I have the same issue as described, but only when one of my monitors is turned off through nvidia-settings or xrandr --ouput $MONITOR --off. If I'm using both monitors, streaming works without flickering. This occurs with multiple window managers - at least i3wm and xfwm4.
Nvidia 570, proprietary driver, same as @zerodogg where it only occurs on big picture mode in the stream and also when the steam overlay is shown within a game (again, only on the stream).
Ok here is my work arround but valve and nvidia should fix this to work out of the box!
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Add this option to the Section "Screen" under DefaultDepth 24 :
Option "metamodes" "CONNECTOR: nvidia-auto-select +X+Y { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"
Example: (this is my configuration i have 2 displays, edit it where needed)
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "Stereo" "0"
Option "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
Option "metamodes" "DVI-I-1: 1920x1080_60 +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }, HDMI-0: 1920x1080_60 +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"
Option "SLI" "Off"
Option "MultiGPU" "Off"
Option "BaseMosaic" "off"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
3.Save and reboot! that is it enjoy your steam link!
This did not work for me. I had to disable my second monitor in my xorg.conf and then enable it through xrandr on login. After this, disabling the second monitor and connecting with the steam link in full screen does not cause flickering. Perhaps my issue is due to the mismatch between the running monitor config and the xorg.conf
I have the same problem as alexmaras, the problem only appears when I am running steam big picture with one of my monitors turned off via xrandr. If I leave both of them on the flickering goes away. Im on 16.10, and oddly enough my xorg.conf file is empty. I'll have to try the generate method mentioned above.
This is issue is still present.
Up until now, my Steam Link was only usable with ForceCompositionPipeline enabled in the nvidia-settings options. When it is not enabled, I would experience the flickering described above in BPM and in games. Additionally, without ForceCompositionPipeline, I also experience low frame rate in video playback (e.g VLC, YouTube in Chrome).
With the new nvidia-390 drivers, enabling ForceCompositionPipeline no longer fixes this issue, rendering the home streaming functionality unusable for nvidia users.
Ubuntu 17.10 with nvidia GTX 660 and driver version 390.25 installed from the nvidia graphics ppa. Steam Linux beta version January 25th 2018. The client is a Steam Link.
When the bug will be fixed? It's very annoying to use steam link. Workaround with ForceFullCompositionPipeline does not working with new nvidia drivers.
same problem here on my win 10 machine using steamlink. not on all games. where is the fix, valve?
newest beta on client and host.
Ubuntu 18.04 only has nvidia 390.48 in its repositories. As mentioned above, ForceCompositionPipeline no longer seems to solve this issue starting 390. This means Steam Link is no longer usable for nvidia users under Ubuntu 18.04.
I have the same issue, 390.48 with ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On and get frequent black flickering. This is not seen in-game or during streaming of the desktop, only during BPM and most notable when video is playing, like a broadcast or store video.
@noammor: I wouldn't say that this issue renders steam link unusable for nvidia users on Linux as it does not happen in-game, at least not for me, but I am using Fedora.
@Plagman: This issue started a few nvidia releases ago 390.12 I think, which coincides with a regression fixed in the nvidia drivers 390.42 and 390.48 but the flickering still occurs, so it could be a compatibility issue with Steam now instead of an nvidia driver issue or both.
I confirm @noammor statement. ForceCompositionPipeline is not fixing the issue in Ubuntu 18.04 and GeForce GTX 1060 using the proprietary drivers.
+1 bumped
I also have constant flickering when streaming the Steam UI, but not in games.
GPU GeForce GTX 750 Ti, resolution [email protected].
Debian Stretch, with nvidia-driver installed from stretch-backports, version 390.67-2~bpo9+1. Kernel 4.9.0-7-amd64.
ForceCompositionPipeline does not fix the issue.
However, running this seems to fix the flicker:
$ xrandr --output HDMI-1 --scale 1x1 --mode 1920x1080
Obviously this is a workaround, and the real issue with Steam UI should be fixed.
Currently:
Latest beta client, latest nvidia drivers, Ubuntu 18.04.
Same here. Linux Mint 19 (based on Ubuntu 18.04) with Nvidia gtx 650 ti. Driver version 390.77. Latest Steam beta and stable. However, I did see flickering in some games. Not all games, though.
Something interesting to note. If I change from nvidia hardware encoding to software encoding, the flickering frequency changes. Instead of a series of quick flashes every x seconds, I get a consistent single flash about every second or so. I haven't tried with quicksync, because I don't know how to get it set up in Linux and never got it working with in-home streaming in Windows.
I tried the workaround described by @playeronlinux and console had this output warning: output HDMI-1 not found; ignoring. I tried the in-home streaming and the flickering was still there. So I tried the command again except changing hdmi-1 to the monitor connected to the pc xrandr --output DVI-D-0 --scale 1x1 --mode 1920x1080 and tried in-home streaming again and there was still flickering.
I don't think this issue is limited to nvidea as i have an amd Vega 64 and still have flickering on arch Linux GNOME. I also have to use GNOME on xorg because on Wayland the screen is scrambled and i can't do anything.
I have found sort of a workaround - the following combination of settings and software results in Netflix and YouTube playing smoothly over Steam Link:
I'm on Linux Mint using Cinnamon, and I don't know what the equivalent of "Compositor settings" would be.
Edit: After a little research, it seems as though Cinnamon is basically built upon the Compositor, and it is impossible to turn off. If I want to try turning the compositor off, I will have to use a different Desktop Environment
Ok, I've done some testing with Mate and XFCE on Linux Mint 19. Besides the flickering, I also experience a sort of jittery playback of video. Kind of like stuttering or frames are dropping but no frames are dropping. Here are the results:
Linux Mint 19
Cinnamon: Flashing and Jittering
Mate: No Flashing and No Jittering
XFCE: No Flashing and Jittering(No Jittering with compositor turned off)
Mate worked flawlessly, but when I tried XFCE, even though there was no flashing, I still saw the jittering. I found Compositor settings in "Window Manager Tweaks" and after unchecking "Enable display compositing", the jittering went away
ForceFullCompositionPipeline is set to on, thought I haven't tested it set to off to see if it makes any difference.
Edit: Nvidia driver version 390.77 Steam Build Nov 10 2018
In nvidia opengl settings uncheck Allow Flipping and the fluckering should
disapear, on other video cards dont know if it has that option let me know
if it does.
On Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 11:36 AM Stewart Martin [email protected]
wrote:
Ok, I've done some testing with Mate and XFCE on Linux Mint 19. Besides
the flickering, I also experience a sort of jittery playback of video. Kind
of like stuttering or frames are dropping but no frames are dropping. Here
are the results:Linux Mint 19
Cinnamon: Flashing and Jittering
Mate: No Flashing and No Jittering
XFCE: No Flashing and Jittering(No Jittering with compositor turned off)Mate worked flawlessly, but when I tried XFCE, even though there was no
flashing, I still saw the jittering. I found Compositor settings in "Window
Manager Tweaks" and after unchecking "Enable display compositing", the
jittering went awayForceFullCompositionPipeline is set to on, thought I haven't tested it set
to off to see if it makes any difference.—
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@blastermaster77 thanks! I have tested and can cofirm that turning off Allow Flipping in the nvidia settings seems to have stopped both the flickering and the jittery video on both cinnamon and xfce with compositor enabled.
Nice to be of some help! Cheers!
On Sat, Nov 17, 2018, 6:31 PM Stewart Martin [email protected]
wrote:
@blastermaster77 https://github.com/blastermaster77 thanks! I have
tested and can cofirm that turning off Allow Flipping in the nvidia
settings seems to have stopped both the flickering and the jittery video on
both cinnamon and xfce with compositor enabled.—
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Quick testing indicates disabling AllowFlipping seems to fix this on kernel 4.9.0-8-amd64 and nvidia-driver 390.87-2~bpo9+1. Props to @blastermaster77!
nvidia-settings has a command line interface as well. The following commands can be used to query and assign AllowFlipping:
$ nvidia-settings --query AllowFlipping
Attribute 'AllowFlipping' (host:0.0): 1.
'AllowFlipping' is a boolean attribute; valid values are: 1 (on/true) and 0 (off/false).
'AllowFlipping' can use the following target types: X Screen.
$ nvidia-settings --assign="AllowFlipping=0"
Attribute 'AllowFlipping' (host:0.0) assigned value 0.
@kisak-valve please take note. If nvidia-settings is in PATH, Steam could automatically set AllowFlipping=0 when entering big picture mode, and restore it to previous value when leaving it.
This should be reported to NVIDIA as well. Anyone have contacts? Does Valve work with NVIDIA to fix driver issues with Steam?
Unchecking Allow Flipping solves the issues in Gnome as well.
