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John Carmack in 2013 >I truly do feel that emulation of some sort is a proper technical direction for gaming on Linux. It is obviously pragmatic in the range o

by bdz 8y ago

John Carmack in 2013 >I truly do feel that emulation of some sort is a proper technical direction for gaming on Linux. It is obviously pragmatic in the range of possible support, but it shouldn’t have the technical stigma that it does. There really isn’t much of anything special that a native port does – we still make OpenGL calls, winsock is just BSD sockets, windows threads become pthreads, and the translation of input and audio interfaces don’t make much difference (XInput and Xaudio2 are good APIs!). A good shim layer should have far less impact on performance than the variability in driver quality. >Translating from D3D to OpenGL would involve more inefficiencies, but figuring out exactly what the difficulties are and making some form of “D3D interop” extension for OpenGL to smooth it out is a lot easier than making dozens of completely refactored, high performance native ports. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_asks_why_wine_isnt_good_enough/c89sfto/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_...

izacus 8y ago
And here pretty much lies the gist of it - most issues I've ever had with Linux gaming wasn't due to ports, but due to really poor driver quality and support from the platform. Missing OGL extensions, broken features or partly-implemented features made games unplayable.
- BurningCycles 8y ago
  Is that really a problem these days ? Nvidia has had very good Linux drivers for a long time and in the recent years, Intel and AMD has made great improvements.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    It's not. Drivers are pretty good nowadays and for AMD last year has seen huge strives in quality and performance of drivers with Mesa.
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    I go with AMD to have the open source driver and things aren't perfect but I knew what I was getting into. A year ago Mankind Divided worked great but Total War: Warhammer had horrid graphics glitches. Today both work great. I really wish there were some sort of registry of which games work on which drivers for Linux...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - foepys 8y ago
      Not directly drivers but Linux overall: https://appdb.winehq.org https://appdb.winehq.org Some people post which drivers they used, especially when it didn't work.
      - Cogito 8y ago
        To add to this, it's really easy to add your experiences to the database. If you get a game to work, take the time to head over and add your experience.
  - izacus 8y ago
    I've had severe issues and glitches even these days (granted I have an nVidia card because AMD drivers were a dumpster fire at the time of purchase) and even things like fullscreen mode doesn't always work reliably depending on the screen (external/internal) and other settings.
  - tomc1985 8y ago
    nvidia's drivers are pretty good, but at least for me they seem to cause crashes with libavcodec on certain video formats. That's linux on the desktop for ya...
    - ahartmetz 8y ago
      Nvidia was probably the best you could get at the time, but better buy AMD next time. The AMD drivers are very good and don't have the integration issues of Nvidia's.
      - tomc1985 8y ago
        The last time I ran AMD I had even weirder issues than nvidia. The card+chipset I had was not supported by Mesa, though. (It was a triple monitor setup on two display adapters, both AMD) Too bad, I'm pretty happy with my nvidia card...
        HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
        I don't know when was the last time you looked but AMD has mainline drivers now and have contributed a lot of general purpose code for other drivers to use.
sandworm101 8y ago
Except that the availability of emulation may cause developers to stop native linux support. I dont want to hear "talk to valve about your linux issue" every time i report a bug.
- baldfat 8y ago
  The nice thing about Linux and emulators is our reporting. It will be much easier to figure out what the issue is then most people think. https://wiki.winehq.org/Bugs https://wiki.winehq.org/Bugs
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Which would you see as more probable? 1) The ease of quality emulation leads to developers ceasing native linux support, resulting in lower quality linux gaming overall. 2) The ease of quality emulation leads more gamers to be willing to migrate to linux as their primary OS, thus helping linux come closer to being a first class deployment target, resulting in higher quality linux gaming overall. Of course this isn't a dichotomy, but rather I think it's often unwise to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when you're looking at hypotheticals.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    I think point 2 should be swapped for "ease of quality emulation means developers are willing to support linux through the emulation layer and can do so at reduced cost compared to porting"
    - jplayer01 8y ago
      He's right though. Linux gaming is a chicken and egg problem. Without enough users, the financial argument for making a Linux port is very weak. Without enough games, gamers will stay on Windows. At least if there's a reliable shim, the Linux gaming community might grow and become more relevant, fostering competition amongst game developers and hopefully incentivizing them to eventually doing native ports.
joveian 8y ago
I don't know the details of this stuff, but with .net/mono is it even correct to call it emluation? It seems more like a compatability layer than emulation.
- vardump 8y ago
  Given the most AAA games are written in native C++, I don't see how mono makes much difference at all. No .net CLR or mono are used at all in those cases. The only major platform using C# is Unity, and there are a few AAA games written in it, like KSP.
  - joveian 8y ago
    Most of the newer games I play are Unity games. Although checking Wikipedia it sounds like the core engine is still in C++, so maybe there is more emultation than I thought even then. I guess this is why not that many games can be run directly with mono... I found someone did a HackWeek project at Unity this year of porting the Unity engine to .net core that has more details: http://xoofx.com/blog/2018/04/06/porting-unity-to-coreclr/ http://xoofx.com/blog/2018/04/06/porting-unity-to-coreclr/
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Unity's C# gets compiled to native code via IL2CPP.

