Black levels issue on Quest 1 OLED display

[fakedeltatime]

Description

The colors, especially black, on the Oculus Quest 1 seem to be somewhat off, with the biggest issue being that black is gray. This happens in game environments, as well as when the stream is not enabled but the streamer is connected (when having the black screen issue for example).

General Troubleshooting

• [x] I carefully followed the instructions in the README and successfully completed the setup wizard
• [x] I read the ALVR GitHub Wiki

Environment

Hardware

hw-probe

Installation

ALVR Version: 20.6.1

ALVR Settings File:?

SteamVR Version: 2.7.4

Install Type:

• [x] Packaged (exe, deb, rpm, etc)
• [ ] Portable (zip)
• [ ] Source

OS Name and Version: (Linux) NixOS 23.11 (Tapir)

[The-personified-devil]

Alvr has color settings, you might want to adjust those

[fakedeltatime]

Alvr has color settings, you might want to adjust those

I forgot to mention in the original post that I did give the color correction settings a try, but to no avail.

Even setting brightness to minimum, which also resulted in a (visually) completely black display, rendered a shade of gray in the headset. The ALVR native blank environment with connection instructions has properly black elements.

[The-personified-devil]

rendered a shade of gray in the headset

That's probably on the display then, it can't properly present black

The ALVR native blank environment with connection instructions has properly black elements

Could you explain this further

[fakedeltatime]

That's probably on the display then, it can't properly present black

No, the display can present black properly (with clearly turned off pixels), since it is OLED, as it does in standalone content (such as the ALVR headset client)

Could you explain this further

I mean that the dark grid environment that the headset client of ALVR opens has perfect blacks, where as the stream does not. Going from the native black levels to the non-black blacks of the streamed content is jarring.

[CactusBoy3]

Can confirm I have the same issue. Running KDE neon, in Half Life Alyx, around chapter 3 ish where it is dark, it looks like I am using an LCD headset. Very grey rather than black.

[urataakumu]

I was thinking that there was a problem since I went from ALVR 20.10.0 -> 20.11.1, the colors appear lighter, my impression in games is as if I launched Discord in light theme...

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue is stale because it has been open 30 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 5 days.

[jadealchemy]

Is it possible to reopen this given it is still an issue. Ubuntu 25.10 AMD RX 9060 XT 16GB ALVR 20.14.1

Also tested with ALVR 20.10.0 and v21.0.0-dev12+nightly.2025.12.10 without any change. Adjusting post process does not help me.

[jadealchemy]

Continuing to mess with this I found that disabling "Full range color" and enabling "Override for full range color" fixes the issue.

If your like me and found this issue on google. The buttons are under Settings, Video, expand "Encoder config".

[jadealchemy]

My assumption is that the encoder is not honouring the full range colour setting but the headset still clamps the range as if it was receiving a full range stream. Testing with a Quest 2 seems to confirm this is not a Quest 1 exclusive issue.