top | item 13875729

Great Progress with DX11 Games Support with WINE 2.3

116 points| ekianjo | 9 years ago |boilingsteam.com | reply

34 comments

order
[+] schwank|9 years ago|reply
Appreciate the link... after many years as a Windows/.Net developer, I made the jump to Linux full time after the release of Windows 8. I don't game much anymore but every once in a while I get the itch. I bought Cities:Skylines through Steam, but I've particularly been missing the racing genre. The boilingsteam site has some good reviews including the recently released Dirt:Rally. So glad to see things are progressing on Linux, and hopefully that continues as SteamOS picks up... steam.
[+] veli_joza|9 years ago|reply
There are many of us waiting for Valve to deliver on SteamOS promises, but it doesn't look too good.

SteamOS was a reaction to Windows App Store. If MS wants to take away from their market share, they would push Linux as preferred platform. I don't really see this happening, so it remains a pipe dream.

We can at least hope Vulcan adoption will ease the effort of porting AAA titles to Linux.

[+] MegaDeKay|9 years ago|reply
Another good site for staying on top of Gaming on Linux is... GamingOnLinux. Lots of stuff on upcoming games, betas, livestreams to see the game in action, etc.

http://gamingonlinux.com/

[+] xxs|9 years ago|reply
"Dirt:Rally" <-- it's good. You won't regret such a choice.
[+] jadbox|9 years ago|reply
If I could just run Overwatch with little issue on Linux [without a virtual machine], I'd be a total convert.
[+] wjoe|9 years ago|reply
It's getting there. I saw a video last week of someone running Overwatch in wine at about 45 FPS with a patched version of Wine. Not sure how easy it is to get running or if/when those patches will be merged in, but it's making good progress.

From what I remember, Overwatch doesn't use much of DX10/11, possibly just a few minor things, so it's mostly just a case of getting it not to crash when those features don't exist, and the rest should perform ok.

[+] youdontknowtho|9 years ago|reply
That must have taken an amazing amount of effort. Bravo, friends. Bravo.
[+] fsiefken|9 years ago|reply
Could running a windows game under Wine and Linux practically get you higher fps then under Windows alone?
[+] simonh|9 years ago|reply
Unfortunately most of the apparent cases of this are likely because under Wine/Linux some of the more advanced effects and visual options aren't available, so the display resolution or quality are actually not equivalent to what you'd get under Windows. There are some comments here about running on cut-down optimized versions of Linux and that's quite possible, but these are really edge cases. The relatively poor state of graphics driver support on Linux is the main problem but it depends on your hardware.
[+] stephen_g|9 years ago|reply
It's possible, and if I recall, it has been known to for some games (this was a couple of years ago when I was more interested in Wine and gaming, and even then not the most recent titles). Depends on your graphics drivers, etc. but there were some operations that were more efficient through the translation layer and OpenGL than DirectX directly (probably version 9 at that point).

I have no idea whether that's the case for modern DirectX and more recent games though.

[+] harrygeez|9 years ago|reply
In some rare cases like L4D IIRC. However it's highly unlikely for the simple reason that most of Linux GPU drivers are inferior to Window's.
[+] pilom|9 years ago|reply
Around 10 years ago I would sometimes see higher framerates in games like HL2 but I'm pretty sure it was b/c I was running Gentoo and had all the cruft removed and had custom compiled everything for my hardware.
[+] ekianjo|9 years ago|reply
I don't think this was ever the case, but sometimes WINE benchmarks come pretty close to Windows, especially with optimizations like CSMT.
[+] szatkus|9 years ago|reply
Years ago I did a small experiment. I ran Armagetronad (OpenGL open source game) on Windows and Wine, on latter FPS was few percent higher. I really don't know why, but OpenGL probably helps (I guess that calls are directly translated to native OpenGL).
[+] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
Not sure about games, but I remember trying some benchmarks on Windows and under Wine (same machine) and it was faster on Linux

(but this was 10yrs ago)

[+] gigatexal|9 years ago|reply
The Wine camp is doing amazing work here. I wish more companies would release games native for Linux.
[+] throwawaysed|9 years ago|reply
So how long until MS freaks out and starts attacking Linux again? I'm calling GPU DRM modules existing in the next 2 yrs, commonplace in three. Shaders and 3D API inaccessible without the right keys. Only 2D mode and OpenCL without the keys, to "protect" game makers from people running their games on unauthorized platforms. EUFI isn't enough to protect their market share if gaming is threatened, they will extend the lockdown to GPU's as well... for "security"
[+] ekianjo|9 years ago|reply
Linux is still a small share of the Gaming market, I don't think MS feels it is a threat at this stage. As for GPU DRM, is there any indication that manufacturers are moving in that direction ?
[+] SmellyGeekBoy|9 years ago|reply
Attacking Linux... By releasing some of their "family jewels" like the Core CLR and SQL Server for it?