Gaming on laptops is broken?

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  • There use to be issues with people playing games on laptops with NWJS, since I think people said it wouldn't use the graphics card GPU.

    Is this a problem still with nwjs 71+?

    EDIT: Solution was found: https://www.construct.net/en/forum/construct-3/general-discussion-7/gaming-laptops-broken-182785#forumPost1115152

  • There was a comment a couple years ago here with a solution:

    github.com/nwjs/nw.js/issues/5732

    I found that the --force_high_performance_gpu flag seems to make NW.js run with a discrete graphics card by default, but with the --in-process-gpu flag it will not work.

    Is that a good tag we can use?

    Is it okay to replace the old "in-process-gpu" which has become common for people to use?

  • Okay I bought a Lenovo gaming laptop in order to test this.

    And the above comment is correct!

    • The tag "--force_high_performance_gpu" allows my game to use the nvidia GPU! It runs wonderfully smooth.
    • But if I also have the "export for steam" button checked, it will NOT use the nvidia GPU, and instead the weak one, and does not run as well.

    Ashley should we now update the NWJS "Export for Steam" option's "--in-process-gpu" with the new one: "--force_high_performance_gpu"? I'm not sure what the old tag did, but since it's blocking laptop's GPU's from being used maybe it should be changed so the games run better for more of our Steam players.

  • I may be mistaken, but I think --force_high_performance_gpu is considered risky, as it is bypassing driver blacklists or something.

    But, I'd rather have a shot at it working with the above flag, rather than the game running awfully without gpu usage.

    Funnily enough, I just bought a lenovo laptop for testing, low to mid range, but I'm having lots of trouble trying to use nwjs remote preview tool, no matter which version of nwjs I use. Some versions load forever, sometimes it let's me input the remote url and I do so, then it loads into black screen, etc.

    Can't even test performance for my game, as can't force Chrome to use GPU, even though nvidia control panel let's me set chrome to the dedicated gpu.

    Never once had problem with nwjs on my main laptop, so I'm glad I have this laptop, as this might be what a player would experience.

  • IIRC, the Steam Overlay will not appear unless you have --in-process-gpu, because Steam doesn't understand Chrome's multi-process architecture. Using --in-process-gpu is a hack to work around that bug in Steam. They really should fix the Steam overlay, otherwise you just keep getting deeper and deeper in to hacks and workarounds, and you eventually get cornered with situations like this, where you have to choose between good performance or having the Steam overlay work.

    IIRC there was some other way to modify a binary to force the high-performance GPU, and maybe that works with --in-process-gpu, but that's still going down the rabbit hole of hacks. The best approach is and always has been for Steam to fix the overlay.

    I've done by best to contact Valve about that, and so far they've ignored us. In situations like this we need every individual developer affected to contact Valve about it so they better understand the scope of the problem.

  • thanks for explaining what it does.

    I tried talking to Steam about it, they got back to me, and I'm not sure if it helps but they said:

    You can check out our Steam Overlay documentation to troubleshoot these issues.

    Hopefully someone that knows what to do will eventually encounter this problem to help us fix it.

  • I've already been through it all - the documentation doesn't cover it at all and from what it says it should work, but it doesn't. It's a bug in Steam and you need to get through to their technical team to get them to fix it. I'd happily talk to anyone on the Steam technical team, but I haven't been able to get through to them myself, even by filing bugs and doing everything I can think of. If anyone has any contacts at Steam, please try to get them on it!

  • I forgot that skymen made a tool that can easily patch NWJS games so they work on laptops! It works well for me.

    You can download it here:

    github.com/ConstructFund/nvPatchUI

  • alastair This is great, but could you tell what exactly it patches? Is it possible to do these changes manually?

    Edit: I didn't realize this tool was by Skymen.

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  • this is the explanation from the person that made the original nvpatch:

    toptensoftware.com/blog/nvpatch-how-it-works

    Skymens tool is afaik just a ui wrapper for it, so it's easier to use.

  • For what it's worth, in r417 I've updated the Windows WebView2 exporter to specify NvOptimusEnablement and AmdPowerXpressRequestHighPerformance in the executable. I haven't been able to test this myself as I don't have a dual-GPU laptop any more, but this should mean it has the same thing as nvpatch does but built-in. It'd be good to know if anyone can confirm this solves the problem of being able to use the high-performance GPU with Windows WebView2.

  • The patcher doesn't work for WV2, i suspect the exe that should be patch is not the exported game's exe, but msedgewebview2.exe in program files/microsoft

  • The issue with NW.js not using the GPU on gaming laptops has been longstanding, but tools like Skymen's nvPatchUI seem to offer a practical fix for enabling the discrete GPU. It's great to see updates like r417 addressing this directly for WebView2, though real-world testing feedback from dual-GPU laptops would be valuable to confirm if it's solving the problem comprehensively.

  • The issue with NW.js not using the GPU on gaming laptops has been longstanding, but tools like Skymen's nvPatchUI seem to offer a practical fix for enabling the discrete GPU. It's great to see updates like r417 addressing this directly for WebView2, though real-world testing feedback from dual-GPU laptops would be valuable to confirm if it's solving the problem comprehensively.

    r417 doesn't work for me, because the exe that should be patched is msedgewebview2.exe, not the exported game's exe.

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