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

phoronix.com

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

#51

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.

Neat, which brand of GPU?

AMD, most likely. There's a lot of benchmark comparisons between Linux and Windows here [1].

[1] https://flightlessmango.com/

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

#52

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

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 pr…

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.

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

#54
post #11

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.

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 afte…

"Some time ago" was eight years ago (/r/linux_gaming reminded me of this). Amazing they kept going through all this time and do not seem to slow down.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well.. and Aspyr for porting. And CodeWeavers for employing Wine devs. And Collabora: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/10/collabora-expect-their...

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

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).

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

#56
post #44
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Collabora guys are working on just that, FYI.

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

#57

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 n…

> 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…

The last part is what I was referring to by "modern derivatives". OpenGL is widely regarded to have a poor API. If you want a higher level API, wouldn't you want a new modern layer with a nicer API instead? How long will technologies like OpenGL last just because people have already learnt them? Surely eventually we will switch over to better alternatives?

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

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

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 he…

Those games don't work. And it's important to note that occasionally those games also don't work for Windows users. New drivers, strange setups, perfectly legitimate background software, they've all upset the boat at some point, and will again in the future. Trusted Clients are fragile beasts.

It was Denuvo's Anti-Cheat and Anti-Tamper that were added retrospectively to Doom Eternal. Denuvo has a pretty awful track record even on Windows, so seeing its quick removal wasn't too surprising. If anything, the experience was positive to see a large publisher acknowledge Linux compatibility.

Games companies can keep betting on the worst anti-cheat mechanisms, I'll keep gaming on Linux thanks. I happily trade a few frames and titles to not use Windows. In my eyes, I'm better for it. If I wanted a locked down system, I'd buy a console.

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

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

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 he…

People are insane to begin with to install some rootkit on their system just to play a game.

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

#60

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?

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.

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