@playeronlinux I typically watch netflix with big picture mode set to off, because I think it may use less resources. I'm still streaming though, and there would still be flickering if AllowFlipping was set to on.
@fragmental I don't know whether Netflix streaming would flicker for me, but games don't. Do you have flickering in games too, or just in Steam UI and Netflix?
@playeronlinux With AllowFlipping set to off I don't get flickering anywhere at any time. I was referring to what you said in a previous comment:
If nvidia-settings is in PATH, Steam could automatically set AllowFlipping=0 when entering big picture mode, and restore it to previous value when leaving it.
If Steam automatically turned AllowFlipping back to on, when leaving big picture mode that would cause me problems when watching netflix.
With AllowFlipping on, I didn't see flickering in most games, but I did see it in some games. I don't remember which games I saw flickering in. I would have to test them out again to be more specific. I assume I still see flickering when the game is in window or fullscreen window mode. Or maybe it has to do with the way the game displays itself.
Edit: I tested 7 games. BattleBlock Theater, Before the Echo, Brutal legend, Castle Crashers, Droid Assault, Hyper Light Drifter, and Mark of the Ninja. Of those games, Castle Crashers and Droid Assault had some flashing that was infrequent, but it was there. Castle Crashers isn't native, it was running through Proton and Droid Assault was having some issues with fullscreen.
hi, i was struggling with this too. AllowFlipping=0 did the trick for me as well.
It also fixed the black screen issue i had when using steam link.
Arch Linux Linux 5.0.1
Nvidia 418.43
Thanks a lot!
Same issue here even without AllowFlipping turned on, but with gsync enabled on my primary display. Setting both to 0 fixed it.
I made this script, that prevents Big Picture to blink when using steam link, and allows OpenGL native games like Rise of Tomb Raider to work properly with Remote Play. It disables OpenGL flipping when steam_monitor process is detected.
Put that in for instance /home/user/bin/teststeammonitor script:
#!/bin/bash
CMD=/usr/bin/nvidia-settings
SLEEP_INTERVAL=30
while true; do
if pgrep -x "steam_monitor"; then
new_flipping=off
else
new_flipping=on
fi
if [ "$new_flipping" != "$old_flipping" ]; then
old_flipping="$new_flipping"
if [ "$new_flipping" == "on" ]; then
$CMD --assign="AllowFlipping=1"
else
$CMD --assign="AllowFlipping=0"
fi
fi
sleep $SLEEP_INTERVAL
done
Then
chmod +x /home/user/bin/teststeammonitor
Then link the script to startup scripts of your session, for instance with Plasma Shell, you can use:
kcmshell5 autostart
This could be done by steam_monitor directly...
I made this script, that prevents Big Picture to blink when using steam link, and allows OpenGL native games like Rise of Tomb Raider to work properly with Remote Play. It disables OpenGL flipping when steam_monitor process is detected.
Put that in for instance /home/user/bin/teststeammonitor script:
#!/bin/bash CMD=/usr/bin/nvidia-settings SLEEP_INTERVAL=30 while true; do if pgrep -x "steam_monitor"; then new_flipping=off else new_flipping=on fi if [ "$new_flipping" != "$old_flipping" ]; then old_flipping="$new_flipping" if [ "$new_flipping" == "on" ]; then $CMD --assign="AllowFlipping=1" else $CMD --assign="AllowFlipping=0" fi fi sleep $SLEEP_INTERVAL doneThen
chmod +x /home/user/bin/teststeammonitorThen link the script to startup scripts of your session, for instance with Plasma Shell, you can use:
kcmshell5 autostartThis could be done by steam_monitor directly...
nice will try it!
This should be fixed with the 450.57 drivers. The AllowFlipping=0 workaround should no longer be required.
This should be fixed with the 450.57 drivers. The AllowFlipping=0 workaround should no longer be required.
I'm running 450.57 on Ubuntu 20.04 and I still get the flicker without AllowFlipping=0, so I can't confirm driver 450.57 fixes this problem.
As far as I can see, with the 450.57 and Allow Flipping=1, the only flicker I can see is in the Steam Bic Picture interface. Videos play nicely in Chrome and games work well. This is on Ubuntu 19.10.
I haven't tested it, but it probably means that on-screen interfaces in games and the Overlay also flicker, so it's not as harmless as it sounds...
I'm using NVIDIA Driver Version 455.28 and Steam Big Picture is still flickering. Games are not flickering, but the overall quality is not as good as on Windows because sometimes the game resolution is lost and/or Steam Overlay loses a lot of image quality.
