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Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

374 points by Fnoord 6y ago

mosselman 6y ago
Valve is doing god’s work when it comes to Linux gaming. I have played over 40 hours of GTA V without many troubles. The game looks great and performs great. So glad I could get rid of my windows install.
- merlinscholz 6y ago
  I've had the same experience with Doom (2016). The most irritating thing was the reduced input latency on Linux, which threw me off for the first few hours. After getting used to it I only boot to Windows for UWP games.
  - yakubin 6y ago
    Low input latency irritates you? That's a new one.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation" It threw them off for the first few hours, as written. Doesn't mean that low latency in general irritates them, just that they weren't used to it at first.
      - jonathanstrange 6y ago
        I have to agree with yakubin, though, and don't think it was a snarky comment. He just pointed out that it was an odd complaint. Gamers go at great length to reduce input lag on Windows.
        capableweb 6y ago
        You agree that because you're not used to something, that means you're not a fan of that thing in general? I'm a gamer myself. Upgrading my display makes me slightly off-game myself, until I get used to the new one. Same when getting a new car, where the brakes are way more sensitive than on a old car. Doesn't mean I don't like the brakes to be more sensitive, just means I'm not used to it. And yes, the first few weeks of sensitive brakes are irritating, just touch the pedal and the car grinds quickly to a full halt. But now I do like it better compared to when you fully press down the pedal and the car slowly stops.
    - thefz 6y ago
      I read it in a sense that it's hard to adjust back once muscle memory is set to a certain value.
    - gentleman11 6y ago
      Doom 2016 and eternal have really significant mouse lag on windows. It’s really hard to get used to. It’s most noticeable if you have recently played an actually responsive FPS recently
      - bitmunk 6y ago
        Wait, so I tried to fix the mouse lag in Windows for days and the problem was Doom? Fuck.
  - marvin 6y ago
    >The most irritating thing was the reduced input latency on Linux Huh. That's a big competitive advantage in competitive games. Why don't pro CS players use Linux? Is the difference smaller in the games that have been optimized for competitive play?
    - seg_lol 6y ago
      > for the first few hours
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      The PCs are provided by the tourney organisers, and it's a marginal benefit really. Most professional CS is played at 4:3 stretched so the PC is pulling in hundreds of FPS
      - Alupis 6y ago
        > Most professional CS is played at 4:3 stretched so the PC is pulling in hundreds of FPS That's unlikely to be true anymore. Even a modestly modern GPU can produce 100's of FPS in CS:GO at 1920x1080 or higher resolutions. Benchmarks for the 3080 were showing 400-500 FPS in CS:GO at 1440p resolutions. After maybe double your screen refresh rate, all excess FPS don't matter and are effectively wasted. Pro's mostly use 144Hz monitors because 240Hz is indistinguishable[1] - making anything above 288FPS basically a waste (and it's debatable if anything above 144FPS with FreeSync enabled is a waste too). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA
        mhh__ 6y ago
        The stretched resolution is because it makes people thicker at the expense of FoV, not performance as per se
    - nvarsj 6y ago
      I don't know how true this is. Personally I've always noticed significantly more input lag on Linux than Windows for games. I even used to hack on ezquake's Linux port to try and get the input lag down, but the Linux kernel just caused too much latency. This could have changed since then though. You have to realize MS invested significantly in "gaming APIs" like DirectInput, DirectX all tuned to low latency gaming. Linux never really had anything like that. I'd love to see results showing otherwise, I'd far prefer to game in Linux if possible.
  - fctorial 6y ago
    What were the specs of your machine?
    - merlinscholz 6y ago
      Ryzen 2700X and a MSI GeForce 1070 TI on a 2k screen
- minetest2048 6y ago
  I think that the only gaming company that actively improve Linux gaming is only Valve. Compare this to Stadia, where I never see any news on them contributing to the Linux gaming stack
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    Well.. and Aspyr for porting. And CodeWeavers for employing Wine devs. And Collabora: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/collabora-expect-their-linux-kernel-work-for-windows-game-emulation-in-kernel-5-11 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/collabora-expect-their...
    - minetest2048 6y ago
      Right, I forgot about those Linux porting companies such as Aspyr and Feral Interactive. And Collabora isn't specifically a gaming company, but they and CodeWeavers also helps
      - bicolao 6y ago
        Both Collabora and CodeWeavers collaborate with Valve (and with funding from Valve?) on the gaming front though so it's not wrong to attribute that to Valve (yes CodeWeavers also improves Wine independently, but that's more than just games).
        ekianjo 6y ago
        Codeweavers is mainly working to support Proton these days, check out this interview from a few days ago: https://boilingsteam.com/podcast-12-with-james-ramey-from-codeweavers/ https://boilingsteam.com/podcast-12-with-james-ramey-from-co...
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      Aspyr has not been doing any porting for years. Feral is scaling down their porting as well. Mainly because of Proton: https://boilingsteam.com/proton-the-native-port-killer/ https://boilingsteam.com/proton-the-native-port-killer/
- Jnr 6y ago
  If I remember correctly, Valve started doing this some time ago as an "insurance policy", when Microsoft spoke about locking down Windows (before they introduced Windows Store). It is amazing to see how far Linux gaming has come since then. 10 years ago almost none of the big games worked, 5 years ago lots of games worked after fiddling with wine config, and now most of the games I have tried work out of the box after enabling Proton. Imagine what will come in the next 5 to 10 years.
  - ubidubbiiui 6y ago
    Call me optimistic, but I imagine a larger amount of "most" work out of the box by then.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      A lot of games now don't work because of anti-cheat technologies. But Valve is working on this with Codeweavers with their refactoring of NTDLL.
      - eptcyka 6y ago
        The most egregious anti-cheat stuff is actually implemented in a windows kernel driver - I'm not optimistic about this being resolved without first party support for Linux.
        arebhaibhai 6y ago
        Collabora guys are working on just that, FYI.
        fctorial 6y ago
        > without first party support for Linux. Or for wine
        eptcyka 6y ago
        It would be quite the undertaking for wine to also emulate not just the Windows userspace but also the whole Windows kernel to allow for the rootkit anti-cheat driver to run.
- ricardo81 6y ago
  I bought Civ 6 for Linux purely because it was available on Linux. Bought from Steam. It does seem like they're pushing things in the right direction for Linux gaming.
  - kungtotte 6y ago
    One thing that's important for Linux gaming is that games played under Proton on Steam are counted as Linux sales, so publishers and developers get accurate statistics on how many Linux gamers there are. If the market is big enough, cross platform development is viable from the start.
    - FrojoS 6y ago
      On the other hand, if the Windows version works fine with Vulcan, why go through the trouble of making a Linux version?
      - imtringued 6y ago
