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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

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree. It's the best way to get an app out that works everywhere. In fact, I actually really wish we could collectively work out some kind of shared container environment for such apps to run more "natively". Something like Electron, but shared between many applications and a little more loosey-goosey in terms of hacking on top of it. Essentially, I want emacs for webapps lol

Not being snarky, but I believe that format is html.

No snark taken. My counterpoint here would be that HTML is a markup language and that the "equivalent to emacs" would be the web browser itself. My issue with that potential position is that the web is implicitly untrusted.

That's why developers even deign to put up with Electron in the first place, because their app can run with more permissions and, thus, offer better host integration (i.e. "nativeness").

Of course, everyone loves to hate Electron. Who wants to run 6 different Chromium instances? Nobody, apparently! I'm not the first wise guy to suggest a single-instance approach that combines the performance wins of a shared browser instance with the trust of an Electron application. It's painfully obvious that there's a golden medium here, but, of course, if it were an easy problem to solve, it would already be solved!

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

#302
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just use the resolution that's configured: if I wanted to change it I'd change it. So you're saying you'd want to change desktop resolution each time you want to play a performance heavy game? > Non-native resolutions look awful on LCDs anyway, so apps really shouldn't change it. So you're saying developers should take away the options that people actively use because you subjectively don't like how it looks on you…

> So you're saying you'd want to change desktop resolution each time you want to play a performance heavy game? Yes, for the Window definitely. If you need to drop the render resolution for perf then the game should upscale at the end (and for fucks sake, handle arbitrary aspect ratios correctly!!!). Personally though, I'd rather wait until I have hardware that can run the game at full resolution.

I agree about upscaling the end result, some games do that and I really appreciate it. Lately DLSS took it to the whole other level though

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

#303
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just use the resolution that's configured: if I wanted to change it I'd change it. So you're saying you'd want to change desktop resolution each time you want to play a performance heavy game? > Non-native resolutions look awful on LCDs anyway, so apps really shouldn't change it. So you're saying developers should take away the options that people actively use because you subjectively don't like how it looks on you…

> So you're saying developers should take away the options that people actively use because you subjectively don't like how it looks on your specific monitor? No, I'm saying they should remove it because they shouldn't aspire to reimplement an OS. I mean, why does a game need to have a panel to configure my hardware, my OS already has that. Imagine if every single app out there implemented their own "screen resolutio…

> every single app out there implemented their own "screen resolution"

Every single app doesn't need to render heavy stuff to fullscreen. I have 2K monitor, but I can't run every game out there with 60-75 FPS at 2K, not without DLSS at least. But I agree with the point made in the sibling comment: they should separate output resolution and render resolution to different options.

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

#304
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By open platform I meant they they should release their own phone. I believe they could do it for not much more than the price of the lawsuit. The iPhone is not even a general purpose computer, it's a brick of consumer electronics that just happens to have an app store on it. It's Apples house and they get to make the rules. If Epic doesn't like it they can build their own house, or they can contribute to a house tha…

Good luck _selling_ that phone to the hundreds of millions of users you lost immediately overnight, to users already perfectly happy with the phone they have. Your customers aren't going to pickup the tab just because you didn't like the distribution terms you had already willingly agreed to on iOS/Google app stores, and its a big tab. A new phone isn't cheap for most. I am also completely ignoring the fact building…

I don't have much sympathy for anybody who helped Google and Apple into the monopoly position by making their products available on those platforms. If we all banded together and made sure that all the best apps were only available on a truly open phone platform then everybody would buy a phone on that platform.

Epic could pump a few million into making sure their games ran well on Linux platforms, then partner with Asus, Razer, and others to make Gaming Phones a real thing with support for Linux on those phones. (or a Google free Android if that will lower the bar).

I think the railways and airports are not a good analogy because those are physical things that need a lot of land. (and investment) We are just talking about software, and what we can and cannot run on our phones.

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

#305
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. L…

It could be that it can vary in multiple areas and depending as well on a lot of different stuff (kernel version, drivers/modules, settings, SW being used, ...). Personally, I always had the feeling that video was slower on Linux (always used nVidia proprietary drivers in Linux), but when I used to play a bit of e-guitar the audio latency was definitely better in Linux (but as well just for audio there are a lot of s…

I play a lot of stepmania (DDR and stamina), and I have really struggled with audio latency in Linux. And I have spent far too much time on PulseAudio and JACK configuration. Windows, again, is fine with nearly no latency and virtually no configuration required. I have resigned myself to just having a dedicated Windows partition for gaming.

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

#306
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck _selling_ that phone to the hundreds of millions of users you lost immediately overnight, to users already perfectly happy with the phone they have. Your customers aren't going to pickup the tab just because you didn't like the distribution terms you had already willingly agreed to on iOS/Google app stores, and its a big tab. A new phone isn't cheap for most. I am also completely ignoring the fact building…

I don't have much sympathy for anybody who helped Google and Apple into the monopoly position by making their products available on those platforms. If we all banded together and made sure that all the best apps were only available on a truly open phone platform then everybody would buy a phone on that platform. Epic could pump a few million into making sure their games ran well on Linux platforms, then partner with…

You are shipping "bits" to phones, just as boats and trains shipped cargo to stations and ports. Its fundamentally analogous as a legal argument; whether it's corporeal items being moved (physical goods) or not doesn't really matter. The principle is the same.

I cannot ever advise a company like Epic to burn its business model overnight on a such a huge risk as you suggest, I'm sure many would agree. You of course are free to continue to disagree and advocate for a new Epic phone platform to sell.

Epic today have 116 million users by their count playing Fortnite on an iOS device. That's a lot of users to convince to pay likely at least several hundred dollars to move to a platform that doesn't exist yet. I didn't even bother to look up the Android count, the iOS user base is enough to illustrate why this is likely a pretty bad business decision.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Yeah, really sad to see this. When Aspyr released Farenheit and KotOR 2 I was really excited for getting more older games ported but it seems they dropped that.

It's just not economical when Proton does the porting "for free" compared to 6-months ports by Aspyr/Feral for very little change in performance.

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

#308
post #70
post #62

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...

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.

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!
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