Steam -> Help -> system information
Processor Information:
CPU Vendor: GenuineIntel
CPU Brand: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz
CPU Family: 0x6
CPU Model: 0x9e
[...]
Operating System Version:
Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid (64 bit)
Kernel Name: Linux
Kernel Version: 5.9.0-1-amd64
X Server Vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Server Release: 12008000
X Window Manager: GNOME Shell
Steam Runtime Version: steam-runtime_0.20201104.0
Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 1650/PCIe/SSE2
Driver Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 455.28
OpenGL Version: 4.6
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 74 Hz
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x1f82
Revision Not Detected
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
Primary Display Resolution: 2560 x 1080
Desktop Resolution: 2560 x 1080
Primary Display Size: 26.65" x 11.42" (28.98" diag)
67.7cm x 29.0cm (73.6cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 4096 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x 16x
Debian 10 (buster), kernel 4.19.0-12-amd64, nvidia-driver 418.152.00-1, Cinnamon. Flickering is still present.
And nvidia-settings --assign="AllowFlipping=0" still fixes it.
@kisak-valve, any chance of getting this fixed?
To celebrate my last comment's anniversary tomorrow, here are the current specs that reproduce the issue:
Debian 11 (bullseye), kernel 5.10.0-9-amd64, nvidia-driver 460.91.03-1, Cinnamon. Flickering is still present. And the workaround still works.
I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the other comments, but when the flickering happens, the desktop behind the full screen big picture mode is seen. Video in issue #6879 seems similar, although in my case the whole desktop is visible, not only borders of it.
Having the same issue where dual monitor setup with one monitor disabled through xrandr causes flicker, fixed by disabling "Allow Flipping".
The script above however doesn't really work for me as steam_monitor is always running even after closing Big Picture. I've rewritten the script to only disable flipping if Big Picture's window is focused.
#!/bin/bash
CMD=/usr/bin/nvidia-settings
SLEEP_INTERVAL=10
while true; do
ACTIVE_WINDOW=$(xprop -root 32x '\t$0' _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW | cut -f 2)
WINDOW_CLASS=$(xprop -id $ACTIVE_WINDOW WM_CLASS | grep -oP 'WM_CLASS[^=]*=[^"]*"\K[^"]*(?=")')
WINDOW_NAME=$(xprop -id $ACTIVE_WINDOW WM_NAME | grep -oP 'WM_NAME[^=]*=[^"]*"\K[^"]*(?=")')
if [ "$WINDOW_CLASS" = "steam" ] && [ "$WINDOW_NAME" = "Steam" ]; then
new_flipping="off"
else
new_flipping="on"
fi
#echo "Window Class: '$WINDOW_CLASS', Name: '$WINDOW_NAME'. Flipping: $new_flipping"
if [ "$new_flipping" != "$old_flipping" ]; then
old_flipping="$new_flipping"
if [ "$new_flipping" == "on" ]; then
$CMD --assign="AllowFlipping=1"
else
$CMD --assign="AllowFlipping=0"
fi
fi
sleep $SLEEP_INTERVAL
done
On most linux distros you should be able to just put the above script in ~/.config/autostart and make it executable.
It still happens with kde neon in 2023
Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4351#issuecomment-989784548
Bless you
When I stream to my Steam Link the big picture interface flashes with regular intervals (roughly every 15 seconds). The interface turns darker for a split second, then lighter again, and does this for around a second. It does not occur when actually playing games. This flashing is limited to when it is streaming (and it occurs when the "screensaver" in BPM is active as well). The flashing is not visible on the host machine's screen, only on the streaming receiver. It happens both with and without hw-encoding enabled (tested by disabling hw-encoding, disconnecting on the steam link and then reconnecting). Neither of the "adjust resolution" or "prioritize network traffic" options affect it. Changing desktop resolution does not appear to affect it either (tried 1600x900 and 1280x720).
Here's a video of it happening (an mp4 inside a zipfile, so that github allows me to upload it):
SteamBPLinuxStreamFlash.zip. It's a phone video, and the camera isn't able to pick up on the speed of the flashing, but you do see that it does so.
The host is using a GeForce GTX 770, currently running the 361.28 Nvidia drivers. It's running Arch Linux, though according to others it also occurs on Ubuntu. I'm running the latest Steam Linux beta as of the 10th of march.
Here is the information from help -> system information:
steaminfo.txt
The bug is also noted on the forum, ie. http://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/451850849175845875/