        It's probably easier to develop proton support for a Windows than to port the entire game to Linux.
        kungtotte 6y ago
        Sure, but my point was that this shows the value in making a game that's easily portable to begin with. This is more for future games rather than converting existing ones.
      - rawfan 6y ago
        True. I've heard some devs are spending at least some time to optimize their games to work better with Proton.
        fctorial 6y ago
        Wine/proton team could provide tech support service to firms trying to make their application wine compatible.
- jpetso 6y ago
  I fear what will happen to DirectX-on-Linux if Oracle vs. Google goes in favor of Oracle.
- justin66 6y ago
  > Valve is doing god’s work when it comes to Linux gaming. I have played over 40 hours of GTA V without many troubles. The game looks great and performs great. So glad I could get rid of my windows install. "I would actually prefer if you didn't play GTA V. I mean, I guess it doesn't matter since you're going to hell anyway. But still." - God
- ivanceras 6y ago
  I still have input lag experience with GTA V on linux despite using new graphics card. The only immediate solution I've found is to play in windowed mode. All other games are playing nicely (ie: Witcher 3, No man's sky).
- loa_in_ 6y ago
  They seem to agree that a free OS with an army of enthusiastic geeks ready at all times is at least almost as good for general public (casual gamers) as is MS proprietary garden. If Windows flopped somehow all my friends would have their gaming rigs with most of their games within few days thanks to my experience, and I wouldn't charge more than a few beers.
ecmascript 6y ago
I have played several windows only games on my linux computer in the last couple of weeks and it works great. It's very, very impressive.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Neat, which brand of GPU?
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    AMD, most likely. There's a lot of benchmark comparisons between Linux and Windows here [1]. [1] https://flightlessmango.com/ https://flightlessmango.com/
  - tpxl 6y ago
    I run nVidia on Ubuntu 20.04 with proprietary drivers and few (gaming) problems.
wiradikusuma 6y ago
I have a huge (already downloaded) library on Steam Windows. Does anyone know how to "share" the game resources so that the Linux version only download the executable/runner?
- gmemstr 6y ago
  I haven't tried this myself, but you might be able to add the existing directory to Steam on the Linux side and Steam might be smart enough to download exactly what it needs, since all the assets are already present.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  if you can mount the Windows partition under Linux (ntfs) you may be able to link your Steam Library under the Steam Linux client, but you have to know that some compatibility issues will arise with non-Linux partitions.
  - minetest2048 6y ago
    Note that as the character ':' is reserved in NTFS, Proton cannot create its wineprefix in the NTFS steamapps/compatdata directory. To solve this, you need to symlink that folder to a filesystem that support filename with the character ':', such as ext4. More info here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-di... https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/82#issuecomment-415099440 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/82#issuecomme... Windows and Linux can share steamapps directory though, I've tried this by installing my games to an external SSD with NTFS filesystem and I can play the games under Proton on my PC and Windows at another PC. I'm not sure whether this will work for games that have native Linux version though
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      I'm having the same issue on my PC. It runs multiple OSes and I'd like to share the Steam library. I've settled for Ext4FS, which works on all the Linux distributions, but not on Windows. I wonder, has anyone tried to get this to work? There's at least 3 options: Ext4FS (Ext3/Ext2), NTFS, and Btrfs (which has a Windows driver as well).
Noxmiles 6y ago
How do we deserve Valve? Okay: Any possibility to support their open source work? (except of using steam)
- zufallsheld 6y ago
  Buy their games without steam.
  - ho_schi 6y ago
    I'm thankfully for the native games from Valve on Linux. And also for improving gaming on Linux in general. Steam? Steam itself is not necessary and is just another system to lure users and developers into a Vendor Lock-In. Everything useful it provides should be part of libraries. In a better world - we would use a package manager or Flatpak to install games. I'm sick of the software industry, every big company tries to lock you in. Microsoft (historically with contracts, incompatiblity and UWP and now Cloud), Apple (AppStore and of course incompatibility), Google (Cloud and PlayStore...and making everything else then Google Services a pain) and EPIC (Games Store). No other industry has managed to be so awful than software industry. You can drive another brand of car than anybody else in your town and be fine with it, as long you get support (spare parts). But software? Hell no! Your choice is either pain through being in a minority or pain through living without control upon your your software, unsteadiness, insecurity, high costs...
    - anonymou2 6y ago
      I think that that software industry philosophy now applies to many other things. I guess because most things now run software, from cars to farmers milk tanks. But it's probably not the only reason.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      > Steam itself is not necessary and is just another system to lure users and developers into a Vendor Lock-In This ignores the history of how Steam came about in the first place. The PC gaming industry was basically dying because physical distribution was expensive, which made the games expensive too, so a lot of users just pirated games (by downloading them from the internet) because it was easier. Valve recognized that piracy was a symptom of a service problem and set out to create the convenient service experience of piracy in legitimate form. It was actually widely hated at first because people assumed malevolence, but over time Valve has proved their good intentions with the platform. They helped kick off the indy explosion with the Potato Sack, they allow developers to sell Steam keys on other stores without giving Valve a cut, they never ask for exclusivity, and despite what many internet whiners complain about they actually try pretty hard to have worthwhile recommendation and review systems. > Everything useful it provides should be part of libraries. In a better world - we would use a package manager or Flatpak to install games. This is basically already the case. Steam is the manager, and it also provides the libraries for its functionality (DRM, workshop, achievements, etc) that are entirely optional. There are games on Steam that don't use any of that and you can copy them to a system without Steam and they run fine (BallisticNG was like this last I checked). Hell, as EA and Ubisoft proved you can even install and run your own alternative client as part of your game you sell on Steam (though thankfully the store now warns users about this behavior).
Lucasoato 6y ago
Shouldn't this be a priority even for other gaming platforms? Imagine all the progress we made on development tools and containerization ported to the game development environment. I think it could be a huge step forward!
AshleysBrain 6y ago
It's cool seeing the tech develop to run D3D/OpenGL on Vulkan/DX12/Metal, moving a lot of code out of drivers and in to libraries. But in the long term apps should all end up using Vulkan/DX12/Metal themselves directly (or modern derivatives) - so there won't be many uses for the old legacy D3D/OpenGL stacks left, so these libraries will probably fall out of use too. So, nice for the short/medium term, but probably no longer relevant in the long term.
