- DXVK 2.1 is released with a big new feature, HDR and HDR10 color space support for games, for improved visual depth.
- While the initial HDR support comes with DXVK 2.1, it still requires a couple of additional software to successfully run the games in HDR mode.
- This release also brings some improvements in shader compilation and brings a forcing option for sample rate shading on D3D9 and D3D11.
Running Windows applications on Linux is actually a hard thing to achieve and running 3D applications is even harder. But thanks to the tools that are constantly being developed, we can even run complicated 3D games made for Windows in Linux. Running Windows games in Linux is possible with Proton, which is based on Wine, that utilizes DXVK DirectX – Vulkan translation layer. And now, the developers of DXVK introduces version 2.1.
A little tricky HDR support
DXVK 2.1 comes with a very important new feature, HDR support. Most of the new games offer an option to activate HDR for improved color depth and brightness difference on HDR-supported monitors. However, this feature is not fully embraced by the Linux community yet because it is currently not fully available in Linux. Meanwhile, a Valve developer teased HDR support on Linux games earlier this month.
In DXVK 2.1, HDR can be enabled by using the DXVK_HDR=1 variable or setting the option dxgi.enableHDR = True in the configuration file. By doing this and using vkd3d-proton 2.8 and a newer version, you can run D3D12 games in HDR10 mode. However, you can only use this option by utilizing Gamescope with the hdr-enabled option, which is currently only supported on AMD GPUs and requires josh-hdr-colorimetry kernel patches. Running HDR games on Linux is still a bit tricky as you can see, but it will be better in the future.
Other improvements
Additionally, DXVK 2.1 delivers some shader compilation improvements to reduce stutters and brings forcing options for sample rate shading features for older D3D9 and D3D11 games. You can use the following options to force sample rate shading:
d3d9.forceSampleRateShadingd3d11.forceSampleRateShadingThere are also several bug fixes and minor improvements as well as some fixes for specific games, which can all be seen in the official announcement of the DXVK 2.1 release.
You can now download and compile DXVK 2.1 for your system by visiting its GitHub page. You can also wait for DXVK 2.1 to land on your Linux distribution’s repositories for a smoother installation process.