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

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

#251

Post by WhyNotHugo »

dkersten wrote: post #172
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #105

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 o…

The client works fine on XWayland, but the games do not, I need to switch to X11 for that. I really only use the client to launch the games though, so I haven't noticed any of the other issues. As far as the games go, I've been very impressed with how well Proton works so far! I was thinking about running Windows in a VM and doing GPU passthrough when I get a desktop next year, but with how well Proton has been worki…

> The client works fine on XWayland

XWayland does not support scaling, so I don't see how it can "work fine".

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

#252

Post by WhyNotHugo »

oseityphelysiol wrote: post #121
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #105

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 o…

That's because they're working on Linux support, they don't care about Linux desktop. Steam os is based on Linux, but it would be naive to think they put much work in supporting Linux desktop, since the market share is neglibe.

Supporting the Linux desktop means they can leverage more of it for whatever solution they ship.

They can either use an existing display server, or write their own. The latter would be absurdly more expensive.

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

#253

Post by WhyNotHugo »

airstrike wrote: post #137
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that games are one of the main reasons the market share is negligible. It used to be games and Office, but home users can increasingly get by with the web version or Google Docs or LibreOffice. But people still keep Windows on their PCs for games. If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows?

Google Docs is no replacement for actual serious work in Office. That's like asking someone who uses NetBeans to switch over to repl.it

This "actual serious work" you mention is not what most people use Office for anyway.

Most people write simple letters, and do very basic spreadsheets.

This is probably one of those "80% of the people use 20% of the features" scenario.

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

#254

Post by WhyNotHugo »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #155
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that games are one of the main reasons the market share is negligible. It used to be games and Office, but home users can increasingly get by with the web version or Google Docs or LibreOffice. But people still keep Windows on their PCs for games. If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows?

> If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows? Let me tell you a story: In the late 1940s the US airforce had a serious problem: many pilots were dying in incidents caused by apparent pilot error. At one point this number reached 17 pilots a day . After ruling out training as a cause, they turned their attention to ergonomics. In the 1920s, they had conducted a study to determine the ph…

I hate how right you are.

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

#255

Post by WhyNotHugo »

tempest_ wrote: post #111
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #105

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 o…

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.

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).

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

#256

Post by supercheetah »

coldpie wrote: post #174
rasz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since its all emulated why even tell the game its alt tabbed in the first place? Just keep it thinking nothing changed, its not like games do special stuff when in the background.

We investigated that briefly. It's not as easy as it sounds, and even if it was, some games do useful things when they lose focus (e.g. auto pause the game, stop sending audio). We decided it wasn't worth pursuing.

Would it be worth it to make that as an option, perhaps a command line option like PROTON_ALWAYS_FOCUSED=1?

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

#257

Post by forest_dweller »

oliwarner wrote: post #241
forest_dweller wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they defintely don't work on Linux which is the point and I definetely can't play them. I personally left a negative review and removed the game until the patch was removed. Whether the anti-cheat should be there isn't the issue. The issue is "does this stop the game from running on Linux". The answer was yes it does. For a lot of people the only reason they buy a PC is to play games. So you might be okay saying…

I'm not trying to give voice to every gamer, just pointing out that there's more to gaming than games that rely on this crap, and that some of us accept that. Life is full of quasi-moral choices like this. You can choose to support hardware that supports your platform. You can choose to buy local rather than carrots flown in from South Africa; wtf Waitrose! You can donate your time to helping people hoping it makes t…

> I'm not trying to give voice to every gamer, just pointing out that there's more to gaming than games that rely on this crap, and that some of us accept that.

That wasn't what I was taking umbrage with. You dismissing the concerns as absurd was what I was taking umbrage with.

> Life is full of quasi-moral choices like this.

Yes understand this.

> You can choose to support hardware that supports your platform. You can choose to buy local rather than carrots flown in from South Africa; wtf Waitrose! You can donate your time to helping people hoping it makes the world slightly better.

I don't wish to be rude but you are being so overly dramatic.

> Not playing games that go out of their way to force me to run Windows is my moral stand here. I get that it's not for you, and it's not for a lot of other Windows gamers, and it might even be stopping the Year of the Linux Desktop...

The dramatic language aside. Yes that is your choice. However a lot of games at the moment require this, so proton as good as it is won't run these games and that is a deal breaker for many people. Whether or not you continue with your moral crusade will make no difference to the current reality.

As for the year of the Linux desktop. It is never going to happen. I've been using alternative Operating systems such as Lnux for about 17 years. I've tried 21 XFCE, Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, mucked about with windows managers and there is always some really irritating bugs that never get resolved and have been there for years on end. That combined with almost every Linux distribution kinda breaking itself as time goes on and requiring you to drop to the terminal to fix it (I have used many distros over the years).

> But my view is this too shall pass. Trusted Clients are bound to fail, as they have again and again and again. They're running out of options. Engines with action integrity checks are the future. And e-sports will move to the cloud because that just makes sense for everybody involved.

I doubt it. It is a good enough solution. These cloud based services have bunch of input latency which is just unacceptable. Many of the large games before covid happened over lan in stadiums, once covid is over we will go back to this.

I suspect with esports I think cheating will be discovered by observing replays at the higher levels. (this already happens in the speed running community).

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

#258

Post by Qwertious »

Jasper_ wrote: post #143
rasz wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Correct. SteamOS is a passion project by Gabe because of a grudge with Microsoft, and it's basically all contractors. Nobody at Valve internal gives a shit, in fact they're more worried about Epic Games than MS.

More likely, it was an attempt for Steam to compete with consoles - Steam can run on HTPCs with Big Picture, but consoles are (or at least were) all about the OOTB experience. It makes a lot of sense to simply ship a pre-configured OS when pushing HTPCs.

You could say that making it Linux-based shows that SteamOS is all about Windows, but if anything that logic suggests it's all about the Xbox. If it were competing with Windows it'd be a KB+M-based distro.

If you say "but they didn't need a separate Linux distro, they were already focusing on Ubuntu", that just proves that SteamOS wasn't about Windows.

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

#259

Post by Qwertious »

giobox wrote: post #147
phone8675309 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in strides because they don't want to get shut out of the Windows market. Having a credible alternative stay's Microsoft's hand about going Apple and requiring apps only come from the store except for Enterprise editions.

Not trying to play devils advocate here, but who genuinely believes a Linux Steam client is a "credible alternative" to Steam on Windows? It's an alternative, I agree, but I can't imagine a world in which it makes a dent on their Windows revenues any time soon. If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get…

"If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get hundreds of millions of users to install Linux."

Valve has fuck-you money, they'd do both. Having Linux Steam development on a trickle gives them a massive time advantage, in that they already have a few years of experience with the project on day zero of the "we need a Windows-par Steam Linux client" focus.

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

#260

Post by seg_lol »

kevincox wrote: post #113
seg_lol wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now that cross platform abstraction layer is the Web. - https://get.webgl.org/webgl2/ - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSockets_... - https://webrtc.org/

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.

I didn't say it was the highest perf. Just that it is that abstraction layer that runs everywhere.
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