by bdz 8y ago

izacus 8y ago

And here pretty much lies the gist of it - most issues I've ever had with Linux gaming wasn't due to ports, but due to really poor driver quality and support from the platform. Missing OGL extensions, broken features or partly-implemented features made games unplayable.

BurningCycles 8y ago
Is that really a problem these days ? Nvidia has had very good Linux drivers for a long time and in the recent years, Intel and AMD has made great improvements.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  It's not. Drivers are pretty good nowadays and for AMD last year has seen huge strives in quality and performance of drivers with Mesa.
- Symmetry 8y ago
  I go with AMD to have the open source driver and things aren't perfect but I knew what I was getting into. A year ago Mankind Divided worked great but Total War: Warhammer had horrid graphics glitches. Today both work great. I really wish there were some sort of registry of which games work on which drivers for Linux...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - foepys 8y ago
    Not directly drivers but Linux overall: https://appdb.winehq.org https://appdb.winehq.org Some people post which drivers they used, especially when it didn't work.
    - Cogito 8y ago
      To add to this, it's really easy to add your experiences to the database. If you get a game to work, take the time to head over and add your experience.
- izacus 8y ago
  I've had severe issues and glitches even these days (granted I have an nVidia card because AMD drivers were a dumpster fire at the time of purchase) and even things like fullscreen mode doesn't always work reliably depending on the screen (external/internal) and other settings.
- tomc1985 8y ago
  nvidia's drivers are pretty good, but at least for me they seem to cause crashes with libavcodec on certain video formats. That's linux on the desktop for ya...
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    Nvidia was probably the best you could get at the time, but better buy AMD next time. The AMD drivers are very good and don't have the integration issues of Nvidia's.
    - tomc1985 8y ago
      The last time I ran AMD I had even weirder issues than nvidia. The card+chipset I had was not supported by Mesa, though. (It was a triple monitor setup on two display adapters, both AMD) Too bad, I'm pretty happy with my nvidia card...
      - HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
        I don't know when was the last time you looked but AMD has mainline drivers now and have contributed a lot of general purpose code for other drivers to use.

sandworm101 8y ago

Except that the availability of emulation may cause developers to stop native linux support. I dont want to hear "talk to valve about your linux issue" every time i report a bug.

baldfat 8y ago
The nice thing about Linux and emulators is our reporting. It will be much easier to figure out what the issue is then most people think. https://wiki.winehq.org/Bugs https://wiki.winehq.org/Bugs
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Which would you see as more probable? 1) The ease of quality emulation leads to developers ceasing native linux support, resulting in lower quality linux gaming overall. 2) The ease of quality emulation leads more gamers to be willing to migrate to linux as their primary OS, thus helping linux come closer to being a first class deployment target, resulting in higher quality linux gaming overall. Of course this isn't a dichotomy, but rather I think it's often unwise to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when you're looking at hypotheticals.
- zaarn 8y ago
  I think point 2 should be swapped for "ease of quality emulation means developers are willing to support linux through the emulation layer and can do so at reduced cost compared to porting"
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    He's right though. Linux gaming is a chicken and egg problem. Without enough users, the financial argument for making a Linux port is very weak. Without enough games, gamers will stay on Windows. At least if there's a reliable shim, the Linux gaming community might grow and become more relevant, fostering competition amongst game developers and hopefully incentivizing them to eventually doing native ports.

joveian 8y ago

I don't know the details of this stuff, but with .net/mono is it even correct to call it emluation? It seems more like a compatability layer than emulation.

vardump 8y ago
Given the most AAA games are written in native C++, I don't see how mono makes much difference at all. No .net CLR or mono are used at all in those cases. The only major platform using C# is Unity, and there are a few AAA games written in it, like KSP.
- joveian 8y ago
  Most of the newer games I play are Unity games. Although checking Wikipedia it sounds like the core engine is still in C++, so maybe there is more emultation than I thought even then. I guess this is why not that many games can be run directly with mono... I found someone did a HackWeek project at Unity this year of porting the Unity engine to .net core that has more details: http://xoofx.com/blog/2018/04/06/porting-unity-to-coreclr/ http://xoofx.com/blog/2018/04/06/porting-unity-to-coreclr/
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Unity's C# gets compiled to native code via IL2CPP.