The Most Important Project Since Mesa 1.0?

[Dukenukemx]

Unless this is implemented in proprietary drivers, then this guy is just wasting his time. What sane person is going to switch back and fourth between Graphics drivers to play games, It's silly.

My test machine says otherwise. My Radeon 4670 hates AMD's proprietary drivers, but loves the open source. When I try to run WoW in WINE, the graphics are glichy and run badly. With the open source drivers, everything runs fine.

I also have a Geforce GT 620, but that's the other way around. When I first tried to get open source working, I had no dispaly on my screen. Without openssh, I couldn't get my computer working again. But install the Nvidia proprietary drivers and everything works fine, including playing WoW through WINE.

As a gamer, the open source drivers offer more in the long term then proprietary drivers do. Especially since my hardware has gone legacy so quickly, if that makes sense. The DX9 state tracker does offer a lot of benefits to the Linux community.

#1 More people will switch over to linux if there aren't performance issues with their games. The gaming community isn't happy about Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 has done nothing to fix it.

#2 The more people that switch to linux, then developers will take notice and will work exclusively on OpenGL. OpenGL isn't going anyway, cause right now it's an OpenGL world. Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. What reason do developers have to continue to use Directx? With PS4 claimed as the winner over Xbox One, Directx won't have much of a hold in the future.

#3 Lets not forget about the Valve Steam box that'll run Linux. Valve will most likely make all their games in the future with OpenGL. If Valve has any influence over developers, then others may also go OpenGL. But there's going to be some that won't, due to lazy or being influenced by Microsoft to stick with Directx. That's where the state tracker and Wine comes in.

[jrch2k8]

Just to inform those that have doubts, this state tracker is a Wine only things tied to a wine dispatcher patch, you cannot access it directly or write games using DX9 on gallium or anything like it, again to be sure is wine specific for improve accel on Wine for windows DX9c games wehn using gallium drivers, it cannot be accesed otherwise

[brosis]

This is the height of insanity. By abandoning OpenGL and adopting DirectX you are basically making Microsoft the sole determiner of the future of graphics on Linux. This is stupid to allow to happen. This is coming right at the moment when Linux gaming is really taking off, with more native ports coming out than ever before thanks to Steam and Valve. This will basically guarantee that Linux remains a second rate platform always trailing behind DirectX revisions. If you think it's hard to implement GL driver support in Mesa, wait til we're trying to chase DirectX 10, 11, 12 and more. The only stuff that even works with DirectX 9 is games that already ran in wine. You still have .NET compatibility to fight, DirectPlay, the rest of the DirectX stack, DirectSound etc.

That's valid point. By introducing compatibility to proprietary products, one actually ensures their spread.
I'd say, let those who are interested, work on the idea. As such, there is not much wrong with it - many proprietary softwares actually internally use WINE to run on Linux, so not much difference - lazy ignorants will remain lazy ignorants.

[Luke_Wolf]

False, see this: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...635#post343635

I don't understand why there are so much negative response to this. Since when is higher compatability a bad thing?
No one is implying that D3D should replace OpenGL, this is simply a more efficient solution to a real problem.

Basically it's the same group that whines and FUDs about .NET because it's technologies developed by Microsoft so obviously they have to be evil and trojans that Microsoft is setting up in order to later sue while anyone who says otherwise is obviously a Microsoft fanboy while they're playing around with their Apple devices. That said though I basically agree that this shouldn't be used to make new stuff not because of OpenGL but because Direct3D 9.0c is ridiculously obsolete. However this should be useful to both WINE and virtualization, although what'd be particularly nice for WINE usage is if someone would write a GLide implementation, why? well because a lot of games of the late 90s to early-mid 2000s had GLide as an available option and it was as the rule the best renderer, and as a bonus you solve a major chunk of the compatibility issues with pre Dx9 games. Yeah I know you can use a GLide wrapper under WINE but as a wrapper it's still having to rely upon their D3D translation layer for most of them (there are some openGL based ones) which isn't the best.

[a user]

imagin a world where amd didnt have the catlylist driver anymore, it was just the mesa+gallium+rX00g stack. both for windows and linux, and the mesa part would have an opengl, opencl, openvg, opengl es, directx 9, directx 10/11, and video decode/encode state trackers.

as many times before MS would put big rocks in the way of such a common compattible way.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Waste of resources, but they can have at it.

By this time next years Mesa support with the OpenGL 4.x stack will be mature and AMD/Intel support very mature including OpenCL.

[smitty3268]

Or the most over-dramatic title of the year

I'm pretty sure Marek is trolling all of us. He had to know this article/title was coming to Phoronix as he wrote that message.

[smitty3268]

Unless this is implemented in proprietary drivers, then this guy is just wasting his time. What sane person is going to switch back and fourth between Graphics drivers to play games, It's silly.

Well, you won't have to switch back and forth if you just use the OSS drivers full time, and this might be a good reason to choose to do that.

[jrch2k8]

False, see this: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...635#post343635

I don't understand why there are so much negative response to this. Since when is higher compatability a bad thing?
No one is implying that D3D should replace OpenGL, this is simply a more efficient solution to a real problem.

well im still partially right "The libd3d9-xlib implementation bitrotted and eventually it was nuked since everything was done through wine, but it could easily be revived and you'd have completely wine-less Direct3D 9 available." since it is an wine only project but someone else could revive his old code for test and make it publically available untied of wine, luckly i doubt such patch make it to mesa upstream ever

[jrch2k8]

Basically it's the same group that whines and FUDs about .NET because it's technologies developed by Microsoft so obviously they have to be evil and trojans that Microsoft is setting up in order to later sue while anyone who says otherwise is obviously a Microsoft fanboy while they're playing around with their Apple devices. That said though I basically agree that this shouldn't be used to make new stuff not because of OpenGL but because Direct3D 9.0c is ridiculously obsolete. However this should be useful to both WINE and virtualization, although what'd be particularly nice for WINE usage is if someone would write a GLide implementation, why? well because a lot of games of the late 90s to early-mid 2000s had GLide as an available option and it was as the rule the best renderer, and as a bonus you solve a major chunk of the compatibility issues with pre Dx9 games. Yeah I know you can use a GLide wrapper under WINE but as a wrapper it's still having to rely upon their D3D translation layer for most of them (there are some openGL based ones) which isn't the best.

well Linux is not about do what everyone else does, is adopt and promote open technologies and try to do things right, current adoption is by ppl that understand this and appreciate open technologies and no vendor locks not to be the next microsoft or to follow whatever microsoft does.

in the case of .NET as many more do, i consider it a very bad implementation[technically speaking], sure is quite used, sure have good support for now from microsoft and sure is easier to write[after all is an script language using a costume of compiled language] since is higher level than C++ but in linux won't have a chance never in its current form, maybe if microsoft later fix it and remove the garbage collector and the JIT stages to add proper compiler support maybe it gets a chance.

in case of any "fanboi bla bla bla linux will never gain market like that bla bla bla directX rocks bla bla .NET bla bla" to use .NET/DX ill just use windows and stay with closed techs, i want linux to grow open and strong using open technologies and that is the point