autohotkey scripts to turn off/on W11 hdr when launching/closing certain emulators?

[lern2swim]

I am having trouble with xemu and supermodel both giving me black screens when I have hdr enabled in windows 11 (I leave it on all the time). I can hit the hotkeys to disable it obviously, but I'd prefer to automate it while this issue persists. I assume I can add scripts to LB to take care of turning hdr off as I launch these emulators and then turn it back on when I exit, but script writing, however, is tech knowledge that I don't currently possess. Can someone help me out, be it with a tutorial that would be good for me figuring out how to come up with this myself or more direct scripting I should use?

[JoeViking245]

If, when you launch a game in Xemu or Supermodel and you get the black screen, at that point, can you hit "the hotkey(s?)" to disable HDR and it fixes it?  Or.... do you have to hit the hotkey to disable it BEFORE the emulator is loaded?

What exactly is (are?) the hotkey(s) used to disable/enable the HDR?

These will determine where and how to best accomplish this.

[Sbaby]

8 hours ago, lern2swim said:

I am having trouble with xemu and supermodel both giving me black screens when I have hdr enabled in windows 11 (I leave it on all the time).

If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, try going to the NVIDIA Control Panel and managing 3D Settings. Under the Vulkan/OpenGL Presentation Mode option, set the method to swapchain DXGI.

[lern2swim]

16 hours ago, JoeViking245 said:

If, when you launch a game in Xemu or Supermodel and you get the black screen, at that point, can you hit "the hotkey(s?)" to disable HDR and it fixes it?  Or.... do you have to hit the hotkey to disable it BEFORE the emulator is loaded?

What exactly is (are?) the hotkey(s) used to disable/enable the HDR?

These will determine where and how to best accomplish this.

It has to be switched off before launching the emulator. The hotkeys are alt+win+B

Edited March 21 by lern2swim

[lern2swim]

11 hours ago, Sbaby said:

If you have an NVIDIA graphics card, try going to the NVIDIA Control Panel and managing 3D Settings. Under the Vulkan/OpenGL Presentation Mode option, set the method to swapchain DXGI.

AMD 6950 xt. I did see, while trying to find a solution, that there's a similar problem related to nvidia cards specifically. Sadly, not here though.

[JoeViking245]

28 minutes ago, lern2swim said:

It has to be switched off before launching the emulator. The hotkeys are alt+win+B

Be that the case, you'll need to do it the "hard" way.  Which really, isn't hard at all.

Since LaunchBox doesn't have a means to Run anything (a command or app) Before and/or After launching an emulator, you'll have to do Before/After launching the game(s).

A way to do that is:

1. Create an AutoHotkey script
2. Add it as 2 Additional Apps to your games
3. Play the games

(1)  Create a new text file.  in it put:  Send, #!b  Nothing more. Nothing less.  Save and close the file.  Place the file somewhere that's obvious to you and you won't forget.  i.e.  D:\MyHDRstuff\  Now rename the file to (again) something that's obvious to you and give it the file extension  .ahk  Something like ToggleHDR.ahk   Be sure it doesn't still have the .txt file extension (like ToggleHDR.ahk.txt)  You should end up with something like D:\MyHDRstuff\ToggleHDR.ahk  

(2A)  Test on a game 1st:

Select an Xbox or Model3 game and edit it.  Under Additional Apps, Add a new Additional App.  Name it Toggle HDR On (or whatever you want).  Browse to and select \LaunchBox\ThirdParty\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.exe  for the app path.  For the App Command-line, put the full path to the file you created above "inside quotes".  i.e.  "D:\MyHDRstuff\ToggleHDR.ahk"   Check Automatically Run Before Main Application.  Click OK to save and close.

Add another new Additional App.  Name it Toggle HDR Off (or whatever you want). Do the same as above but this time check Automatically Run After Main Application. 

(3)  Run the game and see if it works.

 

(2B)  Once you're assured it does work, do the exact same "Test on a game 1st:" process for all your Xemu and Supermodel games.

Alternately, you can use the Bulk Add Additional Apps plugin to do the games all at once.  (Actually, you'll need to do that 4 times.  Twice for your Model3 platform [once for On and once for Off] and twice for your Xbox platform).

[lern2swim]

On 3/21/2025 at 2:23 PM, JoeViking245 said:

Be that the case, you'll need to do it the "hard" way.  Which really, isn't hard at all.

Since LaunchBox doesn't have a means to Run anything (a command or app) Before and/or After launching an emulator, you'll have to do Before/After launching the game(s).