- devwastaken 6y ago
  I don't believe opengl is going anywhere. It's still heavily embedded in modern gaming everywhere. If anything a translation layer from opengl to vulkan would be the direction.
- Tuna-Fish 6y ago
  > But in the long term apps should all end up using Vulkan/DX12/Metal themselves directly In terms of "a typical 3d app writes directly to the API", they really shouldn't. The fundamental shift between DX12/Vk and the earlier APIs is that the old graphics APIs were fundamentally about graphics, in the sense that they described a specific way to draw graphics, and then in conjunction with hardware translated that into something that ran well. Originally, there were many very different ways this was done. Over time the hardware implementations all converged towards a common form, and game developers found themselves not really coding against the old APIs as designed, but twisting it's use into something that translated into what they wanted on the actual hardware. (That they knew and understood because of the consoles that just let the devs target the same or very similar hardware directly without a translation layer on top of it.) DX12/Vk then approaches the API design from a completely different perspective: They are designed to provide an efficient interface to the functionality that is available in hardware. Much of this is graphics-specific, simply because the hardware is meant to run graphics, but in a very real way the API isn't about the graphics, it's about the hardware. Vk doesn't have the kind of simple graphics pipeline that OpenGL devs are used to, because it's outside the context of the API. You, the developer, are supposed to make your own pipeline, out of the pieces of hardware-supported operations that the API exposes. Which brings this back to my point: The typical game dev has no interest or need to learn DX12/Vk, because they fundamentally do not provide what the devs need or want. Instead, game devs should largely build their work on top of an actual graphics pipeline. Right now, most devs get that pipeline out of the large 3rd-party game engines (UE, Unity), but if you are not using those, OpenGL or DX11 is not a bad choice, and a lot of studios still do that, and probably will for a very long time yet. Hopefully over time someone will design a good separate graphics pipeline that runs on DX12/Vk, that is designed purely to be a good abstraction for graphics, and will do that well enough that it will replace most use of the old APIs. However, this will take a very long time, simply because of the human factors. (I already know DX11/OGL, why would I learn something new?) But even when it does, D3D/OpenGL will not be replaced by DX12/Vk, they will be replaced by a new translation layer that sits on top of it and is an analogue of these translation layers being built now.
devwastaken 6y ago
I tested the other day on ubuntu 18.04. yes, proton can run crysis. But the in game videos are real laggy. That's a pretty great feat in itself.
cannedslime 6y ago
I really hope I can play all my games on linux one day. Right now I only play Age of empires 2 definitive edition, anybody knows if i can play it ranked on linux?
- LeonM 6y ago
  I have all versions of AoE in my steam library, currently none of those are playable on Linux. Not surprising since the games are developed by Microsoft. You could try Wine, I haven't tried that.
  - Zhyl 6y ago
    From ProtonDB: Age of Empires 2 (2013) - Platinum Age of Empires 3 - Gold Age of Empires 2 - Gold Age of Empires - Gold https://protondb.com/search?q=age%20of%20empires https://protondb.com/search?q=age%20of%20empires
    - cannedslime 6y ago
      So not definitive edition ? :(
      - Zhyl 6y ago
        Apparently the 'Age of Empires 2' from that listing is the definitive edition. It's rated Gold so should work in most cases. https://www.protondb.com/app/813780 https://www.protondb.com/app/813780
      - BadInformatics 6y ago
        I've played 4v4 ranked on DE with friends without any (WINE-specific) crashes. This was about 6 months ago, so it's likely things are even more stable now.
    - LeonM 6y ago
      Haha, here I was thinking that I had 'all versions'. I have in my library: AoE AoE 2 AoE 2 HD AoE 2 Definitive Edition None of them show up in my Linux steam library.
google234123 6y ago
Most games will never work on Linux since anti cheat on the platform is infeasible.
- oliwarner 6y ago
  This is an absurd comment for two reasons. Most games aren't multiplayer with anti-cheat requirements. And you're only talking about lazy, client-side anti-cheat systems. It's impossible to verify everything between eyeball and public network. The drop-in systems available essentially check for known things, good and bad. This war on clients has a front line moving lower and lower into your computer. It used to be process and driver inspection but it's in the process of moving up to UEFI-locked ring0 (Riot's Vanguard) and it'll be a TPM-like hardware module by 2025. There's another way: INSPECT ACTIONS. Every client knows what's going on, the server —if one exists— knows what's going on. Just replay 10 seconds leading up to a suspicious event and you very quickly discover wall-hacking, or aiming too fast and too accurately, or impossible macros. This system can be automated, cross checked by multiple clients, and you very quickly know if somebody is probably cheating. Even if you don't want to spend time tuning your machine learning, you can just replay scenarios to other players. Hackers aren't subtle! CSGO's Overwatch is essentially crowdsourced moderation... and it works. The reason we pretend that client-side checks are the only anti-cheat feature out there is because they're cheap. Drop-in. But they're awful for gamers' freedoms.
  - forest_dweller 6y ago
    You are missing the point. The games do not work. As you said some install Kernel Level drivers (I believe this is a Ring-0 but I am not an expert in such things) as a Anti-cheat mechanism. These do not work with Wine/Proton. e.g. Doom Eternal worked fine until the first patch and then didn't once the anti-cheat was installed (for the non-existant multiplayer community). Then they removed it only after the fanbase heavily downvoted the game on the steam store and constantly bitched to bethesda about it. However most companies bet on most players just putting up with the bullshit to play the game and they are normally right. I don't drop £700 on a GPU to worry about software freedoms. I buy it to play games. If I get fed up of messing about (I am the guy that runs unironically runs Arch on my desktop when not gaming and OpenBSD on my office laptop), the vast majority of players just won't even bother. The best solution I've found is GPU passthrough (which a friend of mine has setup and I am going to try in the coming weeks) but that has it caveats and tbh Dual booting and just putting up with BS is just easier than trying to fight it.
m12k 6y ago
Most game engines work with some kind of abstraction to unify access to the underlying graphics APIs such as D3D, DX12, OpenGL, Vulkan and Metal (for example in Unity there's GraphicsDevice). Does anyone know if there's any work being done to create an open source abstraction like that? It would be neat if it were possible for open source games and game engines to share the work being done to ease cross-platform development.
- chaorace 6y ago
  OpenGL/Vulkan are open source, multi-platform abstraction layers. Of course, the graphics API isn't the only thing you have to get to work on multiple platforms. There's also the sound stack, networking, window management, and so forth. I think what you're getting at is some kind of all-in-one platform that abstracts away all of those lower level interfaces. In that case, that's basically what Unity is. Unity (and other cross-platform engines) do abstract away the metal in an open source, cross-platform set of APIs/tooling. If you're more interested in application development, as opposed to videogame development, there's toolkits like QT and VM-based environments like Java and Electron. The efficaciousness of these approaches do vary, however. Java UIs are famously ugly, due to how poorly they integrate with the host OS, Electron UIs are famously slow, due to literally being standalone web browser instances, and QT UIs are famously finicky, due to trying to abstract a lot less than the other approaches.
