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Playable at 30 FPS. Low settings, FSR Quality/Balanced, HDR off, offline mode, bloom and depth of field disabled, etc.
-dx11
It's absolutely playable, provided your definition of playable is 30 FPS. My performance massively improved once I used -dx11 and GE-Proton. Naturally, prepare for a hazy FSR-looking experience.
Runs great and no issue so far.
The game runs great for the most part, but during cutscenes they don't always end, they finish and just stand there until you manually skip them and a couple of times the game froze during a cutscene, having to Alt-F4 out of the game.
gamemoderun %command%
First time had issue running, but removed mods and epic games updated. Then launched, no issue.
1440p
80-90fps - Ray Tracing Shadows/Reflections high. FSR set to quality. Settings at Epic. or 90-110fps - No ray tracing, native (no screen optimizations). Settings on Epic.
DXVK_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 PROTON_FORCE_NVAPI=1 mangohud %command%
Slight stutter during sequences where control is taken away from you, smooth while actually playing.
With settings in LOW, no HDR, FSR performance forcing DX11, and offline (not sure but Epic seems to crash the game), you have good 30 fps
-dx11
Can't run game via Heroic or Steam
Only succesfully been able to run the game by running the entire epic-game-store windows app in gamescope and launching Returnal from there. Everything else just mysteryously gives up when it starts. Logs give little to no information.
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1
FPS jumps like kids on the trampoline from 80 to 130 when compared to running it on Windows with same specs(Windows has stable FPS). If you lock game at 60 it's fine.
Some movies do not play and you get "No bradcasting signal" image that you can skip by pressing spacebar.
I was running it through Heroic Games Launcher, I think you will have better experience running it through Steam itself.
VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr11 gamemoderun %command% -dx11
Audio interrupts while loading, happens less in AMD/Radeon when forcing DX11
Save games sync between devices work correctly. Steam Input disabled to get DualSense controller recognized, and really recommend DualSense with this one. The haptic feedback, the way that this game uses adaptive triggers, it's great. Performance and audio cuts improved noticeably when forcing DX11. I didn't need FSR. In any case, I recommend adjustments to get high FPS, this game demands it.
PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 DXVK_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr
Added the launch options to enable Ray Tracing.
Open Engine.ini. Create the section [SystemSettings] at the bottom of the file, if it does not already exist. Add the following line to the section: TGGI.Enable=0 Save and close the file.
Disable TGGI in the config and set everything to low with dynamic resolution to minimum 25% and it'll play great.
No matter what I did I could not get the game to launch. Wine, Protone, GE, Steam Runtimes, none of it mattered.
-dx11/-dx12
Various Dependency installs
Game was either broken in linux with a recent update or my hardware combo will not work
gamemoderun mangohud %command%
Performance very close to windows
VKD3D_FILTER_DEVICE_NAME="NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070" DXVK_FILTER_DEVICE_NAME="NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070" DXVK_HDR=0 DXVK_ASYNC=1 VKD3D_FEATURE_LEVEL=12_1,12_2 PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 PROTON_CONFIG=force_static_cbv VKD3D_CONFIG=force_static_cbv PROTON_NO_ESYNC=0 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 PROTON_ENABLE_NGX_UPDATER=0 WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR_STRENGTH=1,75 VKD3D_SHADER_MODEL=6_6,6_7 gamemoderun %command%
Das Spiel friert Häufig mit Direct X 12 ein. Jedoch lässt sich die Häufigkeit verringern wenn man das Audio Ray Traycing deaktiviert.
gamemoderun mangohud %command% -dx11
Shaders appear to compile on first use however they are cached.
PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 DXVK_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr,dxr11 PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 %command% -dx11
Works fine but sometimes little lag but not really severe
On Arch, DirectX (DX) 12 doesn't work by default.
Either add %command% -dx11 to the steam launch options to force the game to run in DX 11, or install mesa-git from the AUR to get DX 12 to work.
