Valve's SteamOS Now Supports Vulkan, The Cross-Platform Alternative To DirectX 12 (pcworld.com) 119
SteamOS just gained support for Vulkan, the cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's DirectX 12 and Apple's Metal. This should make it easier for developers to write and optimize games for SteamOS, closing the performance gap with Windows and encouraging more developers to support Linux. This feature arrived in SteamOS Brewmaster version 2.63. Valve added version 355 of the Linux Nvidia driver, which means SteamOS offers Vulkan support when used alongside Nvidia hardware. Intel's graphics hardware should also support Vulkan on SteamOS in the near future. AMD is still working on its new driver, known as AMDGPU, that will replace the current fglrx driver for SteamOS and other Linux-based platforms. If you use Linux distribution besides SteamOS, you can download Nvidia's Vulkan-ready Linux driver or an experimental version of Intel's Vulkan-enabled graphics driver.
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Also their developer network, distribution network and own catalog.
Re:isnt steam a launcher? (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:isnt steam a launcher? (Score:5, Insightful)
SteamOS != Steam.
I have issues with the statement "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX". OpenGL was a cross-platform graphics standard before DirectX even existed.
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I have issues with the statement "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX". OpenGL was a cross-platform graphics standard before DirectX even existed.
I have similar issues, but for other reasons.
Once commanding benefit to DirectX is that it attempts to loop unroll shaders and effects, and if it can't do it -- it drops them on the floor. While this may mean that that graphical dust storm isn't as pretty as it might have been otherwise, it also means that you don't crash or hang the video card, and as of DirectX 9 and later, even if you do, to get the compatibility sticker, the manufacture has to make it possible to reset the card and restart pending oper
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Vulkan [...] [is] a replacement for OpenGL to make it more difficult to buy other people's graphics cards.
Whose graphics cards? The graphics card vendors representing roughly 99.5% of the market support Vulkan, and the other 0.5% don't matter because their stuff is very old super low performance embedded chips that isn't useful for gaming anyhow.
Re:isnt steam a launcher? (Score:5, Informative)
an OpenGL emulation running on top of Direct X, as is done on Windows
Stop spewing bullshit. Windows provides a user mode thunk layer [microsoft.com] to allow installable client drivers (OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan, Mantle) to communicate with WDDM kernel mode drivers.
Re:isnt steam a launcher? (Score:5, Informative)
there's no unrolling layer between the instruction stream and the card to protect it.
I've worked on graphics drivers for 3 major vendors, and every one of them can and does unroll loops in OpenGL shaders. The actual situation is complex for both DX and GL, as it involves a myriad of factors such as the version being targeted, whether the loop bounds are statically known by the compiler, and whether they vary per SIMD-channel. Furthermore, GL supports device restart on hung shaders, and this is tested for in many common test suites.
So, your post is almost entirely incorrect. Charitably, we can chalk it to innocent ignorance rather than a vested interest in spreading misinformation about platform-independed APIs.
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there's no unrolling layer between the instruction stream and the card to protect it.
I've worked on graphics drivers for 3 major vendors, and every one of them can and does unroll loops in OpenGL shaders.
They try, but they do not drop them on the floor entirely when it can not be proven that they will run in bounded time. Google actually has a similar technology that it uses in Chrome to "test the waters", but doesn't deploy it in Linux versions.
The actual situation is complex for both DX and GL, as it involves a myriad of factors such as the version being targeted, whether the loop bounds are statically known by the compiler, and whether they vary per SIMD-channel.
Yes. And if they *aren't* statically known by the compiler, it should drop the things on the floor, like Windows tends to. It's not a very ideal solution, but it works well enough that I would not have been resetting my G5 desktop when something decided to go cra
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> it should drop the things on the floor, like Windows tends to
Different AC here, but no, that is not true on more recent shader models.
You have been corrected by a number of individuals here on every major point you raised, and you keep saying more bullshit. You should really stop talking about this subject. You don't know what you are talking about.
You admit error but refuse to acknowledge it. (Score:1)
You start off with "they try", which is 100% acceptance of the FACT that your original claim was 100% wrong, yet you pretend through the rest of your post that you were right all along.
Your "they try, but it doesn't always work" is ALSO defunct since your admission that DX resets cards is admission that DX doesn't always work, either, else they wouldn't need to reset.
I think we can discard the innocent option.
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Incorrect.
The difference is one of fault tolerance, vs. fault recovery. Tolerance, which only requires resetting the card, is more useful than a recovery which requires resetting the system. These systems do not have as their only purpose in life acting as game consoles.