  - seg_lol 6y ago
    Right now that cross platform abstraction layer is the Web. - https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/ https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/ - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_... - https://webrtc.org/ https://webrtc.org/
    - kevincox 6y ago
      This is true and works for a lot of things (I love the web and publish a lot of web apps). However there is currently a very significant performance penalty both due to the available graphics APIs and due to WASM or JS vs native CPU performance. So for games with demanding graphics the web isn't that attractive of a target.
forest_dweller 6y ago
This is nice and all but they need to fix things like alt-tabbing in an out of a game. Many games just crash. I know it sounds dumb but sometimes when organising a game or using discord you need to alt-tab from the game to the chat app. This almost never happens with Windows unless the games are old. Also performance when streaming via discord or OBS significantly drops the framerate even on games my rig can play at 60FPS (while streaming) at 4k without any problems. Amid Evil for example with start stuttering when streaming in Linux but is 100% fine in Windows. Many people say these games work fine but in my experience they don't. I am normally running with whatever is the latest version of proton valve is bundling with. Generally though this maybe because UHD is a total mess on Linux.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  This is a workaround, but I use Discord on my phone to avoid having to go afk in games. It works almost as well as the desktop client, for the most part.
- coldpie 6y ago
  > This is nice and all but they need to fix things like alt-tabbing in an out of a game. This is super hard to get right. It's somewhat wonky on Windows to begin with (we have found plenty of games where it's broken on Windows), and then you have to factor in that X doesn't work the same way, and there are a hundred different window managers, which all work different ways. It should be significantly improved in 5.13, and we're still working on improvements in that area, including in upcoming 5.13 releases.
  - WhyNotHugo 6y ago
    > This is super hard to get right. Not _really_. The issue is that games are trying to do god-knows-what when they lose focus. In reality, they just need to ignore this happening. Regular applications handle losing focus just fine, and games would too -- unless you try to do magic funky stuff when you lose focus (my guess is that they do this to work around funky WM issues on window that don't exist on Linux).
avan1 6y ago
for those who wants to see benchmarks: RDR 2 (Read Dead Redemption) on linux vs windows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfJoH1N6IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfJoH1N6IQ
kuu 6y ago
Is this support to linux related to gaming on the cloud (where servers are mostly linux)? Maybe that's the interest and not so much the linux users...
- Zhyl 6y ago
  It's part of Valve's hedge against Windows. Basically, Valve is making sure they (and no other developer or publisher) end up in an 'Epic vs {Apple,Google}' situation. Valve: invest in technologies that weaken their dependency on third parties. Epic: sue the third parties they depend on and complain about them loudly on Twitter.
  - kuu 6y ago
    Interesting point of view, and it's true that by removing that dependency their position is a bit stronger. I didn't realize about it, thanks for sharing!
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
I've fascinated with what Steam is doing for gaming on Linux. We'd been moving at a slow pace for years, and suddenly, we're jumping in strides. I'm likewise fascinated about how terrible Steam's CLIENT works on Linux. Like, no hidpi support, (it's just blurry), notifications don't work, and lots of other stuff is broken. Sometimes closing a popup closes the main window, but only for _some_ kinds of popups. It also only works via X11 / XWayland. Fortunately, they keep getting all the really hard stuff done.
- tempest_ 6y ago
  Honestly I can tolerate those things if it means I can game on Linux and have no need to keep a copy of Windows installed. It's been 5 years or so since I moved all my computers over to Linux (was not a cortana fan) and proton definitely made the transition easier.
  - WhyNotHugo 6y ago
    Yeah, true. As much as I complain, I still use Steam. It never occurred to me to boot into windows for gaming though -- once I moved I quickly wiped windows and never looked back (like ten years ago now).
- larzang 6y ago
  It also still requires 32-bit drivers, which were initially missing from the last nvidia update, forcing a rollback. I'm incredibly grateful for the work they've done on Proton, but it's definitely odd they don't seem to have anyone prioritizing updating the Steam platform itself.
  - pantalaimon 6y ago
    A lot of old games are 32 bit only and won't be ported to bit.
- rasz 6y ago
  Is it perhaps because Steam Client is being "worked on" by Valve employees (do whatever you want, no bosses, but if you work on something we wont like you will be fired immediately, ask Jeri Ellsworth) while DirecX compatibility is all volunteers with maybe some funding? I googled Hans-Kristian Arntzen (VKD3D-Proton maintainer?) and he doesnt appear to be employed by Valve.
sharpneli 6y ago
Quick perusal of the extension would indicate that it’s main purpose is to help emulate dx12 more efficiently. DX12 doesn’t have descriptorsets like Vulkan. It has descriptorheaps that are bit different. This extension basically makes them quite similar. First of all the descriptors can be stored into the same place (In Vulkan the descriptors are strongly typed.). With this an image or buffer etc can use same descriptor in a set, like DX12. In addition the CPU only heap is exposed in this, allowing the platform to directly implement DX12 heaps with desc sets. Don’t really think this would help with DX11 at all. But it would make the mess that is DX12 binding model more tolerable to emulate. Still not sure how would they emulate the root parameters to their full extent though.
gregjw 6y ago
Does Valve have a vested interest in helping gaming on Linux? What do they get out of it? Or are they a generous corporate machine doing it out the goodness of their heart?
- bananamerica 6y ago
  Steam has a vested interested on Linux ever since Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Store.
- JTon 6y ago
  I've read that Valve was worried about Windows Store eating their lunch (i.e. creating a walled garden around gaming on windows platform). So Valve started investing heavily into gaming on Linux as a hedge.
- squirtle1992 6y ago
  Maybe it's profitable already? 0.8-1% of Steam's userbase is not a small number.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Linux is effectively valves insurance policy against microsoft going back to the good old days.
viseztrance 6y ago
Despite all the comments here stating the opposite, steam has been a home run for me on linux. It worked flawlessly on all my machines and it continues to do so.
shmerl 6y ago
Good progress. Too bad many games still come out using DX12 today instead of Vulkan, so such translation is needed. MS is still its old '90s lock-in self when it comes to gaming and Vulkan adoption. So efforts like this is a great way to break that lock-in and it helps to gradually increase Linux gaming user base which eventually will help break the catch 22 deadlock of publishers ignoring Linux.

374 points by Fnoord 6y ago

Valve is doing god’s work when it comes to Linux gaming. I have played over 40 hours of GTA V without many troubles. The game looks great and performs great. So glad I could get rid of my windows install.

merlinscholz 6y ago
I've had the same experience with Doom (2016). The most irritating thing was the reduced input latency on Linux, which threw me off for the first few hours. After getting used to it I only boot to Windows for UWP games.
- yakubin 6y ago
  Low input latency irritates you? That's a new one.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    "Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation" It threw them off for the first few hours, as written. Doesn't mean that low latency in general irritates them, just that they weren't used to it at first.
    - jonathanstrange 6y ago
      I have to agree with yakubin, though, and don't think it was a snarky comment. He just pointed out that it was an odd complaint. Gamers go at great length to reduce input lag on Windows.
      - capableweb 6y ago
        You agree that because you're not used to something, that means you're not a fan of that thing in general? I'm a gamer myself. Upgrading my display makes me slightly off-game myself, until I get used to the new one. Same when getting a new car, where the brakes are way more sensitive than on a old car. Doesn't mean I don't like the brakes to be more sensitive, just means I'm not used to it. And yes, the first few weeks of sensitive brakes are irritating, just touch the pedal and the car grinds quickly to a full halt. But now I do like it better compared to when you fully press down the pedal and the car slowly stops.
  - thefz 6y ago
    I read it in a sense that it's hard to adjust back once muscle memory is set to a certain value.
  - gentleman11 6y ago
    Doom 2016 and eternal have really significant mouse lag on windows. It’s really hard to get used to. It’s most noticeable if you have recently played an actually responsive FPS recently
    - bitmunk 6y ago
      Wait, so I tried to fix the mouse lag in Windows for days and the problem was Doom? Fuck.
- marvin 6y ago
  >The most irritating thing was the reduced input latency on Linux Huh. That's a big competitive advantage in competitive games. Why don't pro CS players use Linux? Is the difference smaller in the games that have been optimized for competitive play?
  - seg_lol 6y ago
    > for the first few hours
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The PCs are provided by the tourney organisers, and it's a marginal benefit really. Most professional CS is played at 4:3 stretched so the PC is pulling in hundreds of FPS
    - Alupis 6y ago
      > Most professional CS is played at 4:3 stretched so the PC is pulling in hundreds of FPS That's unlikely to be true anymore. Even a modestly modern GPU can produce 100's of FPS in CS:GO at 1920x1080 or higher resolutions. Benchmarks for the 3080 were showing 400-500 FPS in CS:GO at 1440p resolutions. After maybe double your screen refresh rate, all excess FPS don't matter and are effectively wasted. Pro's mostly use 144Hz monitors because 240Hz is indistinguishable[1] - making anything above 288FPS basically a waste (and it's debatable if anything above 144FPS with FreeSync enabled is a waste too). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA
      - mhh__ 6y ago
        The stretched resolution is because it makes people thicker at the expense of FoV, not performance as per se
  - nvarsj 6y ago
    I don't know how true this is. Personally I've always noticed significantly more input lag on Linux than Windows for games. I even used to hack on ezquake's Linux port to try and get the input lag down, but the Linux kernel just caused too much latency. This could have changed since then though. You have to realize MS invested significantly in "gaming APIs" like DirectInput, DirectX all tuned to low latency gaming. Linux never really had anything like that. I'd love to see results showing otherwise, I'd far prefer to game in Linux if possible.
- fctorial 6y ago
  What were the specs of your machine?
  - merlinscholz 6y ago
    Ryzen 2700X and a MSI GeForce 1070 TI on a 2k screen
minetest2048 6y ago
I think that the only gaming company that actively improve Linux gaming is only Valve. Compare this to Stadia, where I never see any news on them contributing to the Linux gaming stack
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  Well.. and Aspyr for porting. And CodeWeavers for employing Wine devs. And Collabora: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/collabora-expect-their-linux-kernel-work-for-windows-game-emulation-in-kernel-5-11 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/collabora-expect-their...
  - minetest2048 6y ago
    Right, I forgot about those Linux porting companies such as Aspyr and Feral Interactive. And Collabora isn't specifically a gaming company, but they and CodeWeavers also helps
    - bicolao 6y ago
      Both Collabora and CodeWeavers collaborate with Valve (and with funding from Valve?) on the gaming front though so it's not wrong to attribute that to Valve (yes CodeWeavers also improves Wine independently, but that's more than just games).
      - ekianjo 6y ago
        Codeweavers is mainly working to support Proton these days, check out this interview from a few days ago: https://boilingsteam.com/podcast-12-with-james-ramey-from-codeweavers/ https://boilingsteam.com/podcast-12-with-james-ramey-from-co...
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Aspyr has not been doing any porting for years. Feral is scaling down their porting as well. Mainly because of Proton: https://boilingsteam.com/proton-the-native-port-killer/ https://boilingsteam.com/proton-the-native-port-killer/
Jnr 6y ago
If I remember correctly, Valve started doing this some time ago as an "insurance policy", when Microsoft spoke about locking down Windows (before they introduced Windows Store). It is amazing to see how far Linux gaming has come since then. 10 years ago almost none of the big games worked, 5 years ago lots of games worked after fiddling with wine config, and now most of the games I have tried work out of the box after enabling Proton. Imagine what will come in the next 5 to 10 years.
- ubidubbiiui 6y ago
  Call me optimistic, but I imagine a larger amount of "most" work out of the box by then.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    A lot of games now don't work because of anti-cheat technologies. But Valve is working on this with Codeweavers with their refactoring of NTDLL.
    - eptcyka 6y ago
      The most egregious anti-cheat stuff is actually implemented in a windows kernel driver - I'm not optimistic about this being resolved without first party support for Linux.
      - arebhaibhai 6y ago
        Collabora guys are working on just that, FYI.
      - fctorial 6y ago
        > without first party support for Linux. Or for wine
        eptcyka 6y ago
        It would be quite the undertaking for wine to also emulate not just the Windows userspace but also the whole Windows kernel to allow for the rootkit anti-cheat driver to run.
ricardo81 6y ago
I bought Civ 6 for Linux purely because it was available on Linux. Bought from Steam. It does seem like they're pushing things in the right direction for Linux gaming.
- kungtotte 6y ago
  One thing that's important for Linux gaming is that games played under Proton on Steam are counted as Linux sales, so publishers and developers get accurate statistics on how many Linux gamers there are. If the market is big enough, cross platform development is viable from the start.
  - FrojoS 6y ago
    On the other hand, if the Windows version works fine with Vulcan, why go through the trouble of making a Linux version?
    - imtringued 6y ago
      It's probably easier to develop proton support for a Windows than to port the entire game to Linux.
      - kungtotte 6y ago
        Sure, but my point was that this shows the value in making a game that's easily portable to begin with. This is more for future games rather than converting existing ones.
    - rawfan 6y ago
      True. I've heard some devs are spending at least some time to optimize their games to work better with Proton.
      - fctorial 6y ago
        Wine/proton team could provide tech support service to firms trying to make their application wine compatible.
jpetso 6y ago
I fear what will happen to DirectX-on-Linux if Oracle vs. Google goes in favor of Oracle.
justin66 6y ago
> Valve is doing god’s work when it comes to Linux gaming. I have played over 40 hours of GTA V without many troubles. The game looks great and performs great. So glad I could get rid of my windows install. "I would actually prefer if you didn't play GTA V. I mean, I guess it doesn't matter since you're going to hell anyway. But still." - God
ivanceras 6y ago
I still have input lag experience with GTA V on linux despite using new graphics card. The only immediate solution I've found is to play in windowed mode. All other games are playing nicely (ie: Witcher 3, No man's sky).
loa_in_ 6y ago
They seem to agree that a free OS with an army of enthusiastic geeks ready at all times is at least almost as good for general public (casual gamers) as is MS proprietary garden. If Windows flopped somehow all my friends would have their gaming rigs with most of their games within few days thanks to my experience, and I wouldn't charge more than a few beers.