DX 11 had about 15-20% better performance than DX 12 for me, but DX 12 has Ray Tracing graphic and audio settings.
On Arch with the normal Mesa package, the game crashes in the default DX12 mode during shader compilation. Switching to mesa-git from the AUR fixes this, launching the game in DX 11 circumvents the bug entirely.
gamemoderun %command% -dx11
Shader compilation inside the game crashes. This only happens on DX12 as DX11 doesn't do shader compilation. It also only appears to happen on AMD cards, Nvidia GPUs seem unaffected.
OOB works great
For this graphics card 5700xt, probably want to tweak into medium to get 60fps at 1440p, still looks excellent.
Playable, but with issues
Falling off a ledge or into water can cause the game window to go black ocassionally (Game still runs). Falling again sometimes fixes it.
Certain areas drop your frames to 5-15 fps. Can often be fixed by entering your status menu.
FPS may drop to 10 randomly - Solution: With my hardware it was enough to lower the quality to from Epic to High to prevent this from essentially ever happen during gameplay. It happened once during a cutscene, but it recovered on its own. As others have pointed out, if such slowdown happens, triggering a benchmark from the settings and stopping it seems to solve temporarily the issue.
Just installing and running failed to start -> forcing Proton 8.0-4 made it work perfectly.
Eneimes glitching, like they were juddering. Missing effects and projectiles here and there.
Runs at a near constant sub-30fps at very lowest graphical settings, with FSR Ultra Perfomance and 720p resolution. Barely playable, plus it looks absolutely horrible with these settings too.
Sadly this game is a lost cause on Steam Deck. Not surpising as It needs a fairly decent PC to run, it even runs at a pretty low base resolution on PS5, but the ProtonDB Gold rating would have you believe it's a decent experience. Even at the absolute lowest settings you can use, which look absolutely terrible, it doesnt seem possible to wring a playable framerate out of it and this is a game that benefits from a high framerate and decent visibility. It's a shame, the game would be well suited to the Deck but unfortunately it's not gonna happen.
No need to tinker
Runs like clockwork!
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 -dxlevel 12
At any given point it will drop to 5 fps and become unplayable.
It crashed a few times until i did some tinkering.
VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr11 %command% -dx11
Tried without the -dx11, hangs when processing shaders, after adding the option the game runs fine.
Occasional frame drops, especially noticeable during doors opening
Returnal is crashing within 2-3 minutes of getting into the game after one or two successful sessions of about an hour each. I can't put it down to a particular trigger either in game or on my system.
DS haptic works if the controller audio is named "Wireless Controller"
To change the name make a file
/etc/udev/rules.d/80-dualsense.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="sound", ACTION=="change", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0ce6", ENV{SOUND_DESCRIPTION}="Wireless Controller"
Then
udevadm control --reload-rules
Other way using pipewire with wireplumber is by creating the file
$HOME/.config/wireplumber/main.lua.d/51-dualsense-rules.lua
rename_dualsense_output = {
matches = {
{
{ "node.name", "equals", "alsa_output.usb-Sony_Interactive_Entertainment_Wireless_Controller-00.analog-surround-40"},
},
},
apply_properties = {
["node.description"] = "Wireless Controller",
},
}
table.insert(alsa_monitor.rules, rename_dualsense_output)
Make sure you set the controller audio as "Analog Surround 4.0 Output + Analog Stereo Input" in pavucontrol and disable steam input for the game
Crashes after processing shaders
Get LowLevelFatalError in WindowsD3D12ViewPort.cpp:252 with error E_INVALIDARG
I can play 60 FPS on my workstation with zero issues. The game is gorgious and very enjoyable with mouse and keyboard.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 gamemoderun %command%
Great game. It deserves much more praise.
The game plays at consistent high frame rates on the 7900XTX at 2560x1440 at the highest graphics settings. It's also playable on the Vega64 at 1920x1080 at the lowest graphics settings with FSR enabled.
There are some minor issues out of the game that will cause it to close when I attempt to tab out of the window.
