Trying to prevent screen dimming due to inactivity. All settings are ignored.

Lounge
1

I am trying to record a long (ideally 30minutes) static scene in a game (Elder Scrolls Online), and by static I mean there is no user input, or mouse movement during this time.

I have adjusted the power settings accordingly

image

I even went as far as to enable caffeine to disable auto-suspending due to inactivity.

However all of this seems to be for nought as every time, after 5 minutes of recording, the screen dims to almost complete darknes (but not 100%). I get the same behaviour under both X and wayland.

The really strange thing is that this only seems to happen while running the game, which I am running under Steam with GE-Proton-9-5. Otherwise, I cand idle on the desktop for the longest time and the screen doesn’t dim. So I’m thinking that perhaps it’s the game that is ignoring all my settings.

Am I missing something? Is there anything you can think of that will make sure my screen won’t dim due to inactivity?

System specs, fwiw:

System:
  Kernel: 6.9.3-arch1-1 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 14.1.1
  Desktop: GNOME v: 46.2 Distro: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 82JM v: Legion 5 17ITH6H
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: LNVNB161216 v: NO DPK serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: LENOVO v: H1CN53WW date: 03/16/2023
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 45.1 Wh (56.0%) condition: 80.5/80.0 Wh (100.7%)
    volts: 15.2 min: 15.4 model: Celxpert L20C4PC2 status: not charging
CPU:
  Info: 8-core model: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-11800H bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Tiger Lake rev: 1 cache: L1: 640 KiB L2: 10 MiB L3: 24 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1350 high: 2295 min/max: 800/4600 cores: 1: 2033 2: 2295
    3: 1507 4: 1485 5: 957 6: 800 7: 2165 8: 1908 9: 1294 10: 1456 11: 800
    12: 800 13: 800 14: 800 15: 800 16: 1714 bogomips: 73744
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel TigerLake-H GT1 [UHD Graphics] vendor: Lenovo driver: i915
    v: kernel arch: Gen-12.1 bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: NVIDIA GA106M [GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile / Max-Q] vendor: Lenovo
    driver: nvidia v: 550.78 arch: Ampere bus-ID: 01:00.0
  Device-3: Syntek Integrated Camera driver: uvcvideo type: USB
    bus-ID: 3-6:3
  Display: x11 server: X.org v: 1.21.1.13 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.0 driver:
    X: loaded: modesetting,nvidia dri: iris gpu: i915
    resolution: 1920x1080~144Hz
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: iris,nvidia,swrast platforms:
    active: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: wayland,device-1
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 24.1.0-arch1.1
    glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (TGL GT1)
  API: Vulkan v: 1.3.279 drivers: nvidia surfaces: xcb,xlib devices: 1
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-H HD Audio vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3
  Device-2: NVIDIA GA106 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.1
  Device-3: Texas Instruments PCM2900C Audio CODEC
    driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid type: USB bus-ID: 3-1:2
  API: ALSA v: k6.9.3-arch1-1 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.7 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel
    bus-ID: 00:14.3
  IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    vendor: Lenovo driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus-ID: 58:00.0
  IF: enp88s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX201 Bluetooth driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB
    bus-ID: 3-14:6
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 4 state: down bt-service: enabled,running
    rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes address: <filter> bt-v: 5.2 lmp-v: 11
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 2.75 TiB used: 766.2 GiB (27.2%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: SK Hynix model: HFS001TDE9X084N
    size: 953.87 GiB temp: 44.9 C
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 vendor: Kingston model: SNV2S2000G size: 1.82 TiB
    temp: 33.9 C
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 96.89 GiB used: 21.57 GiB (22.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-2: /boot size: 1021 MiB used: 256.1 MiB (25.1%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
  ID-3: /home size: 839.39 GiB used: 499.21 GiB (59.5%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 4 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 40.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Memory: total: 32 GiB note: est. available: 31.13 GiB used: 4.34 GiB (13.9%)
  Processes: 352 Uptime: 24m Init: systemd
  Packages: 1429 Compilers: clang: 17.0.6 gcc: 14.1.1 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.26
    inxi: 3.3.34
1 Like
2

You could try installing another DE, or even a WM like dwm, which might be the best option since it’s light and has no dependencies or configs, which makes it every easy to clean afterwards.

That said, check this: PTS Patch Notes v10.0.0 — Elder Scrolls Online

**Screen dimming while inactive** (PC)**:** All major consoles have an OS level setting to do this but there is no PC counterpart, so ESO now includes one built in for PC. At the same time your resolution drops, we will dim the screen on a PC client. We felt it worthwhile since the data we found shows that screens that are not as bright will consume less power, especially for LED/OLED screens.

“Environmental Sustainability Features” for computer games… What a time to be alive…

1 Like
3

Oh boy… On the one hand I feel a bit ashamed and lazy because this seems like something I could have very easily found myself with a very brief google search.

On the other hand…

/me sighs with disappointment…

later edit: It would appear I can edit the UserSettings text file and change SET EnergySustainabilityMeasuresEnabled to 0 and this disables this silly f̶e̶a̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ bug.

1 Like
4

Happens to the best of us :smiley: Especially since this isn’t common at all for games to do, sometimes it just needs some fresh eyes to look at the problem in a different light

1 Like
5

given that gaming PCs easily can pull 400-600W sustained that is actually a really useful feature.

6

While that may be true it’s neither the responsibility nor the concern of any game to be dimming my screen. I am an adult and I can manage the power I consume and pay for on my own just fine, thank you very much.

7

Maybe the resolution drop, but the monitor brightness is saving at most 50W or so… that should be up to the user(or his OS) to control imo.

1 Like
8

Also, and perhaps more importantly, this does NOT lower the brightness of the screen, but only that of the process (the game program).

1 Like
9

something has to power what is shown on the screen

10

and at the same time they probably also reduced the FPS rendered and other things.

11

They did and they shouldn’t have. It’s not their place nor their concern.

1 Like
12

for the average user this is a really good feature. that it does cause a bit of hassle for your absolute corner case of usage is tbh a very minor annoyance coming from a very useful feature.

1 Like
13

I didn’t say otherwise, my point is that they only dim the game window, so unless you have oled, dimming zones etc, you’re not gonna be saving any energy from that move. And if you do, it’s not a lot of power anyhow as a modern oled monitor uses around 45-50W of power. Imo the game should leave the user to choose his power settings through his OS and not have individual applications control their own behavior.

The real power savings is through reducing the rendering resolution/game settings/fps cap/etc and I guess that is indeed up to the game to do, but it should be easily changeable in the settings for those that don’t want it.

At the end of the day in my opinion these measures are simply virtue signalling by gaming companies, for obvious reasons.

1 Like
14

This!

15

Even if you want to disregard the environmental effect, many people might be happy about the saved money from lower power consumption.

Your assumption that this is only for “virtue signalling” and that the company might not actually genuinely care, is pretty toxic. Awareness is going up more and more as the evidence keeps mounting that climate change is getting worse and worse.

1 Like
16

Man-made climate change is an unsubstantiated claim, now close to a cult-like thing that practically no-one dares challenge.

But this is waaaay off-topic so I suggest we leave it at that.

1 Like
17

When you throw some numbers around the effect from this is pretty negligible.

If on the other hand search engines for the web would reduce their response time by only fractions of a second … now that would be something. Also Youtube only hosting 720p videos. And so on and so on.

Yes, it’s an effect. Will it make a real difference? Nope.
Not even on your utility bill. Unless you let your machine idle 24/7.

1 Like
18

Well we have clearly reached the end of this. I’m going to lock this and enjoy the heat dome that is going to bake the American south west.

4 Likes