Sway 1.5-RC1 Wayland Compositor Brings VRR / Adaptive-Sync, New Protocol Support

[Zeioth]

Do someone have the instructions/hints to make work sway with nvidia? I'd like to give it a shot.

[Tsih]

Does this VRR work in multi monitor environments? in particular when one monitor doesn't do GSYNC. That was the BIG issue with X11 for me, couldn't use GSYNC when second monitor was connected even if the application wasn't running fullscreen on that second monitor, it just disables gsync all together.

The other issue was this VRR/Gsync function flickered on my freesync1 monitor whereas that flicker did not exist under windows..

VRR does work with multiple monitors on AMD, I've got 4k 60Hz and 1440p 144Hz monitors with VRR enabled. However I don't think nouveau supports G-sync and Sway doesn't work with the proprietary driver.

[lucrus]

Do someone have the instructions/hints to make work sway with nvidia? I'd like to give it a shot.

From https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/490, last comment:

There are overwhelming technical and non-technical arguments as to why we are not going to support it [nvidia]. Face it, we are never going to support them. There is absolutely no point bringing it up; you are not going to change our minds.

The only possible hint is to use the nouveau driver, assuming it supports your nvidia card enough to run sway.

[Khrundel]

There wasn't one way to do it, so either they all agree how to do it in consistent manner, or it will be over all the place in each implementation.

Do they really need anything to agree about?
Wayland display server stores a number of buffers, one for each surface, and at some moment it composes a screen buffer from them and send it to the video driver. Also there are clients which may send to display server commands to replace a buffer of this surface. Without VRR support DS may wait for a vsync, then check if there were changes and compose a new screenbuffer.
To implement VRR support DS should just start a composition right after an application have updated it's surface. But, if there are more than one surfaces, this may lead to too frequent updates. So, compositor should decide which surfaces updates it should respect and which may wait until next occasion. This may be done by some protocol extension... But there will be many stupid programmers whose will activate this just to make animations smoother. So, perhaps it is better to use some simple heuristic, like attach VRR composition to a focused window or activate it for fullscreen apps only.

[Guest]

Do they really need anything to agree about?
Wayland display server stores a number of buffers, one for each surface, and at some moment it composes a screen buffer from them and send it to the video driver. Also there are clients which may send to display server commands to replace a buffer of this surface. Without VRR support DS may wait for a vsync, then check if there were changes and compose a new screenbuffer.
To implement VRR support DS should just start a composition right after an application have updated it's surface. But, if there are more than one surfaces, this may lead to too frequent updates. So, compositor should decide which surfaces updates it should respect and which may wait until next occasion. This may be done by some protocol extension... But there will be many stupid programmers whose will activate this just to make animations smoother. So, perhaps it is better to use some simple heuristic, like attach VRR composition to a focused window or activate it for fullscreen apps only.

That makes perfect sense for composition of multiple windows. But, don't games need some more assistance with freesync, than just (not) waiting for vsync?

[starshipeleven]

shmerl There’s not much to agree about.

Besides the fact that GNOME is better

[theriddick]

VRR does work with multiple monitors on AMD, I've got 4k 60Hz and 1440p 144Hz monitors with VRR enabled. However I don't think nouveau supports G-sync and Sway doesn't work with the proprietary driver.

Yes but possibly both your monitors support VRR which is why it works? I have a 4k 60hz with VRR and one 1080p portrait monitor which does not have VRR.

[Khrundel]

That makes perfect sense for composition of multiple windows. But, don't games need some more assistance with freesync, than just (not) waiting for vsync?

Can't imagine any such assistance. Game have rendered a new frame and wants to show it asap. Maybe game can benefit from knowing monitors VRR frame time range to add a FPS cap?

[Tsih]

Yes but possibly both your monitors support VRR which is why it works? I have a 4k 60hz with VRR and one 1080p portrait monitor which does not have VRR.

VRR works on Sway even if you have non-VRR display attached. Well, at least I don't have any problems and there are no bug reports on Github about it.

[reba]

I'd make a wish for Plasma on wlroots... :sigh: