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[Durante]

People who don't use Windows 10 yet don't care about stuff like Vulkan or DX12. They will be fine with DX11.

Maintaining DX11 and DX12 means maintaining two rendering paths which are fundamentally different in their approach.

Instead, simply maintaining one Vulkan path for compatibility with all relevant versions of WIndows and alternative OSes is much easier and less costly.

Really, did Vulkan piss on your pizza?

 

[FrozenCell]

/* microsoft faboy gibberish */

same rock I presume?

 

[Maztorre]

I haven't seen any such comments.



People who don't use Windows 10 yet don't care about stuff like Vulkan or DX12. They will be fine with DX11.



Steam OS and Android are irrelevant when it comes to AA/AAA game development.



DX12 was finalized months ago. Valve is an outlier because of their weird Linux/Windows strategy. They are not really representative of the AA/AAA game development industry in that regard.



No, they invested resources in Mantle, which they dropped support for after Microsoft announced their DX12 plans. I still do not see an argument why EA should invest in Vulkan for their AAA titles.



Nonsense. DX is backwards compatible. And people who still run Windows XP don't care about new APIs.



I think you are massively overestimating the effect these two technologies combined will have on the industry. Nobody cares about Linux gaming, except some nerds.



There is nothing that indicates that Valve has the ability to establish Linux as a serious alternative to Windows. They have tried for years. When will their "serious efforts" start? In 2016, the year of the Linux desktop? There is also absolutely no reason for Windows gamers to switch to Linux. Especially considering how new platforms like Origin, Uplay and more have started to pop up in the last few years, and continue to do so. Next year for example we will see the launch of the Oculus Rift platform, which will be exclusive to Windows.

I would think not living under a rock would cause people to agree that Linux has no chance of supplanting Windows on the desktop.

Neither Nvidia nor AMD care enough to actually try to produce Linux drivers which approach the performance of their Windows drivers. No one is going buy a Steam OS box which runs games 30-50% slower than the same hardware running Windows because the drivers are in such a poor state, especially when they already own a PC which runs Windows, and that PC already runs all their games plus Chrome, Word, and Photoshop.

And this is even if we pretend that game developers not named Valve will bother to support Linux. Which they won't. It's like how Blizzard is the only real game dev which supports Mac OS X, anyone who seriously games on a Mac runs Windows through Bootcamp and just games on Windows. Anybody who seriously games will just boot Windows instead of trying to torture themselves with WINE or something on Steam OS/Linux. Windows is right there, just boot the damn thing and play your game on the native OS it was designed for.

Even if Valve announced that Half-Life 3 was exclusively for Steam OS/Linux and would have literally no Windows release, that still wouldn't make Linux supplant Windows. Ever. Think about that a moment, then understand.

So the usual "nothing will change, why bother" horseshit? Which has already been proven false by Microsoft's reaction to Mantle/Vulkan. Just the threat of a viable competitor has given us a DX12 comprised of largely the same features in short order. Any work done to compete with entrenched proprietary API via open source should be encouraged, it benefits literally every developer and end user. There is plenty of room for Linux/Vulkan to grow in the entertainment/living room PC space, since Microsoft have botched those initiatives at every turn, which drove them to Xbox in the first place.

But please, give us some good reasons for Khronos group members to just bend over and say "yeah, we should probably just keep tying our business to the whims of an anticompetitive company that is willing to lock their proprietary API to whichever operating system they're trying to push". As if that's good for them or their customers.

 

[agiantenemycrab]

Wayland has no drawing API only a buffer. Which means that all applications get direct rendering. Which means no more drawing requests going through the server. The biggest benefit of this is proper vsync and double buffering on Linux finally. Which is atrocious right now (on AMD at least). The only way to not get screen tearing is forcing double buffering and vsync through the AMD drivers which slow down things considerably.

The vsync issue only occurs when the surface isn't fullscreen (as is the case on SteamOS), right? Or am I mistaken? Surely the compositor doesn't need to wait for other processes to finish rendering into their buffers in order to produce a full frame, and only needs to wait for frame completion on the buffer of the fullscreen window. I would like to be mistaken here though, would give Valve more reason to support Wayland which seems to be the way the rest of the Linux desktop world is going.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

So the usual "nothing will change, why bother" horseshit? Which has already been proven false by Microsoft's reaction to Mantle/Vulkan. Just the threat of a viable competitor has given us a DX12 comprised of largely the same features in short order. Any work done to compete with entrenched proprietary API via open source should be encouraged, it benefits literally every developer and end user. There is plenty of room for Linux/Vulkan to grow in the entertainment/living room PC space, since Microsoft have botched those initiatives at every turn, which drove them to Xbox in the first place.

But please, give us some good reasons for Khronos group members to just bend over and say "yeah, we should probably just keep tying our business to the whims of an anticompetitive company that is willing to lock their proprietary API to whichever operating system they're trying to push". As if that's good for them or their customers.

Is Linux easier for end users to install, configure, and play games on than Windows?

If not, then I don't see any reason why the status quo should change. PC gaming already has a pretty bad reputation for being more fiddly and hard to get working satisfactorily than consoles are, where you just connect the box to the TV and put the disc in and off you go. I'm trying to imagine your average person trying to get Linux working for gaming. Yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing how that's better for consumers than the Windows monopoly.

Anyone who characterizes me as a Microsoft fanboy is literally clueless, I have plenty of posts in my history where I criticize MS and I really hate how they tried to muscle in on console gaming with Xbox and caused so much harm to the industry last gen and I really hate the way they try to crush their competition and also I hate Windows Phone and I think it's shit. But you know what? Having a single undisputable standard platform on which to base PC gaming has kept it alive all these years. It happens this standard is Windows. There are many things about Windows that sucks. But I would rather have PC gaming than no PC gaming.

 

[V_Arnold]

Unknown Soldier: what you do not seem to realize is that you will NOT be able to distinguish a Vulkan-ran game on Win10 and a DX12-ran game on Win10.

Therefore, the fact that linux is now a possibility without extra effort is just a bonus (although rationally thinking, even if a > (b+c+d), a+b+c+d is STILL > a. That is just rationality.
Supporting Vulkan does not mean mandatory linux installations. It means linux support becomes "default" alongside Win, which is INSANELY good.

 

[tuxfool]

People saying Vulkan is pointless are forgetting about all the software packages that run on linux in professional environments. Things like CAD packages, or Maya. Unlike last time, when these were people dragging their heels and preventing OpenGL from evolving, this time around they seem much more willing to get with the times.

Then there is Android support to consider and maybe even iOS/OSX. A lot of embedded systems will certainly favour an api that is open and gives OS choices.

 

[Durante]

If not, then I don't see any reason why the status quo should change. PC gaming already has a pretty bad reputation for being more fiddly and hard to get working satisfactorily than consoles are, where you just connect the box to the TV and put the disc in and off you go.

If you buy a pre-built SteamOS box, then connecting it to your TV and playing supported games on it is as easy as doing the same thing on a console. And with Vulkan, you should be able to actually enjoy competitive performance in large-scale games.

But more importantly, as a developer you can target all versions of Windows with Vulkan, rather than just Windows 10.

 

[Kezen]

In what shape are Vulkan drivers at the moment ?
Mantle serves as Vulkan's backbone so theoretically AMD should already have production-ready drivers for it, what about Nvidia ?

 

[Aklamarth]

you do not seem to realize is that you will NOT be able to distinguish a Vulkan-ran game on Win10 and a DX12-ran game on Win10.

No shit Sherlock. YOU assume that the Vulkan implementation by both AMD and nVidia will be on par with DirectX 12. There is NO EVIDENCE now to assume that. On Windows, at least, if Vulkan implementation will be slower nobody will give a shit about it.

 

[FyreWulff]

Is Linux easier for end users to install, configure, and play games on than Windows?

Actually, yes. Go download the latest Ubuntu. A few clicks and you have a full operating system with a functional "app store" anyone can search directly to add games to their system.

Hell, you don't even need to actually install Ubuntu to try it anymore. You just liveboot right off the USB stick, and when you're ready to make the install permanent, you can just install as-is onto the hard drive.

 

[tuxfool]

In what shape are Vulkan drivers at the moment ?
Mantle serves as Vulkan's backbone so theoretically AMD should already have production-ready drivers for it, what about Nvidia ?

They're in a good position too.

 

[lukeskymac]

same rock I presume?

There's nothing fanboyish about what he posted. Unlike what you just did.

 

[Durante]

In what shape are Vulkan drivers at the moment ?

Nvidia have shown demos running on Vulkan for over half a year now, and are probably going to release a driver publicly on the same day as the spec is released. Link

LunarG/Valve will release an open source Vulkan driver for Intel GPUs when the spec is released as well.

 

[Bl@de]

Actually, yes. Go download the latest Ubuntu. A few clicks and you have a full operating system with a functional "app store" anyone can search directly to add games to their system.

Yup. Linux has come a long way. For a typical user it's actually simpler than windows because it's "closer" to smartphones with appstores (in distros like Ubuntu). Linux gets complicated if something goes wrong and you have to deal with the terminal. But the community and troubleshooting is the best out there. So even that is a lot easier than in the past.

 

[agiantenemycrab]

Anyone who characterizes me as a Microsoft fanboy is literally clueless, I have plenty of posts in my history where I criticize MS and I really hate how they tried to muscle in on console gaming with Xbox and caused so much harm to the industry last gen and I really hate the way they try to crush their competition and also I hate Windows Phone and I think it's shit. But you know what? Having a single undisputable standard platform on which to base PC gaming has kept it alive all these years. It happens this standard is Windows. There are many things about Windows that sucks. But I would rather have PC gaming than no PC gaming.

So it is obvious you are aware of the fact that Microsoft have taken advantage of their monopoly position in the past, that they are have produced flawed software and generally are managed incompetently, but apparently it doesn't matter to you that the entire PC games industry depends on the competence of this company?

I understand that you think a standard, as you put it, is worth that price, but a lot of people do not share that view. An free and open platform is worth building, even if it means starting from scratch (or close to it).

 

[purdobol]

The vsync issue only occurs when the surface isn't fullscreen (as is the case on SteamOS), right? Or am I mistaken? Surely the compositor doesn't need to wait for other processes to finish rendering into their buffers in order to produce a full frame, and only needs to wait for frame completion on the buffer of the fullscreen window. I would like to be mistaken here though, would give Valve more reason to support Wayland which seems to be the way the rest of the Linux desktop world is going.

Yes. It only occurs when surface isn't fullscreen. So the user has to choose between tear-free desktop or better performance. It creates the mess basically where different applications needs constant tweaking to work properly (Kodi,RetroArch,Games). And that constant turning on-off vsync and db forced me to install Windows 10.

That's why I'm looking forward to Vulcan + Wayland combo (if AMD bother with creating drivers for the latter )

 

[Kezen]

They're in a good position too.

Nvidia have shown demos running on Vulkan for over half a year now, and are probably going to release a driver publicly on the same day as the spec is released. Link

LunarG/Valve will release an open source Vulkan driver for Intel GPUs when the spec is released as well.

Bodes well then. I would not bet on Vulkan just yet but I look forward to the day it is a serious challenger in the PC gaming space.

 

[Blizzard]

Yes. It only occurs when surface isn't fullscreen. So the user has to choose between tear-free desktop or better performance. It creates the mess basically where different applications needs constant tweaking to work properly (Kodi,RetroArch,Games). And that constant turning on-off vsync and db forced me to install Windows 10.

That's why I'm looking forward to Vulcan + Wayland combo (if AMD bother with creating drivers for the latter )

Amusingly enough, the DWM in Windows causes me tearing annoyance for non-fullscreen games, and sometimes even for "fullscreen" games because they do not use true exclusive fullscreen.

This is because I disabled desktop compositing for lower latency in virtual reality, so I don't get the desktop double (triple?) buffering and vsync.

The result is that I get tearing in YouTube videos, even in "fullscreen", unless I turn desktop compositing back on.

 

[Candescence]

No shit Sherlock. YOU assume that the Vulkan implementation by both AMD and nVidia will be on par with DirectX 12. There is NO EVIDENCE now to assume that. On Windows, at least, if Vulkan implementation will be slower nobody will give a shit about it.

Both Vulkan and DX12 are designed so that developers have much, much less dependency on driver support (and by extension support from the GPU manufacturers) as long as they actually know what they're doing. Both APIs are designed to at least greatly alleviate the problem of driver dependency on a game-by-game basis, which in turn makes things a lot easier for AMD and nvidia, who can instead tailor their drivers' API implementations for more general-purpose use. This puts a lot more work in the hands of engine developers, but more and more studios are using existing game engines such as UE4, Unity and to a lesser extent Cryengine, so that effort is offloaded to companies who are dedicated to such work.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Actually, yes. Go download the latest Ubuntu. A few clicks and you have a full operating system with a functional "app store" anyone can search directly to add games to their system.

Hell, you don't even need to actually install Ubuntu to try it anymore. You just liveboot right off the USB stick, and when you're ready to make the install permanent, you can just install as-is onto the hard drive.

I freely admit I haven't really tried Linux in years so okay, I'm curious enough to see what it's like these days. So I'm going to take this Ubuntu iso and put it on a USB stick and I'm going to stick it in my laptop and tell the laptop to boot off it and see what happens. How do you even install Steam for Linux anyways, and should I really even try it on an OS boot from a USB stick I wonder.

 

[Nzyme32]

Vulkan is a API. APIs don't "run" on things their IMPLEMENTATION does. Also driver model in XP is different from 7/8/10 , i highly doubt AMd/nVidia will bother implementing Vulkan on XP.

And you are wrong. They are, and this particularly because of China

 

[Bl@de]

I freely admit I haven't really tried Linux in years so okay, I'm curious enough to see what it's like these days. So I'm going to take this Ubuntu iso and put it on a USB stick and I'm going to stick it in my laptop and tell the laptop to boot off it and see what happens. How do you even install Steam for Linux anyways, and should I really even try it on an OS boot from a USB stick I wonder.

I don't know if you can install apps on a live version running from usb. Just don't expect it to run fast. Steam is installed via appstore. Same as android. Done.

 

[alexandros]

The existence of an open-source cross-platform low-level API should be celebrated by everyone. I will never understand why people so often argue against their own best interests as consumers. Even if someone is perfectly happy with the current situationin mobile, console and PC gaming, the success of Vulkan will at worst maintain the status quo and at best it will give the industry a common base on which to build games for a wide variety of platforms, reducing workloads and making cross-platform support much easier. Seriously, what's not to like?

 

[Bl@de]

The existence of an open-source cross-platform low-level API should be celebrated by everyone. I will never understand why people so often argue against their own best interests as consumers. Even if someone is perfectly happy with the current situationin mobile, console and PC gaming, the success of Vulkan will at worst maintain the status quo and at best it will give the industry a common base on which to build games for a wide variety of platforms, reducing workloads and making cross-platform support much easier. Seriously, what's not to like?

I think people are just scared of new things. I don't know. But don't ask me, I celebrate things like SteamOS and Vulkan^^

 

[FrozenCell]

The existence of an open-source cross-platform low-level API should be celebrated by everyone. I will never understand why people so often argue against their own best interests as consumers. Even if someone is perfectly happy with the current situationin mobile, console and PC gaming, the success of Vulkan will at worst maintain the status quo and at best it will give the industry a common base on which to build games for a wide variety of platforms, reducing workloads and making cross-platform support much easier. Seriously, what's not to like?

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

The existence of an open-source cross-platform low-level API should be celebrated by everyone. I will never understand why people so often argue against their own best interests as consumers. Even if someone is perfectly happy with the current situationin mobile, console and PC gaming, the success of Vulkan will at worst maintain the status quo and at best it will give the industry a common base on which to build games for a wide variety of platforms, reducing workloads and making cross-platform support much easier. Seriously, what's not to like?

Yeah makes no sense whatsoever unless you're a DX12 software engineer. But I think Unknown Soldier is a special case. He's just being argumentative as usual for arguments' sake.

Stockholm syndrome, or capture-bonding, is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the point of defending and identifying with the captors. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims, who essentially mistake a lack of abuse from their captors for an act of kindness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Lol.

 

[SubiyaCryolite]

Great news! Cant wait to start porting my game engine. I already made a transition to AZDO GL4.5 in anticipation

 

[Kezen]

By the way, for anyone interested in graphics APIs for PC :
http://developer.amd.com/resources/documentation-articles/conference-presentations/

The one titled: "Directx 12 and the future of graphics APIs" is informative, and surprisingly accessible for the layman that I am.

 

[Diffense]

I would bet on Vulkan being a success assuming that its design is competent. Given the wide range of input from across the industry (AMD, NVidia, Valve, Google, etc.) including game developers, hardware manufacturers, and operating system developers, I don't have a reason to doubt it right now.

While Vulkan has similar goals as other "next-gen" graphics APIs like DX12 and Mantle it is disruptive in one significant respect: it will work across different operating systems and hardware. Assuming Vulkan gets conformant drivers to fill out the OS/hardware matrix, and there is no reason to doubt it since major Windows/Linux/Android hardware and driver devs like Intel, Nvidia, AMD and Imagination are all on board, this is a huge advantage for software developers. Let's see, you can write versions of your rendering engine for every combination of OS/Hardware/Api you want to support or you can write one. The economic and software engineering advantages should be obvious.

TBH, gamers don't need to care but I think it's rather likely that Vulkan will emerge as THE graphics API within the coming years. On Windows, DirectX will still be relevant behind the scenes because it has other APIs besides graphics. I strongly suspect that Nintendo's next hardware will support Vulkan because of the timeline for NX, the fact that they joined Khronos, and their likely decision to remain with AMD who started the ball rolling with Mantle. it would make a lot of sense. They aren't the third parties' priority right now so supporting an industry standard API would make porting a lot more attractive since major engines will have Vulkan support quickly.

 

[Boombox On]

No, they invested resources in Mantle, which they dropped support for after Microsoft announced their DX12 plans. I still do not see an argument why EA should invest in Vulkan for their AAA titles.

That is a picture of the Khronos group, which EA has been a part of, and the companies supporting Vulkan. EA's logo is right there.

Nonsense. DX is backwards compatible. And people who still run Windows XP don't care about new APIs.

That makes no sense. Windows is compatible with older version of DX, but DX is not compatible with older versions of Windows. I can run D3D9 on Windows 10, but I can't run D3D12 on Windows Vista.

There is nothing that indicates that Valve has the ability to establish Linux as a serious alternative to Windows. They have tried for years. When will their "serious efforts" start?

Between a Linux distro, creating hardware for the first time, a new graphics API... yeah I'm pretty sure that all counts as "serious efforts"

You need to calm down

 

[JaggedSac]

I don't care what API a dev uses. Just make things perty

 

[LCGeek]

Is Linux easier for end users to install, configure, and play games on than Windows?

If not, then I don't see any reason why the status quo should change. PC gaming already has a pretty bad reputation for being more fiddly and hard to get working satisfactorily than consoles are, where you just connect the box to the TV and put the disc in and off you go. I'm trying to imagine your average person trying to get Linux working for gaming. Yeah, I'm having a hard time seeing how that's better for consumers than the Windows monopoly.

Anyone who characterizes me as a Microsoft fanboy is literally clueless, I have plenty of posts in my history where I criticize MS and I really hate how they tried to muscle in on console gaming with Xbox and caused so much harm to the industry last gen and I really hate the way they try to crush their competition and also I hate Windows Phone and I think it's shit. But you know what? Having a single undisputable standard platform on which to base PC gaming has kept it alive all these years. It happens this standard is Windows. There are many things about Windows that sucks. But I would rather have PC gaming than no PC gaming.

Some of us remember this company before DX 8 or 9 when they didn't have the presence they have now. Some of us also remember how DX 10 is crap it took forever DX11 to really start being integrated. Neither of them have given us what the low level apis do and vulkan can be used on older stuff not just Win10. Your reason for not supporting this is not only arbirtary but has no real bearing on people trying to make a good OS even better for gaming than windows is.

People are trying to make linux good and I all I see are posts like this ignoring the fact it took forever for MS to get where it did with windows. Linux has better scheduling and has better networking both which can be to a gamers favor. Once the OS is made more friendly a lot of benefits will be good for consumers or devs, both who are not served well by using windows these days outside of marketshare. Performance wise windows is garbage ms knows it and only hopes linux never catches up in UI issues. The status quo should change for plenty of reasons in pc gaming space including MS constant polictics of various issues including apis like this.

The average person isn't a concern at this point proving and making power users or devs come along is.

 

[unapersson]

As long as steamOS is not a versatile OS for desktop working like windows, I can't see it happening.

Linux is an incredibly versatile OS for desktop working, there's nothing stopping SteamOS being that way other than its front room target.

 

[unapersson]

I don't know if you can install apps on a live version running from usb. Just don't expect it to run fast. Steam is installed via appstore. Same as android. Done.

Yes, you can install apps when running it off USB (or even if you're running it off DVD).

Though it will likely be running off the open source drivers rather than proprietary ones.

 

[Diffense]

Linux is an incredibly versatile OS for desktop working, there's nothing stopping SteamOS being that way other than its front room target.

Kind of funny when people say Linux can't be used as a Desktop OS when I've been using Archlinux exclusively since MS was pushing the rather bloated Windows Vista (2008 IIRC). I'm using Firefox under Linux right now as I type this and I also have Blender (3D modeler), Eclipse (IDE), and Krita (Image editor) open in different desktop workspaces (10 total). If i wanted I could also have Steam but I'm not a big PC gamer.

Obviously nothing is for everyone but Linux has met all my needs and it only keeps getting better as standards take over from proprietary solutions. Flash was once a problem since Adobe didn't even provide a blob if you needed it. Now they do but it's almost moot since HTML5 video is taking over. If Vulkan eats DX's lunch we'll likely get more games. In a pinch there is Wine to run some of my fave Windows programs (WinRar works fine as does SimCity 3,4) and virtualization is an option if you have a Windows license. One such program, qemu, is working on accelerating 3D which would be pretty cool since games wouldn't run like molasses in the guest OS.

 

[StereoVsn]

I freely admit I haven't really tried Linux in years so okay, I'm curious enough to see what it's like these days. So I'm going to take this Ubuntu iso and put it on a USB stick and I'm going to stick it in my laptop and tell the laptop to boot off it and see what happens. How do you even install Steam for Linux anyways, and should I really even try it on an OS boot from a USB stick I wonder.

Ubuntu is fairly easy till you hit some wifi adapter or printer or another accessory that doesn't have obvious driver beside a tarball. Then it's terminal time. The issue is of course with hardware manufacturers and not Ubuntu but let's not pretend there is same amount of support vs Windows.

That said Vulcan is a good thing, will be interesting to see what level of support game developers will give it (and DX12) since it does require more from a Dev vs say DX11.

 

[Crayon]

I would think not living under a rock would cause people to agree that Linux has no chance of supplanting Windows on the desktop.

Neither Nvidia nor AMD care enough to actually try to produce Linux drivers which approach the performance of their Windows drivers. No one is going buy a Steam OS box which runs games 30-50% slower than the same hardware running Windows because the drivers are in such a poor state, especially when they already own a PC which runs Windows, and that PC already runs all their games plus Chrome, Word, and Photoshop.

And this is even if we pretend that game developers not named Valve will bother to support Linux. Which they won't. It's like how Blizzard is the only real game dev which supports Mac OS X, anyone who seriously games on a Mac runs Windows through Bootcamp and just games on Windows. Anybody who seriously games will just boot Windows instead of trying to torture themselves with WINE or something on Steam OS/Linux. Windows is right there, just boot the damn thing and play your game on the native OS it was designed for.

Even if Valve announced that Half-Life 3 was exclusively for Steam OS/Linux and would have literally no Windows release, that still wouldn't make Linux supplant Windows. Ever. Think about that a moment, then understand.

You're paranoid. Noone's trying to supplant, replace, or oust windows.

 

[Diffense]

That said Vulcan is a good thing, will be interesting to see what level of support game developers will give it (and DX12) since it does require more from a Dev vs say DX11.

A fair number of devs use engines like Unity so they'll hae the option to automatically use Vulkan once the engines enable that support. Writing Vulkan code directly will be harder than APIs like DX11 and Opengl which provide a lot more help and sanity checks.

 

[LCGeek]

Amusingly enough, the DWM in Windows causes me tearing annoyance for non-fullscreen games, and sometimes even for "fullscreen" games because they do not use true exclusive fullscreen.

This is because I disabled desktop compositing for lower latency in virtual reality, so I don't get the desktop double (triple?) buffering and vsync.

The result is that I get tearing in YouTube videos, even in "fullscreen", unless I turn desktop compositing back on.

DWM is cpu cycle hogging piece of shit service. I love Win7 compared to 8 or 10 usually bloat could be disabled or gotten out of the way. I have to put up with DWM, Searchindexer, and the firewall constantly causing DPC spikes in certain games new or old.

 

[unapersson]

Kind of funny when people say Linux can't be used as a Desktop OS when I've been using Archlinux exclusively since MS was pushing the rather bloated Windows Vista (2008 IIRC). I'm using Firefox under Linux right now as I type this and I also have Blender (3D modeler), Eclipse (IDE), and Krita (Image editor) open in different desktop workspaces (10 total). If i wanted I could also have Steam but I'm not a big PC gamer.

Yes, I completely agree. I went to Linux instead of Windows 95 when they started with all the activation nonsense. I was always adjusting my hardware back then and didn't want anything to do with it. Was a happy DOS/Windows user before that.

Windows has never got virtual desktops right and I've tried, since NT4.

So I've been really happy to see the forward steps with gaming and video drivers. Steam has been a real revelation with the breadth of what is available, and there are plenty of other services now too.

So for me PC Is becoming more of a gaming choice now, when before it was simply playing second fiddle to whatever console I had at the time. So it's a shame to see some who seem to want the whole initiative shut down.

 

[Crayon]

People are trying to make linux good and I all I see are posts like this ignoring the fact it took forever for MS to get where it did with windows. Linux has better scheduling and has better networking both which can be to a gamers favor. Once the OS is made more friendly a lot of benefits will be good for consumers or devs, both who are not served well by using windows these days outside of marketshare. Performance wise windows is garbage ms knows it and only hopes linux never catches up in UI issues. The status quo should change for plenty of reasons in pc gaming space including MS constant polictics of various issues including apis like this.

I agree with the spirit of this rant.

The average person isn't a concern at this point proving and making power users or devs come along is.

But this the hard truth. The bulk of pc users, including gamers, cannot care about api wars because they don't know apis exist. At most, they may know direct x is "a thing that exists".

Arguments about what users are going to use (as if they are going to choose an api) are specious because the whole game is about putting something in front of as many users as possible. They'll use whatever is in front of them and be none the wiser.

 

[Parsnip]

Why bother supporting XP in this day and age ? I understand sticking to 7 but XP is dead and gone for gamers.

China is big on XP.

 

[jmga]

According to the last Steam Survey, only 29.1% of windows users can run DX12 games(DX12 GPU and W10 needed).

Meanwhile, 81.62% of windows users can run Vulkan games. Also, SteamOS will only support Vulkan, and many AAA are coming to SteamOS already.

There is no point in using D3D12 if Vulkan is available.

 

[Crayon]

According to the last Steam Survey, only 29.1% of windows users can run DX12 games(DX12 GPU and W10 needed).

Meanwhile, 81.62% of windows users can run Vulkan games. Also, SteamOS will only support Vulkan, and many AAA are coming to SteamOS already.

There is no point in using D3D12 if Vulkan is available.

When you put it that way it sounds pretty good.

 

[LordOfChaos]

They left the group in favour of their own Metal API, and pretty much all references to their involvement in Vulkan are gone since Metal was announced for Mac, so most likely not

I heard of that, that sucks. Metal is fine for iOS to Mac ports, but in terms of new native games not having Vulkan would just make devs more likely to throw an app in a poor performing wrapper if they make a Mac version at all.

Vulkan, if it takes off, would increase the likelihood of a non-wrapper native Mac version, seeing as the developer would have a single low overhead API to work with under Windows, Linux, and OSX, significantly reducing how much work they have to do for cross platform.

