201–210 of 333 posts
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How good does this work with things like Oculus Quest, SteamVR, etc.? Are there any performance implications?
There is still no functional VR media player for linux, none of the Windows ones work with Proton and the official SteamVR Media Player has no linux release.
Proton is the reason I moved from a Windows + MacOS machine to GNU/Linux full time. I understand the concern that some hardcore enthusiasts might have about it making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports but to be honest I don't care. I am just glad to have a simple method of gaming on GNU/Linux. Proton plus Lutris and the slew other tools that have come out in recent years has made the transition to GN…
The two goals that actually needed to be achieved were preventing market monopolies and enabling smaller devs, which platform agnosticism has been a welcome and necessary side effect of.
i) Reducing the resource overhead required to publish and support games is make or break for indie/small devs. Just by being Steamplay/Proton aware, compatible games don't require exclusive support, allowing devs to focus on content and expansion instead of learning quirks of all different distro just to be able to support that one user on Hannah Montana Linux. Helping individual customers feels great, but it can become a deadly rabbit hole.
ii) The market aligned against publishing monopolies, which Valve isn't singlehandedly responsible for but has been a major contributor to. Linux native was just a way to get devs and publishers to realize that they couldn't and shouldn't fall prey to the exclusive marketplaces on the rise at the time like GWFL that would only reduce choice and availability for customers and non-AAA devs in the long-term. Breaking OS dependence was key in this.
I think we ultimately want Linux to be able to do whatever we want, be that running video games, powering Mars rovers, or running our HPC clusters. Once software can be run with the same ease on Linux as on Windows, it might as well be Linux native, and non-FOSS Linux purist arguments are confusing and dilute that.
I LOVE Proton. About 85% of my Windows games just... work. And probably 75% of the 15% that fail initially only require a little tweaking to make work. My only complaints are that steam uses arbitrary numbers instead of human readable labels for emulated AppData folders. It can be time consuming to locate a save game file. Also Streaming cross platform isn't a pleasant experience yet but it's getting better and I rea…
> My only complaints are that steam uses arbitrary numbers instead of human readable labels for emulated AppData folders. Yeah, it's a chore. Sadly there really isn't a better option. The only option I can think of is to use the game's localizable name, but that gets pretty ugly very quickly (consider the ".HACK" series). Another option would be to re-use the game's data folder name, but that gets hairy with stuff li…
Like, even if it ain't meant for users to go rooting around in Steam's folders (yet that's a very common occurence anyway), you'd think it'd be the sanest approach for developers, too (both of Steam and its games), no?
Proton is the reason I moved from a Windows + MacOS machine to GNU/Linux full time. I understand the concern that some hardcore enthusiasts might have about it making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports but to be honest I don't care. I am just glad to have a simple method of gaming on GNU/Linux. Proton plus Lutris and the slew other tools that have come out in recent years has made the transition to GN…
I dropped the "native Linux or nothing" mindset sometime in 2013 when I saw the harm it did to developers. As a disproportionately vocal minority comprising 50% of bug requests, making Linux users happy was pretty literally taking food out of some dev's mouths. The two goals that actually needed to be achieved were preventing market monopolies and enabling smaller devs, which platform agnosticism has been a welcome a…
Valves initial support for linux was for precisely these reasons. Microsoft was talking about restricting which games could run on windows in much the same way an Apple does with iPhone software. The prospect of Microsoft having veto/censorship powers over violent video games struck fear across the industry. Valve then pushed towards "steam machines" running not-windows. Those issues have reduced as of late but were the trigger for what would eventually become the proton project.
My problem with Proton is that they are not strict enough with their ratings. I see a game has "platinum" or "gold" support and think "great, this will work well!" but then I discover it crashes after alt-tab and multiplayer doesn't work at all, which I consider critical bugs. To me, the levels should be: * Paltinum - the game works as well as it does on officially supported platforms * Gold - the game works almost a…
Proton is the reason I moved from a Windows + MacOS machine to GNU/Linux full time. I understand the concern that some hardcore enthusiasts might have about it making devs lazy when it comes to developing native ports but to be honest I don't care. I am just glad to have a simple method of gaming on GNU/Linux. Proton plus Lutris and the slew other tools that have come out in recent years has made the transition to GN…
How good does this work with things like Oculus Quest, SteamVR, etc.? Are there any performance implications?
I've got a gtx 1070, which at this point is pretty far from top-of-the-line VR-capable card. I'd probably get significantly better performance improvement per effort spent by upgrading my card than I would by tweaking the OS.
I can pretty consistently enjoy VR games. I haven't tried vr web browsing in a while; I remember it being pretty finicky on Windows several years ago.
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I have bought many native Linux games that simply don’t launch, but run perfectly in Proton. Companies also stop updating their Linux ports often. There is so little market pressure to support Linux in the first place that Proton’s effect is basically irrelevant. Most Linux ports sucked anyway and often Proton performs better including with things like Unity games, so no big loss.
>> Most Linux ports sucked anyway Port /= native client. Try the KSP linux client. It is far more stable than the windows client. Heck, I've found it more stable than my outlook on my work machine, more stable than MS office on MS windows.
There are obviously exceptions, but IME they are quite rare.
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>Imagine spending 20, 30, or 60 dollars on a game that can break at any moment and know there will be zero support waiting for you. I don't have to imagine: I play Steam games on Windows.
At least on Windows you can try troubleshooting and various workarounds to problems to a certain extent, or ask for a refund. I bought Pillars of Eternity on the Nintendo Switch for $60, which was broken on day 1, still broken today, and officially abandoned by the publisher (Versus Evil) This isn't related to the OP in any way, I'm just still angry about it.
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Not sure what you mean, but there is the open source vr-video-player [0] that works with YouTube, can put flat games on a virtual big screen, etc. Works great. [0] https://git.dec05eba.com/vr-video-player/about/
Uh! Never found this one despite extensive googling. I'll install it and report back.
[0] https://github.com/frostworx/steamtinkerlaunch
[1] https://github.com/frostworx/steamtinkerlaunch#Side-by-Side-...
Edit: I should say side-by-side mode works for games with it builtin (like Trine) but can also use shader injection to emulate this which can work pretty well too.
My problem with Proton is that they are not strict enough with their ratings. I see a game has "platinum" or "gold" support and think "great, this will work well!" but then I discover it crashes after alt-tab and multiplayer doesn't work at all, which I consider critical bugs. To me, the levels should be: * Paltinum - the game works as well as it does on officially supported platforms * Gold - the game works almost a…