If I can reset the card, and then replay the operations in such a way that the card does not crash again, or at least does not crash again for some period of time, such that I'm able to get to the next saddle point, and repeat the process,
Re:isnt steam a launcher? (Score:4, Interesting)
The statement is "the cross-platform alternative to DirectX 12" - specifically 12, and not DirectX in general. On Windows your options for Mantle-like APIs are currently Vulkan and DirectX 12, i.e. the platform-limited alternative to Vulkan is DirectX 12, and the cross-platform alternative to DirectX 12 is Vulkan. I hope that helps you feel a bit better about the headline.
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I have lots of steam games (Score:1)
Here is the deal. Steam includes a web browser (currently based on webkit I think) but on windows you cannot disable flash in the steam client. The only thing that you can do is remove the client from your global flash plugin folder, which means flash will no longer work in any browser that uses this location, not just steams.
Over the years the valve forums have been inundated with requests for
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And Steam is designed to keep you from running the games that you've bought.
The state keeps me from driving the car I bought. Just because I drive 127 MPH in a school zone *ONE TIME*, now I'm no longer allowed to drive my own car.
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The state keeps me from driving the car I bought. Just because I drive 127 MPH in a school zone *ONE TIME*, now I'm no longer allowed to drive my own car.
So.... your DeLorean is defective?
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So.... your DeLorean is defective?
If it can make it up to 127, it's probably working better than designed.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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I think you missed an important point. It was not the owner who broke the rules, but a delegated operator (for lack of a better term). Your example would be more precise in saying your friend drove your car at 127 MPH through a school zone, therefore YOU are no longer allowed to operate your car (while your friend merrily goes on continuing to operate his own car).
It's more complicated than that, even, since the nephew in question was [probably?] operating under the uncle's username; if so, that does swin
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Next time read the TOS and EULA before buying the game
You don't need a license to run the game. (Score:1)
Since copyright doesn't control the "copy" made to use the game as purchased, you don't have to agree to squat, and if he's not running the Steam net service (running single player), the TOS is ALSO irrelevant.
Please stop demanding people bend over and take it just so you don't feel such a fool holding on to your ankles and crying at the pain.
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You're able to chroot and jail in linux since I can remember.
The shit is, how do you give your jailed game access to your graphic card, if the same one has to be used by your host/hypervisor?
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You can't give full access like that - you would need a different card for the host OS.
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OpenSUSE for Debian...
*ducks and hides
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Ah you know that SteamOS is ubuntu right with the steam client autostarting in big picture mode and some of the desktop stuff removed. That is all....
And if you could point me towards one instance of a machine being compromised as a result of steam that would be really useful as well....
I think you should just calm a little.
Vulkan could overtake DX12 in adoption! (Score:3, Interesting)
I was surprised to learn that very few games are running on DX12 (maybe 1-3?)..
Vulkan already has one and it's looking likely to get more. I'm guessing Valve at least will port all their modern titles to it. If so, Valve is really playing the long game on becoming less dependent on MS Windows..
Re:Vulkan could overtake DX12 in adoption! (Score:5, Interesting)
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You say it like it's a good thing. The premise of DirectX 12/Vulkan is that game/engine developers want more low level access. If that premise is false they're both going to flop. And I'd say OpenGL has bet a lot more on Vulkan than Microsoft has on DX12, if the premise is false it's worst for Linux and open source in particular. Winning the battle is not so great if you're losing the war.
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While I can't speak for other game developers, I'm betting adoption is low because:
a) It's new, and
b) Windows 10 only.
Microsoft pulled the same stunt with DX10, and games simply held onto DX9 compatibility for many years after we should have moved past it, thanks to Windows XP and ports from our last-gen consoles.
Keep in mind that games also spend a very long time in the pipeline, and game engines spend even longer than that. While occasionally you'll see someone rush support out in a game out in the marke
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All the game developers who have already published titles have a massive code base of shaders and rendering code that they need to maintain. They can only justify upgrading all that code to do something better if they can provide it will boost short-term revenue. Because they may have written their own abstraction layers to encapsulate multiple platforms, they simply can't just change one shader at a time. They'll have their own standard for defining materials, particles, skinned characters, cameras and mo
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Doesn't seem to be done that way, I say this because it's often a third party that handles the 'port' to PC, if they were using what you describe then they wouldn't need to use a third party to port a game.
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It might depend on the developer. I know one company who did try and abstract the differences between the different shader languages (GLSL, Cg, HLSL) into their own macro language.
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If you are talking about the Talos Principle: If you actually read any of the articles about it you'll notice that everyone says that their Vulkan renderer is a "naive" implementation that is "OpenGL-like" and that they are still working on implementing all the stuff that makes rendering with Vulkan fast. Considering that, it's actually a very good sign that it is already faster than their OpenGL renderer on many drivers.
