As a semi-related aside: I often read of people complaining that Fallout New Vegas crashes constantly for them, but under GNU/Linux using Proton I get none of that, I can play it for hours on end without any notable instability.
Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
171–180 of 285 posts
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#172The last missing piece for full Linux gaming is anticheat. Last I looked into it, the major vendors don’t want to support it due to lack of kernel security and the ones that do, game devs refuse to allow it (destiny for example) One we can play AAA games I am literally ditching windows forever. Steamos is the best thing that has happened to gaming
Anti-cheat today is a stop-gap measure at best. For various reasons such as improved OS security and security concerns with this software, ring zero anti-cheat won't be around forever. Besides, it's a cat and mouse game where the vendor is the mouse. We already have the technology now to do it better. A combination of only sending what info a client should have, and server-side checks. As soon as something like UT sh…
The goal isn’t to stop 100% of cheats but the majority of them and that’s fine. Either way, it’s the only thing stopping me from playing the rest of my games on steamos.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as games are running on user hardware/OS, you'll always deal with cheating. Server-side checks and computation can only go so far. For example: in competitive shooters (where cheaters are most prevalent) you can't have things appearing out of thin air. The client needs to know about things ahead of time to play sounds and to give other environmental hints.
Surely the server can tell the client what sounds to play and what other environmental hints to do, just as well as the server can choose to tell the client where the other players are when they are in sight.
If the server says "there are footsteps from these coordinates" then it's telling the client there's a person at these coordinates.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Multiplayer games without dedicated servers is dead end anyways. I dont need a "anti-cheat" daemon hooking into kernel scanning files and other memory while playing a game. Communities in dedicated servers are much more efficient at moderating the player base than centralized match making ever will be.
Yeah, but it's very time consuming/impossible to find similarly skilled players for a fun lobby. The only competitive game I care to play on Linux is Rocket League, which is nearly impossible to cheat at, so it doesn't currently have anti-cheat, but I wouldn't be surprised if Epic decides to put their beloved EAC in it at some point anyway, maybe even just because they hate Linux so much.
EAC has a Proton-compatible version, actually. Even if they enable it, if they use that version, it'll work fine via wine/Proton.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as games are running on user hardware/OS, you'll always deal with cheating. Server-side checks and computation can only go so far. For example: in competitive shooters (where cheaters are most prevalent) you can't have things appearing out of thin air. The client needs to know about things ahead of time to play sounds and to give other environmental hints.
so consoles are better
Someone doesn’t know about the chronus zen or how big console cheating is!
Let’s just say that my finals experience isn’t the same as yours! ;)
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly enough, I've had games that had both a native Linux port and Windows version, and the Windows version through Proton ran better than the native Linux version. This ended up being true for Civ5, Civ6 and Cities Skylines (1). With those admittedly limited examples though, I don't experience the same ranking in performance, but I attribute that to my non-gaming hardware vs. any problem with Linux or Proton…
Linux port if there is one is usually done by a third party porting studio, which is not necessarily at the same quality as the original codebase. Also the devs just don't have the manpower/bandwidth to spare for Linux users given how small this community is. It's better value for money for both the gamers and the devs if the devs just choose to engage with valve and get their game running perfectly under proton.
They probably QA mostly for windows, so they run into bottlenecks and edge-cases of windows APIs during QA. Linux-native APIs probably have different bottlenecks and edge-cases.
I think the reimplementations of Windows APIs in Linux, even though alternative to the original, should have similar bottlenecks and edge-cases. So the extra QA on Windows helps the Proton version more.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Direct Memory Access cheats will always perform better as they can reveal the location of an opponent before they're even visible on the screen.
Why are players who aren't on screen even in the client memory? The server shouldn't be sharing sensitive information.
Although that looks like an obvious solution on first glance it's not really technically feasible. Things like gunshots or footstep sounds are not visible to the player, but still need to be relayed to the client.
As far as I see the only way around not sharing anything that's outside of the immediate perception of a player is to have the audio and graphics be entirely rendered server-side.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you even watch decent Netflix on Linux yet?
Up to full HD, depending on what Netflix streams out. But this has nothing to do with graphics drivers or GPU performance.
Yeah, but it does have to do with graphics in the linux desktop ecosystem and is particularly relevant to those without a dedicated gaming machine.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#179As a semi-related aside: I often read of people complaining that Fallout New Vegas crashes constantly for them, but under GNU/Linux using Proton I get none of that, I can play it for hours on end without any notable instability.
Those are likely people that don't check the pcgamingwiki, one of the first things it mentions is installing dxvk and the 4gb patch.
Re: Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
#180The last missing piece for full Linux gaming is anticheat. Last I looked into it, the major vendors don’t want to support it due to lack of kernel security and the ones that do, game devs refuse to allow it (destiny for example) One we can play AAA games I am literally ditching windows forever. Steamos is the best thing that has happened to gaming
Don't forget the ancillary applications that gamers want. If you follow Discord's website, you're gonna end up installing a DEB file manually. Then, every couple weeks, Discord won't launch until you go download another DEB file and install that. Oh, and good luck getting Discord screen sharing working on Wayland. I tried for hours, gave up, and switched to X11. So, just in Discord, we've already run into two hideous…
And certain types of games have a _ton_ of ancillary applications. For flight simulation, I rely on 2-3 additional contollers, some of which I am fairly certain either won't have driver support, or at the very least will have some major issues with the GUI and configuration.
Then, there are things like head tracking which are either another dedicated peripheral which may or may not get drivers, or a set of apps which feed from a webcam and output the signal to a standard driver that games know to check for.
Finally, most 3rd party add-ons have custom installers, and I'm guessing most of them won't have a working Linux version. So, while I'm sure it's possible to run, say, a vanilla X-Plane on a non-Windows installation with no peripherals/apps/add-ons, I just see a mountain of work to get a normal, heavily custom installation working.