[BUG] Fullscreen games not displaying properly on asymmetrical multi-monitor setup

[KLARI]

...How do I even begin to describe this in words--uh, here, I think it would be best if I share an image to accompany this issue:

https://pasteboard.co/m0JD2rquQ02s.png

I have two monitors: My primary one, which is 1920x1080 @ 165Hz, and my secondary one, which is rotated to the right 90 degrees and only runs @ 60Hz. In order to actually use both of my monitors on GNOME under X.Org, both monitors need to be part of a virtual display.
However, when I try to launch ANY game on Steam, it first tries to launch fullscreen to the ENTIRE virtual display, and then gets downscaled to the primary display. When I try to move my mouse to select menu icons on the game (in this case, Portal 2), the game thinks my mouse is somewhere else on the screen and only highlights the buttons where the game thinks my mouse is. I just now remedied this by using a borderless window, but now the borderless window is centered in the middle of the virtual display containing my two monitors.

This is a problem on EVERY GAME I launch through Steam, and I only started having this problem very recently, after (foolishly) trying to update my graphics drivers (thank you, NVIDIA, for blessing me with these problems, we all love you <3)

If it wasn't obvious from the screenshot, this is Pop!_OS 22.04, GNOME 42.5 under X.Org.
Here's my xorg.conf should it be of importance:
https://pastebin.com/Q37m1K1D

[meheezen]

well, i remember this issue with X back in 2014-ish
the workaround for me was forcing the game to run in a resolution that would fit both screens or to run in a single screen (again by forcing the resolution)

did you try xwayland?

i dont think there will ever be a fix since development on X has kind of stagnated or so i hear

[N1GH7KN1GH7]

Hi dude , try using a TWM ! Its gonna be easy !

[KLARI]

Originally posted by meheezen:

well, i remember this issue with X back in 2014-ish
the workaround for me was forcing the game to run in a resolution that would fit both screens or to run in a single screen (again by forcing the resolution)

did you try xwayland?

i dont think there will ever be a fix since development on X has kind of stagnated or so i hear

Well, that's the problem.
See that transparent part of the screenshot?
There actually isn't any desktop there. At all.
My monitor setup is physically L-shaped:

                 ________
                |        |
 ______________ |        |
|              ||  DP-0  |
|    HDMI-0    ||        |
|______________||________|

There is no physical monitor space covering that part of the virtual display.
I cannot change my setup over to Wayland until Nvidia fixes these[forums.developer.nvidia.com] issues[download.nvidia.com], and until Discord and/or Wayland devs fixes this[support.discord.com] issue[blog.davidedmundson.co.uk].

Originally posted by NightKnight:

Hi dude , try using a TWM ! Its gonna be easy !

I can't change my DE from GNOME on Pop!_OS, as that defeats the entire point of using Pop!_OS. All of Pop's goodies and customizations are built exclusively for GNOME, until the new Rust-based COSMIC desktop is finally released.

[meheezen]

you said you "remediated" the issue by running it in windowed mode, but the window became centered across the virtual display
have you tried playing with wmctrl? (not sure that is included in your setup)
you can use that to figure out the X and Y position that would make the window fit in a single display, assuming that is what you want

(there used to be launch options you could set to have the game start with those X and Y window positions, might be worth investigating)

does ALT+F7 allow you to move the window? (so you can move it to fir your primary/landscape display)

there might be other solutions, but it has been a while since a had a multi-monitor setup

[ripper81]

Originally posted by KLARI:

Originally posted by meheezen:

well, i remember this issue with X back in 2014-ish
the workaround for me was forcing the game to run in a resolution that would fit both screens or to run in a single screen (again by forcing the resolution)

did you try xwayland?

i dont think there will ever be a fix since development on X has kind of stagnated or so i hear

Well, that's the problem.
See that transparent part of the screenshot?
There actually isn't any desktop there. At all.
My monitor setup is physically L-shaped:

                 ________
                |        |
 ______________ |        |
|              ||  DP-0  |
|    HDMI-0    ||        |
|______________||________|

There is no physical monitor space covering that part of the virtual display.
I cannot change my setup over to Wayland until Nvidia fixes these[forums.developer.nvidia.com] issues[download.nvidia.com], and until Discord and/or Wayland devs fixes this[support.discord.com] issue[blog.davidedmundson.co.uk].

Originally posted by NightKnight:

Hi dude , try using a TWM ! Its gonna be easy !

I can't change my DE from GNOME on Pop!_OS, as that defeats the entire point of using Pop!_OS. All of Pop's goodies and customizations are built exclusively for GNOME, until the new Rust-based COSMIC desktop is finally released.

Which of the problems listed in the nvidia forum is keeping you from switching to Wayland? The xWaylandvideobridge should work on GNOME as well.

Personaly i would recommend to use a distro which comes with the latest stable GNOME Release available. Multidisplay setups are difficult in linux especially when the screens use different resolutions and/or refreshrates. There might be some hacky workarounds for X11, but Wayland will most likely be the only way to get this setup running in good way.

[KLARI]

Originally posted by ripper81:

Which of the problems listed in the nvidia forum is keeping you from switching to Wayland?

All of these limitations prevent me from switching to Wayland right now:

NVIDIA DRIVER LIMITATIONS

• The VDPAU library, used for hardware accelerated video decoding and presentation, does not have native Wayland support and does not work with Xwayland.
  
• The NvFBC desktop capture library does not have native Wayland support and does not work with Xwayland.
  