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WiiU, PS3, and PS4 all run freebsd as the OS so why not.
PS4, yes. PS3 and WiiU, no.
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Yes, AMD and Nvidia have been using their own gpl software to load their proprietary video blobs into the kernel to avoid gpl violations and which seems to be okay with Linus for now, but, who knows how long this will last there are a lot of zealots out there that are not happy with this method.
Given it is explicitly called out in the license file preamble for the kernel and re-licensing the kernel is not really possible in terms of practicality I don't see any change happening. Not to mention all the vendors that create proprietary kernel modules and all the kernel contributors that rely on this code (almost all mobile and embedded vendors) would likely continue on with the existing kernel version rather than this re-licensed offshoot if such a thing were even possible.
Is it available on... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Maybe you guys should aim for 1% market share first. ;^)
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Right now it is available on very little (Score:3, Insightful)
It is an open API (though not free, you have to pay membership dues) that can be implemented on basically any platform people wish. As of right now, only nVidia and Intel have implemented it and only on Windows and Linux as far as I know, nVidia may have it in their drivers for other platforms. Apple has expressed no interest and most other OSes rely on the graphic drivers to provide APIs. AMD will eventually probably get a driver out, they were one of the driving forces behind Vulkan, however they suck at
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Actually, AMD already supports Vulkan - it was based on their proprietary Mantis APIs. And it actually makes AMD shine if you use their draw-call optimizations (The only game using it, The Talos Principle, doesn't) compared to NVidia - the AMD GPUs are faster if you properly use it.
Good news for gamers (Score:1)
Awesome. Way to go SteamOS! DirectX is pretty much the only thing that has been driving the gaming scene on PCs. Take that away from Microsoft and you'll be able to get Linux PCs that people are happy with, rather than being forced to game on Windows. Kudos Nvidia, kudos SteamOS.
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But then you have to put up with Windows, which is broken and clumsy by comparison, and seems to be more interested in the welfare of Microsoft than the user. Never mind still a malware magnet and full of crapware and adware.
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Good grief, it's no way near as clumsy as Linux for computer graphics or software development in general.
Gee, you better hand in your geek card. Windows has got practically zero automation, being a windows developer means being a click-monkey.
High hopes, he had high hopes. (Score:4, Informative)
This should make it easier for developers to write and optimize games for SteamOS
It's difficult to get solid numbers on Steam Machine sales. But they don't appear to be setting the world on fire:
Alienware Steam Machine ASM100-6980BLK Desktop Console (Intel Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD) NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPU [amazon.com] 3.1 Stars. #3,293 in Computers & Accessories #237 in Computers & Accessories > Desktops
The Steam Hardware & Software Survey: January 2016 [steampowered.com] doesn't offer much to feed on:
Windows 95%
Win 10 64 Bit 33% and Trending upward.
OSX 4% No change.
Linux 1% No change.
Ubuntu 0.4%. Mint 0.2%
Follow the money. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Market share is not everything. Just look at Apple.
The Alienware Steam Machine I linked to earlier is ranks about #240 in desktop sales at Amazon. While a pimped-out Cybertron Win 10 gaming rig retailing at $6,000 ranks about #40. CybertronPC Thallium X99 Red Gaming Desktop-Intel i7-5960X, 64GB DDR4,3x NVIDIA GTX980 Ti, Microsoft Windows 10 [amazon.com]
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Windows 95%
Win 10 64 Bit 33% and Trending upward.
OSX 4% No change.
Linux 1% No change.
Ubuntu 0.4%
Mint 0.2%
You know what, I'm running Win7 at the moment - and I'd ditch it in a second for Fedora 23 + KDE. Problem is, the fglrx driver doesn't work on Fedora 23 without downgrading packages to F22 release versions. I'd run RHEL7.2 - which fglrx works on, but then no KDE 5 / plasma.
So right now, I'm stuck on Windows 7 and trying to keep MS out of my stuff with their BS 'telemetry' data.
I would love this to change - but right now, I'm stuck with the one problem - graphics drivers.
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And I'm all out of bubblegum.
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What's the issue with KDE on RHEL 7.2? It looks like a thing. [linuxconfig.org]
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What's the issue with KDE on RHEL 7.2? It looks like a thing. [linuxconfig.org]
That's KDE4. KDE5 is quite a bit different - like the Gnome 2 -> 3 - but without the retardation...
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Well, if that's an example of a typical Steam box sale, with an "NVIDIAIDIA GeForce GTX GPU 2GB GDDR5" (their spelling, not mine, and no mention of the actual model) graphics co-processor it's no wonder...