ecmascript 6y ago

I have played several windows only games on my linux computer in the last couple of weeks and it works great. It's very, very impressive.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
Neat, which brand of GPU?
- Fnoord 6y ago
  AMD, most likely. There's a lot of benchmark comparisons between Linux and Windows here [1]. [1] https://flightlessmango.com/ https://flightlessmango.com/
- tpxl 6y ago
  I run nVidia on Ubuntu 20.04 with proprietary drivers and few (gaming) problems.

wiradikusuma 6y ago

I have a huge (already downloaded) library on Steam Windows. Does anyone know how to "share" the game resources so that the Linux version only download the executable/runner?

gmemstr 6y ago
I haven't tried this myself, but you might be able to add the existing directory to Steam on the Linux side and Steam might be smart enough to download exactly what it needs, since all the assets are already present.
ekianjo 6y ago
if you can mount the Windows partition under Linux (ntfs) you may be able to link your Steam Library under the Steam Linux client, but you have to know that some compatibility issues will arise with non-Linux partitions.
- minetest2048 6y ago
  Note that as the character ':' is reserved in NTFS, Proton cannot create its wineprefix in the NTFS steamapps/compatdata directory. To solve this, you need to symlink that folder to a filesystem that support filename with the character ':', such as ext4. More info here: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-di... https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/82#issuecomment-415099440 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/82#issuecomme... Windows and Linux can share steamapps directory though, I've tried this by installing my games to an external SSD with NTFS filesystem and I can play the games under Proton on my PC and Windows at another PC. I'm not sure whether this will work for games that have native Linux version though
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    I'm having the same issue on my PC. It runs multiple OSes and I'd like to share the Steam library. I've settled for Ext4FS, which works on all the Linux distributions, but not on Windows. I wonder, has anyone tried to get this to work? There's at least 3 options: Ext4FS (Ext3/Ext2), NTFS, and Btrfs (which has a Windows driver as well).

Noxmiles 6y ago

How do we deserve Valve? Okay: Any possibility to support their open source work? (except of using steam)

zufallsheld 6y ago
Buy their games without steam.
- ho_schi 6y ago
  I'm thankfully for the native games from Valve on Linux. And also for improving gaming on Linux in general. Steam? Steam itself is not necessary and is just another system to lure users and developers into a Vendor Lock-In. Everything useful it provides should be part of libraries. In a better world - we would use a package manager or Flatpak to install games. I'm sick of the software industry, every big company tries to lock you in. Microsoft (historically with contracts, incompatiblity and UWP and now Cloud), Apple (AppStore and of course incompatibility), Google (Cloud and PlayStore...and making everything else then Google Services a pain) and EPIC (Games Store). No other industry has managed to be so awful than software industry. You can drive another brand of car than anybody else in your town and be fine with it, as long you get support (spare parts). But software? Hell no! Your choice is either pain through being in a minority or pain through living without control upon your your software, unsteadiness, insecurity, high costs...
  - anonymou2 6y ago
    I think that that software industry philosophy now applies to many other things. I guess because most things now run software, from cars to farmers milk tanks. But it's probably not the only reason.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    > Steam itself is not necessary and is just another system to lure users and developers into a Vendor Lock-In This ignores the history of how Steam came about in the first place. The PC gaming industry was basically dying because physical distribution was expensive, which made the games expensive too, so a lot of users just pirated games (by downloading them from the internet) because it was easier. Valve recognized that piracy was a symptom of a service problem and set out to create the convenient service experience of piracy in legitimate form. It was actually widely hated at first because people assumed malevolence, but over time Valve has proved their good intentions with the platform. They helped kick off the indy explosion with the Potato Sack, they allow developers to sell Steam keys on other stores without giving Valve a cut, they never ask for exclusivity, and despite what many internet whiners complain about they actually try pretty hard to have worthwhile recommendation and review systems. > Everything useful it provides should be part of libraries. In a better world - we would use a package manager or Flatpak to install games. This is basically already the case. Steam is the manager, and it also provides the libraries for its functionality (DRM, workshop, achievements, etc) that are entirely optional. There are games on Steam that don't use any of that and you can copy them to a system without Steam and they run fine (BallisticNG was like this last I checked). Hell, as EA and Ubisoft proved you can even install and run your own alternative client as part of your game you sell on Steam (though thankfully the store now warns users about this behavior).

Lucasoato 6y ago

Shouldn't this be a priority even for other gaming platforms? Imagine all the progress we made on development tools and containerization ported to the game development environment. I think it could be a huge step forward!