• Variable display refresh rate capabilities such as G-Sync are not reported by nvidia-drm module, therefore this functionality is not available on Wayland.
  
• Virtual reality displays, such as the SteamVR platform, require support for DRM display leasing which does not currently work.
  
• The nvidia-settings configuration tool has limited functionality on Wayland.

WAYLAND PROTOCOL OR COMPOSITOR LIMITATIONS

• There is no established public API through which Wayland compositors can power off video memory via RTD3.
  
• Xwayland does not provide a suitable mechanism for our driver to synchronize application rendering with presentation, which can cause visual corruption in some circumstances.
  
• Indirect GLX does not work with Xwayland because the Glamor rendering engine is not compatible with our EGL implementation.
  
• Hardware overlays cannot be used by GLX applications with Xwayland.

Most importantly, I require the ability to use the NV-Control API to enable overclocking, or "Coolbits," on my Nvidia graphics card. For me, this is currently impossible on Wayland. If you have any information to prove me otherwise, you're more than welcome to share.

Although, to be fair, a lot of these issues aren't intrinsically related to issues pertaining to multiple monitors with asynchronous refresh rates, it specifically doesn't yet work for my setup.

Originally posted by ripper81:

The xWaylandvideobridge should work on GNOME as well.

On GNOME 42.5, GNOME 43, and by extension the entirety of Pop!_OS 22.04, no it doesn't[imgur.com], at least not yet.

To circle back on what I was trying to get answers for, my setup used to work just fine. I tried exactly once to upgrade from nvidia-driver-525 to nvidia-driver-530 to see if the new driver would, I dunno, fix some of these issues I was having. Turns out that was a mistake, and I had to boot into the recovery partition to refresh my installation (without touching /home), and basically had to start all over again from square one. I realize now I cannot move off nvidia-driver-525 for the forseeable future if I want a usable workstation.

[N1GH7KN1GH7]

why do you want to use wayland ? Wayland is giving you more latency and maybe 10 bit color if ur monitor is "supported"

[ripper81]

Originally posted by NightKnight:

why do you want to use wayland ? Wayland is giving you more latency and maybe 10 bit color if ur monitor is "supported"

Because Wayland has better support for multidisplay setups with displays using different resolutions and refreshrates. Latency is not a big problem on my end. Frametiming in games is lower on my system when compared to X11.

[N1GH7KN1GH7]

Originally posted by ripper81:

Originally posted by NightKnight:

why do you want to use wayland ? Wayland is giving you more latency and maybe 10 bit color if ur monitor is "supported"

Because Wayland has better support for multidisplay setups with displays using different resolutions and refreshrates. Latency is not a big problem on my end. Frametiming in games is lower on my system when compared to X11.

Listen dude , whatever they say about wayland : I can say its its not READY! try xmonad or you can actually try :Hyperland or Sway - these boths are TWM with wayland enabled by default. You can copy hyperland config and scripts from the github repos they are safe. However you gonna have to put real effort on making a custom config for all of your monitors. (like shell script setting res and refresh for each monitor) but when u ready u are good to go.

[ᴿ ᵁ ᴬ ᴺ ᴵ ᵀ ᴼ]

Originally posted by KLARI:

...How do I even begin to describe this in words--uh, here, I think it would be best if I share an image to accompany this issue:

https://pasteboard.co/m0JD2rquQ02s.png

I have two monitors: My primary one, which is 1920x1080 @ 165Hz, and my secondary one, which is rotated to the right 90 degrees and only runs @ 60Hz. In order to actually use both of my monitors on GNOME under X.Org, both monitors need to be part of a virtual display.
However, when I try to launch ANY game on Steam, it first tries to launch fullscreen to the ENTIRE virtual display, and then gets downscaled to the primary display. When I try to move my mouse to select menu icons on the game (in this case, Portal 2), the game thinks my mouse is somewhere else on the screen and only highlights the buttons where the game thinks my mouse is. I just now remedied this by using a borderless window, but now the borderless window is centered in the middle of the virtual display containing my two monitors.

This is a problem on EVERY GAME I launch through Steam, and I only started having this problem very recently, after (foolishly) trying to update my graphics drivers (thank you, NVIDIA, for blessing me with these problems, we all love you <3)

If it wasn't obvious from the screenshot, this is Pop!_OS 22.04, GNOME 42.5 under X.Org.
Here's my xorg.conf should it be of importance:
https://pastebin.com/Q37m1K1D

My God

[KLARI]

Originally posted by NightKnight:

Originally posted by ripper81:

Because Wayland has better support for multidisplay setups with displays using different resolutions and refreshrates. Latency is not a big problem on my end. Frametiming in games is lower on my system when compared to X11.

Listen dude , whatever they say about wayland : I can say its its not READY! try xmonad or you can actually try :Hyperland or Sway - these boths are TWM with wayland enabled by default. You can copy hyperland config and scripts from the github repos they are safe. However you gonna have to put real effort on making a custom config for all of your monitors. (like shell script setting res and refresh for each monitor) but when u ready u are good to go.

Well they better start making it ready.[access.redhat.com] (RHEL Deprecation Notice)
Aren't the Wayland devs the same people who worked on X.org anyway?

[Zyro]

Originally posted by KLARI:

Well they better start making it ready.[access.redhat.com] (RHEL Deprecation Notice)
Aren't the Wayland devs the same people who worked on X.org anyway?

I read X is hardly maintained and Wayland not ready... :-/
Well, I'm fine on X for now.

[meheezen]

well, RHEL is supported for 10y, so if X is still included in RHEL9 it will be there till 2031