A way to do that is:

1. Create an AutoHotkey script
2. Add it as 2 Additional Apps to your games
3. Play the games

(1)  Create a new text file.  in it put:  Send, #!b  Nothing more. Nothing less.  Save and close the file.  Place the file somewhere that's obvious to you and you won't forget.  i.e.  D:\MyHDRstuff\  Now rename the file to (again) something that's obvious to you and give it the file extension  .ahk  Something like ToggleHDR.ahk   Be sure it doesn't still have the .txt file extension (like ToggleHDR.ahk.txt)  You should end up with something like D:\MyHDRstuff\ToggleHDR.ahk  

(2A)  Test on a game 1st:

Select an Xbox or Model3 game and edit it.  Under Additional Apps, Add a new Additional App.  Name it Toggle HDR On (or whatever you want).  Browse to and select \LaunchBox\ThirdParty\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkey.exe  for the app path.  For the App Command-line, put the full path to the file you created above "inside quotes".  i.e.  "D:\MyHDRstuff\ToggleHDR.ahk"   Check Automatically Run Before Main Application.  Click OK to save and close.

Add another new Additional App.  Name it Toggle HDR Off (or whatever you want). Do the same as above but this time check Automatically Run After Main Application. 

(3)  Run the game and see if it works.

 

(2B)  Once you're assured it does work, do the exact same "Test on a game 1st:" process for all your Xemu and Supermodel games.

Alternately, you can use the Bulk Add Additional Apps plugin to do the games all at once.  (Actually, you'll need to do that 4 times.  Twice for your Model3 platform [once for On and once for Off] and twice for your Xbox platform).

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I'll set that up, and it should hold me over until I hopefully figure out what exactly is causing this issue

[JoeViking245]

20 minutes ago, lern2swim said:

Thank you for the thorough explanation. I'll set that up, and it should hold me over until I hopefully figure out what exactly is causing this issue

I didn't know it was an "issue".  I figured it was "just a thing" with those emulators.  Hence your asking for an automagical means to toggle it.   I don't have HDR available on my setup to know any better. You may want to ask back on the Supermodel Discord if it actually is a known issue. Or if running in HDR should indeed work. And then if they have any suggestions about configuration (be it in emulator or with your video card). 

[lern2swim]

On 3/23/2025 at 12:04 PM, JoeViking245 said:

I didn't know it was an "issue".  I figured it was "just a thing" with those emulators.  Hence your asking for an automagical means to toggle it.   I don't have HDR available on my setup to know any better. You may want to ask back on the Supermodel Discord if it actually is a known issue. Or if running in HDR should indeed work. And then if they have any suggestions about configuration (be it in emulator or with your video card). 

I've tried asking in both the supermodel discord and in the xemu subreddit (and entered a support ticket on github) and didn't get any helpful responses.

[JoeViking245]

7 hours ago, lern2swim said:

I've tried asking in both the supermodel discord and in the xemu subreddit (and entered a support ticket on github) and didn't get any helpful responses.

Someone else did comment on Supermodel discord. But it was, they had the same (ish?) setup and didn't have issues. That is, didn't need to turn off HDR.

My guess is there's probably a setting for your video card (maybe along the lines of what @Sbaby indicated) that will make it work without needing to toggle it.

However I'm not very video-card-savvy to know what exactly it would be.

[theshape]

I also need help with this. I have a game, Ghost of Tsushima through steam that I want to enable HDR for. I used the script above and it works to turn HDR on before the game launches. I get the notifaction that hdr is on and then the game launches and it works perfect.  The problem is after I close the game, it does not work to turn if off after the game closes because hdr remains on, I followed the steps to run after main application, I can see the screen colors look washed out. If I run the ahk file outside of launchbox, I can see it working correctly, it turns hdr on and turns hdr off, it just does not work with launchbox. 

[JoeViking245]

57 minutes ago, theshape said:

I also need help with this. I have a game, Ghost of Tsushima through steam that I want to enable HDR for. I used the script above and it works to turn HDR on before the game launches. I get the notifaction that hdr is on and then the game launches and it works perfect.  The problem is after I close the game, it does not work to turn if off after the game closes because hdr remains on

Steam is essentially a launcher for the game. So in your scenario, you launch the game (steam.exe plus game ID and some other parameters). But 1st LB starts the Run Before additional app to turn on HDR, then the steam.exe stuff.  Then Steam launches the game.exe and closes itself (steam.exe).  At this point, LB sees the "game" it launched (steam.exe) has exited (but the game.exe is still running for you to play it).  Here, I'm surprised your Run After additional app doesn't execute, turning off HDR [right as the actual game is starting].

If it's just the one game (Ghost of T..) you need HRD for, you might be able to find the games exe and set that as the games application path (Edit the game and change it in the Launching section).  This way, both Run Before and Run After should work properly.  And as a bonus, if enabled, the Shutdown screen should now show when you exit the game (as in, you're not seeing them now for Steam games.  Startup screens, yes. But not shutdown.).

[theshape]

Hi, thanks for the help. I tried with another game just now, a non steam game and it worked perfectly, it will turn on hdr, launch my game and when I exit the game it will turn off hdr. So the issue is with steam, I guess steam games are being treated differently and maybe the main application is now steam and not the game exe itself. I tried changing my launch options to point to the game exe instead of the steam url file but it still does not work. It seems the script needs to be modified for steam usage.