AshleysBrain 6y ago

It's cool seeing the tech develop to run D3D/OpenGL on Vulkan/DX12/Metal, moving a lot of code out of drivers and in to libraries. But in the long term apps should all end up using Vulkan/DX12/Metal themselves directly (or modern derivatives) - so there won't be many uses for the old legacy D3D/OpenGL stacks left, so these libraries will probably fall out of use too. So, nice for the short/medium term, but probably no longer relevant in the long term.

devwastaken 6y ago
I don't believe opengl is going anywhere. It's still heavily embedded in modern gaming everywhere. If anything a translation layer from opengl to vulkan would be the direction.
Tuna-Fish 6y ago
> But in the long term apps should all end up using Vulkan/DX12/Metal themselves directly In terms of "a typical 3d app writes directly to the API", they really shouldn't. The fundamental shift between DX12/Vk and the earlier APIs is that the old graphics APIs were fundamentally about graphics, in the sense that they described a specific way to draw graphics, and then in conjunction with hardware translated that into something that ran well. Originally, there were many very different ways this was done. Over time the hardware implementations all converged towards a common form, and game developers found themselves not really coding against the old APIs as designed, but twisting it's use into something that translated into what they wanted on the actual hardware. (That they knew and understood because of the consoles that just let the devs target the same or very similar hardware directly without a translation layer on top of it.) DX12/Vk then approaches the API design from a completely different perspective: They are designed to provide an efficient interface to the functionality that is available in hardware. Much of this is graphics-specific, simply because the hardware is meant to run graphics, but in a very real way the API isn't about the graphics, it's about the hardware. Vk doesn't have the kind of simple graphics pipeline that OpenGL devs are used to, because it's outside the context of the API. You, the developer, are supposed to make your own pipeline, out of the pieces of hardware-supported operations that the API exposes. Which brings this back to my point: The typical game dev has no interest or need to learn DX12/Vk, because they fundamentally do not provide what the devs need or want. Instead, game devs should largely build their work on top of an actual graphics pipeline. Right now, most devs get that pipeline out of the large 3rd-party game engines (UE, Unity), but if you are not using those, OpenGL or DX11 is not a bad choice, and a lot of studios still do that, and probably will for a very long time yet. Hopefully over time someone will design a good separate graphics pipeline that runs on DX12/Vk, that is designed purely to be a good abstraction for graphics, and will do that well enough that it will replace most use of the old APIs. However, this will take a very long time, simply because of the human factors. (I already know DX11/OGL, why would I learn something new?) But even when it does, D3D/OpenGL will not be replaced by DX12/Vk, they will be replaced by a new translation layer that sits on top of it and is an analogue of these translation layers being built now.

devwastaken 6y ago

I tested the other day on ubuntu 18.04. yes, proton can run crysis. But the in game videos are real laggy. That's a pretty great feat in itself.

cannedslime 6y ago

I really hope I can play all my games on linux one day. Right now I only play Age of empires 2 definitive edition, anybody knows if i can play it ranked on linux?

LeonM 6y ago
I have all versions of AoE in my steam library, currently none of those are playable on Linux. Not surprising since the games are developed by Microsoft. You could try Wine, I haven't tried that.
- Zhyl 6y ago
  From ProtonDB: Age of Empires 2 (2013) - Platinum Age of Empires 3 - Gold Age of Empires 2 - Gold Age of Empires - Gold https://protondb.com/search?q=age%20of%20empires https://protondb.com/search?q=age%20of%20empires
  - cannedslime 6y ago
    So not definitive edition ? :(
    - Zhyl 6y ago
      Apparently the 'Age of Empires 2' from that listing is the definitive edition. It's rated Gold so should work in most cases. https://www.protondb.com/app/813780 https://www.protondb.com/app/813780
    - BadInformatics 6y ago
      I've played 4v4 ranked on DE with friends without any (WINE-specific) crashes. This was about 6 months ago, so it's likely things are even more stable now.
  - LeonM 6y ago
    Haha, here I was thinking that I had 'all versions'. I have in my library: AoE AoE 2 AoE 2 HD AoE 2 Definitive Edition None of them show up in my Linux steam library.

google234123 6y ago

Most games will never work on Linux since anti cheat on the platform is infeasible.

oliwarner 6y ago
This is an absurd comment for two reasons. Most games aren't multiplayer with anti-cheat requirements. And you're only talking about lazy, client-side anti-cheat systems. It's impossible to verify everything between eyeball and public network. The drop-in systems available essentially check for known things, good and bad. This war on clients has a front line moving lower and lower into your computer. It used to be process and driver inspection but it's in the process of moving up to UEFI-locked ring0 (Riot's Vanguard) and it'll be a TPM-like hardware module by 2025. There's another way: INSPECT ACTIONS. Every client knows what's going on, the server —if one exists— knows what's going on. Just replay 10 seconds leading up to a suspicious event and you very quickly discover wall-hacking, or aiming too fast and too accurately, or impossible macros. This system can be automated, cross checked by multiple clients, and you very quickly know if somebody is probably cheating. Even if you don't want to spend time tuning your machine learning, you can just replay scenarios to other players. Hackers aren't subtle! CSGO's Overwatch is essentially crowdsourced moderation... and it works. The reason we pretend that client-side checks are the only anti-cheat feature out there is because they're cheap. Drop-in. But they're awful for gamers' freedoms.
- forest_dweller 6y ago
  You are missing the point. The games do not work. As you said some install Kernel Level drivers (I believe this is a Ring-0 but I am not an expert in such things) as a Anti-cheat mechanism. These do not work with Wine/Proton. e.g. Doom Eternal worked fine until the first patch and then didn't once the anti-cheat was installed (for the non-existant multiplayer community). Then they removed it only after the fanbase heavily downvoted the game on the steam store and constantly bitched to bethesda about it. However most companies bet on most players just putting up with the bullshit to play the game and they are normally right. I don't drop £700 on a GPU to worry about software freedoms. I buy it to play games. If I get fed up of messing about (I am the guy that runs unironically runs Arch on my desktop when not gaming and OpenBSD on my office laptop), the vast majority of players just won't even bother. The best solution I've found is GPU passthrough (which a friend of mine has setup and I am going to try in the coming weeks) but that has it caveats and tbh Dual booting and just putting up with BS is just easier than trying to fight it.

m12k 6y ago

Most game engines work with some kind of abstraction to unify access to the underlying graphics APIs such as D3D, DX12, OpenGL, Vulkan and Metal (for example in Unity there's GraphicsDevice). Does anyone know if there's any work being done to create an open source abstraction like that? It would be neat if it were possible for open source games and game engines to share the work being done to ease cross-platform development.

