WayfireWM
Flickering at 4k 144hz
Describe the bug
When running a monitor at 4k 144hz I get very regular flickering.
Video: https://youtu.be/mR3Ku8zlq1o
This doesn't happen at 60hz.
I also tried Sway, it doesn't happen there so I don't believe it's a wlroots or wayland issue, but specific to Wayfire.
I've tried disabling/enabling adaptive sync (wayfire itself doesn't appear to have an option for this but enabling it the monitor config seems to work)
Wayfire version
0.7.4-0c3621c
It looks like Sway had a similar issue in the past: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/5076 I wonder if Wayfire needs to implement the same fix?
As noted in https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/issues/1397 this is fixed with WLR_DRM_NO_MODIFIERS=1 I'm not entirely sure what that does but it definitely makes the desktop environment feel less snappy. Less annoying than the flicker though.
interesting. Thanks! I assume that's in milliseconds? Setting it to 1 fixes it, setting it to 7 (roughly 1000/144), 1000 or -1 the flicker still exists. So it appears that (again assuming it's in milliseconds) a max_render_time lower than the time it takes the display to draw one frame fixes it.
So I'd expect 6 to fix it, it makes it a lot less frequent but still get the occasional flicker.
Does this imply it's dropping some frames then? It doesn't seem to cause a noticeable stutter, even on 0 or 1.
From the description I'd expected that lower values would cause the problem rather than resolve it. I'm curious why 0 doesn't break everything entirely or does Wayfire sensibly just use 1 if it's set to 0?
interesting. Thanks! I assume that's in milliseconds? Setting it to 1 fixes it, setting it to 7 (roughly 1000/144), 1000 or -1 the flicker still exists. So it appears that (again assuming it's in milliseconds) a
max_render_timelower than the time it takes the display to draw one frame fixes it.So I'd expect 6 to fix it, it makes it a lot less frequent but still get the occasional flicker.
Does this imply it's dropping some frames then? It doesn't seem to cause a noticeable stutter, even on 0 or 1.
From the description I'd expected that lower values would cause the problem rather than resolve it. I'm curious why
0doesn't break everything entirely or does Wayfire sensibly just use 1 if it's set to 0?
If the option is too low, you may get more latency, that's all.
I was having the same issue, tweaking max_render_time solved it, cheers. I have a 165hz monitor, running at 145hz (but same with 165hz), because there is an issue where running it at 165 causes issues where the video card runs at 100%.
With sway, you can do a neat trick where you can set the global max_render_time, and a per window max_render_time. So you can have a lower one for things like your GPU accelerated terminal :rocket:, and one for your browser where it's fine to have a slightly higher.
I had mine set to 6 with sway, my browser to 4, and my terminal to 1.
Maybe a feature request for a window rule would be worth looking into?