As it stands with their 5 year old OpenGL version on OSX, i'm losing 30-50 (not a bit of exaggeration) percent of my app performance running NATIVELY in OSX, rather than natively in Boot Camp in Windows. And Boot Camp is notoriously under optimized so that should really say something about OSX's poor situation.

Is it any wonder than that only a small percent of games make it to OSX, and a significant chunk of those are just Windows games thrown in a Mac wrapper that lose even more performance than the OpenGL version in OSX normally would.

 

[Irobot82]

I hope UE4 gets a Vulkan renderer backend ASAP. Unity as well I guess. (I know Frostbite and Source 2 will)

With Frostbite is that just a few tweaks to Mantle and done?

 

[injurai]

I think you are massively overestimating the effect these two technologies combined will have on the industry. Nobody cares about Linux gaming, except some nerds.

You are overestimating the relevance of Wayland for games. Wayland is not a particularly interesting or new piece of technology. We have had efficiently designed compositing window managers (ie. not X11 based compositors) since the first release of Mac OSX almost 15 years ago, and Windows has had it since DWM became the standard compositor in Vista. Wayland is simply the free software world catching up with the proprietary world. For applications that own the entire surface and redraw at a variable rate(in other words, fullscreen games) Wayland doesn't have many advantages over X11. A slightly cleaner API maybe, but thats all, and XCB has solved this problem for X11 for a good while now. Valve have explicitly stated that they will be staying with X11 for SteamOS. And I'm not saying this because I am some anti-Linux troll (I'm typing this from a Gnome Shell Wayland session). But lets not make it into something it isn't.

I didn't say for games. I'm saying Vulkan will have an great influence outside of games and it's landing around the same time as Wayland.

 

[Crayon]

I heard of that, that sucks. Metal is fine for iOS to Mac ports, but in terms of new native games not having Vulkan would just make devs more likely to throw an app in a poor performing wrapper if they make a Mac version at all.

Vulkan, if it takes off, would increase the likelihood of a non-wrapper native Mac version, seeing as the developer would have a single low overhead API to work with under Windows, Linux, and OSX, significantly reducing how much work they have to do for cross platform.

As it stands with their 5 year old OpenGL version on OSX, i'm losing 30-50 (not a bit of exaggeration) percent of my app performance running NATIVELY in OSX, rather than natively in Boot Camp in Windows. And Boot Camp is notoriously under optimized so that should really say something about OSX's poor situation.

Is it any wonder than that only a small percent of games make it to OSX, and a significant chunk of those are just Windows games thrown in a Mac wrapper that lose even more performance than the OpenGL version in OSX normally would.

Apple seems to not want much gaming on osx. They are much more interested in gaming on ios. Apple seems to think it's a good time to make a proprietary api for the mobile market where they are strong.

 

[agiantenemycrab]

People are trying to make linux good and I all I see are posts like this ignoring the fact it took forever for MS to get where it did with windows. Linux has better scheduling and has better networking both which can be to a gamers favor. Once the OS is made more friendly a lot of benefits will be good for consumers or devs, both who are not served well by using windows these days outside of marketshare. Performance wise windows is garbage ms knows it and only hopes linux never catches up in UI issues. The status quo should change for plenty of reasons in pc gaming space including MS constant polictics of various issues including apis like this.

Okay, lets not get carried away here. Windows does not have "garbage" performance. Indeed for games or anything that heavily stresses a GPU, Linux has worse performance than Windows, right now at least. The scheduler in Windows and the (main) scheduler in Linux are broadly speaking very similar, although Windows is more focused on lower latency response owing to its focus on desktop responsiveness whereas Linux is primarily used as a server kernel and so is more concerned with throughput.

I would like to see some hard numbers on the relative performance of the Linux and Windows networking stacks. You claim Linux outperforms Windows here. Can you(or anyone else) provide evidence, hopefully with some citations?

Linux has a wealth of filesystems whereas Windows has NTFS, but again, games don't stress a filesystem enough (in most cases) for these extra options to matter.

And I am not shitting on Linux here, it is my preferred system. But you seem to peddling falsehoods.