4 ms·

AFAIK the main value-add for Proton is DXVK, which gives DirectX games incredibly low-overhead access to the linux Vulkan driver. Dramatically improved perform

by skohan 8y ago

AFAIK the main value-add for Proton is DXVK, which gives DirectX games incredibly low-overhead access to the linux Vulkan driver. Dramatically improved performance is more than just "another WINE wrapper with some extra stuff piled on". And Proton's not the end-game: it's a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem. Most people (like yourself) don't see Linux as a viable gaming platform largely because of the lack of games available, and therefore developers don't invest in Linux support, and thus there continue to be few games available for the platform. The promise of Proton is to make Linux good-enough for some gamers, thus increasing the Linux player-base, making Linux a viable target for 1st party titles. > It's never going to get to an equivalent level, because Windows' gaming technology keeps moving forward. That's not really accurate, and hasn't been for some time. For years OpenGL has been on-par with DX in terms of what it can do for some time and the story has only gotten better with Vulkan. Just look at Doom 2016: it was a high-profile AAA game built entirely on an open-source graphics stack (OpenGL and Vulkan) and it was one of the best-looking, best-optimized titles of the year. The main "edge" Microsoft has in terms of being able to bring the best games to its platform has nothing to do with a technical advantage: it has everything to do with industry momentum and incentivizing studios and industry professionals to use their proprietary technologies.

thinkloop 8y ago
> thus increasing the Linux player-base, making Linux a viable target for 1st party titles Do you think the studios will know? Seems like these would come in as windows sales.
- shmerl 8y ago
  > Seems like these would come in as windows sales. No, they count as Linux sales, that was said explicitly by Valve. Even GOG counts Linux downloads of Windows games (they rely on user agent). Not sure how they share that info with developers though.
- ztoben 8y ago
  Pretty sure it counts as a linux sale if the buyer spends more time playing on Linux than Windows within a time window (I think 2 weeks).
lostgame 8y ago
Thank you for being explicit about what exactly they've done to significantly improve this. I had not understood that there was access to Vulkan, that does obviously significantly affect performance. There was another poster here who attempted to elaborate and ended up posting something that absolutely did not. Vulkan is good, but it doesn't affect compatibility, just performance. I just don't care about the performance if compatibility is not even at least close to 90%. I need to run all of my applications and games, not a select few of them that run great.
- RussianCow 8y ago
  > I just don't care about the performance if compatibility is not even at least close to 90%. I need to run all of my applications and games, not a select few of them that run great. On Linux, I can now successfully (i.e. with decent performance and no critical bugs) run about two thirds of the "active" (played at least once in the past two years) games in my library. I originally had the same opinion as you—that this doesn't matter if I still have to dual-boot Windows—but what I've found in practice is that I haven't booted into Windows in months, and have simply stopped playing games that don't run on Linux. YMMV, but I would bet that a lot of Linux users would be perfectly happy with even half their games running well on Linux, so I don't think compatibility is all-or-nothing like you're implying.
- carlosdp 8y ago
  The DirectX -> Vulkan translation layer does in fact help compatibility quite a bit actually.
- skohan 8y ago
  > Vulkan is good, but it doesn't affect compatibility That's exactly what it does. DXVK is a compatibility layer that lets DirectX games run on top of vulkan with near-native performance with no work required of developers. It's about making Windows games run like native Linux games.

by skohan 8y ago

thinkloop 8y ago

> thus increasing the Linux player-base, making Linux a viable target for 1st party titles Do you think the studios will know? Seems like these would come in as windows sales.

shmerl 8y ago
> Seems like these would come in as windows sales. No, they count as Linux sales, that was said explicitly by Valve. Even GOG counts Linux downloads of Windows games (they rely on user agent). Not sure how they share that info with developers though.
ztoben 8y ago
Pretty sure it counts as a linux sale if the buyer spends more time playing on Linux than Windows within a time window (I think 2 weeks).

lostgame 8y ago

Thank you for being explicit about what exactly they've done to significantly improve this. I had not understood that there was access to Vulkan, that does obviously significantly affect performance. There was another poster here who attempted to elaborate and ended up posting something that absolutely did not. Vulkan is good, but it doesn't affect compatibility, just performance. I just don't care about the performance if compatibility is not even at least close to 90%. I need to run all of my applications and games, not a select few of them that run great.

RussianCow 8y ago
> I just don't care about the performance if compatibility is not even at least close to 90%. I need to run all of my applications and games, not a select few of them that run great. On Linux, I can now successfully (i.e. with decent performance and no critical bugs) run about two thirds of the "active" (played at least once in the past two years) games in my library. I originally had the same opinion as you—that this doesn't matter if I still have to dual-boot Windows—but what I've found in practice is that I haven't booted into Windows in months, and have simply stopped playing games that don't run on Linux. YMMV, but I would bet that a lot of Linux users would be perfectly happy with even half their games running well on Linux, so I don't think compatibility is all-or-nothing like you're implying.
carlosdp 8y ago
The DirectX -> Vulkan translation layer does in fact help compatibility quite a bit actually.
skohan 8y ago
> Vulkan is good, but it doesn't affect compatibility That's exactly what it does. DXVK is a compatibility layer that lets DirectX games run on top of vulkan with near-native performance with no work required of developers. It's about making Windows games run like native Linux games.