in the GoldenEye icon is crushed to white, and the blinding light coming off Master Chief

this??? looks terrible??? but a whole subreddit has decided that this is The Way It's Meant To Be Played™

the subreddit seems to make a lot of hay out of the Steam Deck's display being disappointing, somehow, but while it isn't up to the P3 colour depth of the monitors I tend to like, it's perfectly adequate for the task of showing sRGB-targeting games³, and crushing any bright detail like this is only going to make the problem worse

A puzzling goal to start with, that's… not really how displays work?
No shade to the Decky developers, it seems neat, but not something I find I need
According to the internet, the Deck's display only covers 68% of sRGB, which is somewhat low for a high-end modern device, but gamut is fundamentally not the only factor here in whether the display "looks good"

#steam deck #VibrantDeck #sRGB #Display P3 #displays #reddit #reddit moment #reddit opinions

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in reply to @ticky's post:

jae @jkap3/1/2023, 5:20 AM

yeah i mean like i think the color reproduction on the steam deck display is Not Good but that's mostly just because it's only 68% sRGB. More Saturation can't fix that!!! weird that this is the Accepted Solution

Ddddddd @deiskos3/1/2023, 9:02 AM

68% sRGB, the horror, I once bought a laptop with 70% sRGB display and using it felt so horrible that I ended up buying a replacement display and tearing the whole laptop apart to replace it

Birdout: Paradise @SomeEgrets3/1/2023, 5:26 AM

I wonder if there's some overlap here between people who grew up during The Bloom Era™ and being handed a plugin that makes everything look like bloom that's entirely circumstantial

(you could do this on any other platform with colour corrections, but most people don't dig into those menus, this is the platform they were handed a solution on)

or maybe im overthinking it

Nire Bryce @NireBryce3/1/2023, 5:51 AM

i will not miss the Age of Blindingly Reflective Concrete

Nire Bryce @NireBryce3/1/2023, 5:50 AM

I wonder how much of this is that OLED screens also look washed out to me.

also I have a feeling the boosted vibrancy probably makes it easier to play in daylight

christine @love3/1/2023, 3:03 PM

Yeah, it feels like it comes from understanding that the problem with the Steam Deck's display is that the colours aren't nearly vibrant enough (correct!) but not realizing that you can't solve it by increasing saturation because those colours are simply not in the gamut. I think what they're seeing is that the full screen, if taken on average, is now at the level of vibrancy they'd expect... but clearly as you say all the details are wrong.

Anyway this shit drives me insane because the colour of pink that the entire visual vocabulary of GITCL was built around is WAY out of gamut. Entire UI elements taking up most of the screen are just flat pink! It feels like a special hell just for me!!