Enabling NVAPI breaks Monster Hunter World

[Saancreed]

MHW (which is a DLSS 1.1.13 title) crashes shortly after launch with DXVK-NVAPI enabled. Setting WINEDLLOVERRIDES='nvngx=' allows it to run again.

Proton log file (created with env DXVK_NVAPI_LOG_LEVEL=info PROTON_LOG=1 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 prime-run %command%): steam-582010.log

One line of interest is probably this:

011c:err:d3d12_device_vkd3d_ext_CreateCubinComputeShaderWithName: Failed to create cubin function module, vr -3.

Tested on GTX 1660 Ti Mobile (driver version 470.62.02), using Arch Linux, current Proton Experimental (but with Soldier runtime disabled) and DXVK-NVAPI from ca1d79c because I wasn't sure if the issue is related.

[jp7677]

@rochaudhari Do you have an idea what might cause this?

[liam-middlebrook]

Can you grab a log with #49 merged in please?

[rochaudhari]

Sorry, I was on vacation and back today.
@Saancreed please provide the log mentioned by Liam.

[Saancreed]

@liam-middlebrook @rochaudhari steam-582010.log

[jp7677]

Hi @Saancreed, may I ask you to try something?
The game asks for driver version, GPU architecture and adapter Luid before trying to start DLSS.

Could you try to override the driver version to something older (can be set with DXVK_NVAPI_DRIVER_VERSION)? May be that convinces the game to not initialize DLSS? If not, what happens if you modify the source of dxvk-nvapi to return an architecture older than Turing (https://github.com/jp7677/dxvk-nvapi/blob/master/src/nvapi_gpu.cpp#L145) or by return Error when it requests the Luid (https://github.com/jp7677/dxvk-nvapi/blob/master/src/nvapi_gpu.cpp#L118)?

If some of the above lets the game start, we might consider an exception for that specific process name. I don’t really like this, but it’s better than crashing. DLSS won’t work anyway since only DLSS 2 works with the current implementation.

[Saancreed]

NVNGX logs claim that the snippet expects driver version at least 418.81, so I tried setting DXVK_NVAPI_DRIVER_VERSION=41880 and yeah, it launches, but it also causes the game to display an annoying popup:

I can try claiming to have some older GPU architecture later.

[jp7677]

I had implemented the driver version override to get rid of such a pop-up. Well, how thing turn out in reality … :)

[Saancreed]

Hacking NvapiAdapter::GetArchitectureId() to never return Turing or newer also allows the game to launch, this time without the popup message. NVNGX log in this case look like this:

[NGXCheckHardwareSupportUsingINF:172] Driver does not support NvAPI_GPU_GetValuesFromInstalledINF. Fallback to using GPU architecture and chip info of checking hardware support
[NGXCheckIfSupportedOnHW:267] error: unsupported hw detected

If some of the above lets the game start, we might consider an exception for that specific process name. I don’t really like this, but it’s better than crashing. DLSS won’t work anyway since only DLSS 2 works with the current implementation.

Well, in any case DXVK-NVAPI is not enabled by default for MHW; there's little reason to do so (other than to see the message about unsupported driver maybe, like me trying out random stuff to see if anything breaks 🙃).

But even then, I don't think this is the best place to include hacks like that. The best outcome would be to have NVNGX claim that DLSS < 2.0 is not supported, or have Proton set nvngx as disabled for MHW, like it already does in another similar case where a presence of some library can break the game.

[jp7677]

Thanks for testing. Ah yeah, forgot about nvngx. Just using WINEDLLOVERRIDES=nvngx=d should indeed mitigate this too. And yes I agree, having Proton setting this when eventually (may be never) the DXVK nvapi hack is disabled, is probably more elegant than adding profiles in code. This with the assumption that monster hunter world is really an exception.

[jp7677]

Could you please confirm that I didn’t made any typo in https://github.com/jp7677/dxvk-nvapi/wiki/Tips-and-tricks-for-usage-with-DXVK-NVAPI#monster-hunter-world-monsterhunterworldexe ?

[Saancreed]

Yup, it's correct, but I have a small suggestion: prefer using nvngx= over nvngx=d to disable a DLL in Wine as the former is what the manpage recommends (and the latter only works because Wine interprets anything that isn't native, builtin, n or b as disabled).

[jp7677]

Thanks, adjusted and learned something new :), I really thought d was the shortcut for “disabled”.

[Xephobia]

any progress on this? The popup is still here

[jp7677]

any progress on this? The popup is still here

What progress do you mean? The game still wants DLSS 1.x to my knowledge which is not supported via Proton. The work-around described here https://github.com/jp7677/dxvk-nvapi/wiki/Tips-and-tricks-for-usage-with-DXVK-NVAPI#monster-hunter-world-monsterhunterworldexe should let you start the game with NVAPI enabled but of course also without DLSS. There shouldn't be a popup.
Only way to change this, would be a game update.

[jp7677]

A work-around has been implemented that prevents the game from seeing a DLSS capable GPU, thus DLSS cannot be enabled anymore and thus the game should no longer crash on launch.