chaorace 6y ago
OpenGL/Vulkan are open source, multi-platform abstraction layers. Of course, the graphics API isn't the only thing you have to get to work on multiple platforms. There's also the sound stack, networking, window management, and so forth. I think what you're getting at is some kind of all-in-one platform that abstracts away all of those lower level interfaces. In that case, that's basically what Unity is. Unity (and other cross-platform engines) do abstract away the metal in an open source, cross-platform set of APIs/tooling. If you're more interested in application development, as opposed to videogame development, there's toolkits like QT and VM-based environments like Java and Electron. The efficaciousness of these approaches do vary, however. Java UIs are famously ugly, due to how poorly they integrate with the host OS, Electron UIs are famously slow, due to literally being standalone web browser instances, and QT UIs are famously finicky, due to trying to abstract a lot less than the other approaches.
- seg_lol 6y ago
  Right now that cross platform abstraction layer is the Web. - https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/ https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/ - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_... - https://webrtc.org/ https://webrtc.org/
  - kevincox 6y ago
    This is true and works for a lot of things (I love the web and publish a lot of web apps). However there is currently a very significant performance penalty both due to the available graphics APIs and due to WASM or JS vs native CPU performance. So for games with demanding graphics the web isn't that attractive of a target.

forest_dweller 6y ago

This is nice and all but they need to fix things like alt-tabbing in an out of a game. Many games just crash. I know it sounds dumb but sometimes when organising a game or using discord you need to alt-tab from the game to the chat app. This almost never happens with Windows unless the games are old. Also performance when streaming via discord or OBS significantly drops the framerate even on games my rig can play at 60FPS (while streaming) at 4k without any problems. Amid Evil for example with start stuttering when streaming in Linux but is 100% fine in Windows. Many people say these games work fine but in my experience they don't. I am normally running with whatever is the latest version of proton valve is bundling with. Generally though this maybe because UHD is a total mess on Linux.

faitswulff 6y ago
This is a workaround, but I use Discord on my phone to avoid having to go afk in games. It works almost as well as the desktop client, for the most part.
coldpie 6y ago
> This is nice and all but they need to fix things like alt-tabbing in an out of a game. This is super hard to get right. It's somewhat wonky on Windows to begin with (we have found plenty of games where it's broken on Windows), and then you have to factor in that X doesn't work the same way, and there are a hundred different window managers, which all work different ways. It should be significantly improved in 5.13, and we're still working on improvements in that area, including in upcoming 5.13 releases.
- WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  > This is super hard to get right. Not _really_. The issue is that games are trying to do god-knows-what when they lose focus. In reality, they just need to ignore this happening. Regular applications handle losing focus just fine, and games would too -- unless you try to do magic funky stuff when you lose focus (my guess is that they do this to work around funky WM issues on window that don't exist on Linux).

avan1 6y ago

for those who wants to see benchmarks: RDR 2 (Read Dead Redemption) on linux vs windows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfJoH1N6IQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfJoH1N6IQ

kuu 6y ago

Is this support to linux related to gaming on the cloud (where servers are mostly linux)? Maybe that's the interest and not so much the linux users...

Zhyl 6y ago
It's part of Valve's hedge against Windows. Basically, Valve is making sure they (and no other developer or publisher) end up in an 'Epic vs {Apple,Google}' situation. Valve: invest in technologies that weaken their dependency on third parties. Epic: sue the third parties they depend on and complain about them loudly on Twitter.
- kuu 6y ago
  Interesting point of view, and it's true that by removing that dependency their position is a bit stronger. I didn't realize about it, thanks for sharing!

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

I've fascinated with what Steam is doing for gaming on Linux. We'd been moving at a slow pace for years, and suddenly, we're jumping in strides. I'm likewise fascinated about how terrible Steam's CLIENT works on Linux. Like, no hidpi support, (it's just blurry), notifications don't work, and lots of other stuff is broken. Sometimes closing a popup closes the main window, but only for _some_ kinds of popups. It also only works via X11 / XWayland. Fortunately, they keep getting all the really hard stuff done.

tempest_ 6y ago
Honestly I can tolerate those things if it means I can game on Linux and have no need to keep a copy of Windows installed. It's been 5 years or so since I moved all my computers over to Linux (was not a cortana fan) and proton definitely made the transition easier.
- WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  Yeah, true. As much as I complain, I still use Steam. It never occurred to me to boot into windows for gaming though -- once I moved I quickly wiped windows and never looked back (like ten years ago now).
larzang 6y ago
It also still requires 32-bit drivers, which were initially missing from the last nvidia update, forcing a rollback. I'm incredibly grateful for the work they've done on Proton, but it's definitely odd they don't seem to have anyone prioritizing updating the Steam platform itself.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  A lot of old games are 32 bit only and won't be ported to bit.
rasz 6y ago
Is it perhaps because Steam Client is being "worked on" by Valve employees (do whatever you want, no bosses, but if you work on something we wont like you will be fired immediately, ask Jeri Ellsworth) while DirecX compatibility is all volunteers with maybe some funding? I googled Hans-Kristian Arntzen (VKD3D-Proton maintainer?) and he doesnt appear to be employed by Valve.

sharpneli 6y ago

Quick perusal of the extension would indicate that it’s main purpose is to help emulate dx12 more efficiently. DX12 doesn’t have descriptorsets like Vulkan. It has descriptorheaps that are bit different. This extension basically makes them quite similar. First of all the descriptors can be stored into the same place (In Vulkan the descriptors are strongly typed.). With this an image or buffer etc can use same descriptor in a set, like DX12. In addition the CPU only heap is exposed in this, allowing the platform to directly implement DX12 heaps with desc sets. Don’t really think this would help with DX11 at all. But it would make the mess that is DX12 binding model more tolerable to emulate. Still not sure how would they emulate the root parameters to their full extent though.

gregjw 6y ago

Does Valve have a vested interest in helping gaming on Linux? What do they get out of it? Or are they a generous corporate machine doing it out the goodness of their heart?

bananamerica 6y ago
Steam has a vested interested on Linux ever since Microsoft introduced the Microsoft Store.
JTon 6y ago
I've read that Valve was worried about Windows Store eating their lunch (i.e. creating a walled garden around gaming on windows platform). So Valve started investing heavily into gaming on Linux as a hedge.
squirtle1992 6y ago
Maybe it's profitable already? 0.8-1% of Steam's userbase is not a small number.
mhh__ 6y ago
Linux is effectively valves insurance policy against microsoft going back to the good old days.

viseztrance 6y ago

Despite all the comments here stating the opposite, steam has been a home run for me on linux. It worked flawlessly on all my machines and it continues to do so.

shmerl 6y ago

Good progress. Too bad many games still come out using DX12 today instead of Vulkan, so such translation is needed. MS is still its old '90s lock-in self when it comes to gaming and Vulkan adoption. So efforts like this is a great way to break that lock-in and it helps to gradually increase Linux gaming user base which eventually will help break the catch 22 deadlock of publishers ignoring Linux.